July 24th, 5AC

Timothy woke to the trill of exotic songbirds. For just a moment he missed hearing a Cock-a-doodle-doo. Odd considering he’d never lived on a farm. Sleeping mind Timothy was weird. The beep beep beep of an alarm clock would have made sense, but outside of a cartoon he doubted he’d ever heard a chicken.

He sat up and rubbed halfheartedly at the sleepies in his eyes. The simple vine cloth cot caught his eye and he lingered longingly over it for a moment, before regretfully turning away.

He missed sleeping in but it just wasn’t something he had time for. A fact he bitterly regretted. But sleep was the body's natural defense against stress and mental disorders and if so was it really such a bad choice to protect himself? Thoroughly.

He snorted, his half-asleep mind was weird.

He stood up before temptation got the better of him.

Taking a step, he half fell, tripping over his own feet and barely recovering when his flailing hand slammed painfully into the wall. Cussing and shaking his head he stumbled the rest of the way to the water basin and shoved his head into the bracingly cool water.

The stone pot was waist-high and more than wide enough to fit his shoulders, a fact he didn’t test today but considering his usual grace in the mornings it was just as well!

Throwing his now dripping hair backward in a spray of water he gasped for breath, shivering but also finally awake.

Taking a deep breath he habitually checked the time, not on a watch or a clock but by tapping into the Field. The environmental mana was fluctuating. A twisting mix of night-type aspects, but with an unsettled feeling. A slowly growing fear. False dawn then.

He grimaced, and already it was around 27 C. Once the sun rose above the horizon it would pass 30 C and 40 C By noon.

Or something like that.

It wasn't like he had a thermometer and while he could boil and freeze water to find 0 and 100, who knew how mana was fucking with those so-called constants.

He brushed the familiar irritation aside and shook himself like a dog. Getting some of the water off, but mostly just for the hell of it. The humidity wasn’t any less absurd than the heat. Dry was a pleasant dream, but one unachievable without magic help.

Still, for a few moments, he felt blessedly cool, and that was enough to get him started on the morning routine.

He brushed his teeth with a split twig, took a quick sponge down with some locally made soap in the water basin, though he was miserly with the amount. Damn stuff was exorbitantly expensive!

It was harsh and not very pleasant smelling, but a hell of a lot more effective than soapwort stems. Or going without. Especially not with how much he’d be sweating.

It was a far cry from Irish Breeze.

Dwelling on what wasn't available anymore was a quick shortcut to the looney bin.

He spent a few more moments giving his scraggly beard a trim. In this at least, he had the old world beat cold. No cleaning or razor burn here. Just a stone rod that made any hair within a half-inch go poof.

You just had to keep it away from your nose. No one did that more than once. Between nothing smelling right and the constant sneezing, it wasn’t something you’d forget.

He still had no idea why and wasn't interested in doing any more testing.

He checked his work briefly in the no-longer clear wash water. It wasn’t the best of mirrors in the first place, but then that wasn’t an accident. Mirrors were dangerous.

Good enough he decided. He triggered the swirled drain symbol at the bottom of the pot and the detritus and scope scum disappeared leaving picturesque clean water behind.

He snorted softly. He could go months without thinking about the old world. Then something small would throw him for a loop. Something that was oh so similar, but completely different. Like a sink you didn’t empty or worse the toilet that worked on the same principle.

Clean and refreshed, he threw on a new robe, he kept several sets here just in case. Not that he couldn't magic up a new one in a jiffy, but without the right molds they chafed even more than usual.

Picking up his belt, he ran through a series of diagnostic charms. They were well-practiced spells and took barely a trickle of mana. Reading the response though, that took some doing. Willpower for sure, but mostly understanding.

He started with the belt itself first. It was mostly empty and he considered channeling it up a bit. No. he’d be back in Runehold tonight and it would charge itself. The bit it had left was enough for a short boat trip. More importantly, he didn’t spot any red threads of strain or worse the twisting purple of burnt-out channels. It was good and stable, despite the heavy use.

Good.

He moved on to the charms dangling beneath it.

The mana charge across the lot wasn’t a tenth of full. Worse, the signs absent from his belt were cropping up on a few other pieces. His mental touch lingered on the preserved piranha head in particular.

It was both empty and growing pretty ragged. Longevity was dependent on the amount of mana used and the density of meaning. A shovel used for construction? Lots of mana, but it wasn’t a complicated concept. More it was designed as a workhorse, solid durable material kept well below its load limits. It would last most of a year if you took care.

A weapon enchantment was a thoroughbred racer. Carved from whatever material would make the spell more powerful and pushing the limits of that material. It wasn’t made to remove dirt that couldn’t fight back, but to carve through a sapient will and shred the body underneath. A couple months of steady use was about all you could expect from a fish head.

It was what it was. He walked over to a stone cabinet built into one wall. Running through several hand signs and chanting out a rubbish passphrase he unlocked the first ward, then spent another minute or two removing the remaining six.

Paranoid he wondered. Then decided, and not for the first time, no, he wasn’t. He only had to glance to his right and see, if he could through solid rock, the school room.

A room regularly filled with curious little shits who loved to test themselves by breaking Teacher’s wards. Seven complicated and powerful wards on a chest full of lethal weapons was just good sense.

The stone door slid sideways into the wall. Leaving several dozen charms hanging from stone pegs. Some pegs held three or four of the same charms, others hung by their lonesome. There were small stone cards on cotton strands, quartz amulets, bone rings, bone bracers, bone earrings and several forms of dried and preserved beast heads.

Heads, despite the ick factor, had a solid link to the soul of a critter. A very useful feature if the you wanted the spell to have a bit of discernment. Friendly fire wasn’t after all.

Timothy ran his mind over them, testing and judging. They were all topped off, stable and as far as he could tell with a cursory look, untampered with. He took another few minutes to remove that ‘cursory’ caveat.

A stone drawer at the bottom held a lead coffer half filled with a dozen depleted or worn-out charms he hadn’t gotten around to refurbishing yet. Opening up the lid he flinched back, softly cursing, as built-up mana and sour meaning combined into a static-like shock. One that pressed more than a modicum of corruption inside that minor bit of pain. More crap to clean out of his system later.

Fun.

He didn’t have time to deal with that yet though, so he replaced the overfilled magic sump and added the fishhead to the mix, along with seven other questionable charms.

Replacement charms were quickly acquired from the rows above and he paused to plan out his day.

The generic offensive and defensive charms like motions wards and removal charms were good nearly anywhere so they stayed in his load out. But the Deep Dark had special needs for heavy hitting or powerful defenses that weren’t as appropriate on a boat trip. A bit of specialization was in order.

Water-based beasts often had trouble with ice and percussive energies. Sound also worked pretty well through a water medium. He grabbed a few more charms to sub out.

Throw in a few fly swatter spells in case of a mosquito swarm, he reminded himself. A hundred thousand blood-drinking insects could turn the sky dark. In such large numbers the six-inch-long menaces were more of a natural disaster than a beast encounter. They could and had drained an entire passel of hogs dry in passing, much less an unprotected human. Best then, to be a protected human. A few more charms made their way onto his belt.

He hesitated briefly and reluctantly broke out a small metal harpoon. A single-use Hippo Slaying enchantment. He hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to use it. Just the cost of the metal would set him back, but the amount of spellwork he’d have to do on top of that was nauseating.

It took a massive expenditure of mana, even when leveraged well and used wisely, to harm 10+ tons of pure orneriness. Fast orneriness to, far more than anything that large should be. At least in the water. On land they were far easier to deal with. Which was probably why they rarely bothered.

He slid the two hands-long piece of sharpened metal into a leather case and tied them both to his belt. No reason to tempt people with that kind of money.

Almost done, he considered, then added a small bag of natron. The tiny nearly transparent crystals were the forefather of baking soda and a necessity if they ran into acid-spewing leaches. Nasty blighters if you were unprepared but sprinkle a bit on them and they'd combust. Acid plus base equals boom if you do it fast enough and magic ensured that it did. It also ensured the boom went away from the bag.

He hesitated a bit, then split his expended charms up. Those keyed to Paradise he added to the bottom drawer or rehung on their assigned pegs. The rest he placed first into an extra leadstone coffer that then went into his carry sack. He might have some time on the boat to work on them.

He closed up the cabinet, reset the wards then grabbed his staff and headed out. Habitually triggering his personal defensive charms at the door. Motion absorption, hostile intent detection and a small illusion that made him look like he was standing two feet away. It slowly shifted around him over the course of a day too, which made for some hilarity in those who knew what was going on. Mentally tracing the active enchantments, he pulsed the mana lines briefly, then satisfied, he let them be. They'd last the day... or a few minutes of active combat.

Not that they were foolproof, he scratched his now unmarked forehead. A motion ward only absorbed incoming motion limited to above a set speed. If he was the one moving it didn't do jack shit.

He had several spells that would do that... but using them made even walking difficult. Why are you kicking the ground newb? Best absorb that before you bruise your feet! Even fine-tuning it into a directional effect could turn a cobweb into a steal clothesline.

Spells that tried to be specific suffered from problems of specificity. Name or history-based spells like Armor of Achilles, Baldur's Grace, Gorgan's Stare or Nemon's Hide likewise were weak against the very history that spawned them. In order, aim at the heel, mistletoe, something reflective and just choke the fucker.

All spells were that way. If you understood where they came from, you could counter them. The trick from a defensive point of view, was to not let anyone see your choices before you had to use them. And mix it up with several layers with different weaknesses. You still couldn't make yourself invincible, but delaying death long enough to respond was possible.

He snagged a leather strap from beside the door, and after a few turns easily slung his staff across his back. Ready at last, he had to spend several more minutes doing the ward unlock dance. Between curious children, fist-sized mesquitos and half-incoporeal snakes that would have fit the Anaconda movie it wasn't paranoia. Not when they really were out to get him.

The door opened and he snapped his fingers. A stream of cold blue gradually came to life along either side of the narrow little stone tunnel. Reaching about twenty feet away at a steep incline to another blocked doorway. He spent another minute re-triggering the wards behind him. They'd last another week or two after he recharged them last night. A far cry from as powerful as they could be with an active mind controlling them, but it was as much as he could practically manage.

A short walk up the tunnel and another few chanted passwords unlocked the next set of wards, and let him roll the stone disk of a door out of the way.

He relocked this set again, cursing softly in his head at how long security took as he glanced out into his school room. The large subterranean dome was ringed with pillars to support the lofted roof above and filled with small stone platforms in four layers of ascending rings. He could feel the lingering remains of a hundred spells and the blotches of intent they left behind. Even more he could feel the active sources of contained meaning, growing ever stronger from the inner ring to the outer.

Seniors sat to the back, and after most of four years of training, the years of notes inscribed on their stele’s held considerable power. The sheer amount of information straining at the materials and wards they'd built up to contain it.

It was a frightful din. Loud even when empty. Enough noise to hide a more subtle threat too, he mused, flicking through a brief chant and meshing his will into the web of security wards he'd woven into the very stones around him.

Nothing. Good. The room was open to any student in good standing, but it was still very early. Early enough that he had a bit of time...

Best not to wait. He ran his mind through the complicated set of runic thought constructs, reinforcing and reaffirming their existence. Letting his will and his much-depleted mana stores recharge the room that hadn't seen him for a week and a half.

Much longer and he might have had to remake them from scratch. It took him a few minutes, but not the full day a replacement would.

Lines, geometric shapes that controlled the interaction between the many runes began to glow first, tracing out the connections between concepts. Then the runes themselves ignited, lining the columns, tracing the ramps and the edges of each platform. Circling the dome overhead even as they flowed downward to embrace the dais at the center.

Mana, lively with the growing dawn slid smoothly through his will and almost as an afterthought, he snapped his fingers letting a bit of diffuse lighting spread along his route to the door.

He raised his foot and froze mid-step. Placing it back down he closed his eyes and traced the lines of power again. Specifically, those in the stone door behind him. There was something...

He refocused, twisting his will through a familiar pattern. Breifly leaning into his mind palace to link to the fully engraved spell form. It required no mana, but merely a way of looking at what was there. A magnifying glass for his inner eyes.

With it he could see far deeper, deep enough to make out a thin tracing of earth lines. Spider webs of mana so thin they nearly disappeared against the flux of the Field. They coated the outside of the bolder, regular in their pattern except for a small area where the exceedingly fine lines were... perturbed.

Not entirely broken, but close to it. The pattern wasn't quite right anymore and the wrongness of it scratched at his perfectionist tendencies. An irritant that he would have to fix.

Later.

He took a closer look, at frayed and lines that were no longer tightly woven thread, but gnarly frayed fibers sticking out like twine. Or hair that had been in the same braid for a week.

He slipped his mind through another little twist. A filter on his perception. Not on the shape of threads any longer, but to the smell of them. All those spread hairs were sticky. Just the thing to trap a bit of leaking intent.

Yes!

His would-be intruder had left a bit of himself behind. He sniffed deeply, a symbolic act to tie the physical to the metaphysical. It took him a minute, the human mind wasn't a dog’s. We don’t have the database to interpret thousands of scents. But there was one aspect of the sense that humans used heavily.

Nostalgia.

Scent was the key to memory, repressed or otherwise. And his memory wasn’t merely grey matter. Not anymore. The palace of his mind resided in his soul, and he tapped it for a list of the signatures he knew.

Noggen.

Well, well, well. What a pleasant surprise. Not a troublemaker maker. A decent little brat. Hardworking and dedicated.

But despite self-awakening putting at the top of the heap, he wasn’t what Timothy would call talented. He tried his best, but things had a habit of going sideways on him. While his classmates figured out the first time, or at least by the third, he would take five or six.

Timothy didn’t mind That. The speed of learning was much less important than the depth. What bothered Timothy was how accident-prone he was. Frankly, Timothy was pleasantly surprised that he’d survived to see his fourth year.

Even more so that he’d been showing signs of improvement. Spells that were hesitant and sporadic in their effectiveness settled down into reliability. Not just working as intended, but without the constant ill luck that seemed to stock his every waking hour.

It gave Timothy a bit of hope for him. Maybe this bit of tomfoolery meant that whatever cloud he’d lived under, the sun was finally coming out.

If that was so, combined with the work ethic that kept him in sight of the rest of the class, even if not neck and neck, he was likely to really become someone.

As long as Timothy didn't skin him for this bit of illicit spying. And it was spying, he decided. An attempt to peak at the inner structure of the wards rather than to get past them. The tiny bits of intent said nothing of destruction. Only curiosity.

Timothy nodded his head in respect. He'd barely noticed and that made it a very good attempt indeed. It took real control to look beneath that web without breaking it and good sense to back off before he broke anything. Either way, Timothy was pleased.

Being wrong this time was quite exhilarating.

Timothy considered. How could he congratulate him on his progress while also slapping him with a bit of good humor. He did get caught, so it was the least Timothy could do. Encouragement, a small reward for what he'd managed and a reminder of how dangerous peeking could be.

Even if, privately at least, that was what the wards on the stone were for. The kids had to cut their teeth somewhere.

It was an article of faith that any ward people could see would be defeated. That was the nature of humans. Give them a lock they could see and they'd find a way to pick it.

If he'd wanted to really protect that doorway, he'd have obfuscated the working behind illusions seeded with sense traps.

Outside of the classroom if, or rather when, someone tried to penetrate that concealment, it wasn't a minor problem like peeping.

It was a declaration of war.

It had to be, if he caught someone once, then how many times did they try before that? How much had they seen and what drove them to look? How many keys had they found and how vulnerable was he?

It was also why most of Timothy's true sanctum enchantments, and most of the other Origins, had lethal traps tied into them. He’d never admit to knowing that publicly of course. It would be awkward to explain how he knew.

With magic looking and touching were not all that separate.

While that was true outside, he’d lost enough students already without killing them himself. They weren't exactly curious George, he'd never have tolerated that level of stupidity, but he couldn't encourage their curiosity on one hand and expect them to muzzle it on the other.

So he created wards like this just for them. Training puzzles with nasty, but non-lethal consequences. Consequences Noggin had mostly dodged, to his credit. Mostly. He still had some pain and humiliation in his near future.

Because, despite his unspoken invitation, it was still never ok to get caught. And better a slapped hand now than a burnt-out mind later.

Shaking his head he made his way outside. Opening one of the unwarded double doors and stepping into the early morning mist.

Breathing deeply of scents of growing plants and taking a moment to enjoy the world with its edges softened. The schoolhouse in back of him was just another plant-covered hill, a bit bigger than some of its neighbors but not noticeably so. They'd just dug it a bit deeper to make it blend in.

He climbed up a half dozen steps to get to ground level and paused again to enjoy the view. Giving a good morning as two shadows materialized from the greenery to either side. Hopefully, they hadn't been waiting long, but he'd have to do something nice for them later anyway. Getting up well before dawn should always be rewarded.

He didn't bother to find his way back to last night's cooking nook. A pot of Squashmeal was available at every nook and there wasn't much even the best cook could do for its taste. In fact, they were discouraged from trying. The pot was becoming a Union tradition.

Anyone for any reason at any hold could at least fill their bellies for free. If you wanted more than that, taste for instance, then you’d have to work for it. Only the truly poor were willing stomach it for long.

The poor and Timothy. Besides training his will, it was a good reminder of how things looked from the bottom. A view he made sure to share with his students, the future leaders.

Timothy, not being poor, paid. Not that it cost much even so. A tenth of a stone coin. Even throwing in a much tastier breakfast wrap for his bodyguards it only cost him 3 stone.

He finished the bowl quickly (It wasn't a texture you wanted to linger over), rinsed it and left it on a shelf outside the cookery. Then headed towards the docks. The bacon drizzled in chili-plum sauce and wrapped in a lettuce leaf that Paulo was sill eating required no plate. He trailed Timothy eating it very slowly, with extra nibbles at the lettuce between bits of meat.

He could be taught! A very good sign. Timothy hid a snicker, though considering the eyes boring into his back, the amusement bled through.

Walking forward the light grew steadily brighter and vibrantly, skimpily, dressed Paradisians poured out of their hobbit holes to start the morning chores. Weeding, fetching a bit of water, and shoveling mud out of the canals and trenches. The morning rains were due soon.

Enough time to do a few final fixes. Flooding was a real issue around here, and while most planned for it by keeping anything important away from the floor, that didn't make it pleasant.

It did make for some amusing insults.

Calling someone Soggy was a good way to start a fight. They were to lazy, or to inept to keep stay dry.

Smatterings of “Good morning, Runefather! Hope you slept well!” rang out as they traveled along with a round dozen offers of breakfast or a bit of tea. He was known and respected here, but not so popular as the invitations made it appear. He was hardly the charismatic type to start with and an unwillingness to lie didn’t make anyone well liked.

But that didn't matter, even if he'd offended them this very morning, they were just as likely to greet him cheerfully. Those southern roots. You'd get a “Well bless your heart” and practically had to be a local to understand what they meant by it. It could be “eat shit and die” or “hail and well met good fellow”.

He'd like to think that most of them were the latter, but he wasn't fool enough to think all of them were.

He did stop briefly to take Melody up on her offer of a mug of tea. And not just because she filled the standard wrapped top to bursting. Nor the way her green eyes sparkled with wicked humor. Well, at least not only for that. She also made a fantastic black breakfast tea. Only lukewarm in the clay drinking pot, but the sideways dart of her eyes offered an invitation to come in for a much hotter welcome.

Temptation thy name is women. Alas, he really didn't have the time. They'd lost a day coming back and his responsibilities in Runehold would not wait. He begged off, letting his regret bleed into both his voice and intent before giving her a final wave, a thank you for the cuppa and moving along.

“A shame...” Pascoe muttered with a twinkle in his own eye. Devilry rather than invitation. Or at least Timothy hoped so...

“Yup.” Timothy could only agree. “But did you want so badly to stand around waiting?”

“Sure,” Stickum answered for them both. “Though there would be little standing involved. You're not the only one getting invitations. Reaal friendly town.” He drawled.

Damn, but it was that. Timothy mused, looking backward.

They kept moving despite themselves. Answering greetings on the fly and with as much brevity as they could politely manage. Even so, they were delayed a bit. It really was a friendly place.

Timothy set a brisk pace, feet squelching through the ripe rich earth as he tried to make up time.

The boat to Runhaven was a once-a-day affair. That was excellent compared to the once-a-week or worse rates to the Lake cities of Fishtown and Garbados or downstream towards Marseilles. He’d still rather not miss it by a few minuets and have to wait till tomorrow.

Although, he looked backward again...Tempting, but not happening. Damn you responsibility!

The sun was peeking over the horizon though, about a third of its length already. They were cutting it close.

Half sliding in the mud around the last little hill they hit the cliff edge and paused to look out over the majestic river. The morning mist was thick enough here to hide the opposite shore with the rising sun just beginning to burn through it felt like they were on an island in a lake of fire.

It was a magical moment and one that he rarely got to see. He stopped, despite the time crunch and really took it in. Letting his mind mull over it, both as beauty and perhaps inspiration. He'd made many a spell based on less majestic natural phenomena. Then the moment passed and the clouds were just clouds, no matter how bright and he was on the verge of being late.

This called for desperate measures! And that was the story he was sticking to. Timothy double-checked his belt full of charms and finding everything in place to his satisfaction, pulled his staff from his back and activated two of them. Tethers of mana extended from the ends of his horizontally held staff like a circus performer's balance bar and two small blocks of ice around his feet.

He thrust his staff into the ground like a kayak paddle and slid over the edge, swiftly gathering speed as the wind threw his hair backward in a streamer. Then he hit the cloud layer and it got interesting. He could barely see 30 feet and he was moving fast enough to cover that in a second.

With a grin, and adrenaline pulsing in his veins he embraced the terror, though regretfully he had to bite down on the gleeful yell that bubbled in the back of his throat. He hit the first turn at full speed, and thrust his staff directly down, anchoring it in place with a bit of force magic even as he reduced his weight and reinforced his internal organs to take the turn.

He spun through it, throwing a one-handed wave at the startled guards before darting down the next section. Behind him, he spotted Pacoe sprinting madly after him, glaring all the while. And mostly keeping up!

Mostly.

Hah! Wizard 1, Superhumans 0. But fun as it was, Arthur really would lay into him if he outraced his coverage.

He’d also pushed himself quite hard recently and a phantom ache in his forehead warned him not to get too froggy.

With a sigh he reduced his weight to nearly nothing. The wind resistance, no longer competing with gravity, might as well have been a parachute. He slowed drastically in a dozen feet, still sliding downward, but no longer with any great speed.

He pointedly didn't look at the glares coming his way. With a gesture, the ice skates grew together into a small platform big enough for the three of them. An apology of sorts. With an aggrieved but resigned sigh, they jumped on and Timothy let his weight bleed back, along with theirs. Not nearly as fast as the first turn, but enough.

Look ma, I’m riding in style!

Zigzagging as required and waving genially at the guard posts without stopping. He'd catch hell for that... but later. Freaking bureaucrats.

The boat called.

Even the small waterfall of the cleansing gate didn't slow them, though he had to spend a bit of will to keep the ice and water from interacting with one another...

They made the bottom with speed, barely able to see in the thicker clouds of mist that hugged the riverbanks. Timothy banished the ice sled with a wave of his hand, shooing the resulting water off the edge of the docks.

Then jogged onto the stone wharf that jutted from the base of the ramp out 20 yards into the river. Barely a patch on its total width.

The low sleek shape of the transport loomed through the mist. Red-veined purple wood, polished to a dazzling shine, made up the bulwarks looming over Timothy's head. Piranha's might not jump much, but they could spit jets of water that would cut through an inch of hardwood. Unenchanted hardwood at least.

A mast stuck up from the center, crossed by a reefed sail that was as much a spell prop as a wind catcher. Even without focusing, he could see the wind spirits darting and cavorting about its length.

Timothy quickly handed over thirty stone coins and with a gesture tossed up an illusion. The gangplank shifted three feet to the left while still neatly meeting the unmoved gap in the bulwark. Illusions were fun that way. Mind bendy.

The guards behind him followed suit with a wind blade that carved a respectable five foot gap in the waves, though it quickly began to collapse as the river rushed back in, only to rear up into a chest-high wave. Timothy nodded impressed. Individually the spells were fairly simple for Guardians of their experience, but the way they'd meshed them together, that took practice and trust. It was all too easy for spells to interfere with each other instead of adding together.

The mate must have agreed because he quickly ushered them aboard. 10 stone each wasn't cheap, something like three days labor for a mid level worker, but considering the cost of the vessel, the expense of the crew and guards it wasn't an outrageous fee.

Of course, if their party hadn't been willing and able to support and defend her, the price would have been a 50 stone and that was an outrageous fee by any measure. It was a price aimed squarely at Norms. Stuck with bottom end jobs, it wasn't a sum they couldn't pay it, but it might represent more than a year of savings.

Timothy shrugged, it wasn't his decision and while he had some doubts, they weren't strong enough for him to fight it. Most of the Union supported the rule and, in their defense, there were some good reasons involved.

Travel was inherently dangerous. Only made less so by having the personal strength to respond to the inevitable attacks. And norms couldn’t do that. Making that point with a ticket price was cheaper than letting fools try to hunt with spears or bows and arrows.

It had happened.

Ironically perhaps, but the slight involved was deliberate. It wasn’t even hidden. Norms were lower class and the Union rubbed that fact in as often as possible. Not to be cruel, or at least people being people not only to be cruel, but to encourage them to seek an awakening.

There were limits. Going out of your way to kick a dog just made you an asshole. The point was to provide an incentive, not to force an entire group into misery.

The draw was pretty obvious, despite those rules becoming the norm, Norms still outnumbered Guardians. Though not by much.

There was a nearly constant stream of high-level meetings among the Union's movers and shakers trying to change that. Everyone needed more trained manpower. No one expected it to go away entirely, but they hoped to push it down to a quarter of the population.

Timothy wasn't sure how practical even that was.

Not everyone was willing to risk their lives, even for wealth and status. Not to mention the whole gender issue. With contraceptives being somewhat difficult to come by, pregnancy rates were sky-high and that to fed the issue.

It was hard to blame a young mother who was unwilling to risk her life. She had responsibilities now. Of course, she could and should have awakened before that. If only to make magical medical assistance possible. Potions and the rare healing spells would kill the unawakened.

Timothy trooped up the steep gangway, and then over and down a steep stairway that was more like a ladder. It was a bit tight down here, about 7 feet of height. More so for his guards than for Timothy.

Hopefully, it would be a quiet run this time. He really hated the swamp. Between the heat, the smell, and the just plain nasty inhabitants it was the asshole of the riverways.

Though what that said about those who farmed it for resources Timothy preferred not to think about. Despite his antipathy, there wasn't a more practical, or faster, way to travel and at least the standard route skirted the edges of the swamp. An area that was regularly swept and pruned.

Hippo's were highly territorial and unlikely to move once they'd settled in. That left the usual migrating species. The rare but deadly mosquito swarms, hovercrocs, Spitting Poison Frogs and Cocoi Herons not to mention the less nasty but ubiquitous leaches, Quagga spitting mussules, Hangman Vines and swamp-gassum (fresh water kelp beds thick enough to walk on).

They were nasty creatures in an even nastier environment, but nothing that couldn't be handled. At least they were all tier 1 as ascending beasts were picked off as fast as they advanced.

This close it wasn't something the Hold itself had to enforce. Hunters paid the scryers for the privilege of hunting them. Gold on the hoof. Or fin.

All of that meant they shouldn't be bothered. He knocked briefly on the wood of the hull. Between refreshing the wards and dealing with the memorial last night, he hadn't had much time for himself and he was beginning to feel a bit unbalanced.

Taking a comfortable seat (NOT a lotus or whatnot, he wasn't a contortionist.) he took several moments just to relax his body. Letting it guide his mind into the same state. Pushing away concerns and worries. They would be dealt with in their own time. This time was for him and he'd already delayed it longer than he preferred.

Letting his vision turn inwards, Timothy took a moment to just enjoy the vibrancy of his internal mana. Not just his aura, but the mana naturally infused in his body. A sharp interplay of biological features spawned their own mana flavored in kind.

Vibrant except for a few nasty spots of corruption. Traces of leftover healing potion on his head and a pulsing purple sore on his hand from this morning.

The potion problem was normal. Just the price of doing business. He wasn’t trained as a doctor, and his knowledge of the human body wasn’t at a level that made him willing to screw with that.

Potions were a shortcut. They bottled up a set of generic all-purpose healing from knowledgeable brewers and made the user activate them. The activation claimed the mana and made it palatable to the body. Mostly. The maker's mark wasn’t so easily shed, nor was the mana from the ingredients.

It was a toxin, that would slowly corrupt the user’s mana and aura if it wasn’t cleansed.

There were ways to reduce these problems. Wild ingredients had very little in the way of intent compared to the domesticated variety. The grower could not help but leave their mark on them. Even more, some plant options were just easier on the human body then others. Less toxin for the same healing or toxins that were easy to remove afterward.

On top of that, the skill of the brewer was key. It took delicate control to extract the most value from the ingredients without overly impressing oneself on them.

The final marker was the user. Even here understanding mattered. The more the user understood the nature of the potion, the more of its meaning they would be able to convert.

The brewer of a potion for example, would get very little contamination from their own product. But very little was not none. And left untreated it would build up until their senses were too muddled to find the corruption. Much less remove it.

A slow, painful death as the body rejected itself. Like an organ transplant without the drugs.

It wasn’t something Timothy was willing to give a foothold. Not even a little bit.

With a deeper breath, he twisted and stepped into somewhere else.

An inner world opened up, with a ring of room sized towers surrounding a much larger central tower. Bridge like balconies connected the outer to the inner massive runic symbols labeled each of them for what they were.

Timothy took a single step and was at the door of a tower decorated by a plate, well-polished over most of its surface, but grimy on the last bit with a hand holding a sponge swiping towards it.

The tower of cleaning. Purity was such an elusive concept, changing with cultures and people groups. But cleaning was pretty recognizable anywhere. Stepping inside, he stepped up a set of staris that circled the outside, ignoring the large inked out spell form that dominated the available space on the first floor.

The second floor was slightly bigger, with the stairs opening up a good three feet from the outer wall, leaving room for a set of crystal manikins. Each filled with a dense, maze like web of glowing colors and runes. Each was himself, his inner mana pathways at a singular moment in time.

He ignored them and moved inward, stepping over another elaborately carved spell form and taking a seat in the small empty space at the center. A blank crystal manakin stood in front of him. Clear, clean but empty.

With a deep breath and a massive outpouring of will, Timothy changed that. Pulsing the spell alight and dragging in an image of his current self. As complete and accurate an image of his inner mana pathways overlaid on his physical features, and the mana they were bound to.

The process was not instantaneous, nor easy. Few useful tricks were. But five or six minutes later a detailed image stood before him, complete with contamination. With a gesture, another manakin shot out from the wall. The last manakin in a row that started at the stairs and traveled a quarter of the way around the room.

Placing them side by side Timothy nodded. He’d at least been wise enough to prepare a save state before he left and while he had no intention of doing a full reboot, it was at least an excellent reference.

He snapped through a few chanted words and gestures, creating glowing bands of light that connected the two together. First in many different colors, but still chanting, Timothy steadily worked through them, excising the normal results of growth. The beneficial changes that came from living even a week in a place with such high ambient mana.

Timothy didn’t pause the chant, there was no time for that. But he did make a mental note to give that a second look. That was considerably more physical growth than he’d expected.

Still, a few minutes later, though time was deceptive inside his soul, he’d isolated and highlighted the corruption.

With a gesture, both he and the projection of those locations dropped to the floor below, sitting again at the center of a massive web of spells, Timothy began. Teasing individual portions of it to life, one bit at a time.

Tools to isolate first, then to excise or destroy. A symbolic pimple to symbolize traping contaminants into abscesses or cysts. Not good for you, but much easier to destroy later. Destruction that might take the form of a symbolic burning lense to cleanse the worst in fire. A scalpel to remove chunks of mis-healed or rejected biomass or a needle to lance abscesses and bleed out the poison.

For more minor maintenance there was a book labeled with a recycling symbol. A way to focus on the issue and transform it, claiming the mana and making it his own. Only for the most minor of infections though, as it was far too easy to leave a bit of foreign mana behind.

Still usable, Timothy carefully switched between his tools, easily excising and purifying the remains of the potion. The wound had been a surface cut only, very little of it penetrating into his body and those little bits were spread out in droplets through his bloodstream. A fishing net let him collect and guide those through his body till he could eject them.

The forehead was a bit worse and he had to cut some of the healed material away. Just small portions though, and while they left wounds behind, it wasn’t anything his body couldn’t heal up in a day on its own. Like a barked knuckle or a fat lip.

His hand though. Where the refuse from his damaged charms shocked him, that was much harder to deal with. Enough so that he might have to do it in a cycle. Flinching slightly at the pain, he burned a quarter of the flesh along the outside of the last digit of his index finger away. Intermixed with a few other drastic tools he didn’t let it bleed and he didn’t tolerate its existence.

At last clean, if in pain, he made a slow transition out of his mind palace and pulled a minor healing potion from his belt. Activating it and bathing the burnt and bloody finger in the liquid till the bleeding stopped and the flesh reformed.

Then a slow transition back into his mind palace to start the process over again.

Timothy wondered, and not for the first time if he should dig into potion making. It would make this sort of cycle much easier to handle.

Regretfully, he pushed it aside. Someday. But specialization leads to power, not generalization. Nobody respected the jack of all idiots. He would do far better to lean into his strengths than to try and be a third-rate Jenney.

Time flowed on, in cycles cleaning at first, then in more general upkeep and inspection of his mana network. Reinforcing himself where necessary but mostly trying to get a handle on the changes he’d undergone from the higher mana density. Most he left alone as beneficial. But a few he marked for continued observation. He wasn’t sure he liked how much he’d changed. It was one thing when it was deliberate, but quite another when it wasn’t controlled.

Then his senses pinged sharply. Someone was staring at him. Not taking a few peeks in passing, but focusing their attention and their intent on him. Beginning to make his way up and out he sighed. Sometimes he wished that there was a difference between looking and touching when it came to magic.

Taking his time, there was no urgency in the stare, he surfaced perhaps 10 seconds later and opened his eyes. It was still a shock. He felt... bereft. The world was a much plainer and less interesting place without the interplay of mana with flesh. Straight forward. Logical. Boring.

He shook off the maudlin and sat upright. Paulo was staring at him but politely looked away when he noticed Timothy had returned. “We'll be docking shortly.”

Timothy nodded. He was mostly done anyway.

“Any issues?”

“A few minor attacks, the crew never asked for help.”

Timothy nodded, not unexpected or he’d never have gone so deep, but still good to know. He massaged his legs for a few moments, ignoring the familiar pins and needles before standing up. Moving into a set of basic stretches to maintain his muscles and keep the frequent still periods from building up into real damage.

And to prevent charlie horses. Damn things were a bitch.

Good enough, it also gave the other passengers time to make their way above. Most of whom had been with him for the past two weeks. Of course, even if he hadn’t recognized them, it was pretty obvious they were a group. From how they walked as a group splitting up zones of control to how they directed their intent.

A subtle alienation of non-group members that had the only three strangers flinching away from eye contact.

It wasn't deliberate, or at least he hoped not. Just an artifact of high stress and trust. When things got tough, you fell back on who you knew was worthy of it.

It was a familiar effect with Hunters rotating back from a dangerous threshold. One people recognized and made allowances for.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

That didn't make it polite. If they kept it up he’d have to talk with the guys about it. Trying to be friendly Timothy patted one of those three on the shoulder in passing, with a spell to make his illusionary hand feel real for safety, but he tried.

Timothy froze mid-step, if only a moment before continuing on chuckling softly under his breath. Talk to them? With how quickly he'd determined who was Team and who was Stranger? Too paranoid to even slap a shoulder?

Apparently it wasn’t just the guys. Haaa, Timothy made a note to work on that. Not that it would matter for much longer. When they split up and went home to friends and families that defensiveness would begin to crack away.

He was still snickering at the ridiculousness of it as he climbed up the ladder/stairs and slid over to an unoccupied bit of bulwark. There was something in the Bible about this, wasn't there? Something about a twig in a neighbor's eye and a log in your own? He let the thought fade away as he looked around.

A massive stone cavern rose out of the waters around them. Arching well above the main mast in a smooth polished expanse. The boathouse at Runehold had space enough for four boats this size, and even room to move them around a bit in the process.

The stone itself looked grown, not built. At least until you realized how very regular it was. The dim blue light bounced from it in innumerable reflections from recessed shelves of spell-crafted bio-luminescent fungi.

With the outer gates shut, no light made its way inside so they were needed. But it wasn’t a bright light. A relief for eyes that had adapted to the Deep Dark.

It was a striking sight, what magic and skilled craftsman could build now, but Timothy had seen it far too many times to gape at it. An admiring glance, sure, but not a full gape. Nor did he stop for that glance. Casually jumping from the deck to the wide stone dock with a minor pulse of weight reduction. Bypassing the gangplank and the forming line before it.

He flashed a command medallion, touching it with his will to light up the authentication features and project the symbol of Runehold toward the rapidly approaching guards. It was locked to him, and there weren't many handed out.

It was enough at least that only the youngest guard in the squad gave him a disapproving glance for jumping the queue, and even he didn't bother to do more than glare. Not that he had the authority to do more anyway.

Putting it away he quickly strode towards the second set of guards at a small stand by the inner doors. Cheerfully slapping the squad leader on the shoulder. “Strobes, you old bandit! What did you do to get stuck with hospitality duty?”

“Ahh, well.” He looked down with a growing patch of red on his neck and cheeks. “Let's save that for another time, hmm? No reason to delay these good people.”

Timothy's eyebrows shot up. That bad hmm? Strobes barely knew what shame was. Not after the Full Moon and the Wolf Pen incident. Even if he had been drunk out of his gourd. If he wasn't willing to say it in public now... well. Timothy wasn't sure he wanted to know!

Not that he’d refuse to listen if it came to that. He was a friend, even if it wasn't a particularly close friendship. “Alright. I'll leave it be.” He paused for a second and continued with a predatory grin. “For now.”

Strobes squirmed a bit but bravely continued with his job. He asked Paulo a few questions first, then down the line to the rest of the newcomers. Welcoming back the long-term residents, few, and offering guest rights (and obligations) to the rest. All with a deliberately emphasized sense of urgency, playing at being too busy to talk. Timothy snickered softly.

Like the man had ever been too busy to talk!

He moved through the forming crowd, a constant smattering of inane chatter spilling from his lips. Greetings, the weather, and other inane babble mostly, but always willing to stop for more if given the opportunity.

Small talk, the real code of humanity. Timothy snorted.

It was surprisingly effective code too. No one passed through without exchanging at least a dozen words with the man. Enough to weed out disguised beasts, angry vigilantes or even potential invaders. The glory of intent and a receptive, empathetic listener.

A great relief too, considering they would soon be locked in a small purging chamber together.

With a shake of his head, Timothy moved on waving at the guards in guard booths overhead, protected by stone essence bars and manning some pretty serious spellwork in case of issues.

He passed through a large stone door into a smallish box of a room and leaned back against a wall to wait for his fellows, a bodyguard to either side.

They trickled in fairly quickly and soon half-filled the room. The outer doors closed behind the last entrant and a heavy, pleasant-smelling mist poured in from vents in the floor. Rising slowly to fill the room in clouds of billowing white. Opaque white as it rose above his head Timothy couldn't see anything, not even the people who stood less than 3 feet away. Timothy took a deep breath and held it. The mist couldn't hurt him, but it was foreign magic just the same and he really didn't relish the idea of spending any more time cleansing himself than he already had to.

It was a bit ironic that cleansing spells could corrupt. These were no different from Treeholm’s Yellow mist or the waterfalls at Paradise. Just a lot more comfortable for Timothy since he’d created the enchantments involved.

That didn’t make it non foreign with someone else activating them, but it still helped.

The familiar comfort was broken as fireworks exploded four or five people in front of him. He straightened to look, but two seven-foot-plus bodies were suddenly blocking him in. Fast enough to be the mythical teleportation. That held for a moment, then they moved apart with barely a sound. Leaving Timothy staring at one of the three strangers. The man was twitching and shuddering as the mist concentrated towards him. Growing thicker and thicker as it sought to wrap up and consume an ugly malignant yellow mana cluster.

And it was ugly, both in what it looked like, what it smelled like and what it implied. A Mark. The mana aspect smelled strongly of cat urine. Timothy grimaced and wished he'd have mapped that particular feature to a different physical sense.

Distaste didn't stop him from making an identification. It was definitely a prairie cat. They were more... pungent than the jungle varieties.

Ughh. He needed a drink.

The battle continued for a dozen or more seconds, but in time the mist receded and the cat essence etched into the man's aura faded with it. The mist receded through vents at the floor level and the inner doors opened.

Timothy looked back at one of the three strangers and spoke. “You might want to be a bit more careful, hmm?” He didn't say any more. Considering how embarrassed the man looked he probably didn't have to. Not that the guards, waiting in front of them would follow the same logic.

Timothy made a mental note to get a report later. There was something screwy going on. If he'd come from Paradise, the waterfall would have cleansed him. If there’d been a cat on the dock he’d have noticed it. Same on the boat. And since no one stayed outside at night, that left Timothy wondering where he’d picked it up. Or how he’d dodged the protections in between.

There were several possibilities, but none of them were good. A smuggler enclave outside the walls at Paradise? One without proper cleansing spells was a disaster waiting to happen. Slept on the boats? Possible, but against both the rules of Paradise and common sense.

Ah well, he'd no doubt hear about it later. The man was in for a grilling, and he wasn't getting out of there without coming clean, one way or another.

It was possible to verbally dance around a Truth spell, but it mostly required an interrogator unaware of those loop holes or one overly worried about your status. Neither condition applied here.

Shaking his head, Timothy strode out, nodding to several familiar faces in the next room before dropping down a long ramp towards Runehold proper.

Though they had to make a mandatory stop at a checkpoint with a familiar book of crappy rag paper to be stamped. Passing through a fortified door and down another ramp they hit another checkpoint. A fortified gatehouse complete with murder holes, bared arrow slits and enchanted for containment.

A few moments chatting with the guard to prove humanity and displaying the command medallion got them through in under a minute before descending again to what might be called the living level.

The first living level, or L1 to the locals and a seemingly different world opened around them. The fighting levels were powerful statements in their own way, massive reinforced stone fortifications and spells shaped to guide invaders through into strongholds and choke points. But it was an austere statement. Efficiency and brutal functionality over looks.

The living levels had no such problem. The walls and smoothly arched ceilings were covered in art. Fresco's being the preferred medium, though not the only one, elaborate scenes were carved into the reinforced stone in layers, then the cuts were filled with colored stones and semi-precious gems. It wasn't the dotted, tiled look of the old world either. Magic let them mold solid stone into a paste, filling the cracks and crevices in seamless bands of color.

Some were cheap stones, granite or marble in its many natural colorations, from rose to white and even a dull black. Where that just didn't cut it, an extremely thin layer of expensive obsidian was used to give it a shinier look or maybe some lapis lazuli for those deep blues or a garnet for a deeper red.

Each tunnel had a theme, and in fact, stood as a signpost of a kind. Though you had to know the stories to navigate by it. This was the Tolkien tunnel for instance. Given pride of place at the main entrance as the father of fantasy. This was the main tunnel that crossed the entire Hold, and had another exit to the surface at the opposite end.

About fifteen feet wide, it was the main thoroughfare for the level. And every step of it, from walls to curved ceiling, was covered in Frodo's adventure, with a few sections even reserved for Bilbo (Though with a portion left blank, it wasn't safe to say the Smaug's species, much less depict them).

Each cross hallway held a different story. From the Dr. Seuss hall down by the nurseries to the never to be sufficiently damned Twilight hall (thankfully a very short length in a corner of the residential areas. One Timothy didn't pass through more than once a year. It even sparkled...

Either way, with brilliance or with sewage, the walls were well covered in something much more than just simple stone. It made an underground warren of tunnels into something much more friendly and livable. An homage to favored authors and the stories that inspired the residents. Some visitors would spend days, simply wandering the halls to take in the wonder of it.

As it should be. The year's long labor of love deserved to be seen and admired.

Even better, it wasn’t a government project. No one dictated who could put what where. Although there were a few beatings delivered, that Timothy was very carefully unaware of, when one gentleman started on a Hustler Hall. The residents decided what went where and what didn’t. Mostly without violence. Which rated as a minor miracle in Timothy's book.

It wasn't just art, but a newborn culture. Paradise had their ways, Runehold had this.

And like Paradise, it extended past mere looks and into the local zeitgeist. Muralists were highly paid professionals here. The best of them were fought over by competing neighborhoods in battles, that while bloodless, were still quite brutal. With new construction constantly increasing the size of the underground city, you could wait decades.

Artists Timothy was proud to say he had a hand in teaching.

Oh, not in teaching them artwork. He dabbled but was an amateur in comparison. No, he’d taught them how to control their intent. How to guide it through large-scale compositions without letting the meaning destroy the materials.

And in turn, each hall had a soul. A guiding feel brought on by the intent embedded in the walls.

Timothy slowed down a bit, pacing deliberately through the hall, taking in the décor with the reverence such talent deserved. Never stopping though, he had a lot of work catch up on.

A minute or so later he moved to the side of the tunnel, ducking beneath Gimly on a wide curtain wall beheading an orc, and pounded his fist on a heavy door, fused wood layered with bands of stone essence split by a shuttered arrow slit.

Timothy held his Medallion up to the opening, barely able to detect the ward's opening as someone peeked through the masking array. With another small pulse, the Medallion sprang to life, but the door and the wards tied to it were already opening.

He let Paulo through first, then stepped in with Stickum walking backward behind him. Timothy grimaced, it had only happened once, but an Origin with a knife in his back was a hell of a message. One no Hold could afford to ignore.

Even if the creep had brought it on himself.

The ready room in front of him was a study in contrasts. The walls were equally carved and beautified. Images and scenes of a fantasy barracks right out of Rivendale, complete with gleaming silvered armor, swords, spears and bows competed with rough molded wooden tables occupied by leather and fur armored mages wielding wands, staves and the occasional preserved fish head.

Fashion baby, Oh ya!

He counted twenty of these worthies, and despite looking like a combo of New Age and Stone Age, they'd eat those armored ninnies for lunch. Pointy ears or no.

They weren't an overly serious bunch, joking, playing, eating and drinking in apparent abandon.

Apparent.

It was a dirty lie.

The mugs were filled with water and the games tended towards reaction speed trainers. Slapping or grabbing at the call of dice or an expensive card deck. They weren't much on spit and polish, but that wasn't their purpose. Any and all of them could be at the other end of the hold in under a minute, game-face on and ready to kick ass.

He asked the officer a few quick questions, gave Stickum a few moments to slap some backs, then they were back in the hallway and striding along, tossing out greetings to friends and acquaintances at every other step. He had to beg off a few times when asked for news but promised to make it up to them later.

If he “stopped for a minute” with each person who asked, he'd be here all night!

No matter where he went, gossip seemed to be the new national pastime. Should that be City-al, Hold-al? Neither sounded right. He wondered for a few moments but dropped it as he spotted a looming tower with a trademarked eye between its flared battlements.

A dozen steps beyond its menacing stare he turned abruptly and stepped through the wall. Or at least it looked that way. Some smart ass put a hidden stair outside the set of massive black gates and put the mayor's office on top of them. An amusing if unflattering easter egg for the citizenry to snicker over.

Timothy shook his head; it wasn't even magic. Or at least not the new kind. The optical illusion was just a recessed wall that matched mural of the outside, a set of dark stone cliffs. Like any good inside joke, it was obvious only from one side.

He quickly turned right and climbed the short staircase. It really was a brilliant bit of work. A good joke and practical to. Da was hardly a spider waiting for prey to be delivered but he did insist on an open-door policy, which meant no door. That and the threat of a beast incursion made hiding the entrance a second-best sort of thing.

Linking him to an evil wizard dictator, yet still going far out of their way to see him safe... People were weird.

Passing through an archway carved with runes of purification and clear sight, Timothy's own contribution to the joke, he smirked at the massive man sitting within.

“Hello Da.”

Joe Mason, Da to his children and Mayor to everyone else, stood fast enough that he nearly tipped over his massive wooden desk. Then picked the wobbling affair up sitting it to the side, before darting forward to embrace his second youngest child.

It was a simple piece, practical. Solid rather than fancy but well made for all of that. And it weighed well over a hundred pounds.

It didn't really add much to his dignity, even when he wasn't tossing it about like a rag-doll, but then again it didn't have to. The man himself took care of that. At well over six feet before the change, and wide in the shoulders for his height even then, he'd made the transition into something that belonged on the cover of The Fantastic Four instead of Home and Family.

“Ti- Runes!” Timothy hid a sigh, it was a hard thing to ask parents not to name their own children.

Timothy didn't have to see his bodyguards to know they were still there. He really didn’t want to deal with them hearing his name from his Fathers mouth. It was a single step below telling them himself and he didn’t need that kind of vulnerability.

On the positive side, at least he'd used the short form of Timothy’s title. Hearing your own father call you Father anything was just wrong. The kind of wrong that came with banjos and paddling faster.

“Welcome home!” He boomed as his indoor voice rattled Timothy chest and his arms, larger than Timothy's thighs, wrapped and lifted him from the floor.

After struggling to breathe for a few moments, only half hamming it up, his flailing feet at last found the floor again.

His Da dragged a massive chair that matched the desk forward while Timothy grabbed a much more petite version from its place by the side wall. Timothy rocked for a moment, enjoying the ridiculous comparison of his spoked back everyday dining chair compared to the solid hardwood essence slabs of his Da's. He felt like a damn child. It didn't help that even the 'normal' chair was sized for the new norm and left his toes barely touching the floor.

They spent a few moments on the usual greetings, and Timothy had to decline an offer of tea, before settling down to business. Timothy quickly gave him a rundown of the last two weeks. Hitting the highlights and any critical bits but leaving the hum drum details out.

From how well the wards had taken (The strong ambient mana in the area was going to make them potent as hell) to his rating of the new threshold’s sight (Very nice!), the kinds of beasts and their average strength (Uncomfortably high), even a very brief discussion about mana levels in the plant species they'd brought back (Also quite High!). He finished it up with a brief overview of Treeholm's worries. Focusing on family life in the thresholds and the issues with having children.

“Haaa,” Joe rubbed at his clean-shaven square chin. “It's a problem and no denying it. Especially with the baby boom!” Timothy nodded. Boom was a bit mild frankly. Kids were popping out like it was a clown car.

A bit of a shock at first although it apparently shouldn't have been. Who knew that humans under existential threats tended to reproduce like bunnies? That and contraceptives were a bit awkward when they were available at all.

“We talked about this several months ago, didn't we? I thought you had a few irons in the fire?”

“Irons? Sure, over 40 of them should be attempting graduation soon. But for anything beyond that? Nothing's panned out, not that I've had as much time to work on it as I'd like.” He spoke that last bit with a pointed glare.

Joe held up his hands with a light smile and dancing eyebrows. “That's true enough. We've kept you busy recently, you poor baby.”

Timothy snapped out a few unkind comments about fat-bottomed paper pushers and they bickered good-naturedly for a few more minutes before Joe dragged the discussion back on track.

“The mana levels out there were really that high? Proves your theory, does it?” The older man stood up and paced a bit. “The farther away from our river valley you travel, the higher the mana levels?”

“That's not quite how I'd phrase it. It's not getting away from the Riverlands that's important. I'll ignore the old causation versus correlation for now,” Timothy ignored the muttered “Thank God” and kept speaking “It's getting into something that matters. The heart of the jungle, or the center of the plains, or the mountain peaks.”

“...Ok, getting away from one thing or towards something else. Sounds like quibbling. Give me something to work with here and explain why that distinction matters?”

“Since when do I explain myself? My reasons are my own, Da. Even if I showed you the hints I had, I doubt it would help. Magic is a bit light in the consistent logic area. Probably because it's so biased by individual perspectives. I have hints and suggestions thrown into a wok with a bit of divination. Shake and bake till I get something that passes the smell test.”

Best not to admit to all the scrying he did. It wasn't like his Da didn't know, but rubbing his face in, well to put it crudely, spying would just be poor taste. Especially if he was asked about it during the monthly meet-the-mayor meetings. Those were always carried out under Truth.

“I'm not always right but I'd like to think I'm beating the odds by a significant margin so far so you can take it or leave it.” Timothy wasn’t about to bend on this. He had too many secrets to go around explaining every time he gave a suggestion. Oh, he shared most of what he learned. Just not how he learned it. And most was by no means all.

“I'd hoped that my track record would be enough at this point.” Timothy carefully tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. He'd have told anyone else to fuck themselves already, but family- ah, family always made things more complicated.

Joe considered his second youngest child for a time, then nodded apologetically. “You've never been one for the blarney. And not even your naysayers will bet against ye. But that don't make policy on 'educated guesses' any easier to sell.”

“I'm not a dictator son. I can't just hand down the commandments. There is a process to it. A debate. And while being right more often then not, and keeping the town intact gives my words a great deal of weight, it’s a currency that can be overspent. I’m not without detractors. Some with legitimate grievances, but even more simply playing the game for a bigger slice of the pie.”

“I'm not questioning your gut, I treat its mildest rumblings as damn near gospel! But that's me. And being you’re father means I’m already biased on your behalf. Give me something for the rest of them, huh? Why isn't that a distinction without a difference?”

Timothy leaned back, sighed and threw in the towel. Or perhaps just the dish rag. He couldn't exactly stiff his old man, not when he dealt with this shit so Timothy didn’t have to.

“Alright,” Timothy grumbled. “-but I'm not going to make a habit of it. I fully reserve the right to just say 'Because I said so'. I don’t need people assuming its some great plot every time I refuse to have my time wasted.”

He waited, staring at his Da, who after a few moments shrugged and gave him an acknowledge-rather-than-agree nod.

“Alright, let's start with The Swamp. And it is The Swamp. Not a wide spot in the river. Not just another section of the Riverlands nor a part of the River either. It's a distinct entity of its own and naming it as such matters. Despite being squarely in the middle of the Riverlands and surrounded by low mana areas it has a massive increase in mana density from the outskirts to the depths and the beasts follow that power trend. Unfortunately, so does the value of what can be found.”

Joe nodded, eyes brightening “I knew that.” He muttered his voice suddenly much happier. “Hadn't put it together in quite that way, but then I doubt many others have either.” His large hands tapped lightly on the desk for a while as he thought that over.

Timothy, considered and decided to give him a bit more. He didn't mind giving all of it to family, but Da wouldn't keep it to those limits. “I think identity is key. If a place has that, then it has a nature, a story. And that can attract and fix mana. Or the story is already there and the mana enforces it on the place.” Timothy held a hand out to either side like a scale, “Chicken.” He lifted his left hand, dropping his right. “egg.” He reversed it.

Da leaned back, tapping at his legs for a moment, before speaking in his slow methodical way. “The Riverlands have an identity.” He pointed out.

Timothy grimaced. Nothing was ever simple. “They do. Now at least.”

His Da looked at him for a moment, parsing that. “You mean we gave it to them? And young as it is it hasn't changed much?”

“Could be. But it also could be that the river isn't a place. It's a border. A separator between other areas. The Jungle and the Prairie for instance.” Timothy wasn't all that sure on this one. “It could be too long and slender to have a heart. To have graduated zones of mana from center to edges. It takes a large distance for the mana to rise to a peak.”

“Jungle, Plains, Mountains and even the Sea. To make it worse, not all of those are just one thing. I’ve located at least six jungle hearts for instance. And the mountains have more than a few peaks.” It also explained the regional boundaries the hunter teams tried to travel along.

Their travel routes looked like topographical lines of low mana areas. Avoiding the mountains and following the denuded valleys. Though neither had anything to do with altitude.

Joe nodded absently while tapping away at his desk.

“And we get better harvests with mana density, you said. Can you confirm that? Is it just plants and animals or do the below ground resources follow suit? The minable bits?”

“From what I can tell? I'd give it a solid 'mostly'. With beasts being more on the yes side and plants and minerals on the more maybe end. Even in mana-rich areas, the mana density of plants depends on age. I think they grow faster, but they also get eaten by the residents. Makes for mostly low-tier edible plants but with a few sneaky ones slipping through. That and the trees and bushes are often far more potent. But there’s a randomness to it that makes it hard to predict.”

“The ascension of Tiers isn't guaranteed. Not for humans or beasts. Why not plants as well? Even when the resources are available. There are more high Tier plants in high Tier areas, but there’s also a lot more lower Tiers.”

“Hmmm,” Joe muttered, tapping again on his leg. “Do humans also benefit from the mana? The high-density stuff I mean.”

Timothy hesitated, that was getting into territory he wasn't really happy to discuss. Partially because he wasn't sure, but also because he'd heard about the designer baby fights of the 90’s.

After a few moments, he shrugged, not his circus, not his baby monkeys. “Sixes and eights. Oh the simple answer is yes. Like constantly eating low grade meat your body will advance steadily, mana will regen quicker and resources available will let you rush forward on your path.”

“And that’s the problem. It encourages rushing, and when you do that on an unknown path it’s a bit to easy to kill yourself. For kids its also a bit of a mixed bag. Sure they will grow faster at first. But the overabundance of mana will actually hide small mistakes in their spellwork. Ones that they’d be better off having fail in their face to learn from. Having a stable foundation is far more important than how fast you advance.”

“Throw in the issues with practical experience, IE it’s a death trap for newbies out there and if they aren’t strong enough to hunt they aren’t strong enough to travel either, and honestly I don’t recommend it.”

Timothy turned the issue around in his head for a bit longer then sighed. “The biggest issue I see is that it’s all external. True strength comes from knowledge and understanding. And that means study. Sure, inspiration is a thing. The more you get to see and experience the easier it is to create new paths and there is far more to see in those high-end areas. But those inspirations won’t solidify your base like study will.”

Joe gave Timothy a skeptical look, it wasn't the first time they'd hashed over that particular issue, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, hands interlaced and resting on his stomach while he stared at the ceiling.

It was a posture Timothy easily recognized. His Da wasn't the fast-thinking, fast-reacting sort. He was as steady and methodical as a metronome. He wouldn't hurry, but he'd get there eventually and without the mistakes a more excitable man might fall into.

A good trait in someone entrusted with the everyday living of the hold. He'd heard Timothy out, and he'd take the next day, or a couple of days, mulling it over. Then he'd come back with reasoned questions and arguments.

“Moving on,” Joe finally spoke, “if higher mana density helps them grow, why are the higher-tier beasts leaving those areas to bother us?” He mused.

Unsure if it was a question or merely talking to himself, Timothy waited a moment, then hesitantly responded. “With more beasts ascending you get more dominance battles, and more of the losers getting chased out to find their own territory.” He thought it over. “Perhaps.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “How many dominance battles leave the loser alive?”

“More than you'd think. It doesn’t matter though. Many dominance battles aren’t actually fought. More of an intimidation game. A growing pride of Cat’s will make a rat nest move on without some kind of mono-e-mono throwdown. Put that together with how much space is out there and well… you get the idea. Hell, if dominance doesn’t do it for you, what about environmental? Drought, fires, water sources drying up, flooding etc.”

Despite his wishy-washy answers, it was the right question. Most of the thought behind creating the Thresholds was based exactly on those migrating asshats. That and as a foothold to hunt and harvest the mana-rich areas that spawned them.

Joe tapped his fingers on the desk for a while longer, then he abruptly shook his head. “Well, we won't be solving the world's problems from here. Or at least not right now. How you holding up?”

“Doing just fine. Had a fine meal in Paradise, got to hold little John and got a couple full nights sleep. I feel like a new man.”

“Uhuh. Did this new man eat a big enough breakfast to carry him over till dinner?”

Timothy shrugged agreeably. It had been a while since breakfast, but hardly an active while. He wasn't hurting for fuel.

“Then I'll send a quick message to your Ma, don't have to be Nostradamus to know what she'll do.”

She'd want to feed him. And the rest of the family too. Da was right, didn't take an astrolabe or a crystal ball to divine that future. “Of course, I'm certainly not dumb enough to try and argue her out of it.” Timothy put in with a growing smile. Ma's cooking was worth rearranging his plans on normal days. But on special occasions? Hell yes, even if the main course came with a few sides called interrogation and guilt.

“Alright, then if you could spend a few hours with the Planning staff fleshing out your report with those extra details I know you didn't want to bother me with-” He gave his son a sharp glance even as Timothy bit back a groan. “-it would benefit us all.”

He held Timothy's eye firmly while Timothy tried to think of a way to gracefully weasel out. Freaking bureaucrats, never willing to take a report at face value without beating it, and its bearer near to death.

Unfortunately, while he could simply say no and walk away, and did more often than not. It was much harder to tell his Da that to his face. A lifetime of love and habit left him in a pretty poor position. But then again, respect was an odd kind of currency. If you only spent a bit of it, it recovered quickly. But push things too far or too often and it wouldn't come back at all.

“You really willing to die on this hill Da?”

“You have an irrational hate for the bureaucrats Runes, they're not so bad as long as you regularly clip the hedges. Sure, they get off on red tape and tediousness.” Timothy gave a few wildly exaggerated nods. “But they're also the glue that makes civilization possible.”

Timothy snorted. Bullshit he'd heard a dozen times. His Da was willing to admit they'd grow into monsters if left unchecked, but no one was willing to admit that those so-called checks never worked. The only times bureaucrats and the little courts they created got pruned was when someone was willing to apply a massive degree of violence to the problem. Stalin and Chairmen Mao levels of violence.

Not anything any sane man wanted to have happen regularly. No matter what Thomas Jefferson said about the tree of liberty. Why were otherwise sane individuals willing to try the same old failed system and expect a better result? That was a definition of insanity!

Still, favors and coins of any kind could travel in both directions. Put up with this bull shit now, and well, he did have a few things he'd need help with... “I'll go Da, but only as favor to you.”

Joe let out an exasperated sigh. “It's not a favor for me Ti-Runes! It's your duty to the Hold!”

“Oh, it's not for you? Good then I won't bother. I have no problem telling 'the Hold' where it can put it. And it would give me time for a much-needed bath.”

Eye contact was established and they started the age-old game of trying not to blink. Asinine really, but a man had to have boundaries. Bad enough that they had old-world paperwork cropping up here and there, despite several public vetoes on Timothy's part. He might not use it often, but as 1 of only 4 native pathfinders he had the right and there was no way in hell he was going to let the new world ape the worst parts of the old.

Joe broke first or perhaps decided to let Timothy win, it was often hard to tell the difference. “Fine! Fine! It's a favor. But since it's a favor, bought and paid for, you'd better not half-ass it! Nor spend half the time telling my staff, what was it again? Something about mushrooms?”

“Feed them shit and keep them in the dark.” Timothy sighed regretfully, that had been a damn good movie. Marky Mark in top form. A movie he’d never get to see again…

“Ya, none of that. Be polite and try to be helpful.”

Timothy shrugged. “It's your favor, if you want to run up the till that's up to you.”

Shaking his head Joe gestured, perhaps with more violence than was his want, towards the back of the office and a small door almost hidden in the shadow of a large cabinet.

It was the result of another small veto from Timothy. Their first digs were in a tower on the surface. Natural light, a fresh breeze and a view. Now they were where they belonged, in a small set of rooms lit by the ever-present blue glow of the mushroom lights and perfumed by the slightly too sweet scent of Oxy Ferns.

Just like most of the rest of Runehold.

And he’d done his best to keep them there. They wanted an expansion for more workers? Vetoed. More bureaucrats was not a benefit, it was a curse. Besides, it was much harder for the swine to think they were in charge when they lived in a sty.

He gave his Da a pat on the back in passing, careful to stay well to the side as the man picked his desk up and plopped it back into its old spot. Timothy shook his head at the absurdity of the image before opening and walking through the back door.

The room wasn’t really that small. But neither was it large or luxurious. Built like a bomb shelter, it was formed from stone arches that started at the ground level and only left the middle two-thirds usable. Two additional wide but low dead-end tunnels extended off at right angles to provide more room and the illusion of an office for the section leads or whatever the rat bastards were calling themselves recently.

All of it lit by small mushroom beds in the non-walkable areas. Throw in the reflective polish of the stone ceiling and it kept the room well lit. If in an oddly gentle blue color.

It reflected down on a sea of tightly packed desks interspaced with the ubiquitous oxyferns in their large pots. They didn't smell the best, but you'd suffocate sooner or later without them.

To keep the light strong enough to read and write by, the arched ceiling was left bare. No art, no story. Just a polished reflective surface framing the mushroom plots. It made for a somewhat austere room. No wall hangings or art projects to distract them from their soulless duty. Aside from a few small things on individual desks they used as props to imply humanity.

Some twenty of them, all told. Norms mostly what with the restrictions on writing. Rag paper was what they used here, and very few of the awakened could touch the stuff without destroying it. Vellum was far too expensive to waste on nonmagical uses and considering their were stacks of the cheap paper already head high in places, he didn't want to guess what it would look like with wooden or stone tablets.

He'd worried about giving norms a reason to stay that way. It was pretty much the opposite of the current social strata and strategy. Still, it worked out in a weird way. They had a bit of indirect power here, but without the ability to manipulate mana, they would never have any real status. And it irked them.

Timothy smiled.

Stepping into this den of depravity Timothy gave a quick hello and quickly became the focal point of 20-odd pairs of eyes. Eyes belonging to individuals he’d publicly reviled on multiple occasions, and perhaps worse, had stuck in the worst rooms he could find. How could this possibly be less than a good time?

Right...

__________________________________

The door closed behind him as he paused, briefly, to pulse the privacy wards to full. He loved her dearly, but Ma didn't give a damn about true name protocols and even though Paulo and Stickum had departed, with a large bonus too (they'd taken his mark for a favor over the offered coin like the smart lads they were) their replacements were waiting outside.

“Welcome home Timothy, still in one piece I see!” A small red-headed whirlwind darted across the entryway and glomped onto him. She sniffed once and leaned backward to give him a look “A very fragrant piece.” She raised an eyebrow in disapproval.

“Give me a break Ma, Da had me slaving away over reports instead of bathing like I'd rather. What should I do? Go and keep your dinner waiting? You'd string me up!”

The dull rumble of his Da’s laughter rattled Timothy's ribcage as he stepped in from the living room stopped any rejoinder she might have offered. “You would too. Let him be, love, a bit of honest sweat is hardly going to put me off my appetite.”

Regi’s equally massive frame followed him into the dining room, “Not sure the second coming could do that Da.” Timothy half expected the floor to shake when the two of them walked together. Like the screen shake in a video game when a dinosaur walked by.

With over 10 feet of stone essence beneath their feet it wasn't going to happen. With the numerous reinforcement spells added on even an earthquake wouldn't do more than a mild tremor, facts couldn’t keep the childish image from his head. The two of them were like small mountains.

He mused, not a bad Symbol. They both had stood out and up to keep the new sky from falling down. At least in this hold.

Da crossed his hands over his heart, glancing back over his shoulder in comically feigned shock. “And you me own flesh and blood? Fer shame!”

James followed behind the two man-shaped mountains and the comparison wasn’t kind. He wasn't a small man coming in at 5'9 before the fall and around 6'6” now. Despite that, he, like Timothy, favored their mother's more slender looks. Petite if he was being honest with himself. Even with his growth, he remained trim and fit. Well-muscled, but more in the long-distance runner vein than bodybuilder. Pa and Regi could have competed in the Scottish games even before the change. Now? Puny was the only comparative term that fit.

A fact that he was all too aware of. Timothy hid a sigh. This younger brother of his... he was too used to succeeding. From a youth all through Law school and on to the start of a successful practice. He'd known too little of defeat and failure. It left him brittle.

Then came the big one. A mistake so big it damn near shattered him. In furry over losing his girl, successful partnership and the world he'd built, he refused to accept the change. He rejected the offered awakening and wasted the tutorial years in self-pity. He'd been paying for his foolishness ever since.

It could be worse. At least he was willing to pay. Working himself like a dog to catch up. There was a reason he'd seen so little failure. His 'little' brother was sharp as a razor and just as willing to cut. Those were good traits here, and he was making up the difference. Enough that he'd gone from Norm to a place on the rising talent list. He was sharing it with teenagers, but hey, you did what you had to.

Timothy was surprised to see him here. Last he heard; James had a team of his own. Prairie hunters out at threshold Dorado most of a day's run to the southeast. He offered a wry grin but with a significant glance towards Regi and Pa didn’t say anything.

“A bit of the ol’ pot calling the kettle too.” Ma remarked with an angelic smile.

“It’s true. Look what your cooking's done, Ma.” Hamming it up, Regi pulled a bodybuilder's overhead flex. Pulled it off quite well at that. His muscles bulged out till the simple hide tunic he was wearing, a single piece of hide with a neck hole cut into it, folded over like a poncho then laced up the sides and beneath the arms with rawhide thongs, stretched till those thongs started creaking alarmingly.

“Dammit Regi, don't you dare break those! Your wife spent how long fixing them last time?”

“Sure, sure ma.” He dropped the pose, but not the sly smile that had come with it.

Da was a mountain but Regi was a chip off the old block… if the chip was bigger than the original. Add in a high position in their burgeoning society and thus access to a steady diet of higher Tier meat and you got this. Broc Sampson meets the Hulk. It was getting to the point where standard doorways weren't wide enough. He was probably the most extreme example but by no means the only one. Those standards were likely going to change soon.

“Alright, alright, enough of your blarney. Have a seat, dinner’ll be out soon.”

Timothy moved over and climbed up slightly to seat himself on what looked far to damn much like a high chair. They'd had to get creative with the furniture to fit the size differences between family members. “Bit light aren't we? I saw Lissette down in paradise, but where are Jenney and Marry?”

There were a few moments of awkward silence as Ma avoided his eyes, bustling about to put a series of lidded pots and trays on the table. Da hesitated, but in the end spoke with a grimace. “Your eldest sister hasn't left her garden in at least two months, a fact you'd know if you came to dinner more often.”

He glared at Timothy for a moment, who blithely ignored it. Who was it that kept Timothy so damn busy he barely had a free moment for his own projects? Seeing no signs of guilt nor repentance he let it drop. “Just the same, I'd appreciate you dropping in and having a word with her.” It was a command, for all it was politely phrased. He mentally drew a line through another hour or two of his mythical free time.

Another thing stood out. No one mentioned Mary and dollars to donuts that meant Ma and her were fighting.

Again.

Not that either of them would admit it. He wondered what ridiculous excuse Mary'd come up with this time. Was it celebrating the six-month anniversary of little William learning to walk? Or maybe she couldn't miss little Margaret's first tea party! The excuses had been amusing at first, but the joke was getting pretty stale.

He didn't bother asking what the real issue was. Ma'd bite his head off for interfering all the while refusing to admit there was an issue! Frankly, he didn't need to ask. Marry was spoiling her son and daughter rotten and Ma wouldn't put up with it. She'd nip their little fits and tantrums in the bud with a sharp tongue and a fiercely wielded spoon.

And that was the problem. They knew Nanna wouldn't tolerate it, so they behaved for her. Comparisons were odious things.

Marry was wrong, but Ma wasn't making things easier either. She wasn't one to hold her tongue when she saw her children making mistakes and Mary had never taken criticism gracefully.

Motherly advice could get old real fast, Timothy could attest to that. But that didn't make it wrong and he didn't enjoy sitting through those tantrums either. Marry was making a hash of things and was too damn stubborn to admit it, much less ask for help.

I wonder where she gets that from? He held in a snort.

Regi and Da approached the table and Timothy held in a wince as they carefully lowered themselves into the heavily reinforced chairs. Magically reinforced actually. He'd replaced them as a gag gift a few years back. Essence of Teak shaped into a chair then soaked in a potion of fortification. Ma'd appreciated the birthday present, even if it had been mostly a joke then.

Now? He wondered if he needed to give them another soak. They were creaking and groaning alarmingly despite the care the two had taken.

Timothy glanced over and caught his ma's eye, winking in shared humor. She was in a high chair of her own though one with less lift, though he hated to admit it. She'd been a good 4” shorter than him before the change and at least then he'd not been the shortest. A sad day it was, when he lost the last person in the family he could overtop.

He reached out eagerly for a large pot Ma passed his way. Oofing, a bit at the weight. Between them, Regi and Da took a lot of feeding, and the pots were growing apace. He surreptitiously triggered a weight reduction spell before he dropped the damn thing!

The food had been excellent last night, but it didn’t make up for a week of survival soup. Even that had been a far cry better than dry trail rations. The bricks of parched sunflower seeds, jerky, dried fruits and berries were energy-dense and deeply nutritious. They were also a pain to chew and the oddly blended flavors got old fast.

He breathed in the steam rising gently from the pot. Luxuriating in the familiar scent. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he'd go back to his usual bland diet. But today? Today he had colcannon!

Mountainview Hold had wild-growing potatoes in some of their sub-alpine meadows. In a bit of irony, considering the family history, spuds were a luxury good now. And Mountainview charged a pretty bit of coin for them.

They weren't quite old-world potatoes, being fist-sized purple, tan or blue rounds. Not oversized like most vegetables were. Or at least it looked that way to Timothy. Apparently, so Jenney said, they were giant, just of a different breed. The ancestor of the carefully bred modern variety.

Like Chihuahuas and Great Danes. Both were dogs descended from the same wolf ancestor, but you couldn’t tell it by looking. Either way they were tasty and being wild grown from the middle mountainous regions they had a pretty decent mana density to them. Ma wasn’t a Cook, but Lissette was, and they’d worked out the recipe between them to a T.

It was still a rare luxury. Jenney'd tried to domesticate them, but between requiring a dryer climate that was pretty rare in these parts and the space it required, the results were limited.

Besides, having tasted the wild, the garden grown were hard to stomach. Mana did more than provide fuel for progression. Frankly, the few domestically grown were fit for stews and little else.

It was endlessly amusing to Timothy that the new potato farmers weren't men with plows. They didn't sow seeds and weed fields. They were more like game wardens. Watching the natural crops and maintaining the habitat against encroaching species.

It wasn't a unique situation either. Runehold did the same with the sunflower crops. Sunflower flour... wasn't that a mess of a term? Tasty though.

Not that either issue mattered right now. The potatoes were cooked, and the cabbage softened and the butter spread. Time to stop thinking about prices and start tasting. He ladled it onto his plate.

It still smelled and tasted like home.

Very little talking occurred for a time, aside from “please pass the -” or occasionally “would you like another pork chop?” Still, in time even good things must end. Stuffed to the gills, Timothy leaned back and willingly submitted to the inevitable interrogation.

“-Tier 2 packs were pretty common. We didn't see it, but I can't help but worry that only a chief of chiefs could keep that many high-grade beasts from killing each other.” Timothy obediently explained.

“A Tier 3 then. Low I hope?” Ma said with a sigh.

“Low would be nice, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Mid and high are out there. And sooner or later we'll have to deal with them. I'll spend some time with the scrying pool looking, but you know how chancy that can be. Even if I find it, not much we can do before it attacks. Too much mana lost in covering the distance without an anchor. Brother Father, you might be needed sooner rather than later.”

He ducked the leftover piece of mashed potato Regi chucked his way, snickering. Runefather was bad enough. But Brotherhood Father? Poor bastard.

Damn silly ass titles.

“Forget it, I shouldn’t expect anything else out of the man who made laser spatulas. You don't get to bitch at me about naming!”

“Hey! I'm not that bad. Right? ...” Everyone was studiously looking away from him as he glanced around, not to mention their shoulders were shaking in a rather suspicious manner.

Regi took pity on him at last. “Anyway, I hope not Timothy, I'm already working full tilt with the Thresholds I've committed to. I don't need more, and frankly, I’m hoping some of your new graduates can take up the slack.”

Timothy hid a frown. Regi wasn't one to complain over a minor leak. More like calling it a leak while madly bailing and the boat was half under already.

He wondered, then turned wonder into action. Looking inward first and dropping his sight into the Flow. A deep breath centered him, then his inner eyes turned out, and the world opened up like a thousand-petaled flower where each petal was a different dimension, mana type or flowing stream of something else he couldn’t identify. He wasn't nearly as deep as he'd been on the boat. Not for this. The physical was still there, just washed out behind the stunning depths of the Field. He floundered for a moment in the strobing lights, sounds and tastes that turned his moment of unfettered enlightenment into a bad trip. A discordant cacophony of painfully muddled senses.

He took it in stride. Realing beneath the blow, but not stopped as he habitually let it slide by. There was just too much information in the Field to read it all, but this wasn't the jungle.

It was home and that was an entirely different monster.

He twisted his sight through a familiar pattern, tapping his mind palace for the formula. He let filters settle over his vision, shifting to block entire sections of the Field. Tuning his sight away from the natural and focusing on their shared humanity to show only man-made mana.

It was possible to hide that tint so it wasn't always safe to use this mode, but it would do here. Regi stood out like a bonfire to the torches of Ma, Da and the large candle of James.

The difference between guardians and pathfinders. Between one of the most potent Pathfinders, two of the original guardians and an up-and-comer.

But it was more than just size that distinguished them. Regi's light was purer. The focused light through a nearly pristine burning glass vs a smoked quartz version. His soul burned with tastes of love, compassion, worry, pride and satiation. His nose was overloaded with their identities. Of Resolute-father-mayor-who-bares-the-burdens-in-love. He-who-guides-cats-and-placates-unreasonable-wizards. Who- timothy wrenched his senses away, and blocked out that set, only for it to be replaced with underachieving-selfhating-guilty-silver-tongued-speaker-and-chooser-of-the-many-truths- he blocked that out as well. Of She-who- blocked! Leaving only Regi, Captain-admiral-alpha-of-brotherhood-who-will-build-a-world-for-his-children-worth-living-in- Timothy flinched away from the feed. Still too much. He shifted his sight, letting the stream slide by instead of directly through him. Skimming it for a more limited set of symbols and analogies. They were his symbols, filtered through preconceptions and knowledge, but it was still rough.

Down, focusing downward. Blocking out the emotional wavelengths, the directed intent of his gaze. The touch/watch that sampled the areas around him while also changing them. Like a series of colored lenses, he bore down, till only Regi's persistent construct filled his gaze. It felt like hours, but experience told him it was probably less than a dozen seconds.

Still, a good chunk when you were trying to be subtle, but quite quick as these things go. An old cutter rocked gently before him on the swells of the Field. Single-masted and well-used. Scared by a life at sea. A hell of a story told in the nicks, dings and scars that graced her hull and decks. Her sails were reefed, but even so they glowed to his sight with the promise of primed spells. Of death in ice and sky-fire.

The coiled lines that webbed the ship from sails to the reinforced bulwarks likewise glowed but in a different way. From thick hawsers to the thinnest of lines, they were stored mana flows. A dozen sizes for different tasks. Racks of weapons lined the bulwark. Wands and staves fought for pride of place with harpoons and gaffs.

Timothy ignored the weapons and sails for a moment focusing on the ropes and their many colorful names. Lines, cables, hawsers. Regi'd once explained that they were what pulled the ship along. Let the forces involved be spread throughout so that no one part shattered under the strain.

Perhaps even beyond that, as it wasn't only on his ship that the lines traveled. Massive hawsers moored the ship in place. Reaching out beyond Timothy's sight, even looking at them left images burned into his mind. Snarling stone statues of various dogs. His links to the holds and thresholds.

Finer lines stretched out in a web to more local sources. Individuals perhaps? However, the branching nature suggested a hierarchy in the majority of them.

Only a few didn’t branch and most of those ended in this very room.

The amount of connectivity made it hard to see anything else. Filling his mind with tastes and smells of people when he needed to focus on just Regi. He added another filter.

It was enough to focus on the ship itself, and the lines contained within. The step-by-step work of years.

Hard worked years and as he looked deeper he frowned. Its age was showing to a worrying degree. Lines were still neatly coiled and organized, the decks were clean and clear. What you called ship shape. But everything was worn and a bit shabby. It was lacking something he'd always associated with his brother.

Polish.

The brasswork showed tints of green while the decks weren't the warm honey of well-kept and preserved wood. There were unhealthy-looking grey tones here and there. Not common, and not on the hull at all, but still. Even the lines were a bit off. Tiny hairs sticking out instead of tied together in clean tight braids.

Rather less than pleased Timothy shifted his sight back to the physical. Right in time to get a gimlet eye from Ma. She had opinions on privacy, and he'd just rather flagrantly violated them.

The social rules were there for a reason, he didn't deny that. What was a health check between brothers was a search for weaknesses from someone else.

Of course, he was quite good at this. Able to make his 'looking' much more look-ish. It was hard to observe without changing, but it was sort of Timothy's specialty. On the magical front, he didn't know any better than him. He did it frequently without getting caught. On the magical front.

Acting was another thing entirely.

He shrugged at her and looked away, perturbed by what he'd seen. Regi wasn't the lazy sort. Quite the opposite. He was damn near obsessive-compulsive about maintenance. If he wasn't keeping up with his self-care, it was because he couldn’t.

It wasn't a disaster. More at the level of strain and overworked muscles instead of torn. Of course, the ship metaphors were his brothers thing. Timothy wasn't so knowledgeable about ships that his brother couldn't hide things in the exotic lingo and arcane seeming traditions of a sailing vessel.

But he'd have to try, and that wasn't really something that would occur to Regi without prompting. From what he could see, there was no rotting wood, cracked glass or even noticeable warping or leaking, in the ship's timbers.

Like the muscle analogy, if Regi could take a bit of time to look after himself he might even profit from this. If he didn't pull something first.

“That's not very polite, brother mine.” Regi rumbled, finally noticing and attempting to throw up a screen to block Timothy's sight. Not that the screen did any good, he'd already seen what he needed to. Not to mention Regi wasn't very good at obfuscation. The symbols didn't resonate with him.

He had power in spades, and the massive net he threw up in moments was impressive. Cables fit to hold down a whale stretched across Timothy's sight. Sturdy, neatly woven and backed by a will of iron. And that was without calling on his Brotherhood links for aid.

He was a hammer of magic ready to smite interlopers. A lightning bolt stretched and looking for a target. Powerful concepts.

But blunt ones. A knight in full plate bearing a battle-hammer. Not a rapier searching out small weaknesses or deftly protecting and deflecting attacks from the same. The screens he threw up followed the same trend. It was a net when he needed sailcloth. It would protect him from big blows, but Timothy could slide through it like a minnow when Regi was fishing for sharks.

Could, but then Ma's fingers were getting uncomfortably close to his ear. He let the image, and all the filters that built it drop, dodging the clutching fingers even as he clamped down on his gut, forcefully containing the nausea that came from switching his sight that fast.

Of course, he wasn't done dodging, if Timothy didn't want to get the raw side of a couple of tongues he'd have to do some verbal dancing. Or...A redirect. Huh. That would work.

“If politeness lets you hurt yourself, then screw it. You’re on the ragged edge there, brother mine. I thought you knew better. So-called noble suffering is just noble stupidity in a mirror of self-righteousness. We need you too much for this martyr routine.”

Regi gave him a gimlet and somewhat angry glance, but he had bigger problems than Timothy now.

“Reginald, what does he mean?” Ma’s voice froze the conversation, and Regi’s facial muscles with it. He'd heard it all too often recently, but for once, Timothy wasn’t on the wrong end of that tone.

Enjoy brother! He snickered in his thoughts, careful not to let it bleed into his aura or face. Ma wasn't above spreading the pain around for those foolish enough to draw her attention. Then again, if he could redirect her a bit more... Social dodge and maybe something good could come from it.

“He’s damn near tearing a mental muscle, Ma. It’s what happens when he pitches in for free. People start counting on it, instead of planning to prevent it from being necessary. Why should they risk themselves or their mana reserves when the white knight will do it for them.”

He glanced at his oversized brother, no longer laughing, even internally. “Tell me some of the little shits who we call colleagues haven't been slacking off on you brother. Tell me that the Thresholds themselves aren't taking advantage of your good nature?”

“Haaaa, really? Not just a bus, but several and you just throw me underneath?” Regi muttered out of the side of his mouth, eyes bulging a bit in disbelief. He cleared his throat a bit then caved, “It's not as bad as he makes it sound Ma. Sure there are a few slackers around, but most of the problem is that beast attacks are really ramping up.”

He sighed. “And yes, Timothy's not wrong. There are a few Origins who should be helping and aren’t. They're supposed to be doing spot checks on the defenses, looking for weaknesses or issues with the mana reserves. More, they’re supposed to provide the magical know how to fix those problems when they crop up. A few have been half-assing that task. Turning the few patrols they do put in into glad-handing.”

“For all that, I can't just let the scabs fail like Timothy wants. Dozens of good men would go down for each gombeem.” he ignored her muttered “Regi!” and continued, “Veteran guardians we can't replace. Not to mention the staggering cost if the wards themselves were destroyed. Who knows how long it will take even to find the ingredients for it.”

Timothy couldn't disagree, not that Regi was going to give him the chance to. “Still, as bad as it is, it’s an opportunity. Not ‘noble suffering’. Every time I step in to save lives, the Brotherhood's stock goes up. I'm making bank in political capital and trust. Something these fools are blind to. The common guardians trust the Brotherhood more than their own crappy leadership and that is priceless. It’s cementing us together as an organization. Not just a loose trade Union, but an actual government.”

And that was a good thing? Sometimes Timothy wondered. The current situation had its benefits. A sort of free city-states collective where you could vote with your feet. Rulers with stupid laws lost their subjects. But when everyone was under the same set of laws, where could they run too?

“You said a few.” Ma's eyes were tight and the smile on her face was anything but kind. Mama bear on the warpath, “You know who's pulling this farce.” It was a statement, not a question.

He smiled, shark-like, “Yes. Yes I do. And it’s going to bite them in the ass soon enough, Ma. I’m not one to simply take it and smile, no matter what my own brother implies. Those jackasses ‘forgot’ that there is a contract in place. Those thresholds took loans from Timothy to get off the ground, and part of that matching money came with requirements on the local Origins. And it doesn’t matter that they were verbal only. I’ve seen what you can do, brother mine, with a broken oath like this.”

Timothy nodded, no longer smiling. Oh yes, he could indeed. And the only reason he hadn’t was it was Regi’s show.

“I don’t want you to act yet, little brother. I just need to hold it together a bit longer, give them a bit more rope. Then they'll surely swing.”

Da broke in, concerned, “Satisfying as that might be, is that to the Union’s benefit, son? If you have a talk with them now, you’ll get some work out of them. We don’t have so much slack that we can afford to throw away even bad tools.”

“I could, and have for a few of the less egregious cases. Some took the lesson to heart and changed their ways. Others got better. For a time. Then they gradually slid back into their old ways. And that was for the minor cases.”

“I learned the hard way in the navy, you can’t ‘fix’ stupid. Nor lazy. You can... inspire them to get the job done. But only if you’re on their arse every moment. The navy had the people and the structure for that. We don’t. The only thing I can do is get them the hell off our ship.”

He paused for a drink, the mug almost disappearing inside his big mitt. “The thing is; this lot, even the bad ones, aren't like some Seaman Recruits I've trained. They haven't gone full retard. They're not even incompetent. They, and their holds, would never have survived the early years if they were.”

“It’s just, now that the immediate risk is less obvious, they’re falling back on old-world habits. Coasting through boring jobs for some, empire building for others.”

“I’m going to throw them back to the deep end where their own life will depend on their own hard work. That’s what ‘hanging’ is going to entail Da, a banishment to the Thresholds they are supposed to be supporting. And they can stay their until they pay off the debt owed.”

“Let their own safety motivate them. Because you’re right. They may be tools, but we can't afford not to get every bit of use out of them. Even the bad ones.”

Timothy stared, he forgot sometimes that his brother could be subtle. He was such a blunt hand, in voice, form and magic that it often hid the very sharp mind that dwelt within. He was just particular about where to apply that sharpness. Regi believed in this unified human ideal and was willing to work and scheme to make it happen.

Seemed a bit silly to Timothy, humans were far better at backstabbing and civil war than they were at unity, especially as the groups in question got larger and less homogeneous. But to each their own. He at least seemed to be good at it, and that was enough for Timothy. Hell, even if he was a villain of the worst stripe, he’d better be a badass one. Incompetence was a disgrace to the family name.

He paused for a moment, that might be why he was so annoyed by Mary's shenanigans. He had no problem with being her choice of housewifery. It was being bad at that choice that pissed him off. He pushed the familiar rage aside and focused on the food in front of him.

There was that old saying about plans and first contact with the enemy. What Regi was saying sounded good, but Timothy would just have to patiently wait and see. And he was very good at that.