Saxon made his way toward his desk and booted up his computer.

“Are you early, or am I late?” Saxon asked, noticing Lya now sitting at Herman’s old desk.

Lya looked down at her watch. “Both. What’s with the gloves?”

“I have poor circulation, so my hands get cold,” Saxon replied. While Saxon wasn’t technically lying, the main purpose was to cover the wounds from when he gripped Kenji’s katanas.

“Must be a pain to type with those on,” Lya remarked. “Good thing I already did the work for you.”

Saxon glanced over at Lya to see her waving a stack of papers in the air. “Whatcha got there?”

“The report regarding the Desmond case,” Lya responded. “Quinn wanted it redone, and this time without any baseless theories.”

Saxon walked over and grabbed the report off Lya’s desk.

“She said I needed your approval first,” Lya said.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Saxon replied, taking the report back to his desk.

After reading the entirety of it, Saxon shared his opinion. “This won’t cut it.”

Lya was rightfully frustrated. She had spent hours on the report, and triple-checked the contents to make sure not even the tiniest detail had been excluded.

“Is anything in there incorrect?” Lya questioned, slightly annoyed.

“No,” Saxon answered.

“Nothing is omitted,” Lya said.

“That’s the problem,” Saxon replied. “This is 5 times the length it needs to be.”

Lya was confused. “Isn’t it best to provide the most detail possible?”

“In theory that would be best,” Saxon replied. “Unfortunately, we’re the only department that deals with avatars in the entirety of Fable. That means we have a lot of cases, so our reports have to be concise.”

Lya sighed. “Alright, I'll fix it.”

“No you aren’t,” Saxon said, shaking his head.

“Just give it to me, and stop being so, ow!” Lya exclaimed, getting from her desk to retrieve the report.

“Sit back down,” Saxon said. “Avatars heal quicker, not instantly. Your foot probably still hurts. Prop it up, and ice it.”

“I can still fix the report,” Lya insisted, sitting back down. “Did it all myself at the academy.”

Saxon rolled his eyes. “At the academy, you were probably out of everyone’s league. Nobody’s work matched your standards, so you did it all yourself. Here, everybody, well mostly everybody, is competent, likely more so than you.”

“How can I learn to do it, without doing it myself?” Lya inquired.

“Experience is great for learning, but so are examples,” Saxon replied. “Just let your senior show off, okay.”

“Well I look forward to studying your contributions,” Lya said.

Saxon stood from his desk. “Before I do anything, I’m gonna go get a coffee. Do you want anything?”

“How’s the coffee?” Lya asked.

“Terrible,” Saxon answered.

“Great, I’ll take two,” Lya said.

“Coming right up,” Saxon responded.

As Saxon returned with the coffees, he handed two of them to Lya, and the last one he took to his desk.

Over the next few hours, Saxon revised the report Lya had made. All of the information was solid, so all Saxon had to do was condense it.

He was surprised to see that Lya had left in his hypothesis about Desmond’s mythos--which Saxon had confirmed was indeed Bigfoot. As expected, the section about Desmond wanting to be captured was removed, and likely for the best.

Saxon suspected it was far more likely Desmond was simply unaware that his mythos had been remanifested--similar to Octave--and could no longer hide him, explaining why Saxon and Lya were able to catch him by surprise.

It still didn’t explain Desmond’s strange actions, but it was far more plausible than Saxon’s last theory and aligned with his overarching belief that somebody was altering mythoi in Fable.

Once he had finished all the revisions, Saxon printed out the new report and handed it over to Lya. “Whaddya think?”

Lya picked it up, skeptical that something a fraction of her previous report could still convey the same details. However, she found herself pleasantly surprised at how Saxon was able to condense her points down.

“Looks like you’re one of the competent ones,” Lya joked.

“Told you,” Saxon said, grinning. “Give it another run-through, in case you catch anything I missed.”

“And what’ll you be doing in the meantime?” Lya asked.

“Gonna hit up the archives,” Saxon replied. “I want to chase down an idea I have regarding the whole Epilogue incident.”

“Oh, I forgot you were involved with that,” Lya said. “Well whatever your idea is, it better be more plausible than the criminal wanting to be caught. I have a feeling Quinn isn’t the type to let you get to 3 strikes.”

“The fact that you’ve been here all of 3 days, and can figure that out tells me you're gonna survive,” Saxon replied.

“Thanks?” Lya said, unsure if that was a compliment. “Well, good luck.”

“You too,” Saxon replied.

Saxon headed over to the Library of Alexandria to find the books Octave had been given, while he was at the Epilogue.

Saxon started meandering about the library’s halls. Without Alex, Saxon had no chance of finding what he was looking for.

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After a lot of walking about aimlessly, Saxon finally stumbled into Alex as they were reading through a book.

“Found you!” Saxon exclaimed.

“What do you need?” Alex asked, glancing up from their book.

“Heard they found some books in the apartment above the Epilogue,” Saxon said. “Was wanting to check them out.”

Alex simply snapped their fingers, and with a flash of light, a stack of books appeared out of thin air and fell onto the floor in front of them.

Saxon was surprised to see Alex use their mythos. Typically, Alex wouldn’t summon anything in the library for anyone other than themselves, because nobody besides themself knew where to put it back.

Alex promptly returned to their reading. “Please, take them. You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Why are you so ready to get rid of these things?” Saxon inquired, picking up the stack of books.

“Because those books are making organizing a nightmare,” Alex replied. “I’ve got the same set of books scattered throughout the library. However, these are slightly different, and relevant to the case, so Quinn wants me to store them.”

“And that leads to confusion between these and the real copies,” Saxon said.

“Exactly,” Alex confirmed.

“Wait a second,” Saxon said. “Did you summon these because you’re banking on me losing them so that you don’t have to put them back?”

“Perhaps,” Alex replied.

Saxon had no reply, so instead began skimming through each of the books, to find the one he was looking for. “Think I’m gonna just do this one for today.”

“Let me see that for a second,” Alex requested, closing their book.

“Sure,” Saxon said, handing over the book. “Mind if I ask why?”

Alex started speedreading the book. “Checking to see if this is the real or the fake one. Orpehus’ tale has Hades in it, so Seph had the real one for the longest time, meaning I always get this one and that one mixed up.”

“I’m surprised Eddi let her return it,” Saxon asked. “He’s always giving all his patients books about their mythos. Eddi is always telling me that one day Seph is gonna wake up, and forget who Hades even is. Considering she never leaves her room, and spends all day playing games, I can kinda understand his concern.”

“Well that’s just the thing,” Alex responded. “Supposedly Eddi’s anxiety got so bad, that he started taking time out of his day to explain the entire mythos of Hades to Seph, so the Underworld doesn’t vanish overnight. Seph felt Eddi’s constant lecturing was sufficient enough to keep Hades in her mind, so returned everything she had related to him.”

“That checks out,” Saxon said, worryingly unsurprised by Eddi’s actions.

“Pretty sure this is the fake,” Alex said, handing the book back to Saxon.

“Well, I was going to get the other copy anyway, and compare the two,” Saxon informed Alex. “Do you know where I could find that one?”

Wanting to keep the book in its proper place this time, Alex closed their eyes and started thinking. “Go 3 aisles down, then 2 right and 1 left. It’ll be the bookshelf on your left, 2nd row, 5th book from the left. And put it back, when you’re done.”

“Thank you,” Saxon said.

Following Alex’s instruction, Saxon was able to quickly locate the book. As he did, Saxon even checked the book's placement on the bookshelf. Sure enough, it was on the 2nd row and 5th from the left. Saxon chuckled to himself in astonishment.

Saxon took the book and opened both it and the fake one, and set them side by side.

He’d never read anything about Orpheus before, so reading the story was rather interesting.

Orpheus predominantly using a golden harp was a surprise to Saxon. Given how Octave’s mythos manifested, he had expected Orpheus to be a musician who played several instruments, though such a deviation wasn’t too uncommon.

Mythoi typically manifested somewhat in line with their original myth, but rarely was it an exact one-to-one. Just as details of a story change depending on the person telling it, mythoi could manifest differently than their source material depending on the avatar’s interpretation of the myth itself--as was the case with Jack Reisch.

During his reading Saxon wrote down every sentence that had been altered from the original, in the fake copy Octave had been given, next to the original sentence. It wasn’t until Saxon was done, and took a look at the list he had made, that a pattern started to form.

It wasn’t obvious by any means, but nearly every mention of the effect Orpheus’ music had on those that listened to it had been changed to use more forceful language. Phrases such as “brought Hades to tears,” changed to “forced Hades to tears.”

What keyed Saxon into the purposes of these alterations, was one change in particular. The line “Orpheus was a musician so great that he evoked emotion from every god and man, and it was said even trees and rocks would be moved by his music,” had been changed to “Orpheus’ music was so great that no god or man could resist its charm, and it was said even trees and rocks would be forced to dance upon hearing it.”

In the original, Orpheus was shown to be a musician whose music could move anybody. In the copy Octave had been given, through subtle changes in word choice and phrasing, Orpheus’ depiction had been altered to a musician whose music could force emotions onto people.

The change from music that was moving to commanding, was the same one that happened to Octave’s mythos. This informed Saxon that this book was deliberately given to Octave, as a means of conditioning Octave into this belief about Orpheus.

However, this raised an important question. Why would whoever was altering mythoi, need to change Octave’s interpretation?

That’s when Saxon had an idea.

Something that had been bugging Saxon was the limitations of changing a mythos’ manifestation. He knew there had to be a limitation on the number of mythoi they could alter a day, and the significance of the alterations, because otherwise whoever was behind this would have already accomplished their goal by now--and they’d be virtually unstoppable.

What provided both of those limitations, and would explain why Octave’s interpretation needed to be changed, is if the mastermind behind all this isn’t changing mythoi at all, but rather simply remanifesting them.

When a mythos manifests, it does so based on the avatar’s interpretation of it, and from there on cannot change. As a result, Saxon theorized that if an avatar’s interpretation of their mythos were to change for some reason, and the mythos was to manifest again, then logically the manifestation would fall in line with their new idea.

If Saxon was right, then this was a massive limitation. Changing an avatar’s belief about their mythos was not an easy task. It would take a long time, and undoubtedly some would ultimately never change their interpretations.

While this should have come as a relief to Saxon, it instead brought far more concerns. With the inconsistency, and time investment needed to change a single avatar’s mythos, the fact that so many had been changed without anyone realizing terrified Saxon, because it meant this had been going on for a long time.

Moreover, it still begged the question of what the mastermind’s goal was. Removing Desmond’s ability to hide, and forcing Octave to unknowingly control people brought no benefit to anybody.

However, neither of those thoughts scarred Saxon half as much as another realization he had. In all his years in Fable, he had never seen manifestations that didn’t just deviate, but also contradict their source material.

Bigfoot being hard to find is a key aspect of his myth. While deviations could occur during a manifestation, core parts always remained present in some form. That fact is exactly how Alex had helped Saxon rule out candidates for Desmond’s mythos.

What this signified to Saxon was that the remanifestations were either far more heavily influenced by or worse, solely influenced by the avatar’s interpretation. If this was true, then theoretically there was no limit on what kind of power a remanifested mythos could grant.

The only piece of reassurance Saxon had was that most avatars were familiar enough with their mythos that changing their interpretation drastically would prove near impossible.

Additionally, if the mythos depended largely on the avatar’s interpretation, then Saxon hypothesized that by changing their interpretation back he may be able to undo the changes, though that was just a theory.

Unfortunately, Saxon was very unfamiliar with the science of mythoi, and avatars. Without proper understanding of how a mythos manifests, any more thinking would simply drive him crazy.

Luckily, he happened to be close friends with somebody who knew more about mythoi and avatars than anybody else in Fable.

Saxon looked up at the clock, noticed it was about to be lunchtime, and decided to call Eddi.

“Hey man, wanna grab lunch?” Saxon asked.

“Sure,” Eddi replied. “I’ve been craving diner food, so this works out.”

“Who said we were eating at a diner?” Saxon questioned.

“It’s you,” Eddi responded.

“Fair enough,” Saxon said. “Let’s meet up at Valhalla. Sounds good?”

“Sounds good,” Eddi replied, hanging up the phone.

Saxon needed to consult somebody who knew what they were talking about and what better time to do so than lunchtime?