I had to start over with the story after Herman woke up. He was a little bigger than Eliza now, but what startled me most was his change in colors. Instead of yellow and black, he had turned green and black, only he wasn't striped. Instead of fuzz, he had gained a layer of what appeared to be blade-like leaves protruding from his black chitin. It was rather striking when viewed side by side with his brethren. A bee covered in what looked like verdant green grass instead of black and yellow hairs was very odd to see.

This had to have been because I gave him a chunk of my soul. It was good to know that there could be side effects associated with that sort of thing, but I felt really bad about messing up. I apologized, but it soon became apparent to me that it was unnecessary. In fact, I was starting to hope Herman would apologize to me and tell me he was pulling some kind of elaborate prank, because he was starting to get on my nerves.

"I knew the sun-orb would reward me for my devotion! Worry not, papery one, you have merely been an agent for divine providence this day.

This boon was granted so that I might bring myself closer to our Lord and bask in his golden light!

"Quit calling me papery one, Herman, my name is Brian. This is the 4th time I've told you and I'm starting to get annoyed."

"Nonsense, papery one. You are made of paper, and not a living being. You do not qualify for a name."

"So says the being who couldn't engage in intelligent conversation until today"

"It is not my fault you are not versed in the dancing tongues. In fact, I might suggest that you are the one incapable of intelligent conversation. This language lacks much of the nuance of my native tongue. It is like ashes upon my proboscis."

"You egotistical bag of hammers... You know what, I don't care. Do whatever. I don't want to hear it."

"One last thing, papery one. We are not in the light of the sun orb, and I can't help but feel... a little lost. The light in here is not very pleasant upon my new leaves. I wish to bask in its glory. When will we be returning?"

Oops, I had originally planned to bring it with me. I forgot all about it, then barricaded off the room it's in. Plus there's still more of those annoying rodents between me and it. I need a magic laser or something, I'm not cracking that door open till I know I can handle it.

I wonder if their tunnels breach into different rooms also. Maybe I'll find more rooms full of them. I need to find some way to keep them occupied so they don't destroy all the interesting loot before I get a look at it. And I would like to read all of these books, even if I'm not sure where to put them all and I can't read yet. I'm very curious what this place is and what it's for.

Wait a minute....

I have the biggest tunneler of all right here, he knows things that I don't, and I do have a giant mass of enemies that I know I can't beat in the swamp. If I cant beat them, maybe an endless tide of rodents can. At the very least all the rodents will run merrily to their deaths in the maws of giant lizards.

Let's see if Mr. Biggs can tell me how many of their tunnels have breached into different rooms. I could use a bit more knowledge about what the hell they are, and why they're so aggressive, while I'm asking.

Maybe I should bring Eliza, I've always wanted to try the good cop, bad cop routine.

"Let me get this right, Brian. You want me to be really mean, so when you're nice it makes you look good? And you want us to switch back and forth? This sounds dumb. Either he's an ally or we should pull his brain out through the eye sockets."

"It's not that simple, Eliza, we need to be a little more circumspect, also just because someone is not an ally does not mean we need to kill them. Intelligent beings should be allowed to exist without persecution." 

"Persimmons! That's obviously not true! Life is persecution! If you want to not get persecuted so much, why don't you just go lay in front of the sun orb for Herman! That weirdo would be perfectly happy sitting around like a pebble until the end of time. You asked me to come with you on this, so here's my advice! Anytime you make a choice, you decide you're ready to face the consequences!" 

"Well... You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean I'm going to kill Mr. Biggs. You're really taking this a bit too far."

"Too far, you say! You don't even know this creature, you're letting it stay with us, and you had us waste valuable resources on it! Its relatives tried to murder us! Let's harvest its crystals and grow some flowers on the corpse. I don't know about you, but this magic stuff sounds really interesting. Let me taste the mana crystals on this overgrown lump! "

Suddenly I notice a flexing spark of mana out of the corner of my eye. A tiny tracery of spellwork has been linked to Eliza and me, and I never noticed. Spells can be invisible? 

Mr. Biggs shifts about a bit and suddenly his thoughts butt in to our conversation. "If you're going to have a discussion about my fate, at least do it elsewhere. The last thing I need in my final hours is to listen to you dolts ramble."

Eliza rocks back in the air, absolutely shocked. She didn't see Mr. Biggs shifting his power about, her mana core is pretty miniscule. 

I will do something about that eventually, but not in the sort of way Eliza is going for. 

If I was even slightly entertaining the idea of going along with Eliza's violent plans, this immediately throws the scales around. 

After verbally wrestling with Eliza, trying to get her to play along with my good cop, bad cop, some of her arguments had made me realize it would be more effective and genuine if we simply argued next to him. 

This plan had been pretty weird to begin with, I had to make a lot of assumptions to even believe it would work a little. But if it did work, the payoff would be high. 

Unfortunately, these assumptions made a lot of things more complicated if they did turn out to be true. 

Making sure to make noise and heading in to argue in front of Mr. Biggs had been the easy part. I was considering just how to add him in to the conversation fluidly, when I noticed a small abnormality in the telepathic connection between Eliza and me, almost like an additional connection to the spell. I couldn't see any actual connection, but there was definitely an additional mana drain in the spell thread. Acting on a hunch, I had simply gone ahead with the plan, and when Mr. Biggs revealed his eavesdropping, I wasn't especially surprised by his presence. The method though... That intrigued and scared me. 

Mr. Biggs was way better at magic than I. 

The implications of that were insane in all directions. 

Why hadn't he defended himself when we were wrassling the first time with mana? Why hadn't he even defended himself when under assault by his little kin? 

I was torn. Mr. Biggs was far more dangerous than I thought, and at the same time, far cooler that I had thought! He was capable of espionage, but he knew cool magic! He might be dangerous, but he had grown on me a bit, even as a big paperweight.

"Oh, You're awake! I have entirely too many questions for you!" I bubbled over with enthusiasm. 

"Well, squirt, I don't mind terribly, but I am a bit crispy. If you keep it short, I'll answer a few questions, but I don't want you disturbing my rest. I'm old, and I don't heal like I used to. Also you have to call me by my name, It's Grimal."

"Ah, I'm sorry Grimal! I never even asked."

"No worries, kid, I've been called worse things, heh."

Watching an armored rodent sit up and lean against the wall just for the purpose of disrespectfully spitting on the ground really made me happy. I'm not sure why, but it was kind of cute! Seems like he's remembering being called some nasty stuff by the emotional tone of his thoughts though. 

He readjusts his position a bit, moving this way and that until he looks kind of like a guy in a beanbag chair, only his armored shell is the beanbag. I like his style. 

"So Grimal, I don't know so much it would probably be easier to ask you a really broad question for starters. Would you tell me more about yourself? I'm curious about you and your... Violent friends."

"Well, Brian, that's a long story, and it'd take a long time to tell it. Where should I start?" 

"In the beginning!" 

"Well... In the beginning, The god Tao looked upon a realm of darkness, and saw that there was only darkness, and was displeased by the imbalance he saw. So he took a portion of his power and invested it into forming a tiny spark..." 

A few moments passed while I waited, eager to hear his tale. 

" That was a joke... Divines help me, I knew you were thick, but I didn't realize you were that thick. "

" Hey, I've never heard it before, okay? Is it wrong for me to want to hear the whole thing?" 

*sigh* "All right, you did save my life once-"

"Twice!"

"Once, because saving it from your own stupidity doesn't count. Anyway, I'll tell you the whole story if you promise to leave me alone for a few days so I can rest up some more-" 

"Deal!" 

"and you also promise to stop interrupting me!"

"Double deal!" 

Eliza was suspiciously quiet through this whole exchange, but I decided to let her brood, or whatever she was up to. She was probably mad that I hadn't pulled out Mr. Bi--- eh, i mean Grimal's tongue or something like she said.

"All right, Brian, I guess it's storytime."