If my first day at Dyralight went far better than I'd imagined, the second... well... didn't.

It started out normal enough. When I went into the office, there was a note on my desk:

> Partial confirmation. We have the wreckage in our possession. The rune plate was damaged in the crash. Not able to confirm your suggestions on how to break this, but there are intact points that are clearly not FSD-decision. — Ampha

I still had no idea who Ampha was, but apparently they did good work. Together with the note was a hand-drawn schema with heavy scribbling around the edges (to represent damage?) and a few of the clear points circled. Checking them on my rune tablet, I saw that they were places that didn't match our version of FSD-decision.

We had a weekly team meeting a bit later, where Kayla and I presented our findings. Torrin looked pleased by the clear evidence that it was not our work that had caused the crash. Kayla seemed to care more about what people would say about it on the news. "Best part of all is, now the talking heads won't have any way to pin this on us."

"You know that's not true," Joanna said. "They'll say it's our fault anyway because we 'did not do enough' to prevent people from tampering with it, and then accuse us of blaming the victim." I noticed she was standing in the corner of the meeting room, with everyone else gathered around the table. Yesterday at the restaurant, she'd been at the end of the table too. Was she deliberately trying to distance herself from others, to minimize the effect her aura would have on them?

Kayla groaned at her prediction. "Ugh, by Meþas's tits, you're probably right."

I blinked at the vulgarity; I wasn't expecting something like that out of her, especially in a professional setting! Kelamek gave her a curious look. "I admit my knowledge of tha surfacer panþeon isn't the best, but isn't Meþas a male god?"

Irgos gave him a scaly grin. "He is! That's why it's funny!"

Torrin scowled at their antics. "Anyway, good work from you two. Next, can you look at tightening up the oculus's decision time a bit? The way it fiddled around classifying that car is a bit concerning. Even if it wasn't the cause of the crash, it might cause the next one."

"Sure," I said. Then, looking around the room again, I noticed something. "Hey, where's Apogee?"

"Out sick today," Torrin said, before moving on to ask Irgos and Kelamek how they had done yesterday.

After the meeting, Kayla went with me over to the lab. We were at a R&D office, not a factory, but the lab was kind of the closest thing we had to one. A large, wide-open room with about half a dozen Feurdanfs in various stages of completion, hooked up to different mechanisms and arcane devices for testing. There was a sign on the wall, "38 days without an extraplanar incident."

"You're doing planar magic here?" I asked Kayla.

"Not exactly, but sometimes testing can cause interference that draws the attention of things from other realms. It's why we have a Summoner on staff."

Who... isn't here today. Perfect! "So how come I never hear about wrecks causing Incursions?"

"Because the magic that runs a car won't do that. It's the testing systems interacting with unproven and possibly faulty runescripts that does it. Didn't they tell you about this stuff at school?"

"No; they never had us working on anything powerful enough to accidentally cause an Incursion."

She looked surprised by that. "Wow! Guess a lot's changed since I was in school!" She started showing me around the lab, looking at the various ways we had to test out the systems that go into a modern car, up to and including lifting a fully-operational Feurdanf up so the wheels are off the floor and putting a driver inside, then observing that the finished product responds to controls as expected.

"So, are you just showing me around, or is there stuff we need to do here for our new assignment that can't be done at our desks?"

"There is, actually," she said. "Because — aww, crud-muffins!"

Huh?

Suddenly a loud hissing, crackling sound, like the world's biggest piece of bacon being thrown into a hot skillet, filled the room. One of the other techs had been working on a testing device, and it was starting to warp, a tear in reality beginning to grow.

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

Kade looked over and gave an exasperated sigh. "Ugh, not again!" A small creature wriggled through and started looking around at the world it found itself in. It kind of looked like a cute little squirrel... except that a squirrel's cuteness comes in large part from its fuzziness, and this thing was completely hairless. Worse still, it was covered in a thin layer of foul-smelling slime. Oh, and also it wasn't particularly little, being about the size of your average guard dog!

Kade ran over to face off with it, his hands glowing. "Black mages, blast it!"

...black mages? What Age is he living in? Would he call a cleric a "white mage," or a theurge "red?"

Kayla sighed and started conjuring up little spears of ice, throwing them at the creature, which largely dodged out of the way, leaving the ice to shatter against the floor. The other tech, an orcish woman, saw this and threw some sort of hex, making it move a bit more slowly.

My first instinct was to try flame, but with so much delicate equipment around... I followed Kayla's example, conjuring ice shards. They were kind of embarrassingly puny compared to what she was tossing around; I'd never really thought I'd have much need for combat magic, so I did the bare minimum required for my degree and focused on more relevant stuff. Nevertheless, I did actually manage to land one hit on it.

With an enraged chittering sound, the outsider-squirrel-thing charged at me. I fumbled at trying to project a barrier spell, but Kade suddenly was in front of me. I hadn't even seen him move! As the monster leapt into the air, the old Felyn executed some sort of spinning kick that sent the creature flying, crashing into a wall with a nasty, squishy crunch. It fell to the ground, and the orc threw a bolt of violet energy at it that quickly made it stop twitching.

Kade chuckled to himself. "Don't think I've seen one of those before. Too bad Apogee's not here; he'd have enjoyed adding it to his collection!"

Needless to say, we didn't get much productive work done today. There were incident reports to fill out, safety procedures to review, a "days since" counter to reset, and an eldritch-squirrel corpse body to dispose of. Then Torrin called the four of us into the meeting room for a post-mortem.

Turns out the orc lady was Ampha. And just in case the magic she'd been wielding wasn't clue enough, she was wearing a collar emblazoned with the emblem of a dragon. I wasn't aware that Dyralight kept warlocks; I was kind of under the impression that the Big Guy opposed the practice! She quickly accepted responsibility for the accident, and that was that; it didn't seem like she was in trouble. Apparently this is just a thing that happens, and she'd try to do better in the future and that's all there is to it.

I, on the other hand, was the focus of some scrutiny. I didn't exactly get chewed out, but everyone in the room expressed surprise at my level of unpreparedness for a combat situation. Even Kade. I asked him, "weren't you the one talking about Thaxil's Tower yesterday, and how such things aren't really a part of today's society?"

He gave a little nod. "Society in general, yes. But Brad, you must understand... it is not the same for the ones building the tower."

I didn't really agree, but sometimes you need to know when to keep your head down. "All right. So, how can I do better? Could you teach me that Flash Step spell you used?"

The old cat's eyes twinkled. "That was no spell; I learned it through training at the dojo. If such things appeal to you, there are several nearby where you could study."

"Might be better to play to your strengths, though," Ampha chimed in.

I looked over at her. "Hmm?"

"Your magic's got no oomph behind it, but you landed a hit on that thing before Kade or Kayla did. You've got talent, just no real experience in using it."

I bit my lip, thinking it over. "So I should find somewhere I can take some classes in combat casting?"

She nodded, but at the same time Kayla shook her head. "You've already been through school and didn't pick this up. What you need is some practical education." She looked back and forth between the others. "What do you think? We've got some openings..."

Openings? Oh no... that does not sound good.

"That sounds like an excellent idea!" Torrin said. "Dyralight sponsors several Adventurer's League teams at the local dungeon, and we could use a dedicated Wizard on ours."

What? No, no no no. I've never been the weekend warrior type, not in the slightest! How do I get out of this? "Isn't Kayla a—"

"Bard!" she said, grinning at me. "Why'd you think I want a legendary instrument?" So she likes to play at being a minstrel, despite clearly being a wizard by training. Lovely.

Torrin nodded. "Kelamek's already expressed interest in joining up! It'll be great to have the whole team there. Next session is next Saturday; I'll æ-mail you the details." He didn't seem to care, or even notice, that I'd never actually said yes.

So what am I gonna do now? Can't really say no, not when I'm trying to make a good impression on these guys and I just moved across the Empire to take this job, with no friends around here and no backup plan. I guess I got roped into it. But I really don't want to do this.

And just to make it worse, on my way home I was listening to the voxcast and the news came on. Normally I'd attune a different station, but they interrupted with a special announcement. I kinda felt in my gut what it was going to be before they said it, but it was still a bit of a shock: the Emperor had passed away. He'd been sick for so long that everyone was expecting it, but... then again he'd been sick for so long that it just felt normal for him to stay sick forever. And of course they made a big deal of how he'd died with no heir and the question of succession would be thrown to the Council of High Lords, as if there was anyone in the Empire who didn't already know that was exactly what was going to happen.

Kayla's always ragging on the news; she seems to think reporters have something against us at Dyralight. When they go and "report" blindingly obvious things like that, though... I kinda wonder if they don't have something against all of us, and are engaged in a vast conspiracy to make the Empire dumber?