Mortal coffee beans are the cheap byproduct of inefficient processing. The poor-man’s coffea plant species (e.g., arabica), steal a healthy percentage of Dao-investiture in nurturing the bean, leaving only a miniscule portion within the cascara. While CJO geneticists have identified several variant species that hold promise in increasing the proportion of cascara, they require very specific underground climates that mimic the temperate zones of traditional mortal planets.

M-Brew, the mildly psychedelic stimulant and the true finished product of coffea processing is perhaps the only known substance in the galaxy that allows a person to wield a Forgework beyond their system stage restriction. Many military empires are known to purchase M-Brew in bulk to allow their [Elites] to carry weapons suitable to their capabilities.

This is known.

What the Arabica Syndicate seeks to hide is that these variant coffea species have the added benefit of advancing Dao-Seeds.

– Coalition for Java Octane, Propaganda_caz_z13.docx

Chapter 33 – Games

Toki arrived before the enchanted library door once more. Inside she would find Kristina and Edgar. Hopefully safe. To both her sides, the tunnel stretched out like a gullet of some ancient beast.

She had prepared as best she could while the Alpha and the monkeys recovered.

Toki’s slender fingers tightened around the haft of her hammer as she called forth her [Lessons]. Using [First Burn] she infused her shadows with [Empower Armor], a durability enchantment. It was rather generic but provided both Toki and Alpha with a shadow shield, much stronger than the shadows alone. 50% manadraw each. Kristina was not the violent type, but she would go in prepared. To her side, Alpha's presence was reassuring. His expanded form reached the height of the grand doorway.

They would go in prepared for battle, but Toki hoped it did not come to it. Alpha had asked to bring the whole troop. Toki had declined out of a mix of fatalism and moral responsibility. Either Alpha and I are enough, or we die miserably. More monkeys just mean more dead monkeys if the latter comes to pass.

"Time to end this game," Toki murmured.

Alpha's response was a rumble deep within his throat—a primordial sound.

Toki pushed open the door, bracing herself for the maelstrom of confrontation. But what lay beyond was not the battlefield she had envisioned.

In the heart of the now immaculate library, beneath the illuminated chandelier, Edgar sat across from Kristina, anvil in between, embroiled in a hand of Folly. Proverbially called Forger’s Folly, a game of skill and chance.

Kristina's cards hovered next to her face. The anvil between them carried two stacks of chits, about equal in height. “You’re bluffing. We’ve seen three eights already; you can’t possibly have the last.”

"Heh. That’s another one for me. Twenty-one." Edgar chirped, his voice a thread of cheer in the heavy air, his wings folding neatly at his back. He laid down his four cards with a flourish, eyes gleaming with a childlike pride that belied the tense duo that just arrived.

"Chance is fickle today," Kristina conceded, and with an enigmatic smile, she sent over a chit to Edgar’s pile. She drew a card from the center, her gaze never straying from Edgar's face, even as the shadows at the edge of the room had arrived. "But the game is far from over."

Edgar's feathers ruffled ever so slightly.

Toki watched the scene unfold, her initial surge of adrenaline giving way to a creeping unease. This was not how she had imagined her arrival in the Spider Queen's library—Edgar was awake. Perhaps a battle isn’t needed! Just the quiet clink of cards and the soft, mocking laughter of fate itself.

"Twenty-one," Kristina declared, her voice laced with the thrill of victory. She pulled a chit back from Edgar’s pile. "Seems we're evenly matched, Edgar," she said, her eyes finally lifting to meet Toki's. "Or perhaps," Kristina mused, "we're simply awaiting the arrival of a third player to tip the scales."

Perhaps a battle is needed.

Toki's gaze lingered on the odd scene before her. The Spider Queen and her feathered opponent were so engrossed in their game that they appeared as two habitual forgers lost in the gamble.

"Your game is charming, but I haven’t come for small talk," Toki said, her voice edged with a hint of sarcasm. "I've come for an explanation." She stepped cautiously forward, her eyes wary of Kristina's chain which lay coiled like a dormant serpent. "You deceived me again with the dragon core."

Kristina's reaction was a mere incline of her head. "A shame, but not unforeseen," she murmured, her tone betraying neither surprise nor disappointment. “I do not have the core, love.”

Toki did not take Kristina’s word for truth. With measured movements, Toki reached into her bag and produced the object the monkeys did have—the dead dragon egg, its shell pulsing with an inner light that seemed to echo the distant stars.

"I found something else. This is what you were after, wasn’t it?" Toki declared, holding the egg aloft, careful not to cross the threshold where Kristina could reach.

Kristina's interest flared immediately. Cards forgotten, she rose, her presence enveloping Toki in an aura of anticipation. Her chain locked her in place just a few feet across from Toki. "The egg is truly dead," she breathed, and there was hunger in her voice, a craving Toki had never seen before. “This is… This is… glorious! Wonderful! Bravo, Tokyo! Hand it here."

"Hmmm," Toki countered, her grip on the egg tightening. "But what of karma? To accept this... would it not break your code. Your path?" Toki motioned to Alpha to search the library while Kristina was distracted.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"With this egg, I can grant you that which many warriors would slaughter worlds to possess. A gift to alter the course of your destiny. To change history itself." Kristina’s eyes, as mysterious as they were, could not hide her greed.

"All power shifts fate." Toki acknowledged, her resolve a flickering flame in the face of such temptation. "If I accept something from you, O Weaver of Webs, doesn’t it become just another thread binding me to your deception?"

"I suspect you can bear the karma."

“Why should I have to?”

"Your newfound abilities seem… unique, but there are many like you, love. Aris… let’s just say that you alone, as you are, is not enough to save it."

“And giving you this egg will give me enough power to save Aris?”

“This… I truly do not know. It will give you enough power to take revenge if what you fear comes to pass.”

A sigh escaped Toki, laced with frustration and the bitter tang of inevitability. She began to enshroud the egg within her bag. “I won’t trade power for some hidden trap later, Kristina. Why should I expect that a spider will not deceive… Aris…" she echoed, her voice trailing off into the void of what-ifs.

Kristina’s voice shifted to urgency. "Let us barter, Tokyo," she proposed. "Three questions I shall answer, three riddles unraveled."

The offer hung. Toki considered.

The alpha still hasn’t found the dragon core. Perhaps she is telling the truth about that at least. In that case, there is only one answer. Only one other person that could have it. Golgheim.

Toki hesitated, her mind a whirlpool of doubt and curiosity. "Tell me of Golgheim," she demanded, her voice steady despite the turmoil brewing within.

"Ah, the planet spirit," Kristina intoned. "Do you know of the Spearbreaker?”

“No, but he seems to be coming up a lot lately.”

“Hmmm, no matter. It is sufficient to tell you that the Spearbreaker was an elite amongst elites… that man—he would burn worlds for his people. I do miss him… I wonder if you shall follow in his footsteps…” She paused, then continued. “This Spearbreaker had created chaos across Cazoran, claiming hidden quests and acquiring rewards significantly beyond his means as a mortal. Amongst his prizes was a nascent planet spirit. To claim Golgheim, he sabotaged another planet’s world trial.”

“At the time, Golgheim wasn’t even sentient. The Spearbreaker fed the baby planet spirit dozens of planets worth of resources to grow Aris. He kept it a mortal world to protect his people from the system conquest protocols. He hid this world among over one-hundred mortal planet acquisitions and protected them all with layers of contracts. Mortal planets are already protected by the system to a degree, but this solidified the protection.”

“As a mortal, by technicality to the system, the Spearbreaker was unparalleled. The Astral Throne was different, but that is another story. This world was safe, open to only other mortals. Golgheim was his contingency. A sentient planet spirit that could operate in his place while he wasn’t there. To give Golgheim power that could defend this world, he had to restrict him in equal measure.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Patience. Stories need context as melodies need harmonies. Golgheim gained sentience only after the Spearbreaker was sealed away. The parents that dotingly fed and loved him left him with only a single directive. Protect the planet, protect Bastion.”

“Golgheim as an orphan had learned from the legends of the Spearbreaker, and so too did he wish to protect his people, but he soon found that he had to choose between people and his directive.”

“I know little of his youth. Golgheim was hundreds of years old when I first met him, but he was a child even then. He railed against the fates that took his parents. He wished to challenge the universe. He built armies and aligned the people of this world to his warbanner. They killed dozens of envoys all at once. Some had bounties and Aris gained its [Elites]. ‘If the Spearbreaker could do it, I, his child could as well.’ Naïve. Especially because he was bound in multitudes of contracts. He was fortunate that he did not activate the world trial then.”

“The world still burned. In a last effort, he hid away the capital city, Bastion, under the earth and let the rest fall in sacrifice. After all, without Bastion, Aris would be a simple planet and Golgheim a simple planet spirit. Pendulum stole his innocence then. He was a child no longer.”

“So that’s it? He gave up?”

“He tried many times since then, isolating enemies, isolating wars. But he could never create someone to match the Spearbreaker. His enemies adapted and limited access to bounties. Limited the envoys present on the surface. For the last millennia, Golgheim has drifted farther and farther from that petulant child. At least that child had a spine.”

“I’m not the Spearbreaker. I can’t replace what he lost.”

“His fealty lies with the Spearbreaker's grand design, an allegiance that supersedes all else."

Toki absorbed the tale. Golgheim, a figure she had come to regard with tentative trust, now painted in shades of ambivalence.

"His heart beats for the people," Toki whispered, more to herself than to Kristina as she remembered his love for Elara Twice. "But it seems that it’s a heart divided."

"What is loyalty but a choice between the many and the one? Golgheim will never be loyal, love. That is the answer to your question.”

Toki thought carefully about what Kristina said. Is him sending me down here more of the same? I bet he wanted me to keep going down. Curiosity. Running away from my problems. Getting stronger. Pandora’s box. They were all seeds.

There were many questions that Toki wished to ask. Many that she felt held the key to the secrets and conspiracies that surrounded her. The Twice lineage, the Spearbreaker, the Spearbreaker’s grand design, the allies she could trust. There were too many. Instead, she settled on advice.

Toki's voice emerged as a whisper, "What path leads away from Aris’s destruction?"

Kristina's eyes narrowed as if she sought to obscure her answer. Yet, Toki felt she continued to speak the truth. "You’ve no doubt prevented the dragons from raining fire on Alabaster Ring… for now. It will not last."

“We have won wars before.”

“When you die as a mortal, who shall hold the banner? Within 50 years, your body will fail and you will leave Aris without an [Elite].”

Toki's grip on the dragon egg tightened, its surface cool and alien beneath her fingers. "And the world trial?" she asked, daring to hope.

“So, you are informed. The primes of Aris die before they can hope to start it. Maybe that has changed.” Kristina paused.

Toki sensed that the pause was intended to probe as much as obscure.

“Regardless, you are ill-prepared," Kristina's gaze bore into her. "A tide of both allies and enemies will descend. Golgheim most certainly has prepared, so it is uncertain who will win. But even if Mabu’Aris survives, everyone you know will not."

“And the dragon’s core?”

“That presents an interesting case. I won’t speculate, but I know that many would value it, if only to extract the genius lizard's research. Perhaps you should find it first before becoming so hopeful.”

A shiver of foreboding traced its icy fingers down Toki's spine. Her mind raced, once again considering the myriad mysteries that lay at the heart of Aris. But there was another enigma, one closer to her heart.

"Where is Edgar?" The question spilled from her lips.

[Hidden Quest: Trial IV: Fool Me Once (1/1) - complete]

[User Tokyo Twice has been rewarded with a profession mutation. Strategist -> Weaver]

[Weaver skill [Create Contract] has gained the subskill [Karma Clause]]

[Clear the Weaver’s Trials – system title awarded, Target (Chosen of Weaver)]

[Target (Chosen of Weaver): Restricted access to Protocol JE-87; [Targets] can identify other [Targets]; Defeat 1 Targets to upgrade access to Protocol JE-87 (0/1)]

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