“Turns out, the Protans were busy, huh!” Dema exclaimed, joining their side.

“It was them?” Bell asked, her voice laden with wonder.

“I would assume so, considering they are the only spacefaring people we have records of.” Isobel shrugged and clacked dangerously close to the ledge.

The city sloped upwards in terraces, the closest buildings around twenty paces downward, whereas the ones leading further into the massive cavern were no more than little dots in the distance. This settlement was easily the size of Hallmark, if not larger. Theora fought the urge to let herself fall on the nearest roof to jump from building to building, leaving her friends behind. Perhaps she would get to do that later.

“Yeah… that is bad news for the experiment,” Bell murmured. Her eyes went over caved-in houses. “I wouldn’t want to break this place any further.”

“Yep!” Isobel said. “Still, I figured we could take a look around. Let’s find some evidence that it actually belonged to the Protans.” She expectantly looked to Dema, who nodded and then bit into her wrist. Blood gushed out as if it had only just been waiting for the occasion, and with a wave of her hand, it formed into a crystal blood bridge leading down. Dema set foot on it while it was still in the process of forming further ahead.

Theora joined her first, her gaze wandering around. They had to make sure to stay in Bell’s oxygen bubble — technically both Theora and Isobel could walk outside of it, but talking was much harder without air to carry the voices.

That might make it more difficult to run around on her own… The buildings seemed to be made of calcite or something similar; definitely not sturdy. Which was understandable, considering calcite was easy to make using Skills, and safe from any weather degradation here beneath the surface of the moon.

“During my mission to meet the Ancient Devourer, I found a Protan device on a hidden planet,” Theora murmured. She still remembered his name — V47.

“Really?” Dema asked in surprise, and it was only now that Theora realised she may have never mentioned that to anyone.

“Yes. He… well, he was very nice,” she said. “Hugged me and gave me advice when I didn’t know how to continue.”

“Oh… like, someone to talk to?” Isobel asked, turning her head.

Theora nodded. “I don’t think what we might find here would be alive in the way he was… I found him through his presence. I don’t feel any presences down here. But seeing abandoned remains of technology made me think of him.”

“What do you mean, technology?” Bell asked, and looked around to see if she missed something. She found town — a wide street they were paving across on Dema’s blood bridge, which led down to a tiny plaza. “All I see are houses?”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re used to them,” Dema teased.

“What?” Bell blinked, then looked around more frantically to find anything of note.

There were some interesting things in the streets — statues made of calcide maybe? Among other things; though it was difficult to tell exactly what they were from above. That, and some old, dark debris.

Eventually Bell turned to Isobel with a questioning gaze. “Are they messing with me?”

“It’s because you’re young.” Isobel gave her an indulgent smile. “Theora and Dema are both ancient, so they may have seen it happen. Millions of years ago, during my first life” — she turned her head and waved her hand to present the city — “houses did not exist. They are a technology.”

Bell blinked. “Oh. Right, that’s obvious.” She chewed on her lip, then turned to Theora. “There’s no difference to you between seeing a house or a—an advanced machine?”

“In this case there’s a difference, because only one of them is alive,” Theora said.

“Huh…” Bell didn’t quite seem happy with the answer. “Okay then, is there a difference to you between seeing a city and…” She scratched her cheek with a tendril. “And, say, an advanced magical device?”

Theora shrugged. “Maybe.” She mulled it over in her head for a moment. “I think what reminded me of V47 was simply seeing something made by people. Cities, knowledge, Skills, machines, language — they change as time passes, because they are made by people, as opposed to things that change because they are made by nature.”

“Okay, but now I know for sure you are messing with me,” Bell claimed, not sounding sure at all. She hopped down as they reached the end of Dema’s bridge, but stared at Theora rather than the scenery. “Since when is language a technology?”

“It had to be invented,” Isobel said, without even looking at them — she was gazing into an alleyway leading towards the city centre. “Didn’t exist millions of years ago, either. I got a trait that taught me that stuff after waking up.”

“But—” Bell took a deep breath as she was having her little mind broken apart. “Okay, but language doesn’t change. I can read manuscripts that are thousands of years old, no problem, no matter where they are from.”

Theora frowned. She looked over at Dema, who was equally puzzled. Language didn’t change. Didn’t language change, though? Why did something about the phrase ring familiar? She looked over to Isobel.

“Yeah, no clue about that one,” Iso admitted, also looking a little confused. “As I said, I got all that from a trait.”

“Pretty sure language changes, though!” Dema said. “New words are made all the time. Like, the word ‘DespairLit’ didn’t used to exist. Right?”

“Right,” Theora agreed. That one was definitely new. “But I thought old words changed too. They don’t?”

“We understood each other perfectly when we first met,” Dema murmured. “So it can’t have changed that much.”

Theora scratched her head, letting her gaze wander over the surroundings. Eventually she stepped closer to a building, Bell scrambling behind her to keep everyone in the bubble. As Theora peered into a window, she finally found what she was looking for — words. She climbed into the ruins, picked up a board hanging on the wall, and read aloud:

“I was here.”

Dema climbed after her. “I can read that! But it must be old…”

“Ah,” Theora let out; it came out involuntarily at the sudden realisation. It was at that moment that the memory came back to Theora. Neither Bell nor Iso had been around when it hit, and Dema may not have noticed because she’d been in solitary confinement at the time. “Right. Forgot about that.”

“Forgot about that?” Bell carried herself inside with help of her tendrils. Her gaze went around the inside of the room — broken pieces of calcite, abandoned furniture.

“The patch.”

Theora knew the others were waiting for her, but the memory was a little difficult to retrieve and put into words.

She managed to say: “Language patch. Our language doesn’t change anymore because the System translates it into a unified language for all of us.” Then, Theora spoke in her native tongue, “Forgot how fun learning new words was” — but of course it came out as unified speech. On her travels during the first few centuries of her journey she’d met many other places with other languages.

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“Wait,” Dema said, “does that mean the System can control what we like, tell each other?”

“Probably not,” Isobel chimed in, giving Theora a bit of relief. “I checked that loophole back when we started using the System’s instant messaging component. My investigation came to the conclusion that that’s an Interface thing, not a Brat thing. The component lies incredibly deep, has little overhead. The conscious Brat part of the System likely has very limited access. But yeah… I had no clue that the System did that. I thought everyone just spoke the same language because it’s easier.”

“Still feels a little scary,” Bell murmured. “I had no idea, either.”

Theora really had completely forgotten something that was so important…

“I didn’t even notice!” Dema cheered with easygoing curiosity, like she’d just learned an interesting fun fact. Somehow that made Theora feel a little better.

“I wonder if there’s a way to disable that translation module,” Isobel mused under her breath. “Would be fun to hear everyone’s true words.”

“It would be…” Dema trailed off as she made her way to the door into another room. “Wait.” Her head swivelled toward Theora. “Didn’t you break the System back then? But we could still talk!”

“I targeted the quest user interface,” Theora said.

The System itself was a much larger target and that would have had far more severe consequences. Likely, part of the System now laid rotten and decomposing beneath the surface; it had turned and twisted itself to hide the damage. If the language component was as deep as the messaging component, it may have remained unaffected by any of Theora’s attacks.

Isobel hummed, looking absentmindedly at the ‘I was here’. “Maybe we can hear each other’s true words if we go outside the System’s range. Although it would take a few years.”

Outside the System’s range… That’s where Theora had met V47. Then why had she been able to talk to him?

“So, you wanted to find evidence,” Dema went, and came back from the other room with a painting of a landscape in hand. It showed a forest clearing like you’d find on Himaeya. “Does that count?”

Isobel went closer, smiling as she inspected the image. “This is probably a good start. My thought was this — we find evidence that the Protans really lived here. And if they did, then…” She scratched her mandible over the other. “Well, I thought that between Bell and I, we have the infrastructure to take other people to the moon — like you, and Dema. So…”

“I think some of their descendents still live in the Feverwoods,” Theora remarked as understanding dawned. “You want to offer them a visit?”

Isobel nodded. “If Bell is up for that, of course.”

“I mean—” Bell hesitated. “Look, maybe? Dema and Theora are both kind of immortal. Even if I mess up, nothing too bad is going to happen to them.”

“Oi,” Dema let out playfully. “I can still feel pain! Lots of things can happen to me!”

Dema sure didn’t make a habit out of acting the part, though.

“I get what you mean,” Isobel said with a sigh. “Bringing people who are less… sturdy up here is a bigger risk. It’s up to you. I was just thinking that perhaps an archaeologist of theirs would like to take a look.”

“Didn’t they abandon this stuff?” Dema asked, still looking like she desperately wanted to run off and explore. “Like, wasn’t that the thing?”

Isobel nodded. “At least from what we heard in preparation for Theora’s space mission, yes. They noticed they couldn’t expand into the skies further without harmfully reducing our home planet’s resources. Even Skills weren’t able to make up for that. But that was a few thousand years ago.”

Bell frowned, slightly retracting her tendrils that had started probing around the room. “You think it would be different nowadays?”

“Nah,” Iso said. “If they figured it would just take time, I don’t think they would have done a full evacuation and cease of procedures. I don’t think anything changed, I just figured…”

“That you could offer their descendents a look into their past,” Theora surmised.

Isobel beamed and seemed to visibly grow as her segments shifted apart in a bout of happiness. “Yeah! It’s a bit selfish too, to be honest. Those ruins are just like I was before I was revived! Not to say we should revive this city, but I’d be curious to hear out a Protan historian’s thoughts, if we find one who wants to guide us… and I’d feel awkward perusing too much without their consent.”

Dema let out a sigh, at which Isobel giggled.

“I said not to peruse too much. I think there’s nothing wrong with taking a quick look?”

“Yeah!” Dema cheered, and was about to run off, but Isobel cleared her throat.

“Mom, please remember that you can only breathe right now because we’re in Bell’s air bubble.”

“Oh, right,” Dema let out, looking a little dejected. “Damn, and I’m all out…”

“All out of what?” Theora asked. Wait — Isobel and Dema had been out alone earlier, without Bell. Isobel was one thing, but Dema…?

“Ah, right, you didn’t know yet,” Isobel said. “Remember how I can store liquids in my body? Well, turns out, because of her blood’s inherent regenerative abilities, the cells won’t just die. So, if we take blood from one of her arteries, and store it inside me—”

“Yeah, but I used all the oxygenated blood on our earlier trip. It’s a bit of a hassle.” Dema shrugged. “But I really wanted to go further in…”

“I know you’re curious,” Bell said, “but why that much? It’s old ruins and they aren’t going to run away. We can just prepare properly and then come back. No need to rush.”

Dema tilted her head. “Wait, don’t you feel the thingy?”

“Feel what thingy?”

Dema pointed into the distance. There was a dome in the centre of the town, but that wasn’t quite what Dema indicated. “The thing that calls out to mages, forgot the name. Wants me to go there.”

Bell’s expression changed from confusion to a frown. “Ah. Sorry, yeah. I’m not very sensitive right now because of the barriers.” Her gaze turned to Isobel, who smiled.

“You mean Manawant, right? I kinda feel it too! Now that we’re closer. Was it there the entire time?”

Dema shrugged, and then bit her lips. “Dunno. It became really obvious after we entered, but now I’m wondering if this might be why we chose this location for a test site in the first place.”

“It called out to us,” Isobel said with a nod. “Yeah.”

“What are you all talking about?” Theora asked. She didn’t feel anything. “Manawant?”

“It’s when a thing wants mana,” Dema said and pulled Theora ahead. “Like that big building in the distance there,” she said, pointing to that dome. “Kinda reminds me of the Observatory of Fiction. But that one’s really faint compared to the others around here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Isobel let out. “Looks like they have a smaller version here.”

“Maybe so they won’t get bored from living in a grey city,” Bell murmured.

Theora shook her head. “I don’t think it used to be just grey.” The walls had a hint of colour to them, for one thing, but more importantly — there were remains. Many of them turned to dust by time, but occasionally, there was a hint of a piece of wood, a hint of soil.

The streets were spacious and looked like they’d once been overgrown with vegetation. The leftovers were black and shrivelled, though.

Dema pointed to a calcite statue of perhaps a bear; it appeared shoddily made, like children’s Skill practice. “That’s cute!”

Eventually, they reached a plaza, full with remnants of an older time — more child’s play scattered around, some statues had been destroyed and formed into new ones. Here, they found more elaborate and skillful creations too, like a miniature version of the city on a calcite table; although it appeared outdated. Or maybe it was never meant to be accurate in the first place.

“Oh!” Dema let out as they reached the centre. “That…” She turned to Theora. “See? Remind you of anything?”

Theora let her eyes wander over the basin — it was very large, laid into the ground, with a railing around it.

Dema hopped inside and the basin began glowing.

“You can imbue items that need to be refilled with Manawant,” Isobel explained, looking at Theora. “The spell creates a pull to nearby mages with excess mana who can charge the device back up. It feels a little bad to not charge them. It’s like a pet that wants feeding.”

Theora watched Dema charge the basin back up. There had been something similar at the Grand Observatory of Fiction. Was it built by Protans?

It seemed at first like Dema was struggling, but soon it became apparent that the basin was simply distributing the mana to surrounding devices. Lanterns started glowing; not all of them, for some were broken. Little orbs by the wayside began thrumming in a low bass tone, the vibrations carrying all over the plaza.

“What’s happening?” Bell asked, looking a little apprehensive. Theora sensed her preparing a plethora of Skills; Bell was getting ready to defend them.

“I think it’s fine,” Isobel said with a giggle. “I wonder if this works properly? We should test it out!”

Dema didn’t let herself be told that twice and broke free from Bell’s bubble. Bell almost lurched on reflex to make sure Dema was still covered, and only held back upon realising she’d left on purpose. Bell still looked anxious.

Theora gently tapped a hand against Bell’s bell — a sign they had decided on that wouldn’t startle her into using [Last Stand]. Bell turned around to find Theora smiling down at her.

“It’s alright, Bell,” she said. “You might get some relief soon. I think these devices are making atmosphere.”