Chapter 2.2: Spawn Camping

The Dawn Commission Field Agents arrive in Arkham.

The derelict lot sprawls out in front of me, lit by the cold early morning sun. Thick ivy clings to the house's decaying timbers, draping over the crumbled walls and fallen beams. More vines curl across the broken pavement. The house's windows are long gone, leaving only holes like gaping mouths screaming into the void.

No shoggoths. In fact, no signs of life at all. Only the restless sway of leaves in the subtle morning breeze.

My fingers twitch with the urge to set the whole scene ablaze. One blast of flame in that large window at the bottom, and the whole place goes up like a torch. Crackling orange flames devour the rotten wood, leaping from beam to beam. Thin screams slice the air as shoggoths scuttle out of the inferno, only to be cut down by —

I shake myself, pulling free from the fantasy. I'm not the sort of person who would engage in such wanton destruction, especially not with a pair of witnesses standing just behind me. There could be victims in the hive beneath the house. I'm a Sellain. Someone who saves people. A hero.

You know, Vesper says. I can see it every time you lose yourself in one of those dreams.

Can't you allow a girl a few private thoughts? I hide a smirk. Besides, it's my actions that matter. As far as the world is concerned, I've turned over a new leaf. I'm a nice person. A kind person. A thoughtful, generous person.

Suuure you are. As far as the world is concerned — and how about as far as you're concerned?

You know what they say, Vesper. The best lies are the ones you believe yourself.

I paint confidence and deference across my face, subtly shifting my posture to convey interest and respect as I turn to face the others. "How do you want to do this?"

Astute eyes may notice that, now that autumn has unfolded in force, the vegetation on the Dyer Estate is more lush and clinging to the last vestiges of summer more tightly than the surrounding gardens of the neighboring old manors. The newly-broken fence still grants ingress as it did when the agents first visited the abandoned estate.

Any evidence of the previous trek mere days ago -- broken branches, scars of searing magic, footprints -- seems to have utterly been undone.

"Um, do the shoggoths intentionally erase evidence to lure in more victims? That would be a worrying amount of intelligence."

"The report says they're pretty stupid. If they clean up after themselves, it's likely a behavior learned by instinct and trial-and-error rather than true intelligence."

"Or some timey-wimey bullshit." Alric opens the trunk and grabs one of the axes, resting it on his shoulder. At the broken fence, where they emerged just a few days ago, he presses the axe against the ground. The harsh, grating noise from the axe dragging over the floor repeatedly is in stark contrast to the otherwise calm Saturday noon. Once done, the floor is left with a mark going from a few inches into the lot to a few inches out of it.

"Okay. We're going to setup camp just a few yards from the border. Last time, they found us, and then didn't relent until we were practically out. I expect them to not have had a change of heart." He gestures to them, then the trunk. "You guys take the gasoline and axes." He grabs the stack of plastic boxes with the smaller items inside, then heads towards the border.

I pick up the gas can and follow Alric. "Did you bring bait? Or is the hope that they'll sense us and that'll be sufficient?"

"I'd be surprised if they aren't already on their way to us." He puts down the boxes just a few yards from the border, making sure that he can still see it from his position.

Everyone, roll Notice

Does Alric notice anything?: [5, 3] Result: Success! 🎯

Rolled: [11, 2] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

Notice: [1, 1]+1 Result: Critical Failure! 💀

"I think this gas can is leaking..." Hope says, peering closely at the bottom of her can.

"What?" I lift the can up and examine it.

inspect can: [1, 4] Result: Success! 🎯

"It's not. Alric just spilled some gas when he filled it."

From the broken portion of fence, Alric can see that there are thick silk lines crossing the vegetation in the lot.

The shoggoth's haven't been seen yet, but the silk lines are reminiscent of a spider's web, and may also be used for alerting the creators to prey.

"Take a look around, guys. This looks an awful lot of like spider silk. It's kind of like the whole lot is a giant spider's web." If it turns out there are shoggoth spiders, I'll burn down the whole lot. "Once you're ready, feel free to pull on any of the silk, something's bound to happen." He grabs one of the axes and positions himself next to the broken fence. He starts widening the breach a little, just to be sure.

I set down my can of gas and axe to free up my hands, then toss a rock at the nearest spiderweb.

Hope sets down her can and axe, and draws her 1911's.

Alric remotely locks the car, then puts his focus on the lot.

It's not very long before the first teacup shoggoth slips its way into view. It investigates the struck web with an amorphous limb. It quietly roots around the spot, curious tendrils probing the undergrowth.

sunfire: [1, 3] Result: Failure ❌

Shot 1: [3, 3] Result: Failure ❌

Shot 2: [6, 6 💥 2 = 8] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

AP 1 (3d6 + 1) results: 6, 3, 5 total: 15

With the second thunderclap of gunfire, the shoggoth is instantly incapacitated. Its ichor oozes into the soil and the scent of it battles with the gunpowder to bite the noses of the field agents.

"Welp, here we go!"

Alric moves over to the dead shoggoth and gives it a few whacks with his axe. Satisfied with the unlikelyhood of the shoggoth's reanimation, he proceeds to collect one of the plastic boxes and shovels in the shoggoth. With a little trouble that is, as an axe isn't a shovel. He makes a mental note to rectify this issue at the next opportunity. He puts the lid on the box and notices that he forgot to get duct tape. He makes a mental note to also rectify that issue as soon as possible. Instead, Alric takes a garbage bag and wraps the whole box in there, then ties it shut. Finally, he carries the box to the car and stores it in the trunk.

It’s impossible to bag the shoggoth without disturbing the silk line it was investigating. So while Alric tidies it up, another shoggoth slinks its way through the undergrowth in his direction.

Hope, Inara, roll Notice with +2 for already being on the lookout for shoggoths. Alric, you get no bonus to noticing.

keeping an eye out: [4, 3]+2 Result: Success! 🎯

sunfire: [5, 6 💥 3 = 9] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

sunfire (3d6) results: 2, 5, 4 total: 11

Inara spots the creature first and swiftly skewers it dead with a bolt of radiant magic.

It’s interesting. You can tell when the creatures are dead because their form stops shifting and blurring between possible limbs and texture and patterning and relaxes into a meaty blob that twitches incoherently for only seconds more.

"See, Alric? I told you we'd have your back."

He throws her a thumbs up. A very perceptive onlooker would recognize him as being sarcastic.

Seeing the direction this is going, Alric dons one of the raincoats and masks, and grabs another box on the way over.

Whack, bag, trunk.

It takes a while longer for the next shoggoth to show up. Likely because unlike the first two, it wasn't summoned by plucking on the silk trip lines in the undergrowth.

sunfire: [9, 3] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

undefined (3d6) results: 4, 5, 5 total: 14

This shoggoth is singed like the last.

Unless baited, a fourth shoggoth fails to emerge for many minutes.

"How many did you guys want?"

"I don't know how many Alric needs to pay Sawyer, but the plan was to kill as many as we could before venturing into the hive." I pause. "This is taking an awfully long time, but I think I've got an idea to speed it up."

Alric, meanwhile, gets busy chopping up the third shoggoth.

My fingers shift through the gestures to instantiate Alazander's Fourfold Command — index across pinky, thumbs curled in, middle fingers touching. Glowing gold runes drip from one finger and I curl them around my wrist, binding their power to it. The control gestures are simpler — Carlyle Three to create countless tiny threads, Basic Twelve to direct them into place around the shoggoth webs. Each thread of air is limned by faint golden runes linking it back to my hand, like tiny strands of effervescent sun.

I clench my fist, tugging on every web in sight. "There. That should get their attention."

Does Alric notice the silk lines moving?: [4, 3] Result: Success! 🎯

In the corner of his eye, Alric notices a silk line moving, then all of them. "What the -" His head snaps around. "What the fuck did you do?"

"I just cut hours off this operation," I say. "Relax, we're three meters from the edge of the lot and you've got the both of us to shoot them down."

"Good fucking luck." Alric turns around, and moves back onto the street. More angry mumbling is to be heard.

What a baby. I don't say it, turning to keep an eye on the lot instead.

Sure enough, a patch of shadows seems to detach from the background and glide forward to investigate the plucked web. Elsewhere another shifting creature silently emerges. At first it looks quite large, but as it comes into view, it becomes apparent that it is merely two shoggoth side by side. For a grand total of three easily visible, closing in.

Initiative Order:
Shoggoth3: Queen ♠︎
Shoggoth1: Queen ♦︎
Shoggoth2: Jack ♥︎
Inara: 7 ♦︎
Hope: 5 ♥︎
Alric: 5 ♣︎

The Shoggoth each leisurely inspect some of the nearby lines. Inara, what do you do?

sunfire (K9): [7, 6 💥 1 = 7] Result: Success! 🎯

undefined (2d6) results: 3, 1 total: 4

The lance strikes the shoggoth through a membranous sail-fin-wing-limb, but fails to do any meaningful damage to the creature.

Hope, what do you do?

Shot 1: [9, 2] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

undefined (3d6 + 1) results: 5, 1, 5 total: 12

Shot 2: [5, 2]+1 Result: Success! 🎯

undefined (2d6 + 1) results: 3, 5 total: 9

In two shots, Hope takes out the shoggoth that were standing beside each other.

Their shifting forms twitch, and then are still.

Alric, what do you do?

BROKEN LINK

Alric runs to the other side of the fence to give the professionals space to work.

+++

Officer Green watched the road hawk-like as his partner, Officer Campbell fastidiously continued to drive no faster than the speed limit and refused to turn on the siren. They were supposed to be responding to reports of gunfire, a situation which Green had thought would call for urgency, but which the senior Officer Campbell had treated thus far with an (infuriatingly) mildly cheerful ponderousness.

They were only now turning onto Pickman Street and approaching the area where a concerned citizen had reported the distant sound of gunfire.

"What's that there!" Green points to a flash of light from a condemned lot. A rent-a-truck is parked just outside a damaged fence.

Campbell cruses by without slowing. "Hmm? Fence repair, most likely."

"No, I mean the flash of light. Shouldn't we stop to investigate?"

"That's the Dyer Estate. It's best left be. Besides, a flash of light isn't gunfire." Campbell says, voice still unconcerned.

Two muffled shots echo from the lot in question.

"..." Green has trouble voicing his consternation. He catches a glimpse of a man running from the lot with an axe before the squad car passes out of sight.

Campbell, if he hears the shots simply takes it in stride. "Look. When there's gunfire, we either stay clear or respond with extreme prejudice. And we don't do the Dyer Estate with extreme prejudice. The problem is likely to solve itself anyway."

"Pull over."

"Nope."

Officer Green considers pressing the issue and jumping out of the car, but road rash isn't conductive to investigating an active shooting immediately after, so he settles for composing a draft of his report in his head.

Officer Campbell does not return them to the scene.

+++

Initiative Order:
Shoggoth1: Jack ♦︎
Hope: 6 ♠︎
Inara: 4 ♥︎
Alric: 4 ♣︎```

The remaining shoggoth slips through the undergrowth toward its felled fellows.

BROKEN LINK

Hope, what do you do?

Shot 1: [9, 6 💥 4 = 10] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

undefined (3d6 + 1) results: 4, 2, 1 total: 8

Shot 2: [10 💥 5 = 15, 5] Result: Success with 2 raises! 🎯🎯🎯

undefined (3d6 + 1) results: 4, 5, 2 total: 12

ammo remaining: 5,5

The last shoggoth was stunned with the first shot and dead with the second.

The scent of dead shoggoth, a confusing cacophony of organic odors, fills the small clearing. Shapes shuffle in the background, but any other shoggoths out there are well camouflaged and under cover. No shadows seem eager to approach.

"There you go," I say, turning to face Alric. "Three more corpses for you."

Alric waits a minute to make sure that there's nothing else crawling out of the woods, then finishes processing the previous shoggoth, then moves on to the other three.

"Not as many as I expected. Want to do that again? Or will that tire you out for the fighting?"

"Maybe want to wait for two minutes so I can process these before we continue?" He's obviously irritated.

"That works too." Hope takes a look for enemies, reloads, then starts refilling the first magazines.

~~He finishes up, then takes position at the fence again.~~

Alric, roll Notice with a -2

Does Alric notice anything?: [2, 1]-2 Result: Failure ❌

shoggoth surprise!: [6, 0] Result: Success! 🎯

Alric has to traverse into a thicket of underbrush to get at two of the felled bodies.

A shoggoth that was waiting in the shadows takes the opportunity to lurch out and Entangle Alric as he passes.

Entangled: target can’t move and suffers -2 to all Trait rolls.

Initiative Order:
Inara: 9 ♠︎
Hope: 6 ♣︎
Alric: 4 ♦︎
Shoggoth1: 2 ♥︎```

sunfire: [10 💥 6 = 16, 3] Result: Success with 3 raises! 🎯🎯🎯🎯

undefined (3d6) results: 4, 6, 3 total: 13

The searing hot bolt deftly misses Alric and strikes directly at his attacker, dispatching it.

"Good find! Want to wander around and bait out any others?" Hope is mostly joking here but would totally do it in his position.

The tangles fall loose only moments after gripping Alric, making it easy to pull them off.

FUCK THIS

He runs, almost stumbling over himself, and then emerges back on the clearing.

"Nope. Fuck this. Fuck this." He clasps his knees, catching his breath. What the fuck did I think going in there? I really need to stop doing stupid shit like that.

Wheel loader? No. Bulldozer? Yes. No. Napalm. NAPALM. Fuck this place.

"Give me a second. I'll retrieve the corpses, then I'll deliver the first round. In a second." And then I'll go shopping.

I eye Alric. He looks unsteady, panicked eyes skittering around the clearing like a cornered rat. "Yeah, a break might be a good idea. I'll come with you to drop the shoggoths off."

Oh, fuck that.

"It's been like 20 minutes we've been here. And we're not going to leave anyone alone with cosmic horrors. I'll deliver them on my own."

Having collected himself somewhat, he starts inching closer to the edge of the clearing, where the shoggoths lie. He peers into the thicket, checking for anything with too many eyes, tentacles, or teeth. He'll also surface check his sense for magic for anything wrong.

"I'm sure Hope wouldn't stay in the lot," I say. "Besides, I wanted to chat with you, and this seems like a good time to do it, with nothing stressful hanging over us."

Roll Notice with -2, Alric.

"Great."

He continues checking the thicket.

Does Alric see anything?: [7, 4]-2 Result: Success! 🎯

A large dark eye peers out from underneith a rock just beyond where the cluster of three shoggoth corpses lie, likely within tentacle range if Alric tries to retrieve the corpses. The gap in the rock doesn't look anywhere near large enough to contain the teacup shoggoth, so the bulk of it must be buried underground or improbably squeezed... elsewhere.

And that's only one. Given how well hidden that shoggoth is, there may be any number of others more well hidden in the underbrush.

Querying magic sense just returns a feeling of unsteadiness like a subtle alcohol buzz slightly disrupting footing, if it even truly returns that. It's a new felt sense. It is hard to be sure if it is even truely percieving anything.

Alric slowly moves back. "Those fuckers are buried under rocks and probably in the ground, I can see at least one and I bet there's more. I'm not going in there."

"Okay, okay. The thicket is officially a no-go zone. Plan B." He walks over to the shoggoth he was working on before he got interrupted by the silk line pulling idea, and finishes shoveling it into the container. He then pulls the container into the middle of the clearing, with the lid off, and takes position at the fence.

"I could use magic to drag out the corpses in the thicket."

Alric rolls his eyes up and stares at the sky, then sighs.

"Alright. Please do so."

elemental manipulation: [2, 4] Result: Success! 🎯

I cast Fourfold Command again and thicken the air around one of the shoggoths before dragging it out with a sweep of my hand and dropping it in front of Alric. The other three take just as little effort, and I spend the rest of the spell to give him a nice breeze while he chops them apart.

And with that, a total of seven shoggoths are whacked, bagged, and trunked.

Alric tells Hope to take care, then gets into the driver's side of the car and starts the motor.

I get in the passenger side. After all, Alric did agree to have me come with him and I've been dying to have a private chat.

Only after Inara got into the car did Alric get the idea of locking the doors from the inside.

He pulls the car onto the road and into the direction of Bright Books.

"What do you want?"

"Must I want something? Can't I just be a friend interested in keeping you company?"

~~Come on, Alric. Pedal to the metal, then run the passenger's side into a wall and it's over.~~

He pushes the thought to the side as it arises.

"You could've been."

"That's cold, Alric." I sigh and stare out the window, painting sadness on my face even though he can't see. "People can change, you know."

~~A very sad accident induced maybe by a combination of eldritch madness and very, very bad luck. Noone could blame you.~~

"In a day. Sure."

Up ahead is a corner with a very inviting wall. He turns it without issues.

"Alright, explain this to me: You can obviously act like you're a normal, likeable human being. Why would you choose to act like a bitch all the time? How can that be in your interest?"

Why, indeed. That's suboptimal.

Fuck. That's human.

I almost deflect, but something in his question catches me. He already knows my secret, I think, staring at the streets passing by. What harm can a little honesty do?

I turn to face him, letting my expression slide away like water off an oiled cloth, leaving only bland neutrality. "Because it's simpler. Easier. Everyone expects it from me anyways — I'm a wizard, and we're an arrogant bunch as a rule." It's weirdly refreshing to tell the truth, and maybe that's what inspires me to continue. "Being nice is a grueling, thankless task. You have to pretend to care about everyone's feelings. To think about others constantly, to hide and dance and lie — and then to lie about what you're doing."

My voice stays calm and quiet. "Haven't you ever wanted to say what's truly on your mind, Alric? Haven't you ever been annoyed by someone and wanted to just... cut loose? Tell them what you really thought? Everything's a role at the end of the day, but at least being Inara is easier than the alternatives."

Huh.

He can actually sympathize somewhat. "I... Yes? I mean, I did feel like that, once upon a time. I still think everyone around me is an idiot. Yes, you included. But I don't tell people that anymore. There's no point to it."

Another corner, now less inviting.

"What do you feel you get out of telling people how much they suck? Status, maybe?"

"I could pretend to be offended, but what's the point? We both know it's pretense, and there's no audience to dance for. So instead, I'll simply answer your question." I shrug. "The Sellain name stretches back hundreds of years, and it's my duty to uphold that legacy." The answer comes easily, drilled into me by Alina's countless lectures every time I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

"Go on. Tell me that being nice feels good, that it's its own reward, that I'll somehow be happier if I'm a kind and generous soul. I've heard it before, trite garbage spouted by fools without the slightest understanding of reality. It's tiresome to hold back and worse to put in all that effort for the fleeting gratitude of a bunch of unimportant people. Legacy is all that really matters in this world. Legacy and wizardry. Who you are, and what you do."

Alric pulls the car into a parking lot next to Bright Books.

"I'm none of those things and I'm not going to tell you any of them. I'll ask you the following questions: How does it feel to play your roles? And how did this car drive feel?"

And with that, he gets out of the car, shuts the door, and makes his way into Bright Books.

That was.. nice? It might've been a role she played. But she doesn't strike me as someone on a very high level. Mind reading? Eehh.. I'll review later.

I don't feel like dealing with Sawyer, so I wait in the car, alone with nothing but my thoughts for company.

And me.

And Vesper. It's easy to forget about her.

I think about what he said while waiting. How does being Inara feel? Not like much, if I'm being honest. Long periods of emptiness punctuated by moments of triumphant satisfaction, like killing the shoggoths. Using magic feels better than anything else. Nothing else stands out, and I'm not sure what Alric was trying to point out.

The car ride was fine. None of the thrill of verbally fencing with Alric in the park, but not boring, exactly. Not bothering to control my expressions and tone while talking, not worrying about what Alric might think, not thinking about how best to get what I want... well, it was novel. Not something I can keep doing, though. People will tear me apart if I don't play a role.

I'm getting distracted. These games with Alric are just that: games. I need to find his dead man's switch, disable it, and then get rid of Alric. Ideally in a way that casts me as a hero, rather than a potential suspect. Maybe he can get eaten by shoggoths or torn apart by werewolves. That kind of thing happens all the time in Boston.

I rest my head in my hands and stare at Bright Books. The whole thing leaves me feeling vaguely dissatisfied, like a spellform that's subtly wrong. Why would he tell me to think about how being Inara felt? Was he trying to suggest that legacy isn't important?

Ugh.

Sawyer doesn't seem to be present, but one of the ever-present employees notices Alric and blinks, slowly, before pulling out their phone and typing something out.

Sawyer emerges from the back a few moments later, holding a handkerchief tight against his nose as he does, head swivelling until he notices Alric and waves his unoccupied hand in greeting.

Alric waves back, and yells across the room. "I've got a car full of stuff, where do you want me to put it?"

Sawyer hesitates, glancing at the number of people inside the store, then heads over. "Are we talking super obvious stuff, or less obvious? If it's not super obvious, bring it in through and I'll show you where I've got freezer space, if it's what I think it is," He asks, gesturing for one of the employees shelving books and the employee who noticed Alric to join them. "I can have Ryan and Yao give you a hand with the heavy lifting if you've got a lot to bring in."

The man who'd noticed Alric rolls his eyes. "I'm sworn to bear your burdens~"

Sawyer elbows him in the side with the arm not holding the handkerchief. "That's what you get for adding your name to the schedule."

The other employee, a tall asian wearing a scarf, covers their mouth with their knuckles in silent laughter.

"Shouldn't be obvious. It might be obvious that it's not meant to be obvious, but that'd require someone to actually give a shit. It's black plastic boxes wrapped in garbage bags, for good measure."

"Clearly you just wanted to make sure the books you're bringing from storage didn't get water damaged on the trip," he grins crookedly. "Alright, I'll get the door to the storage room open, Ryan and Yao will be right behind you to help out."

Alric nods, then gestures to the two to follow him. He makes his way out to the car, opens the trunk, grabs the first box and starts carrying it inside.

The two follow behind, each grabbing a box and lugging it in Alric's wake.

Alric is pointed towards an EMPLOYEES ONLY door, through which is another open door to a mostly cleared room with a number of deep freezes inside it. The room also houses a window with a lovely view of San Francisco outside. Sawyer, shoving a rolling butcherblock into the middle of the room with both arms and all of his spindly body weight, grins at Alric with bloody teeth as he stops pushing the butcher block and brings his black handkerchief back up to his face. "Productive day?"

You know what, I don't even want to know.

Alric puts the box down next to the block. "Eh." He shrugs. "We spent a grand total of half an hour on the lot, so far. But there's a lot of day left," he says as he makes his way outside to get the next box.

The next three boxes are quickly brought in, then Alric collects the final one.

He puts it down next to the others. "This is the last one for now. How much space do you have? We can have the next delivery in an hour. Oh, but I might need the boxes though, I only bought so many."

"Hopefully the rest goes that smoothly," Sawyer comments, peeling off his outer layers and hauling a bin towards him as Alric heads for the car with Sawyer's Employees following in his wake. When he returns with the second load Sawyer's handkerchief is stuffed in his back pocket and he's working away, breaking the first shoggoth down into neater parts, with tarps laid out on the floor around him. The employees split off as he heads back for the final box.

When Alric returns with the final load, he finds Sawyer is no longer alone and is now fending off a man who has affectionately draped himself over his shoulders. The man has skin that's nearly ink-black, hair braided in intricate patterns, and his sunglasses match Sawyer's, but the weaving black tendrils that have encompassed the room, idly poking and prodding and trying to steal a chunk of shoggoth from the bin at Sawyer's feet, even as he shuffles to lightly kick at them, are reminiscent of the searching tentacles in the lot. "Can't I just have a piece now? You don't have to cook it," the man says hopefully. "Please, Sawyer?"

Sawyer hisses. "I told you to wait and that I'd be back, you've spoiled the whole surprise I was planning for you, get out of there-"

He finally leans down to try and haul a seeking tendril from the box.

The man takes this as an opportunity to sneak some of the shoggoth Sawyer was processing down into further manageable parts from the butcherblock, dropping it into a mouth that opens to reveal row upon row of serrated teeth.

Sawyer's expression grows flustered. "Zeke!"

The last bin in Alric's hands doesn't end up on the floor as a seeking pair of tendrils reach out to wrap around it and pull it towards the two, pulling the lid off and starting to pull the contents free.

"Oh. Uh." Sawyer's face goes pink as the man behind him blushes purple, staring at Alric in surprise. Sawyer's face still looks bloodied, but he's not bleeding anymore. "That's... one bin each? Uh. Probably have room for more than this in the freezers, I... stop it-"

He swats searching hands away from the shoggoth again. "Give me a few minutes, we can just get them out of the bins so you can take them back, I've got the A/C on so it should be alright if I can keep someone from eating the damn things long enough to let me freeze them-"

Walking backwards to push the door open into the freezer room, he only noticed the second person once the box was grabbed from his hands. Alric is taken aback, but not as much as he would've been just a week ago.

What. "Hi..?" He resigns. "Ah, fuck it. Hi, I'm Alric, nice to meet you. I'll just put this on my list of things I don't get, aaaand I'll wait outside."

He turns around to leave.

A strangled, nervous "nice to meet you?" is cautiously directed at Alric's back as Sawyer jostles his boyfriend again, ushering him to "help, please?"

He pitches his voice to carry. "Wait in the hall? Streets of Arkham are still a no-go zone for me. I'll be out in, like, a minute."

There's a sussurus of sounds behind Alric, accompanied by the horrible wet noises of burned and mutilated shoggoths being poured out of bins and onto tarps for processing.

"Ugh, it's like an ichor smoothie, I'm never going to get this off my boots if it - oh, thanks, babe." Sawyer's voice is much closer to Alric now, swiftly accompanied by the sound of damp bins being stacked together and dropped nearby.

"Don't eat all of it, it's going to be better once I'm done," Sawyer calls out, then steps to join Alric, holding the empty bins.

"Look, I can't help it if my boyfriend can't keep his hands off me," he jokes lightly, pulling the door partway closed and tilting his head, even as one tendril snakes out through the doorway to coil around his ankle. "I told you humans can't eat shoggoth and my boyfriend's family gave me some of their old family recipes. I figured the math was pretty obvious. Zeke's a sweetheart, though."

He offers Alric the bins. "Thanks again, I appreciate it. They'll still be plenty useful, even though he's managed to sniff them out already."

"Yes, no, like," he's gesturing a lot while trying to put his thoughts into words. "Yes? I got that. But I didn't expect tentacles and" - his voice drops to a whisper - "that's a lot of teeth."

He takes the bins, his voice normal again. "Is this one of the situations where I'll go mad if I see him?"

"Mh-hm. He's gorgeous," Sawyer sighs, smitten. "You get used to the teeth. Plus, heritage, wise, the teeth are good for catching things like shoggoths, slippery things that don't want you to get a grip on. Absolutely not an ideal configuration when he wants to eat soft things, like bread, though. Zeke... mh..."

Sawyer grins like a cheshire cat, showing all his teeth in a very self-satisfied expression. "You might go a bit nuts if you see him without his clothes on, but I don't think that's going to be a problem you need to worry about," he elbows Alric gently. "Actual talk? Only if you try to twist your mind to keep up around the corners where human minds aren't adapted to comprehend without stretching first."

"You really love him." Alric's smiling now. "I wouldn't be opposed to meeting him later, though I'll make sure to keep my mind in more human corners."

He lifts up the bins. "Alright, I'm off. I'll see you in an hour or so."

"Mh-hm, I'll coax him out to meet you properly sometime," Sawyer beams, expression warm. "See you then, Alric, stay safe, and good luck hunting."

He'll wave Alric off and vanish into the backroom, voice fondly exasperated as he greets and rejoins his partner, getting back to processing the delivered shoggoths.

That was nice.

Back outside, Alric throws the bins into the trunk. He gets into the driver's seat, starts the car, and pulls out of the parking lot. He won't say anything unless spoken to.

I greet Alric's arrival with an automatic smile. "It went well, I take it? How many more does he want?"

"Yeah, that's the debt paid. I don't know how many more, we'll just continue driving them over until he asks us to stop. Each of them translates into store credit for the commission."

I nod my assent and lapse into silence, staring out the window as Alric leaves Bright Books. I can't trust anything he says. Alric is trying to manipulate me, just as I'm trying to manipulate him — that's the game, that's the way it's always been, that's the only way it can be.

But even a lie can hint at truth. So I turn to face him, shifting my posture to portray reticent curiosity. "Why did you ask me those questions?"

Alric thinks it over for a moment or two.

"I'll answer that question if you tell me why you wanted to have a chat with me. You still haven't told me what you want."

"I wanted to strengthen the bonds of friendship." It's not even a lie, not really — the more Alric trusts me, the easier it'll be to deal with him. "I want to be a useful, helpful teammate, and I think friendly conversation is part of that. Don't you want to have me as an ally at your side?"

"Man, it must be exhausting to go through the motions like that."

"I really would've liked us to be friends, but you made it clear that you don't even know what friendship is. Friendship requires trust. And I can't trust someone whose identity is wrapped up in this 48 laws of power bullshit, and who has shown a propensity for violence, and who wants to see me dead."

I really want to ask what '48 laws of power bullshit' is a reference to, but something tells me it won't be taken kindly. I flash him a grin. "You're so pessimistic. A taste for violence is practically a prerequisite in our line of work, but I would never hurt a person. When have I ever done anything to hurt you? What's more important — thoughts or actions, hm?"

They haven't arrived yet at the lot, but Alric halts the car at the side of the road.

"Okay. Let's find out. Let me talk to Vesper."

I blink at him, taken aback. "What? Why? Anything she can offer you, I can do better."

"She's trustworthy, you're not. You want me to have more than zero trust in you? This is your only opportunity. Vesper, now."

I briefly consider whether I can fake him out, but without time to think, it's too risky.

You had better not fuck this up for me, I warn. And then I'm —

— sitting at the front of a truck, staring at Alric. Reality slams into me like a solid wave, the vile stink of burned shoggoth ichor, the golden sunlight glinting through the windshield, the smooth texture of Inara's robe. I cling to the sensations, drinking it in, and slowly it settles into my body, burning down to a low glow.

"Hi," I say. I want to ask why he didn't come to find me at night, but there's a chance he's planning something and if I speak up now, well, I haven't kept my nighttime freedom a secret this long just to spill it on the first small betrayal. "Ah... I'm not sure what to say?"

"Yesterday, I was attacked. By what, and how was that resolved?"

It's so tempting to deliberately fail and throw a wrench in Inara's plans, whatever they are exactly. But if I mess up here, she'll probably never let me out again. "It's a trick question; you weren't attacked by anything yesterday. We met up at the HQ, talked about geometric magic and you being a Seer, had Phoenix eat a magical bookmark off your arm, you took a nap, and then we talked about, uh, other stuff. It really is me."

"Works for me. How often since yesterday has she thought of killing me?"

"I-I don't know, that's not how it works. I can't read her mind unless she's really distracted or she's actively saying something. Most of the time it's just a vague feeling."

"Okay. Mhm." He thinks for a second. "Since this whole demon fusing thing, how many humans has she killed?"

"I don't know, I didn't keep count."

Fuck you, Inara says. I haven't killed anyone who didn't have it coming ten times over.

Grudgingly, I add, "But they were human monsters. Evil mages, out of control shifters, violent abusers. Nobody who was missed. After the wizard hunting group disbanded, Inara mostly did her own thing. Bounties, jobs for the Wizard Council, that sort of thing. What are you getting at?"

"M-hm. I obviously want to know how likely it is that I get killed if I trust her. Has she killed anyone who couldn't be considered a monster? Perhaps, because it was convenient for her or in her interest in some way?"

"I... no, I don't think so, but..." I shake my head. "Look, she's violent. I'm not denying that. She never hesitated to shake someone down for information or intimidate someone. She took the jobs that involved fighting whenever she could. Almost every job we went on she thought about killing someone — hell, she thought about immolating Sawyer the other day — but she never actually killed anyone without justification.

"Maybe she didn't look too hard for that justification, maybe there were a few jobs where you could argue that she got the wrong person and if she had dug a little deeper it would have turned out that they weren't as bad as people thought. And sure, you could say that their deaths were convenient, but... I'm talking about things like putting down a berserk wolf instead of trying to restrain it. Or killing one drug dealer to make a point to three more. Or dangling a murderous gangster off a skyscraper and then dropping him when she's done asking questions.

"Like... sure, maybe the wolf would have been fine if she had put herself at the extra risk of trapping it and waiting for it to change back. Maybe that drug dealer was actually a good person who got pushed into it. Maybe the gangster got framed for the murder. Maybe. But that's a long ways from killing a friendly teammate.

"She cares a lot about her bloodline's image. The last scion of House Sellain turning out to be a psychopathic murderer would really trash that." I give Alric a weak smile. "I probably wouldn't trust her, exactly, but you've got leverage over her. And she hasn't done anything to deal with it. I don't think she even knows what exactly you've got — that's not a question, she's listening right now and the less she knows about that, the better."

"Okay, I like hearing that. Do you think my dead man's switch is an overreaction and unnecessary?"

Say yes. Convince him to get rid of it.

"I mean... maybe a little? You seem a little... you overreact to things a lot. It's a bit of a pattern with you. I'm not saying you were wrong to take this approach, but maybe she would have been less aggressive if you hadn't basically stuck her feet in the fire." I hesitate. "I don't think she's going to kill you the first chance she gets."

Keep going, Inara urges. Tell him that if he gets rid of it I'll do whatever he wants. I can be a powerful friend.

I bite back a sigh. "She says that if you get rid of it she'll do you a favor. But as I was going to say, I've seen dozens of people underestimate her because she's short, because she's a woman, because she looks frail, whatever, and most of them only realized their mistake after it was too late to matter."

'Don't underestimate her. She won't kill you the first chance she gets.'

"How often has she gone back on her word, in the time you spent with her? Broken it, bent it, worked around it?"

"Pretty much whenever she could get away with it without it hurting her reputation. I don't think she values oaths except insofar as others will frown on broken oaths, if they find out. Except... well, there was one time. You know about Arcane Vanguard, right? The all-wizard hunter team? Inara was close with one of them, a combat specialist named Lisa.

Lisa. A surge of mixed emotions battles across the divide between us — sorrow, despair, an aching yearning. Inara forcibly suppresses them. That's not for you to share.

Want to front and tell it yourself? I challenge, though I know she won't.

Silence is her only reply.

"Long story made short, Lisa had an artifact that a collector named Viktor Romer wanted. He tried to buy it off her. She refused. His next offer? A bullet. She was killed while walking home one night."

The memory isn't mine, but it burns through my brain with unique intensity. Inara, waiting at home, dinner table set, increasingly anxious. Her pacing, calls to Lisa yielding only voicemail. Initial worry morphing into gut-wrenching fear, then cold certainty. Red and blue lights flashing outside a store, Lisa's lifeless form crumpled on the pavement, a broken wine bottle nearby. Shock, disbelief, agony. Unbridled rage.

"Inara lost it. Demanded that the team hunt down Romer. The others thought it was suicide. That disagreement shattered the team."

They didn't care. Claimed to be friends, but abandoned her memory like it was nothing. Old anger tinges Inara's words. Fuck them. And fuck you for telling Alric about this.

My voice wavers as I continue, "She got obsessive. Months tracking Romer, plotting revenge. She drained her resources, called in every favor, and finally infiltrated his mansion, slipping a cursed artifact into his prized collection — a mirror that leeches life. Romer died a miserable man, staring into his own decaying reflection.

"Inara never told anyone about what she did. Never flaunted it, the way she did most of her victories. I... I think her vengeance honored Lisa's memory better than any eulogy ever could have. And if you're asking if it's possible for Inara to be trustworthy, well... I don't know what made Lisa so special —"

Everything, you stupid, shallow girl, Inara spits. She saw me, she understood me, she knew what I was, and she didn't run or panic. She liked it. It was us against the world, and then the world fucking took her from me.

"— but it happened once. Maybe it can happen again?"

"I'm genuinely sorry about that. I truly am. But I have to think about all this for a second."

Hypotheses.

This is still Vesper. Then making up this story on the fly, with Inara directing her in the background, is highly unlikely. That would've required careful planning and subtle steering, and while I wouldn't put that past her on some level, her doing that on this level? She's too much of a fucking idiot for that, let's be real.

or

This is Inara making shit up on the fly. That would be more her MO. Low priors, for the last time a switch happened, there was visible struggle and a transition period. And that can also be checked.

"I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, you're giving me more info she could kill me for. By the way, thanks for this whole situation." He gestures broadly. "On the other, it paints her as less of a monster than I thought. Anyways. Quick check, think fast: Give me details about what happened between the removal of the bookmark, and us talking."

"You took a nap. I left a note saying we should talk and practiced magic by carving a stone tree with Alazander's fourfold command in my office. You asked me to analyze some spells I didn't recognize, we wandered around the empty offices. Then I told you I was Vesper. Seriously, Alric, it's me. And I don't think Inara would kill you for knowing about Lisa, she never talked about it because she felt it was her burden to bear and nobody would understand, not because it needed to stay secret. I think."

"Where did you leave the note, and how many spells? Humor me here for a second."

I roll my eyes. "Under your arm, though maybe you shifted in your sleep and it got moved. And it was three spells, they were geometric inscriptions on paper. No gestures or incantations. Satisfied?"

"Satisfied."

Not clippy, not an absolute psycho. Doesn't need to be killed, thank god. She's just a very smart idiot.

"I'm reminding you that Inara took over your body and life, and I'm an innocent man none whatsoever interested in being tangled up in this. Your best guess: Will Inara kill me if I disable the dead man's switch?"

Say no.

I hesitate. I want an hour a day, and no trickery to keep me from using it. And you don't pursue vengeance against Alric.

Only if you agree to keep your existence secret.

Ugh. It's my foot in the door, though, and I can't spend too long arguing about it or Alric will get suspicious. Fine, I'll pretend to be you, or avoid people. And if you're thinking of reneging, consider that you can't get rid of me and I will remember next time you need something from me.

"No," I say. It doesn't sound as convincing as I had hoped. Maybe because I don't really believe it. "She cares about her house's reputation, if you're willing to stay quiet and not damage that or blackmail her, that's fine. She's not interested in revenge. Dunno if she'll still want to be your friend afterwards, but yeah."

"Well, at least it wasn't an immediate yes. Progress." He sighs. "Alright, thank you for your help. I'd like to talk to Inara again, if that's okay."

Ugh. And here I had been hoping to keep fronting for a while longer. "Fine."

Remember, an hour a day, I say.

For that performance? No. You were supposed to convince him, not sabotage me!

Not everyone is as good at lying as you, I retort. Maybe you won't kill him, but I don't think it's a good idea for Alric to let his guard down around you.

Just switch out, Inara says. You'll get your hour when the switch is gone. Not before.

Fucking bitch. There's no real alternative though. Just have to hope she keeps her word, hope that the nebulous threat of me not helping her in the future is enough to cow her.

I let go of the front, falling —

— forwards, reality washing over me. It's less disorienting than usual, maybe because I'm not forcibly overwhelming Vesper, and it only takes a few seconds for me to get my bearings.

Victory is so close I can practically taste it. Alric is so stupid it almost hurts — asking about whether I've killed anyone as if I would ever be so careless as to let Vesper see. My skeletons are much better buried than that.

I put on a tentative, slightly shy smile. "That went well, I think?"

"It could've gone worse. So: I can't disable the switch yet, but I think this situation is solvable. You won't like the solution though."

"Go on."

"You're lacking, for a lack of better words, basic humanity. You know, a sense of fairness, give and take, that kind of thing." Not completely, that is, but let's not bring up any trauma. "You might consider that a strength, and think me a fool, but that's what enables normal people to cooperate."

"However, even psychopaths can be cooperated with, as long as they aren't idiots. You are smart, I give you that. But at the same time, you're one massive fucking idiot. It's actually taking effort not to yell at you. Such a disappointment."

He takes a deep breath.

"Can you tell me why I consider you an idiot?"

I only barely manage not to sneer. Basic humanity. As if it's something to be lauded and worshipped instead of decried. As if being a slave to his emotions and shackled to his friends somehow makes him better than me instead of a fragile house of cards just waiting for a shove.

Still, I can admit that I've made mistakes. "If I was smarter, none of this would have happened. I'd have found a way to keep you from learning about Vesper. The best way to avoid being blackmailed is to not get caught in the first place."

"What does this have to do with your solution?"

"Yes! Some of what you said is right! Let me explain it to you. You looked down on me since the first time we met. You think yourself better than me at everything. You think all of this is a game, and you're better than me at it. Let's ignore all this feelings stuff and just add up the game score, okay?"

"What have I gotten out of this week? I got personally tutored in magic, a subject I've previously been told is impossible for me, and casted my first spell. I got guided in the use of my Seeing ability. I met and got some info from a demigod" not necessarily info for me, but hey, "and got access to very expensive materials that will help me build my own magical devices. All of this is not paid by my salary by the way, but by the commission's help."

"Meanwhile, what have you gotten out of this week? A Damocles' sword over your head, more enemies, and you almost got yourself killed. Because you don't think ahead. All of this is a game to you, a game you've played your whole life, and you suck at it. You ended up 'blackmailed', and all you learned from that is that you shouldn't get caught. If you were any good at this game, it wouldn't matter if you get caught, because no one would give a shit. With anyone but you, I wouldn't have had a bad relationship to start with, wouldn't have had alarm bells going off when you started being nice to me, wouldn't have setup a dead man's switch. I'd just have had a chat with the two of you, gotten some understanding of your situation, and kept my mouth shut."

I'm getting angry again. Huh.

"This is a game, and I'll teach you its theory. And then, maybe, we can cooperate."

"It's been a hell of a week, but it's not as if I can't replicate your feats. I've already surpassed them. When I want to learn more magic, I have an entire library to study from, with no need to seek out tutors. I don't need someone to hold my hand through the intricacies of magic because I've been using it since I could speak. And artifacts are, frankly, crutches for those too incompetent to use magic themselves. It's not a skill worth pursuing."

"If I weren't exceptional at playing this game, I'd be dead or rotting in some forgotten cell. But here I am, the revered heir of an ancient bloodline, a force to be reckoned with." I pause, letting the words hang heavy in the air. "You're only the second person to know what I am, and among the rare few who know about Vesper. I'd say I'm doing more than just well." I offer him a light smile "But please, enlighten me with your theory. I'm eager to dissect it."

Alric you can't argue someone out of their delusions you know better than that you idiot. But you could just kill her. ~~Just kill her. ~~~~Just kill her.~~

No. It's likely that one day, in this line of work, I'll have to take a life, and then another. It'll be hard, and then it'll get easier, and then I'll get used to it. But it doesn't have to be today. In this specific case, I can procrastinate. So shut up.

Then ask questions. Ask, and see where that leads you.

"What exactly do you mean when you say 'revered'?"

"Huh? I'm the eldest scion of House Sellain, taught wizardry since I could speak. I'm a monster hunter, I carry on and uphold the legacy of my bloodline. What else?"

"'Revered' doesn't mean that you're a monster hunter or that you know magic. What do you think the word 'revered' means?"

"To respect and like someone. And as a talented wizard and monster hunter, I am respected and liked."

"How do you know that you're respected or liked?"

"I... because other wizards afford me the courtesies due to one of my station. Because I can see it in their faces when I attend one of my family's dinner parties, or when I visit the Council's chantry to uphold my oath of service, or when I encounter another wizard in the streets and see the recognition on their face."

"Have you ever afforded other wizards these courtesies even though you despised them?"

"Of course. I'm not sure why you think I dislike other wizards, but I dont. A good bit less than everyone else, at least. To have the Gift is to be a beacon burning bright in a world of darkness."

"If you yourself have acted like you respect and like other wizards, and they were none the wiser, how do you differentiate between them being genuine and them just playing a role to hide their despise for you?"

I stare at him, taken aback. "That's -- I mean, I suppose it's possible. But normal people don't seem very capable of hiding how they feel. Something about their basic humanity I imagine."

"Do you think the other wizards are normal people?"

"In this way, yes, unfortunately. But much better than normal in other ways."

"How can you tell they're normal?"

"It's obvious. They're like you, blinded by emotion and empathy." Except for Lisa. But she was unique. "Is this going anywhere?"

"It is. Could you, with enough skill, act like you're blinded by emotion and empathy?"

"Of course. I can act like anything."

"Then how can you tell they're normal?"

"Because they wouldn't do it perfectly. I would notice the tiny flaws, even if a normal person wouldn't. Are you seriously suggesting that everyone is actually like me, and they're all just better at hiding it? Really?"

"Normal people would've helped you avenge Lisa."

"Bullshit. Normal people stab each other in the back all the time, empathy and kindness be damned."

"True, that happens. But in your specific case, as a team with a history of hunting monsters together, I find that unlikely."

Let's try another day. Piece by piece.

Alric starts the car, and pulls it back onto the road.

"You wanted to know why I asked you how you feel playing your roles. I asked because I want you to understand how you tick."

"The Vanguard was scared. Nothing more. Most people would act similarly if they were put under pressure like that. Pretty ideals are always the first to fall by the wayside when the going gets tough." I eye him. "And of course I understand myself. You also said there was a solution, but then you didn't explain."

"You haven't read a lot of history, I take it. You should give it a try."

"And I already told you the solution. I can only cooperate with you if I expect you to cooperate. You're playing single round games in an environment that's running repeated games. My best plays here are: I can either defect, that is, kill you or make your secret public, or teach you enough where I can actually expect you to cooperate, as any smart psychopath in your position would."

"Sure," I say immediately. "I'll cooperate. You can trust me."

Alric rolls his eyes up to the ceiling of the car for a moment, then sighs, and then just laughs.

I smirk. "Yeah, didn't think that'd work either."

A minute later Alric pulls the car onto the sidewalk, next to the broken fence. He gets out, grabs the bins from the trunk, and makes his way inside.

I follow behind him.

Meanwhile,

After Alric and Inara left, do you remain in the clearing or leave to guard on the sidewalk?

Hope is standing just outside the lot.

And so is not jumped by shoggoths while she waits. 👍

When Alric and Inara arrive, little has changed. Back in the lot, some of the signs of battle have been cleared up; spilled ichor has faded, damaged trees have been unsplintered, trampled plants have perked back up.

The shoggoths aren't immediately visible, but are probably not far.

Does Alric notice the timey-wimey bullshit?: [5, 3] Result: Success! 🎯

Alric notices the changes, puts down the bins, and looks for the groove he scratched into the floor earlier.

(Hope would have seen the shoggoth tentatively (and tentaclely) weaving their world back together. All the while sticking to cover as much as they could.)

The groove is still there. And on closer inspection, the other signs are still there. They just look fixed.

"What the.. Hey, Hope. I swear this area looked more like some fighting happened, you know, like it did. What happened?"

"They cleaned it up. Very weird to watch."

"Did you see how many of them there were?" My voice is crisp, professional, betraying none of the weight of everything that just happened.

There were at least 5.

Did Hope try to shoot any more of them?

"At least 5." Hope was very tempted, but waited for the team.

"Well, then let's get started."

pluck webs with elemental manipulation: [4, 2] Result: Success! 🎯

The webs are successfully plucked, but the shoggoths are already here, in hiding.

"I could burn down the vegetation. Force them out."

Ah fuck, I forgot the napalm.

"Please, go ahead." Alric places the bins next to the fence, close to the exit, then goes back onto the sidewalk.

undefined (1d6) results: 2 total: 2

I gesture with my rune-encrusted hand and the space above it warps and ripples as the very air itself ignites into a fist-sized ball of flame. It hovers above my palm as I scan the abandoned lot, eyes fixing on a fallen log. My lips curl into a slight smirk as I flick the fireball towards it. It hits the wood with a dull thud, sizzling against the moisture. The fire doesn't catch immediately, rejected by the damp wood.

Another gesture intensifies the flames to a crackling roar, burning past the damp until the log blazes alight. There's something beautiful about fire, the glow of its ember, the hiss of water vaporizing, the flickering light it casts. Living wood giving way to hungry flame. If only all my problems could be solved so easily. I wave my hand absentmindedly, and slender serpents of heat and light arc off the logg, igniting grass, vines, and smaller bushes around the lot.

Half a dozen shoggoths emerge from the undergrowth to spew pale foam at the fires.

The foam doesn't douse the fires immediately - and the summoned fire under Inara's control is unquenchable by any mundane means - but the foam does prevent the fires from naturally spreading and gradually cools and smothers the fires when they are not actively fed.

Of course, the shoggoths have to leave cover in order to firefight.

"Shoot them, quick," I say. Most of my attention is on the fourfold command, keeping the flames alive even as they're smothered.

Shot 1: [5, 1] Result: Success! 🎯

undefined (2d6 + 1) results: 3, 4 total: 8

Shot 2: [6, 5] Result: Success! 🎯

undefined (2d6 + 1) results: 2, 5 total: 8

Hope fires both shots at one. The first bullet shakes it, the second kills it.

One of its fellows stops fighting the fire to drag the corpse away.

Shot 1: [10 💥 10 💥 6 = 26, 2] Result: Success with 5 raises! 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

undefined (3d6 + 1) results: 4, 2, 5 total: 12

Shot 2: [1, 3] Result: Failure ❌

Which shoggoth are you aiming for?

closest still fighting the fire

Another shot, another shoggoth dead. The one closest by it switches tasks to drag the body away. The remaining two visible shoggoths seem to have decided that their firefighting isn't effective. They each grab smouldering saplings and start to burrow with them, pulling the vegetation down to smother it with earth.

And then other plants sink into the ground.

And then more.

An expanding circle of vegetation is pulled into the ground to escape the arcane fire, leaving only churned dirt and rocks and slippery mucus. This continues for as long as Inara maintains her fire spell.

"Wait, what?"

No animals I know of protect the natural environment they're in, humans rarely excluded. Nothing perceives a natural environment to be something that needs to be kept in its current form. A natural environment changes on its own, and animals are evolved to just go with it. Is evolution even a thing now? Maybe the creationists aren't that far off.

No, concentrate.

Hypotheses. One. They have a deal with the plants or something plant adjacent, or the plants aren't actually just plants but some magic bullshit. Fae? Two. This isn't a natural environment, and the 'plants' are part of their nest, it just looks natural to us, because it's supposed to. Three. The shoggoths just really like flowers.

Ah, fuck.

Alric rips out a plant a few steps into the lot, returns to the fence, and starts inspecting the plant, both magically and non-magically.

Magically, there's nothing to be found. (At Alric's skill level.)

Physically... The sapling Alric pulled up looks like a birch tree on the surface, one with unseasonably still green leaves. Most of the plants in the lot seem to have only barely gotten the memo that it is supposed to be autumn. The roots seem to be pretty shallow; it was easier than expected to pull the sapling up.

Cutting into the sapling... are birch trees supposed to have segmented trunks? It looks a lot more like bamboo than solid wood.

This isn't a spider's web. It's... I'm missing a comparison. It's like a drain, but instead of water, it's for migrating animals and the occasional human.

"Inara, can you earth bend a hole into the floor around here?" He's pointing at a spot two meters in front of him. "I would like to take a peek."

"Might as well," I say, eyeing the barren lot. All that's left are a few erratically flickering flames. "This clearly isn't working."

It takes only an effort of will and a few gestures to extend the fourfold command and redirect it to the ground before Alric. Golden threads plunge into the dirt and the muck churns, flowing up and off to the side. I keep the hole roughly circular, about a foot in diameter, lining it with the expelled rocks and stones so it doesn't immediately collapse as it gets deeper.

The ground contains dirt, rocks, and thick root structures. Just under the surface, Inara excavates the top of what was once a bush, it's furled up like a bud and --as the excavation reveals a few feet deeper -- partway retracted into a cord-like root that's about four inches in diameter.

"Fascinating."

He walks over to the fence to pick up his axe.

"So, to me, it looks like the vegetation is a sort of set full of props that the Shoggoths can pull in and out of the ground as they want. The plants are wrong, as if designed to grow very quickly, and there's a bush in there" - he's pointing at the hole - "that looks almost spring loaded? Kind of like when that root there were to push out, it'd expand into the bush."

He walks over to the tree close to the fence.

"Now, I wonder if even the trees are props. Let's find out."

He swings the axe into the tree.

Clarification: the bush found in the hole was present on the surface in that location before it was retracted in response to the fire.

The tree does have the same bamboo-like structure on the inside. The thin sap quickly hardens over the axe cut.

"Weird. Want me to burn it down?"

Wild.

"That won't -" Wait. Maybe.. "Actually, yes, please do so. I want to see them retract a whole tree."

He returns back to the gap in the fence.

I extend the fourfold command again and set the tree on fire.

It first weeps a flame retardant sap. But when the arcane fire continues to burn it, it retracts under the ground.

Absolutely fucking WILD

"Cool. Cool. Let's stop burning and hacking for a second. I want to see how long it takes for the tree to come back." Alric starts a timer on his phone.

Well, the plants that were retracted in response to the first fire haven’t sprouted again.

After ten-ish minutes, the plants farthest away from the group inch back up into sunlight. The burns on them are now repaired with fresh green growth.

Damaging the forest immediately stops the regrowth. It will slowly continue re-emerging only when the agents are still and quiet or if they retreat past the fence.

BROKEN LINK Science roll to investigate the structure of the plants in the lot.

The plants are certainly organic. Under closer inspection, there do seem to be vein-like structures that are like hollow mycelium. But all plants seem to still be plants… maaayyybe spliced with fungus. It’s hard for a non-biologist to tell.

They are certainly modified, with the external structures especially matching the local ecology. But it looks like the insides have been restructured to be more efficient at growing.

The sap smells like honey.

Shot 1: [10 💥 5 = 15, 2]-4 Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

undefined (2d6 + 1) results: 2, 2 total: 5

Shot 2: [8, 5]-4 Result: Success! 🎯

undefined (3d6 + 1) results: 4, 2, 5 total: 12

Another shoggoth dead, this one half burrowed as it tries to leave.

The last visible shoggoth gets stunned, but manages to slink away underground.

"Inara, would you be so kind and air bend the dead shoggoths over here?" He's pointing out an area next to the boxes, close to the fence. "Before more emerge and take them away."

elemental manipulation: [6, 3] Result: Success! 🎯

It takes only an effort of will and a few seconds to levitate the shoggoth over to the area Alric pointed out.

Put it in a box? Vesper suggests. Saves Alric the mess of having to do it himself.

I consider dropping it there on the concrete just to spite them both, but after a moment I stuff it inside the box instead. Alric probably won't even notice, but if I want him to think I'm 'cooperative', the mask needs to be flawless.

Except for the intentional imperfections, of course. He won't buy it if I'm too good.

There’s only one shoggoth available for air lift, and it is a real pain to pry out of its burrow. Eventually it comes free from its hole with a squelching pop and can then be glided into the designated box.

"Great, thanks."

Alric gives the dead Shoggoth a few smacks with his axe, for good measure, then packs it up and stores it in the trunk.

I lift my hand and dismiss Alazander's fourfold command with a twist of will. The golden runes unravel into motes of glimmering dust that vanish a few seconds later.

"This plan isn't working." I'm careful to keep my tone neutral, not wanting to give Alric the impression that I blame him for coming up with a shoddy plan. "We don't know how deep the hive runs, but if they've taken over the surface to this extent, I'd wager it's large enough that us picking off shoggoths one by one is like trying to drain the ocean with a thimble. We need to strike at their heart and dismantle the hive's rooms. Cut them off from their power."

I take a moment to glance inwards, past the darkness where Vesper lurks unseen. "And my mana is nearly spent," I confess, half-truthfully. The exaggeration serves two purposes: highlighting our need for a tactical retreat and keeping Alric in the dark about the extent of my powers. "We should call it a day. I'll find Phoenix and enlist her aid, and come morning, we can enter the hive itself."

Spent, after like, I don't know, five spells? How on god's green earth can she think herself and her magic better than anyone else?

"We've been here for an hour. We collected a total of eight Shoggoths. And yes, they're messing with the plants, but we don't know whether that's based on their own bio mass, or just some basic bio engineering. We'll stay. You can take a break if you're exhausted."

Alric picks up a stone and throws it into the thicket, where he's last seen shoggoths crawl around.

The contempt in Alric's tone is music to my ears. It's all part of the game — the more he underestimates me, the smoother my path becomes. "I'll stay. I've still got a few more spells in me."

More like a few dozen, if you count the reserves, Vesper chimes in, her voice a whisper in the back of my mind. I can't help but agree with her; we both know the true extent of my power, even if Alric is oblivious. Let him think he's got the upper hand. There's nothing quite like the look of shock on someone's face when they realizes how badly they've miscalculated.

The shoggoths seem shy now. With all the damage done between the fires and the forest's response to the fires, the silk lines have been damaged and even deeper in where the forest is still intact, the shoggoths don't come to investigate when the lines are plucked.

After 10 minutes of nothing happening, Alric had enough.

"Okay, they've wisened up. Let's move camp to the hole in the fence on the other side of the lot, near university, then continue."

Alric starts packing up.

"Sure. Probably they'll still be aware, but we can try."

Biting back a sigh, I help Alric pack up his gear. This whole endeavor is turning out to be a lot more complicated than I had expected.

What a waste of time, I say. We should have just gone into the hive from the start.

You're just hoping Alric gets grabbed by shoggoths, Vesper retorts.

I very carefully don't grin. Why, the thought never crossed my mind. I simply meant that this plan of attack is pointless — the hive is too big to exhaust this way.

10 minutes later they've arrived at the other side of the lot and setup camp again.

"Alright, cool. Same as before. You shoot, you air bend them over, I process them. Let's go."

Alric walks over to some spider silk, and gives it a good whack with his axe.

Hope has reloaded and refilled her magazines.

15 minutes later, the shoggoths still have not come to investigate the cut snare line.

Alric, frustrated, is staring at the sky and talking to himself. "I fucking hate this. I hate this so much. These dumb fucking Shoggoths communicate via chemicals, like hormones, for christ's sake. How the fuck do you communicate 'don't go near those three snacks in specific' using chemicals. You can't tell me those fuckers evolved a specific scent for that this is stupid stupid stupid actually wait a minute"

He turns to Inara.

"If they communicate via chemicals, probably scents, we might be marked somehow and they can smell us as a 'do not approach'. Can you air bend it so that the wind blows our scent into the street? I don't see how they could smell us against the wind."

"I could, but it'd only last a few minutes."

Probably wouldn't work anyway, Vesper says. Just because the shoggoths communicate through chemicals doesn't mean they can't communicate complex concepts.

I hesitate, weighing the merit of voicing Vesper's thoughts versus avoiding an argument with Alric. Is it more cooperative to maintain civility or to help him understand why his plan is flawed? Probably the former. Telling people that they're wrong is rarely well-received. And didn't Alric tell me to keep my comments to myself, back in the park when he outlined the conditions of the dead man's switch?

Besides, it's not as if I could do it anyway. Maintaining Alazander's for ten minutes would nearly exhaust my mana. My real mana, that is, not the half-sized portion I'm pretending to have.

"It's more likely a signal for "everyone hide" in which case it's not our scent that is the problem."

"Ah fuck, you're probably right. I hate this. There has to be a simple solution to this, I feel it, I just can't see it yet. Fuck."

Alric picks up his axe and with a few swings, chops of a small branch off of a tree.

"Fine. Fine. Let's cut it here, deliver the one shoggoth we got, and then rethink this. If I can't come up with anything else, we can still fall back onto the napalm plan."

He collects the branch and the boxes, and starts putting things back into the trunk.

10 minutes later, they arrive at Bright Books. Alric gets out of the car, grabs the box and branch from the trunk, then carries both inside.

Hope pulls up and follows him inside.

I was in no mood for another argument with Sawyer earlier and I'm even less keen on it now, after that conversation with Alric. But somehow I doubt sitting here in the truck and brooding will be seen as cooperative. Needs must when the devil drives.

I shove the truck door open and step out, my expression a calculated blank slate. Sawyer will interpret it as me holding back my emotions. There's a twisted humor in how close and yet so far that is from the truth that is. In the end, it doesn't much matter what he thinks — unless Alric told him about me... which he very well might have. Sawyer's a powerful mage and he's Alric's teacher. It would certainly explain Sawyer's anger, if he was merely looking for an excuse to cut loose.

Somewhat more interested now, I trail Alric into the bookshop, staying a deliberate half-step behind Alric. No harm in letting them think he's in charge.

Ryan - the same clerk that directed Alric to the back last time - looks over as he walks in and and hooks his thumb towards the Employees Only door Alric went through to reach the freezer-filled room from last time.

Sawyer's voice is audible once they step into the hall, words indistinct but his tone warm with affection, punctuated by laughter - both his own and another's - as the trio head in to find him at work processing the shoggoths, his boyfriend still affectionately draped over him as they talk.

Hope is a Hunter, her knowledge focused more on all the most common threats out there and how to protect others from them.

Alric is fresh, new and primed to accept that the world is now wilder and weirder than he ever suspected, more willing to accept now that some things just are and that he might as well roll with the punches.

Inara, on the other hand, was born into this world, raised in it, educated in it. There is knowledge she has learned that she doesn't have, things she hasn't seen, but at the end of the day she's the team member with the best calibration as to what's normal in this world of the weird and what isn't.

The man cuddling up to Sawyer Morgan is not normal. There's something to him that feels off - and the thirty-six black tendrils growing from his back feel like they're just the tip of the iceberg. They move in a way that echoes the hunting tentacles of the teacup shoggoths as they stretch and explore the room around him, keeping it in his peripheral awareness, even as he keeps Sawyer tangled up in his arms, harrying and slowing his work with his affection.

Inara has never seen someone like this.

His head snaps up and towards the door, body jerking in a startle reflex, tendrils rapidly curling into his body and hauling a startled Sawyer up and into his arms before they wind tighter tighter tighter into an incomprehensible ball of tangled tendrils before space warps and the pair vanish with an audible rush of air.

My hands are already moving through a spellform when the horror vanishes, taking Sawyer with him. I stare at the empty space for a moment, then drop my hands to my sides. "Fuck. That's going to be a problem. Where did it even come from?"

But even as I finish the sentence, I know the answer: the same place every other horror comes from — a summoning circle. No wonder Sawyer wanted shoggoth corpses.

Alric, again, tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.

"He." He sighs, again. Alric seems to do that often in Inara's presence. "Not 'it', he." He sounds tired.

Alric never had a particularly strong interest in common morality. There is no good or evil, only mobs forming around their own definitions thereof. Alric focuses on actions and consequences, and evidence connecting one to the other.

And now, with Inara's mere presence evidently damaging his relationships and potentially endangering people he likes, he's having an even tougher time justifying the effort he's spending on resisting coming up with increasingly elaborate planned accidents. As if that wasn't hard enough already, with her literally being a threat to his life.

Every plan not thought is draining, every minute around her is another plan. There's so many solutions to this problem, and he really needs to sit down and come up with a good reason for why exactly he's clinging to 'fix the psychopath'. Later. Later. When he has more time to think.

Alric places the box onto the counter, and without looking at the others, starts making his way to the door. Shoulders slumped, a tinge of sadness in his voice. "What is it with you? Can't you just.. stay away?"

I stare at Alric. "You're blaming this on me? I had nothing to do with it! You're the one who wanted to bring Sawyer materials to summon that... thing, whatever it is. If I had known what he wanted to use the shoggoths for I never would have agreed to help." I shake my head. "Look, we can argue about this later. Right now we need to come up with a plan to get Sawyer out of its clutches. Assuming there's even a Sawyer left to save, that is."

"Sawyer didn't seem scared of him. Alric, you've met him? Was that Sawyer's non-human boyfriend?"

Oh wow, she's a quick one.

"Yes! That's him." At some point I need to have a chat with Hope. She's actually thinking. "We didn't get to talk much last time, and I was hoping I'd get more of a chance for that this time, because he knows a lot about Shoggoths. But alas, we had a mage with us, a critical failure of judgement on my part. I'm sorry, I had a long day, and I'll do better next time." He's actually sorry. It was his fault. Why didn't he check whether Inara was following? Is he dumb? He's dumb. He's a dumb fucking idiot who needs to get his shit together.

He's moving out of the kitchen, and into the shop, then towards the exit. "Inara, would you kindly wait in the car? Maybe I can partially salvage this situation. Please."

I need my hands on a functioning Relief device soon so I can stop doing these dumb fucking mistakes.

"He's a hybrid, actually," Sawyer's voice answers from down the hall as he descends the last few steps back into the hallway. "You're all fine, Zeke's just got a strong startle response. He's a sweetheart with anxiety, not a malicious actor, and I didn't summon him."

He holds his hands so his palms are visible, open, unarmed, no spellcasting in motion, eyes on Inara.

"Hate to say it, but Inara's kneejerk reaction wouldn't be unwarranted under other circumstances. I'd joke about speciesism, but honestly? Most full-blooded entities with a background similar to his are a significantly higher threat to humanity and the stability of the fabric of reality. Hybrids tend to be a mixed-bag, but considering most of them end up raised in resurrection or doomsday cults, they do have a tendency to come out unhinged and power-hungry," he tips his head. "For the sake of preventing as many future problems as possible? Most entities who are allowed in the secured or private areas of my home are on the pro-social side of the equation, including the more dangerous ones."

That thing is half human? I guess it — he — did have a human-ish body, now that I'm thinking about it. The tentacles and aura of evil were a bit distracting.

Sawyer's still an idiot for dating him. Hybrids might be stable enough to be accepted in society but they're still half monster. Some day Zeke is going to snap and eat Sawyer and — maybe that's not a bad thing. A dead Sawyer can't blab about whatever Alric might have told him.

Yeah. The more I think about it, the better this sounds. And you never know. Zeke might be one of the few half humans who actually has a lid on their monstrous half.

"Sorry about that," I say, pasting an apologetic awkward smile on my face. "Just a misunderstanding. I'll keep that in mind for the future."

"It won't be the first misunderstanding and it won't be the last," Sawyer shrugs one shoulder.

"The Old Ones don't play nice and Arkham's got a lot of records chronicling what happens when their cults wrap themselves tightly enough around places to take control. Not that they're the only source of problems, but there's a notably higher probability of them trying to pull powerful entities that are antithetical to the continued existence of humanity through to our reality. Most hybrids whose parents are native to our reality, on the other hand, have a way overblown reputation for a high threat threshold."

Hope, what are your thoughts on nonhumans and hybrids?

Hope tries not to distrust anyone because of their species. She distrusts everyone equally. She does try to learn the capabilities of every creature she meets, just in case.

"Again, sorry for startling Zeke. We came here to deliver the final Shoggoth. It turns out that the Shoggoths somehow figured out to avoid us, and we're not particularly keen to follow them into the green. One thing we noticed though is that they keep the vegetation in shape, even if it gets destroyed. I've brought a branch from the lot. It looks wrong - they either bio engineered the vegetation for faster growth, or they might even have spliced in something Shoggoth-y and perhaps use flesh to grow the trees. Either way, could you or Zeke take a look at it? It'd be another puzzle piece at our disposal."

Alric squints, eyes darting around for a second. Wait. That doesn't make sense.

"Wait. What? What do you mean 'hybrid'? Humans aren't genetically compatible with species from another plane of existence. Which means, genetics is bullshit? I either need you to explain that to me or give me a book on that topic."

"It's fine," Sawyer reassures. "These things happen."

He considers Alric's comments about the shoggoths and the plants. "... shoggoths do manipulate biological substances, it's possible they did something along either of those lines..." He pulls out his phone, texting briefly, then pushes his phone back into his pocket, facing Alric.

"Magic allows us to transcend limitations of more than just physical rules of reality. HybridIzation tends to bend the rules of biology in a similar way to summoning fire from the air seems to defy physics. The Old Ones are. Uh. Pretty physical, by and large, but a lot of powerful Entities that are native to our reality are ... more conceptual. That conceptual weight can allow for a lot of leeway."

He pauses. "Plus there's arguments about what counts as a hybrid versus a separate species, and myths and legends that debate whether some species did originate from a human-hybrid," he glances at Inara, a momentary flick of his eyes, before they return to Alric. "Some families with stronger magical traditions, human families, have ancestors who weren't or weren't entirely human. Some traits pass down. Some don't. Some magnify a natural talent that was already present within a family line, strengthening an existing attunement or predilection that was already there."

Inara's aware of enough hushed gossip in her own community to recognize why Sawyer's paying subtle attention to her reaction while working to keep it from being obvious. Only humans can be wizards, but rumors of scandals hidden within prestigious family lines, glossed over and politely ignored? A dedicated hunt for blackmail, a seeking of historical knives to twist into the side of a rival, those can lead one to some very interesting rumors if one digs deep enough into the archives of Wizard society and history.... especially when one has access to the personal family diaries and notes from prior generations of their own lineage. Not every diary, not every record... but most families have at least one or two ancestors who kept careful track of gossip and rumors of scandal.

Sawyer taps one black-painted nail against his lips, considering. "In terms of books, there's a now-defunct blog and a book by a changeling going by Faeresiensis, which goes into more detail about various non-human cultures, including some of the... odd ways that hybridization occurs. Largely based off of one on one interviews, it's one of the only compendiums that's gone public from a non-human perspective. Hope, you might actually be interested in the content, too. Most existing compendiums tend to be hunting focused - manuals for how to remove threats - but, if you're going to be working for the Dawn Commision in the long term, reading something with a more nuanced approach may be useful."

"For examples of hybrids... faeries and humans don't breed true. They produce Changelings, who are neither one or the other. There are a few species, for lack of a better word, tend to breed more or less true, even if they have a human partner - you're the same thing as your inhuman parent or you're not." He pauses. "I think the most recent updated published volume should be out soon - the author himself isn't contactable right now, but I worked with him to set up a release schedule of updated volumes that's projected to reduce the occurrence of death threats getting sent my way as his publisher. We kind of have to do that with a lot of things. I've got one by Bayes that we've scheduled for a first printing in a few years."

I meet Sawyer's gaze as he looks at me, making it quite clear I spotted his gauche probe. Has the man no subtlety at all? He ought to be ashamed of himself. Besides, House Sellain might have its share of glossed-over scandals, but my blood is as pure as it comes. I'm the eldest scion, Iskandar Sellain's most direct descendant. Not some far-flung distant relation.

I give Sawyer a polite smile as he continues blathering about hybrid species. As far as I'm concerned, half-humans are ticking time bombs. There comes a day in every hybrid's life when they stand above the corpse of a person they had not meant to kill, whether it's from a werecreature's rage, a vampire's hunger, or the dark urges of a tiefling. The more monster blood they've got in them, the sooner and faster the descent. It's not their fault, not really — you can't fuse a human's soul with a monster and expect the resulting abomination to be civilized.

Does Alric notice Sawyer paying attention to Inara's reaction?: [10 💥 10 💥 9 = 29, 1]-1 Result: Success with 6 raises! 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

[ Supplement Placeholder ]

With indifference to both social norms and authority figures there comes the problem of never developing the habit of looking out for social clues. Not that Alric couldn't, if he bothered to, but he usually doesn't. There's just little of a point to it when one considers everyone around them an idiot.

But in this moment, he can almost see the situation unfolding in front of him. The way Sawyer not just glances at Inara, but seems to keep her in his peripheral vision, somehow. Inara's smile, no, not the way she smiles, but the point and speed at which she switched to it. These subtle shifts in the social net, as visible as a sacred geometry unfolding. If friendship is magic, hate has to be too, right?

Sawyer has a whole book store, plus whatever books he keeps hidden from the public. And he's not an idiot. He shouldn't just get information directly from books, but also information from the space between. What hasn't been written about? Where are the gaps, what history is too smooth?

Why haven't I researched her yet? Know thy enemy, and all that?

Because all this shit started yesterday and I haven't had the time to get anything done yet and on top of my list is to get my hands on the Relief spell so I can get more done and then maybe at some point I can research the history of the Sellain family but it's not even close to being a priority right now

As visible as a sacred geometry unfolding… a very very small and complicated geometry, nearly masked by the noise of a kind of background radiation of myriad geometries. Or sensed like the gentle gravitational tug of one suspended sphere on another while all around the forces are churned by the buzz of the rest of the lab classroom also attempting to recreate a measure of gravity. Little more than a hunch of a vector, the intuition that this might be a signal in the noise: Sawyer’s trajectory is pulled by the remembrance of a person. Inara’s trajectory is driven by pride.

Inara smiles and some of the tension drains from Sawyer, a subtle shift in body language, a loosening of his shoulders and an increase in the expressiveness of his hand movements as he talks. The tension isn't gone, but Inara smiling seems to reduce Sawyer's concern that she's an immediate threat, that he could incite violence if he chose his words wrong and was percieved as implying the wrong thing -

It sparks a recognition of a pattern in Sawyer's behavior today - he was watching Inara like he's expecting to be hit. He's been careful of entering her space, he came back down the stairs with his attention focused on her, hands already up, placating, there's a pattern here.

The tension keeping him wound up has a history to it that extends past Inara. He thinks she's a threat, but he's been watching for the echoes of someone else when he's watching her body language.

Alric didn't expect Sawyer, book store owner with a strongly teethed boyfriend, to be scared. No, scared isn't quite right. Defensive? Expecting attacks? Almost like a child, abused, instinctively ducking down when an adult raises their hand. What happened between Saywer and wizards that left an imprint like that on him?

The one wizard Alric knows is certainly known to shoot first, ask questions never. He already excluded nature as an explanation for Inara's tendencies. You don't fall in love as a full blown psychopath, no matter how much you think yourself one. It's nurture. And he has yet to come across any person or book describing any wizards as different from Inara. The consensus, so far, seems to be: they suck.

Let's put 'blow up Hogwarts' somewhere on my todo list, when I have more time.

This isn't Alric's usual self. Blowing things up should maybe be his third thought, not his first. His inner critic pipes up. You dumbass. You spend too much time around the Dementor. You can do better than that, at least try to think for a second.

Alric retorts. You know that most of the stuff we build blows up? Like, that's half the charm of building it? That's what we are good at? What else could - oh, I get it now.

A hunch of an idea starts to form, and with it, a pattern eagerly waiting to be matched.

But for now, he turns his attention back to the conversation.

"Fascinating, and confusing, I still have a hard time reconciling that with genetics. I'll have to read up on that. Speaking of which, considering that this is the last Shoggoth at least for a while, do you have a zip bag I can store my take-home Shoggoth sample in? I've forgotten to bring one." He turns towards the kitchen, then back to Sawyer, and smacks his lips. "Oh, and also, do you have any books on curses? I'd like to know how those work."

"...yeah, I can grab you one after Zeke comes back down to look at your plant sample," Sawyer says, slowly raising an eyebrow. “Casting or breaking? The genuine stuff is in the restricted section and for curse breaking research purposes only. Working on ways to help people with unresolvable curses or magical backlash has been an interest of mine for decades.”

Zeke is coming back down?

Alric answers while walking back into the kitchen, positioning himself to be able to intervene in case a 5' wizard decides to defect.

"I'm mostly interested in the kind of curse you get by messing around with magic, or by being around magical accidents, or things in that direction. But if there's permanent curses you can cast, I'd also like to know how those work. Anything that could give me insight into the mechanics behind it."

I follow Alric back into the kitchen, keeping an eye on him and Sawyer both. This is fascinating. What curse is Alric trying to break? The answer could be the key to dealing with him once and for all — and he's too busy worrying about me lashing out at Sawyer to realize that he's revealing far more in front of me than he should.

"In technical terms, while they may feel like a curse, those effects are called backlash. Backlashes and curses are different beasts, even if they can have similar outcomes," he pushes his sunglasses up, blinking his pitch-black eyes. "My eyes are a pretty benign side effect, but they're a consequence of some of my more intensive research."

He puts his sunglasses back on. "Most of the curses I've researched for breaking purposes have been on the permanent side - when no one else can help-" He's tracking Inara out of the corner of his eyes again. "...or when people refuse to help - that's when you look for more radical treatment methods. Extreme cases are my specialty in terms of curse research. Some of that research has crossover with amelioration of backlash symptoms, because... if you can't break a curse, you can at least try to ease the impact it has."

You hear that? Permanent curses when nobody can help, Vesper says. Ask him if he knows anything that might help with our condition.

I keep my face a mask of polite interest — Sawyer is so skittish, even more so than Alric. Please. If the finest wizard healers couldn't untangle us, I doubt this hedge mage would even know where to start.

You and your stupid prejudices. Wizardry might be the best form of magic, but that doesn't mean wizards know everything. We can still learn from other arts!

please give me a perception check to see if you notice anything particularly interesting about the shoggoth-processing room

Noticeable vigilance: [6 💥 4 = 10, 1]+1 Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

Hope, when you look past the others, you can see a city through the window that doesn't line up with what you've seen of Arkham - where you expect the overcast sky you entered under you see a sky of bright blue and a glittering bay in the distance. This first-floor window has a third-floor view looking down on streets that are beginning to fill with mid-morning tourists. A car drives by with California plates.

Rolled: [5, 1] Result: Success! 🎯

Inara sees the window and the sights through it. She probably doesn't notice the license plate on the passing car.

Permanent portals. That's... kind of impressive. Teleporting a few feet is a mighty feat only one in a dozen wizards are capable of. Opening a long distance portal is solidly in archmage territory, never mind making them stable rather than cycling like the ones in my sanctum. And Sawyer has several as glorified windows.

I study Sawyer surreptitiously. Who is this guy? Why is someone with that kind of wealth slumming it in a mediocre bookstore? Unless... no, that's absurd. Nobody with the power to create a permanent portal would dress like that, act like that. I've met archmages, at family events, and they exuded an aura of power one and all. Sawyer is just some guy.

Look at them with spectral sight, Vesper suggests. I want to see how they're made.

No. Sawyer will probably have a heart attack if I cast anything. And besides, you wouldn't be able to understand the working. That kind of magic is so far beyond you it'd be like an ant trying to comprehend a library.

I'm sure he can tell the difference between spectral sight and sunfire lace. Vesper says. Come on. Surely you're curious too.

Ugh. When Vesper gets like this, she won't shut up til I satisfy her curiosity. And she's probably right about Sawyer. Didn't he say something to that effect the other day, too?

I wait until Sawyer and Alric are distracted, then quickly run through the gestures for spectral sight and raise the rectangle of fingers to eye level.

Rolled: [3, 6 💥 6 💥 6 💥 5 = 23] Result: Success with 4 raises! 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

Spectral Sight usually displays a false-color overlay of auras. Tints for mortals, vampires, shifters, etc. Not that auras naturally have a color to begin with, or rather, there are many different schemes by which one can translate auras into color.

Sawyer Morgan does not have a false-color aura. The spell displays the true-color he has shaped into his magic. A blazing royal purple fire radiates from his crown. A core of vibrant green rests in his chest. The edges of him bleed into the Realm of Forms and fray into stardust. Night-black eyes are true night, and even with his back turned, the sight the spell grants reveals the alien suns within.

Throughout his body are scattered ashes of who he was before, the stellar dust of a spark collapsed. A connection to the divine consumed by inferno. These ashes of the divine Name move with the heartbeat of a new connection, a blessing reforged through a divergent path.

The tattoos that cover his skin from neck to foot are brilliant, thrumming lines of purple magic sunk into intricate lines of geometry and mathematics that form spells that lie in wait for the pulse of magic to set them off, an delicate tracery that overlays his blackwork. Blackwork which echoes with the same Space as his eyes, even dormant as they are, wrapped around the brilliant cores in his aura.

Oh, and... the window doesn't glow with magic.

The doorway does.

I blanch and take a step back. He's -- he's --

The thought short circuits, and it takes a long second for me to stop staring and come to my senses. What the fuck is a demigod doing running a bookshop? No. That's not important right now. Not dying is what's important.

I need to get out of here.

Calm down, Vesper says. If he wanted to kill us, he'd have done so during your shouting match. There's no immediate danger.

No immediate danger? Are you fucking kidding me? You do not mess with archmages. Sawyer has more magic in his pinkie than I have in my entire body. He could probably vaporize us with a single word.

Exactly! Think of the opportunity!

I drop my hands to my side and still my mind, detaching from the fear and adrenaline. It's easy. The emotions fall away, like wrapping paper peeling off and leaving only frozen clarity. No matter what Alric thinks, emotion is weakness. Better to be strong and free and clear headed.

Alina's advice floats into my mind, given before I met my first archmage at a dinner party. Be polite. Be deferential. Speak only when spoken to. Use no magic without permission.

Well. It's a bit late for that last one, but I can manage the others. I drift back around into Sawyer's field of view, still wearing a polite, vaguely pleasant smile as he talks about curses.

Alric was, as it often happens, distracted for a moment, and by the time he had Inara in his view again, she was already casting something. His immediate concern vanished as he quickly recognized the spell as the spell he previously tried to copy himself - Arcane Sight or whatever it's called. Everything's fine.

Or was, for about five seconds. Alric sees Inara blanch and take a step back. By now he knows: Those aren't usual reactions for our Moloch optimized monster hunter. That's either incredible fear, or some act she put on. Probably the latter.

He squints at her, then turns his attention back to Sawyer, seeing her compose herself in his peripheral vision.

Sawyer has continued to talk the whole time, attention falling away from Inara as his mind focuses in on one of his research interests and his hands moving with more and more enthusiasm. "I've written a few things on the subject of curse breaking, but there are a lot of curses out there that... don't have good solutions. Japan in particular has some nasty ones that will follow a bloodline or family lineage until the last drop has been spilled," his mouth presses into a thin line. "... I've been working on ways to help people with unresolvable curses or who were impacted by magical backlash since I was sixteen, so I've got a pretty solid collection of documents discussing the identification and breaking of curses. Some of my employees joined the staff through that line of research."

There's a cautious footfall outside the room and a moment of hesitation as Zeke looks in through the doorway before nervously stepping inside, staying close to the exit, tendrils hidden. He looks far more human without them, even with his eyes concealed behind sunglasses that are a match to Sawyer's in both fashion and function. He's pulled a soft flannel shirt in shades of purple, grey, and black on overtop his black t-shirt, and between that and his jeans he fits into the reality of the world with far more ease than he did a few minutes before.

He glances nervously at Sawyer, who beams, moving towards him and taking his hand, expression warm and encouraging, gently guiding him towards the group. "...h-hi? Uh. I'm Zeke. It's... nice to meet you."

He looks at Alric, adding a tentative "again" to his words. He speaks carefully, in a way that speaks to long practice considering how well it keeps his teeth mostly concealed. "...Sawyer said you wanted me to look at something shoggoth related?"

I offer Zeke a polite smile, though the bulk of my attention remains on Sawyer. The thought of Zeke snapping and devouring him seems almost comical now. No wonder he's so cavalier about consorting with a nonhuman.

He has tentacles and too many teeth, why is my first instinct to hug him?

"Yes! Hi again! You might be able to help us with something. We noticed the Shoggoths manipulating the vegetation around the lot we want to expel them from. They repair it, for a lack of better words, and can pull it in and push it out of the floor. We cut some open, and it looks like the plants themselves have been tampered with on a cell level. We were wondering whether they just bio engineered it, or whether they maybe even grow them out of flesh, partially perhaps, and the plants themselves are part Shoggoth."

He points to the branch.

"We brought a sample."

"Oh. Uhm. Maybe, I... might be able to figure that out." Zeke hesitates, looking towards the branch and staring for a long moment before carefully walking over to pick it up with his hands, fidgeting a bit as he turns it over and sniffs it before carefully breaking a small piece off and putting it in his mouth, hiding his teeth with his hand as he chews. He looks thoughtful as he considers the taste and texture, swallowing before he turns his attention back to the branch. "...yeah, this is definitely shoggoth material. The flavor is faint, though, it's probably earth-based biology? It does taste like they built it."

He looks at Alric, smiling hesitantly and offering him the branch, shifting to draw closer to Sawyer again, who reaches out to squeeze the hand not holding the branch. "It's... mostly plant flesh, though. It doesn't taste as good as actual shoggoth."

Alric takes the branch.

"Mostly plant flesh? Just to make sure I got that right, there's also animal flesh in there?" He looks the branch over, again. It's unsettling.

He considers for a moment. "....they taste like the roots are bringing nutrients up through a connection to shoggoth vein. There did seem to be some native animal flesh involved, the taste is a lot more intense when the flesh has all been converted to shoggoth-flesh."

"Awesome, thank you." Alric gives him a smile, then puts the branch down and pulls out his notepad. He starts taking notes. In between, he talks out loud. "So, there's been a thing that bothered me for a bit, and I think I figured out how that works. Shoggoths are flesh-based. Yes, they are eldritch horrors beyond my comprehension, but they also die to bullets and fire. They have hearts and lungs. All of this implies standard combustion based life."

He's starting to get into the swing of things, gesturing wildly with his non-glittering pen.

"Which means they need oxygen. They need to breath. How do they breath in their pocket dimensions or however they do the whole 'squeezing into things' thing? We could just say it's magic, but then again, they're not using magic to summon flesh either, no, they hunt and digest the same as other life forms. No. The lot has shoggoth plants on it that breath for the whole hive."

Alric may, however, be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

"Before I go into the obvious implications: Does anyone here know anything that contradicts that thought, have I perhaps missed something?"

He's looking into the room, expectantly.

Zeke glances at Sawyer, then back to Alric. "....yeah, their cities are self-contained biospheres. Uhm... They kind of use magic to summon flesh? I don't know the mechanics, Auntie didn't put that in her book."

"Well, so much for that. So.. Do you happen to know why they hunt, and also retrieve dead flesh? If they could just summon more?"

"I think they can only stretch it so far," he hesitates. "...and they need living components to make the hive work."

So much about the napalm.

"Alright, I'm not seeing the solution quite yet. Is Auntie someone we could get a second opinion from, just to make sure we're not missing anything obvious? If I'm not mistaken, she's the one who wrote some of the Shoggoth info we got earlier."

Zeke's smile goes a little brittle as he gives a quiet, nervous laugh, forgetting to hide his teeth. The bright, animal panic the suggestion brings out is palpable, even as he twists his hands together. "Uh. No. Probably not. They're... it's..."

"Our copy was given to us by a different member of Zeke's family," Sawyer cuts in smoothly, resting his chin on Zeke's shoulders and hugging him, which immediately helps ease off some of the nervous tension in Zeke's posture. Zeke reaches up to grip and gently squeeze Sawyer's arm. "They don't communicate the same way we do, and the process of speaking with them is... rough. Especially if you don't have practice translating things into spatial and mathematical terms on the fly. They're not a hybrid, and neither is Auntie."

Sawyer looks away from Alric for a moment, more openly gauging Inara's reaction.

Nonhuman family members. Disgusting. At least have the decency not to talk about it openly. But one does not criticize an archmage to their face, no matter how bad their blunder.

I give Sawyer a noncommittal smile instead of the excoriating sneer he deserves. Hopefully we can wrap up our business here quick. This conversation is terrifying — and not in the fun way. If Alric told everyone what I am, my family would smooth it over. It'd be difficult and costly, but doable. If Sawyer turns me into a smear of ash because I told him he's a disgusting pervert, well. That's a little more permanent.

Sawyer's brow furrows slightly, like he was expecting a different reaction and isn't sure why he didn't get it. His attention turns back to Alric again.

"Mhm. Alright, let's skip the second, no, I guess third opinion, then."

Mhm.

Wait.

Maybe?

"Okay, so, right, I gotta ask this, sorry for the tangent. If I try to see Shoggoths, or eat them I guess, I'll go mad. If I try to talk to extra-dimensionals, I'll go mad too, right? Why is it me who'd go mad, and not the other way around?"

Because your mind is weak and frail, I think, but don't say.

"Eating shoggoth won't drive you crazy, it's just going to straight-up poison you," Sawyer says helpfully.

Zeke licks his lips, hesitating, then takes point. "The way the full-blooded members of my family talk is with a direct connection to your mind, via physical contact. Their minds are... big. Loud. They communicate in a way that's much closer to the way that people cast spells, I guess? They don't use names, they use coordinates. It's kind of like pushing a calculus book into someone's head all at once? Or pulling someone from the third dimension into the fourth. Four dimensional beings can understand three dimensions okay, but vice versa is... less easy. Sometimes you can work up to it from a human baseline and build up your understanding and mental resilience. But it's better to be careful."

He squeezes Sawyer's arm again, prompting Sawyer to lean more of his weight against him. "Uhm. The reverse... can also be true? Sometimes other entities have difficulty with human concepts, or can't understand them, and that can cause problems. They can go... kind of crazy, from their own perspective. Even some things native to your world can have those problems if they run into something that's diametrically opposed to their whole deal. Plus their understanding of scales of time and space can get weird."

"Then there's the whole if you're not like me you're not a person thing, but that's not really exclusive to non-human entities," Sawyer adds, testing the waters a bit more brazenly. "It's a problem with humans, too."

Zeke winces. "...yeah. uh. That. Is a big problem. But I don't think Alric's asking about that?"

"... you're right. Sorry," Sawyer hums.

Zeke looks back at Alric and smiles slightly, the edges of his teeth showing. "My cousin Ellie still can't understand directions that aren't given with geospatial data, 2-D navigational instructions just don't make sense in her head. They... don't make as much sense to me as they do to all of you, either, but I can mostly follow along?"

I offer Sawyer an appreciative nod, as if the drivel he's spouting is not only sensible, but insightful. There's a case to be made for hybrids, but full-blooded monsters? You may as well call a wolf a person. Dress it up in pretty clothes, give it a nice name — it'll still claw your face off and eat it. It's easy for Sawyer to blather about horrors being people when he's a fucking archmage. Most people don't have that kind of power at their fingertips and the best case scenario for the average idiot with a bleeding heart is that their stupidity only gets themselves killed.

I like him, Vesper says. Zeke, I mean. He's cute.

I carefully keep my contempt from showing on my face, only responding once I'm certain that I've got it under control. You think that is cute? Tell me you're joking. He might be mostly civilized but he's still a hideous abomination. Look at those tentacles.

Eh, the tentacles are okay, could take or leave them, Vesper says. But like, the way he hides his teeth, or the way he's constantly looks at at Sawyer. He's shy, not aggressive.

Ugh. I don't need you to tell me what Zeke's emotions are, I can read them perfectly fine myself. It doesn't matter. Every half-human is a few bad days away from a blood-soaked rampage through the streets.

Fascinating.

'Are there any books you could recommend on the topic?' is the obvious next question, but Alric already knows the answer: 'Yes, in the restricted section.' And as curious as he is, he's not going to read the necronomicon until he knows he won't go mad.

"Speaking of which: Is there magic that can tell you how mentally resilient someone is? Like, could I cast a spell and have revealed to me that I have a +4 to Wisdom checks? It probably doesn't work that way, but, you know, worth checking."

Zeke blinks, then chuckles, tension unspooliing as he smiles at Alric. There's more teeth in it, this time. His voice is warm enough that it's obvious that he's forgetting to hide them. ".... Sawyer wasn't kidding when he said you were knowledge-hungry. I think there are some divinatory spells that could tell you something like that, right Sawyer?"

Sawyer nods. "Mh-hm. Personality tests are easier to conduct and are just about as accurate, though, " he chuckles.

Zeke nods, enthusiasm slowly building as he speaks. "… or you can find out with Name magic. That won’t give you a number, but a deep understanding of your position and limits. Knowing your own coordinates is important, it can help you know yourself more fully, for better or worse."

"That's a thing? How would that work, and what exactly do you mean by position? Position in concept space?"

"Mh-hm! Your position in Concept Space. We learn to listen to our-" he says something that comes out thick with eldritch echoes, voice distorting, then pauses, blinking. "Which. Uhm. Humans don't have that one."

"Crown's close," Sawyer hums. "But most people don't tune in that way."

"Oh. Uhm. Yeah. So. You - humans in general - use more simplified, relative positioning. You can. Uhm. Listen to things nearby so you know where you are?"

He hesitates. "You... could also test your mental resilience by exposure in a controlled setting to something on the mild end. Uhm. If Auntie was a mountain, say, someone like me or Ellie might be more like... something between a fist-sized rock and a ten-foot boulder? Like if you kicked it you'd stub your toe, but you wouldn't fall off a cliff. So. Like. I could try to explain directions to you, but we would wanna do it in a safe space where you're comfortable and have emotional support for after just in case something happens."

He glances at Sawyer, who smiles, then back to Alric. "There's always a chance you could go irreparably insane, but it's pretty low with something mild, and continued exposure can help build resilience."

"Repeat failures on the other hand can lower it," Sawyer cautions.

Alric's first thought is to shelve this until he's checked off everything else on his todo list, and he has a reason and has some time to dive into the necronomicon. His immediate second thought is that for some unknown reasons his team - no, wait, just Inara - insists on him delving into a shoggoth hive in the very near future. If he can't talk himself out of that, upfront training would be very helpful.

"How would you compare to a shoggoth, in terms of insanity on my part?"

"...that depends on what I'm doing or saying," Zeke says after a moment.

"Then it might be worth it to actually take you up on that offer. Not immediately, but certainly before we delve into the Shoggoth hive. I'd rather find out in a controlled environment that I'm not particularly resilient to any of that, rather than while strolling through eldritch horror flesh chambers as a Seer. Would me taking you up on that offer be okay for you, some time in the next days?"

"Yeah! That should be okay, I... think we could walk any of you who are interested through it, maybe?" He glances at Sawyer. "...probably not this weekend, though, we need to get back to our campsite soon, Ellie and Mori are probably wondering when we're going to get back."

Sawyer pulls his phone from his pocket and makes a face. "...Ellie's wondering if we're going to be back in time for me to make lunch."

Zeke's attention perks up. "....can we take some of the shoggoth for Ellie?"

Sawyer groans. "If we let her know about it she'll raid the freezers as soon as we get home, Zeke. This is going to be like last time I told her I was making jellyfish for dinner, I ended up having to go back to the supplier!"

Campsite? Let me guess, portal to another plane? I'm going to ask another time.

"Great! Thanks again for your help, both of you. I won't hold you any longer, then, we've got work to do as well. Uhm.. I owed you six, we've delivered eight. Can you credit the excess two to the commission?" Alric walks over and grabs the, by now, emptied plastic container.

"The Commission?" Sawyer says. "Yeah, I can do that. We can talk later about any other follow-up."

"Sounds like a plan."

Alric walks towards the kitchen exit, then turns around. "Zeke, it was great meeting you, I'm looking forward to next time. Sawyer, we stay in touch, I'll keep you updated." He nods to the both of them, then pushes the door open with his shoulder and makes his way through into the hallway.

I give Sawyer a shallow bow, then back away from him and follow Alric out.

Zeke waves, smiling and leaning back into Sawyer.

Sawyer blinks, expression turning visibly startled, then outright confused as Inara bows. That's... weird. That's really weird. Something shifted somewhere in the last ten minutes and he has no idea why. It's obvious he's expecting a sneer or look of dismissal, not this polite distance that could be seen as... respectful?

He hisses to Zeke as Inara backs out of the room, just audible enough to catch.. "...what the hell was that about?"

"... hm?"

"... I'll explain later. Let's.. clean up here. The sooner we do the sooner I can get lunch started."

"Is there a reason you're bowing all of a sudden? The portal door is pretty cool."

"What? I didn't bow?" Alric doesn't even consider Inara as the one being asked. He throws the plastic box into the trunk.

Now that I'm out of that too-small room, I can finally breathe again. "I was merely offering him the respect due one of his station. If I overlooked the niceties earlier, it was only because I didn't realize he was an archmage, due to the way he masks his power instead of letting it spill out around him like most do."

Alric audibly chuckles as he gets into the driver's seat.

"Ha. A super powerful archmage, and you haven't made a good first impression. Tss tss.." He sighs. "Oh well, you've probably course corrected early enough for him to not completely learn to hate your guts, so, thumbs up for that." He's very amused, that much is obvious.

Heh, and she definitely won't learn from this. Another chuckle.

"What does archmage even mean? Dumbledore power level?" he asks, as he starts the car.

Course corrected... as if I plan on ever being in the same room as Sawyer again. "Archmage is not an official rank or title with well-defined characteristics. One is only an archmage when others refer to you as such." I pause. "Sawyer might not be a wizard, but I doubt any of us would seriously argue that he does not qualify. I have met perhaps a dozen archmages my life, and Sawyer would fit among their august company with ease were he to stop cloaking his power."

That's how all words work.

"No, like, what differentiates an archmage from a normal mage? Like, by power level, are archmages top 10% of mages? Or 1%?"

"Power and knowledge, mostly. Age, but only indirectly — it takes to master magic to such an extraordinary extent. There is no official statistic on how many wizards are archmages, but I would say that less than one percent of us hold the title. Why? If you're wondering how rare it is to be trained by an archmage — very rare. You are exceedingly lucky to have caught the interest of one."

Not surprising really, he has his own bookstore.

He's pulling out of the parking lot and onto the street.

"Wild. Well, aren't you glad that you didn't get to attack his boyfriend with him being so overpow-" Alric is hit by a thought, then laughs out loud. "That's what made you go white as a sheet! I knew there was something off about that. But no! You're scared of him!" Alric throws his head back laughing, and playfully slaps the steering wheel a few times. "Aaaaaah, this is great. What a day, what a lovely, lovely day. Anyone up for ice cream? Both of you are invited, my treat!"

"Anyone with the slightest shred of common sense would be scared of an archmage," I say, staring at Alric. I don't bother to scowl or sneer — he's too smart for that to work. But I have to convince him of this, or he's going to get himself killed and leave me with a gigantic mess to clean up. "They are eccentric and unpredictable, beholden to no one and with near-absolute power over reality. Your ignorance is the only reason you're not afraid."

"Aaah, fantastic." Another chuckle. "My ignorance?" He's having a hard time not laughing out loud saying that, but he gets himself somewhat under control. He chuckles again. "Hey, between the two of us," he leans over to her, "you don't get the joke yet, but I'll remind you of this moment in the future. You'll get a kick out of it."

He leans back, and takes a deep breath.

"Sawyer's cool, don't worry. He's no idiot." He spots a McDonalds, and points to it. "Oh shit, let's go. I wouldn't touch any of their other stuff, but their soft ice is amazing. Do you know any magic that can repair machines? Ah, dumb question, skip that. Let's just spin the wheel." Alric's turning the car on course towards the drive-through.

"I... no, I don't know any repair spells. Why?"

"It's a Seer thing, you'll see. I hope I'm wrong."

Ugh. "Enough with the cryptic hints, just tell me. And why are we getting ice cream? We have a shoggoth hive to exterminate."

Alric pulls into the drive-through, ignoring Inara.

I sigh and slump back in my seat. This is my life now, huh? It really has been an awful few days. If only I hadn't seen that Dawn Commission flyer in the library. I can't believe I thought that it might be nice to have teammates again.

The kid operating the drive through has a weak chin and large eyes filled with the dread that comes from fast food employment and impending midterms.

Sometimes, magic does exist in the world: the soft serve ice cream machine is actually working! Only vanilla though, they’re out of chocolate.

"Oh shit, I forgot, they have McFlurrys. Alright, what do you guys want? McFlurry? Vanilla cone? Sundae?" He leans out of the window. "Hi! I'm definitely taking an M&Ms McFlurry." He looks back in. "What's it gonna be?"

"Vanilla cone," I say reluctantly.

He leans back out. "And one vanilla cone. One sec-" He turns around to Hope. "What about you?"

"Rolo McFlurry. Did Sawyer's portal take us to a parallel universe where the ice cream machine works?"

"It seems so! WOO!" Alric leans back out. "And one Rolo McFlurry for the lady in the back! That's all! How much for all that?"

"$8.07." The kid says. "Nah, not parallel universes, I just fix the machine when it acts up. Can't make chocolate syrup when we're out though." He takes the money and hands over the ice cream.

Alric hands over $15 and tells him to keep the change, then passes out the ice cream to the other two.

After they've pulled into the parking lot, Alric starts digging into his McFlurry.

While eating, he speaks up."Sho, Hope, what'sh mmm the biggest monster you've fought, like, ever?"

"A zombie bear! You would not believe how much ammo that thing took to put down. Thankfully it was dumber than a real bear and I could kite it through dense trees; I couldn't have outrun it."

"I did try climbing a tree, but it just knocked it over! Actually the only injury I got from that one was from the fall. A creature that size is a pretty all-or-nothing fight."

Of course zombies are a thing. Why wouldn't they be?

"Whew. Did you run across it during a hike or something? How does a zombie bear even come to be?"

Alric, unsurprisingly, never developed an appreciation for hiking. Or the outdoors. Or touching grass. He hated every second of every class trip into the wilds. There's nothing there? Just trees and flowers and dirt? What's the point? What are you even supposed to do with plants?

He adds zombie bears to his list of excuses, and continues digging into his McFlurry.

"No, somebody else ran into it on a hike. I was called in due to multiple missing persons. It wasn't hard to track down. Finding the necromancer took longer, and in theory should have been just as dangerous, but it turns out death rays take a good two seconds to cast, so that didn't happen."

Alric chuckles. "Are you sure you killed him? He 'was' a necromancer after all, I'd imagine them having a trick up their sleeves for that."

"Burned the bodies on general principles, but I'm pretty sure coming back as a sapient undead was out of his league. Vesper, when was the last recorded lich?"

Hope doesn't have to worry about her man coming back to life. Only a rank amateur would stand still and unshielded while casting a slow spell. A real lich would have shrugged off the bullets and turned Hope into a thin red smear with a wave of his hand. Good thing, too, because destroying the body would only slow down a lich — the entire point of the phylactery ritual is preservation of the soul after corporeal death.

I don't say any of that, of course. There's really no way to point out how ignorant someone is without coming off as condescending.

"There are still liches around," I say instead. "Petal Whip, various Nazis... all the dumb liches met their final death a while ago, though. The ones who are left are smart enough to keep a low profile, so you won't find a lot of information about them unless you know where to look."

Where would one look? Vesper asks.

Arcanum's restricted stacks, I say. Where else?

Really? Arcanum has that kind of material?

I project superiority along with my words. All the necromancy books are in the restricted section, but Arcanum has everything. Supposedly they even have a copy of Towards Eternity, the original work describing the phylactery ritual.

"Ah yes, nazi liches. Alright. Anything else I should know about? Actually, let's go into the extreme. What's the dumbest thing to exist? Is, I don't know, Slenderman real? Possessed animatronics?" He's gesturing around with the white plastic spoon in hand. "Xenomorphs? Chucky?" ~~Backrooms?~~ Let's not mention that one. "If you guys know the ceiling to the ridiculousness, let's just go there right away."

"Confluences." It's not as if showing off here will annoy Alric, so it's fine. "Temporary knots in reality that draw nightwalkers to a particular place, creating a gathering out of nothing. The knot itself doesn't do much, but having that many nightwalkers in one place tends to turn it into a powder keg. Small confluences last a few weeks, but big ones can blaze for years before burning themselves out."

"'Temporary knots in reality' - what exactly does that mean?" Probably just a rationalization. But the observation that vampires? get drawn to a particular place is interesting. "And just to make sure: 'Nightwalkers' is the politically correct term for vampires, right?"

"Nightwalkers is a broader term that refers to supernaturals and those involved with them. As for knots —" I hesitate, keenly aware of the pitfalls looming up ahead. If I hold back he'll think I'm uncooperative, but if I try to explain everything it'll just make him feel stupid. Two semesters at Arcanum was barely enough to grasp the basics of fundament theory for me, and I'm a natural at magic. Someone like Alric probably wouldn't understand it if he took four years of classes on nothing else.

"Imagine that you have an servant," I say. "The servant is obedient and helpful, but it's not very smart. It only knows a few basic commands that it's been painstakingly trained in, such as bringing you food or waking you up in the morning. Now, imagine that the servant is invisible and infinitesimally tiny. And instead of one servant, there is an infinitude of them, everywhere, all the time.

It's the same analogy Alina used when I asked her how magic worked at eight years old. It wasn't until much later that I learned the full theory. I'll give Alric a condensed summary, leaving out all the complicated theories and proofs. Better for him to merely think he understands than struggle through the miserable slog that foreshadows true comprehension.

"The world you see is an illusion." I take a bite of ice cream and swallow, letting the statement hang in the air between us before explaining. "The deepest level of reality is not the atom, but aether. Solidified magic with a sliver of intelligence. There are as many types of aether as there are parts of reality and every piece of aether can be subdivided infinitely. The aether of a blade can be split into sharpness and steel. The steel can be split into shiny and hard. And the smaller the aether, the dumber it is, and the less it remembers.

"Without the Gift, your words are nearly meaningless. They have little to no power behind them. But even so, when five nightwalkers gather in a grassy field, that makes an impression on the fundament. It becomes just that slight bit easier for more people to join in. Make enough of an impression, and people start getting drawn in. The more people gather, the deeper the pattern, and the more people gather. People take a wrong turn and end up in the confluence, they have an impulse to head that way, or they wander into the area while distracted. And on the flip side, it's harder to leave: bad things happen when you try to walk away, people pick fights with you, your car breaks down. Small, coincidental things."

Alric takes another spoonful of ice cream, and leans his head back to think.

None of this makes any sense. Yes, he already knows that reality is a vector space across meaning, and Saige's best guess was that this universe is a complex spell. Which, if you skip over the preconception that spells are gang signs and drawings, just means that the mechanics behind meaning - let's call that 'spells' - creates physics, not the other way around. But then you'd have a situation where abstractions dictate physical behavior, and they do that consistently, and can be independently reproduced to the point that people misunderstand the direction of causality here: Meaning dictating physics, not the other way around. Of course, this brings us right to the start: None of this makes any sense.

Timeless physics? Or the meaning equivalent thereof? Time is just the muggle explanation for causality, which in physics, only runs in one direction, which we thus dub 'time'. But if causality actually runs in any direction in the meaning wonderland, we, as subjects storing memories in physics, would perceive time normally, but causality would be breaking from our perspective. If causality runs in any direction, it'd a) explain how gang signs could make an effect happen far away from them, e.g. Inara's air bending, and b) predict the existence of seers, prophecies, etc. In fact, fate would be a thing, because fate would just be causality 'backwards', so in a sense, whenever casting magic, you're actually producing your own 'fate'. Not your fate in the sense of your destiny, but some fate.

If some of this is right, it'd also slot in with the thing Sawyer said, something along the lines of 'torturing Shoggoths isn't good for your soul'. Your soul could attract adjacent concepts, similar to how Nightwalkers attract others, and torturing animals is probably around a corner of bad stuff. And with causality being any direction, it could easily have 'bad thing' start to make its way to you before you turn your soul dark, just to have it arrive the moment you do, what a coincidence.

But how is Inara still around, then? How wasn't she accidental'd already? PeRhApS tHeRe's A gReAt FaTe AhEaD oF hEr?

...

It doesn't quite fit.

...

There's one thing I can check immediately, though.

He opens his eyes. "Okay, got it. Makes sense, so far. So, are future sight, prophecies, divination, any of these a thing? Or perhaps the ability to look into the past, one way or another?"

It takes all my effort to not reflexively sneer at Alric. Divination. You may as well roll a die to make your choices. The entire field is riddled with flawed spells -- when it's not outright fraud.

"It depends on what you mean," I say, careful to keep my tone neutral. "Prophecies are --" utter nonsense "-- generally inaccurate. Spiritual divination is --" evil "-- not done. Psychometry works reliably, but it's fairly limited unless you have a lot of time to spare. Scrying works, but that only lets you see the present, not the future. There are ask-a-question divinations that have been verified to work, but they do better with simple questions than complex ones.

" To go back to what I was saying, it's easier for the aether to understand a simple question with a clear yes or no answer than a complicated question with any number of possible answers. But even then, it'll only give you the most likely answer, and the act of giving that answer can easily change it. There is no such thing as fate or destiny, despite what some would have you believe."

It's exhilarating. Alric can't remember the last time he tried to make sense out of magic and actually managed to make an accurate prediction. Has he, ever? It does not matter. This is progress.

What a day.

"Awesome." He's using his spoon to scratch out the last of his ice cream, eats it, then puts the empty cup to the side. He won't point out the incongruity between 'people get drawn to confluences, and coincidences prevent them from leaving' and 'fate isn't a thing'. If enough meaning mass can keep you there, similar to gravity wells, it sure wouldn't be surprising if future meaning wells can pull you to them as well. It fits the causality arrows pretty well, actually.

"So, if aether is intelligence, and our intelligence doesn't come from a physical process, then it probably comes directly from our souls, which are aether. Mhm.. So, reality is aether, and thus one giant continuous intelligence. We are separate souls, but souls are just subsets of aether, so in a sense we are just reality observing itself, as the buddhists would say, right?"

Between me having my third eye open already, and now all of this, I should really start meditating and stuff.

"Religion is --" for idiots "-- mostly wrong and wildly misleading. In a sense we are reality observing itself because we are also made of aether. But even if that sounds deeply wise, it's a trap as lethal as any exploding fire rune. The world still exists. We still act within it. Other parts of it act on you. Don't get distracted and hug a vampire because you think it's one with you."

Alric shrugs. "Eh, it's a coin flip, really."

If this is all just souls projected onto reality, how hard can immortality be, then? Just build a thing to track me in concept space, then summon me again when I die. The whole 'doesn't have enough conceptual weight' thing Sawyer described can't be that hard to solve, can it?

...

That's why Jesus went full prophet, isn't it?

"Alright, that was enlightening. Everyone done with their ice cream? I suggest we circle around. I'd like to go into the back, I have some reading to do." Alric gets out of the driver's seat and gets into the back row. He pulls the Tome out of his backpack, then starts reading.

Inara moves into the driver's seat. Half an hour later the crew arrives at Dawn HQ.

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