"We were planning to wait until Basalith expanded out into the DC area," Brian explained, shifting his head to appear within the camera. "Avery, honey, move over."

"Dad," Avery whined, rolling her eyes, though she adjusted her position and tilted the camera to catch Mr. McLane's rather tall frame.

"You should all come to Basalith," Bath said, shaking his head slightly. "Don't wait for the expansion outward."

Samantha and Brian looked at one another, then back at the computer. "Is there a rush?" Samantha asked. "Besides, we want to be able to keep our home. Based on how the new dragonleaf city-seeds have functioned in other countries, we should be able to stay put without much trouble."

Bath's lower eyelids drew up slightly and his eyebrows rose. "You all should come to Basalith first. I need to talk with you."

His serious, though faintly pained voice gave everyone pause. "Are you...at Basalith?" Samantha asked, eyes narrowed. She didn't think her son was one to leave college and join COTD on a whim. Besides, he'd been at school the last time they'd talked.

Avery saw from Bath's posture--he was angling himself away from the camera, and wasn't making eye contact--that something was amiss. He never seemed uncomfortable, a perpetual pillar of stability and strength in her life...why did he seem uncertain now?

"If you come tomorrow, you'll understand. Just come. Trust me; I don't want to explain without being there in person."

"We'll be there," Avery asserted, looking seriously into the camera.

"Avery--" Brian began, admonishing his fiery daughter.

"No, seriously, I think we need to go," Avery rebuked. "I'll go alone if I have to," she pledged.

"Also, bring Lisa's family with you. She's been too busy to reach out to them herself, but I know she'll want to see them in person."

'So Lisa and Bath are both at Basalith,' Samantha thought to herself, mulling over the significance of the information. In the end, she supposed there was too much craziness surrounding Basalith and COTD; she'd find out exactly what was going on when she arrived at Basalith.

Samantha gave Brian a pointed look. He nodded in return, then said, "We'll be there. Can't wait to see you and hear about what you've been doing."

Bath smiled back. "See you all when you arrive."

Then he terminated the call. He wondered what they would do when they realized who--what--he was. He didn't doubt that they would still love him.

'Why do I even care about their opinions, about their relationship to me?' Bath thought pensively to himself, sitting against the wall of the Spire's living quarters.

Bath was under no illusions that he, alone, would likely be able to conquer most of the universe, in particular worlds lacking strong sapient presences. But Bath was starting to realize that there was a beauty in sharing experiences with others, just as there was satisfaction to be gained by helping them and receiving their adoration.

Perhaps more than anything else, building up Basalith and all the tasks encompassed therein had truly taxed Bath in a way he'd never experienced before. He'd really needed to work to create his boons, to put flesh on the bones of Lisa's hierarchy, to create dragonleaf, city-seeds, and spineroot. Such exertion, in an odd way, almost made him...forget about the every-aching hunger at his Center.

'It's almost time to begin the second stage of the hierarchy,' he noted. A few people were already starting their seventh professions. This meant that they were officially half-way through the basic enhancement process. Bath figured he still had a little over a week before the first person made it to Expert in all fourteen.

'Adequate time to finish the next wave of enhancements,' he thought, wary of the large task before him. Each Expert path needed to branch off into a certain direction. While each person would need to initially choose an Expert path upon which to venture, they wouldn't be stuck with that path forever. However, the commitment would likely be around a year.

Lisa had outlined all of the possible paths in the Hierarchy of the Church of the Dragon, however, Bath found that creating suitable boons to match each pathway wasn't straight forward.

After a few minutes of fruitless contemplation, Bath sat up a bit straighter, eyes widening. 'Why tell them what their boons will be?' he mused. 'Why not create a substantial bank of boons, with different tiers, and let them choose? They'll still need to pick a path to follow in the hierarchy, but this way, they'll have more freedom...' and, of course, Bath recognized the upside that this involved far less work.

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Bath drew his hands together and stretched. 'What boon should I start working on first?' He wasted no time in devising new tiers of boons, eager to fill his mind with anything other than thoughts of his family.

---

Bath and Lisa stood in the Spire's bedroom, both dressed in their formal Dragon and Church attire. Bath closed the gap between them, then looked, smiling, into Lisa's bright eyes.

"You worried?"

"Irrationally," Lisa exhaled. "I shouldn't be. But I am. A bit." She fidgeted in place, then grinned. "You?"

Bath chuckled lightly, then looked to the side, out the window framing open sky. "I feel...as I did when I told you about me."

They shared a moment of contemplative silence.

"I remember," she murmured. "Most people would probably wonder why I believed you so easily. But it was just...so obvious."

"Oh?"

"You'd have to experience it firsthand to understand," Lisa sighed. "I think, too, that I just wanted to believe."

Bath nodded sagely. "Who doesn't want a half-billion-year-old super-powered alien best friend?"

Lisa suppressed a grin as she lightly smacked Bath's shoulder. "You're so annoying," she quipped. "We should probably do something productive, instead of just waiting for them to arrive," Lisa admitted.

"Productive...hmmm," Bath said slowly, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "Nope. I got nothing." In actuality, he was off generating the new round of boons in a separate location in Basalith.

"Really? Nothing?" Lisa tilted her head forward, incredulous. "I bet you're working on ten things at once as we speak."

"Four," Bath admitted with a sly grin. "How goes our planet-conquering strategy?"

Lisa snorted. "For the nearby planets, easy as pie. We've decided to try to recruit Juserin as an ally."

"He'd be useful," Bath acknowledged, thinking of the Waymaster's experience holding down several gates. "How are the other projects?"

"They're going fine," Lisa shrugged. "The hawks are absolutely terrifying, not to mention the sparrows."

Bath grinned. The sparrow quasi-sapients were, in actuality, a mesh of a plethora of different small bird species from several different eras. They did, coincidentally, happen to resemble modern sparrows. This didn't mean that the birds were harmless.

"How do they work together?"

"Eh, they're getting there," Lisa said, shaking her right hand in the gesture for "so-so." "I'm sure they'll get the hang of working together with a little more time."

Bath's gaze suddenly sharpened. He turned towards Lisa, then muttered, "They're all here. Even your aunt and uncle," he noticed, slightly surprised.

Lisa blew out a breath of air, closing her eyes. When she opened them, she nodded brusquely to Bath. "Let's give them a proper greeting."

---

"Assigned to where?" Edgewood balked. "Russia? But they haven't surrendered yet."

Susan gave him a tired look. "Does that even matter anymore?"

"Chemical weapons aren't funny," Edgewood snapped. "And I don't think Russia will hesitate to use them against us."

"This seems like a total, arbitrary shitshow," David muttered under his breath. "Sure, we won second place, but practically every other team in the tournament also got a city-seed assignment. I'm going to be so fucking pissed if I got covered in rot juice for nothing."

"I'm sure we'll have some way to counteract any kind of chemical weapon," Kayt butted in. "Stop whining." She coughed, then added a second too late, "That's what Nimesh wanted to say."

Edgewood gave her an "are you kidding me?" look. "How? And even if we're somehow protected by the constitution boon, what about any civilians who come to our city-seed? If they get gassed, they'll be completely screwed."

Kayt shrugged. "Do you really believe that the Dragon hasn't already thought of something?"

Edgewood groaned. "I have no idea. How are we supposed to find out if he has a solution, anyways?"

Then, suddenly, on a patch of ground between the members of Edgier Than You, a box made of dragonleaf appeared.

Anne rose an eyebrow. "That just appeared out of nowhere, right?" Nobody else had been paying attention to the ground. Anne, bored with the conversation, had been wasting time finding patterns in the grass. "'Cuz I'm thinking that maybe the Dragon was listening, and this is the solution."

The conversation ceased. "A box," Susan murmured, inspecting its surface with her expert vision. "Somebody, open it."

Edgewood wasted no time in coming forward. Anne met him in front of the box; Edgewood held the box down, while Anne pulled.

"Whoever made this made the lid tight," Anne grunted, face turning red. "Like, the hell?" Anne was pretty sure such a strong box was physically impossible. Was the Dragon still intervening?

"Dragon, please let us have the box," Anne vocalized. "Pretty please, with sugar on top."

Anne fell over as the lid flew off, her body's balance thrown off by the lid's rapid displacement. "Da-yum," she whistled. "Edgy, what's inside?"

Edgewood gave her a disapproving look, then returned his eyes to the contents within. "Looks like a hedge of dragonleaf," he admitted. "It's probably different."

"Let me see~" Anne cried out eagerly, stretching a hand towards the compact hedge nestled within the box. "Oh, huh. Definitely not dragonleaf," Anne observed. "Kayt, get over here."

Kayt walked over, then pressed her own hand against the shrub. "It's like a stupider version of dragonleaf," she remarked, eyes narrowed. "But...why?" The little shrub didn't seem to comprehend the majority of things Kayt was telling it.

"Try touching it, then thinking of a gas mask," Edgewood suggested.

David rolled his eyes. "Really?"

Nonplussed by David's pessimism, Kayt envisioned a gas mask. The shrub began to shake, then grow. Soon, the shrub had branches covering the air. "I think that worked."

David looked on in utter shock. "But...why?"

Kayt shrugged. "No clue. But I guess that means any objections over going to Russia are tabled, right?"

Edgewood threw up his hands in defeat. "If the Dragon himself intervenes..."