“So how does this usually work?”

Lilijoy looked at the easy bake oven, the small molecular manufacturing unit that Anda had brought with him. She had thought it lost in the chaos of escaping Guayaquil, but it turned out he had stashed it away for later retrieval. It looked exactly as it had, except for a small blue light shining on the top right corner. He had also brought a radiant power source.

Anda shrugged. “It’s very simple. Put feedstock in, perform the required chicken dance...” he broke off as he saw her expression.

“I’m glad you’re feeling more relaxed,” she said.

He smiled at her. “I had much to process, it is true. But to answer your question with the seriousness it deserves, it really is simple. This part of it, at any rate. You simply put your hand on the top, like so, and deliver the jade.”

“As in slip?”

He nodded, “Just so. They can actually take a variety of forms, but essentially it's an object on the Inside that stays with your system as data, if it’s in your inventory when you log out. The tricky part, or what can be tricky, is obtaining the jade in the first place. For that, you need to buy from a vendor, or do your homework on the Inside. Naturally, formulas for common items are easy to obtain, and quite affordable, but purchasing something like the jade for a blood pill would cost a couple thousand credits, and pills for higher ranks are unobtainable in most cases.”

She took a moment to ponder the Goldbergian elegance of the system. Ingredients gathered, rituals performed, all the arcane processes of Inside alchemy, in order to produce a one-time-use formula represented as a jade slip that could be used on the Outside, provided you had a molecular manufacturing unit of some kind.

“Does the Inside part of this correspond to the product, or is it arbitrary?” she asked.

“Some of both, perhaps more of the former, in a loose, magical kind of way,” Anda replied. “The original formulas, ingredients, proportions and whatnot, are closely guarded secrets, though many of them have become common knowledge over the years, or at least the general outlines of them. Blood pills usually have the blood of some magical beast or another as a starting point for example. It has layers too, I’m sure you could learn much more about that from Marcus, so that high-level alchemists can access the actual molecular designs and become chemists again, gaining the ability to customize and improvise.”

Lilijoy’s mind was buzzing with ideas. “What about actual Inside objects, or creatures? Is there any way to copy them over?”

Anda chuckled, “That would be something, wouldn’t it? No one has discovered such a method, if it exists at all. Weapons and such often have corresponding formulas, which allow them to be recreated Outside. That sword Attaboy has been waving around is an example of that, I’m sure. It probably has a twin on the Inside somewhere. I think we can all be grateful that living beings can’t be created.”

“Yeah,” Lilijoy jumped in, “I’m sure the clans would have run wild with that. There’d be armies of ogres riding saw-backed lions all over the place.”

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what might be possible for her, for the Tao System. What would it be like, to blur the lines still further between Inside and Outside? Shadow had already found a way to affect events in both worlds, and the oracle stones allowed information to travel back and forth directly. Could an Insider, someday, step forth and explore the Earth? It would only be fair, she thought.

Out of curiosity, she placed her hand on the top of the boxy device, and immediately felt her system engage with it.

“I don’t suppose you have a jade for another arm on you?” she asked Anda. “Just kidding. I’m going to grow it back, so there’s no point anyway.”

“How long will it take, do you think?” he asked.

“Too long,” she replied, “but I have a short term solution, kind of.”

He raised an eyebrow and she beckoned him closer.

“Look carefully,” she said, holding up her left arm, which ended in a smooth stump just past the elbow. Anda could see nothing at first, but then there was a stirring under the smooth skin, dark lines converging to a tiny point which swelled into a tiny angular protrusion with a metallic sheen. After another couple seconds, a blade that would have been about right for a young field mouse had formed.

“The world’s sharpest toothpick!” Lilijoy said with pride. “Courtesy of Nykka’s sword. Unfortunately, the little guys that form it have very strong opinions about the angles of their bonds. I had hoped I could make a working metal hand, but it seems like sharp and pointy is the main thing in their wheelhouse. Eventually I'll make enough to form real blades.”

She returned her attention to the easy bake oven, while Anda contemplated her new ability to grow tiny, tiny swords. The interface with the device wasn’t visual; there was no text or graphics. Instead, it was a subtle sensation of readiness, that the machine was waiting for her to deliver something, a jade, she assumed.

Hmm. You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you? she mused. I need to get hold of some jades to study.

“You can make a sword anywhere on your body?” Anda asked.

“Theoretically,” she replied. “Once I have enough, and as long as I can anchor them to bone. I could make a pretty mean hedgehog.”

Saying that made her think of Professor Anaskafius.

Anda cleared his throat, an uncharacteristic sound. “I’ve been wondering something,” he said. “Are you absolutely set on doing...” he waved in the general direction of the airship, “...this, now? Even another month or two would make a substantial difference.”

Lilijoy looked up at him. “There’s a clock counting down, somewhere, that’s all I know. It’s like Sarah said in her letter, there’s a choice looming and everything is going to come down to one pathetically small pile of brain cells and the problem is, I’m not ready. But it’s even worse because it’s not me, it’s Attaboy, probably. But Sarah thought there was an answer, if she just had more time. She thought the answer was on the Inside, but what if it isn’t? What if it’s out here, up there?” She pointed north with her needle-sized sword.

Anda nodded, slowly. “I just wanted to check in. I’ll spare you any lectures I may or may not have prepared.” He grinned, “And maybe my intentions aren’t entirely pure. There are two things I truly hate in this world, ice and flying, and this trip is going to be nothing but.”

“At least there won’t be geyser squid in New Mexico,” said Lilijoy, guessing where his aversion to ice might originate.

“I certainly hope not,” Anda replied. “But there aren’t respawns either.”

***

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They were ready to leave shortly after that, tents packed and belongings stowed with relative ease, given that most of what their possessions and provisions were already on the airship. The mid-afternoon sun draped over the lower third of the sky, stretching across rolling bands of ocher and umber as Lilijoy watched the campsite recede from view through the cabin window. She felt no particular nostalgia for the place, but the absence of the feeling felt like a void, and made her wonder if she would ever be able to put down roots, to have a place that would generate such a fond attachment, on the Outside, anyway.

We’re finally on our way, she thought, doing her best to dilute her apprehension with the excitement of the journey’s first step.

With seven of them, the airship was noticeably cramped. The cabin was designed for three people, with a small bathroom in the rear, and an even smaller cockpit partly sectioned off by a flimsy folding door at the front. Thankfully, all of them but Mo would be taking turns standing watch and piloting while the rest went Inside. Mo was stuck without an escape, other than watching the antics of his gods and sleeping, but he seemed comfortable enough with his role as human warning system.

When the ground vanished into haze and the windows filled with unrelenting tan, she turned to where Magpie and Nykka were softly conversing. The two of them got along quite well, for the most part.

“So I hear they finally have a new Head at the Academy,” Nykka was saying.

Magpie rolled her eyes. “The professors have been gossiping for weeks. Evidently, they don’t have any say in the matter, so it came as a surprise to them when it finally happened.”

“I imagine they got used to.. call it, hands free management over the years.”

“Yeah. The place could do with a shake-up.”

Listening to them talk, Lilijoy thought back over her last few weeks of Inside activities. It had begun calmly enough, and then gotten… interesting, in the way things did so often when she was involved.

***

Three weeks ago:

Lilijoy wished sleep was still a thing for her.

It’s been, what? Three weeks since I slept? Not counting passing out after decapitation.

Sleep framed one’s sense of time and the passage of days in a way that was hard to replace. She didn’t miss losing the time, but she missed the activities on either end. She finally had nice, soft pillows and blankets, and no need to snuggle into them and just let go, to enjoy the warmth and the slow drift into dreams. She could still go through the motions, but without biological imperative her mind had too much going on to let go of the day. She could put herself to sleep, but it felt too strange to program herself like some twentieth-century alarm clock, just to capture those few moments of bliss on either side.

It changed her relationship with her room too, giving it the feel of a waiting room or holding chamber where she kept herself when she had nothing better to do. It was where she kept her stuff too, she supposed, such stuff consisting of a single burnbalm plant that had somehow survived despite neglect. She had spent some time repairing that relationship earlier, and they were on good terms again.

“I suppose it’s more your room than mine,” she said to the plant.

Unlike her, Skria and Jess still needed to sleep, and after the celebration at the bar in town, the three of them had made their way back to the Academy, surrounded by an honor guard of orcs that took them to the front entrance. After greeting Mumo, they made their way through familiar halls and stairs rendered slightly foreign by the intensity of their recent experiences. Her friends had gone to their rooms, and she went to hers, not having anything better to do.

There weren’t many people around, as the Academy was now in the middle of an experience term. It was late at night, on top of that, so even if Professor Anaskafius was in his quarters, he was probably asleep. She wasn’t in the mood to read, and while she had a great deal of thinking to do, her system was still quite low on energy. Given how often her introspection led to internal events of seismic proportion, she felt it best to refrain from deep contemplation.

She looked out the window at the mist strewn training fields and arenas stretched out far below. While she felt restless, it wasn’t the kind of feeling that would be assuaged by losing herself in physical activity. Finally, she sighed.

Fine. To the Mystic Library I go.

Back down long, stone corridors and endless oak doors, down stairs winding and straight, she made her way to the Mystic Library. Or where the library was supposed to be. When she arrived at the intended destination, she was greeted by a blank wall, with no indication of where the library might have gone, or acknowledgment that it was missing in the first place.

Getting a real Hogwarts vibe here, she thought. You'd think they could leave a sign or something.

With nothing better to do, she set off in search of someone to ask, figuring she would head to Mumo’s office and hope she met someone nocturnal before she went that far out of her way. Three deserted hallways later, she had resigned herself to a conversation that was sure to be depressing, when she saw a furry figure walking toward her.

“Excuse me,” she called, when the wolf-kin was within hailing distance. “Do you know what happened to the library?”

He turned yellow eyes on her. “Not really. Stuff’s been moving lately and no one knows why.”

He walked past, clearly not interested in further conversation.

Well, that’s not helpful at all.

She continued walking, and while she passed a few more students, she was only able to find out that the changes had begun at the lower levels of the huge building over a week ago, and seemed to be slowly percolating upward. Since they began at more or less the same time as the current experience term, no one had been greatly inconvenienced yet, other than some of the faculty with offices in the subterranean portion of the building. But, according to rumor, areas that disappeared would reappear in a day or two, with only minor changes to the layout and furnishings.

Perhaps the Archon hired an interior decorator, Lilijoy mused.

Still, the whole situation had put the kibosh on her plans for the evening, so she once again found herself at loose ends. Then an idea struck as she remembered a promise she had made.

Let’s see, she thought, where would be a good place? Somewhere dark and not too strange…

She knew just the place. It only took her a few minutes to make her way to the Subtle Arts training area, hoping that it would be as deserted as the rest of the building. During previous experience terms, when the vast majority of the Academy population was grouped into minor cohorts and sent off into various parts of the Garden, the place still had a substantial population of stragglers. Some had just arrived, while others might have one reason or another to hang about. This time the building almost felt abandoned, and she had to wonder if it was due to the mysterious happenings.

She jumped up to the hidden handholds on the ceiling of the Subtle Arts antechamber with ease, and soon had made her way across the walkways and down to the floor level of the main Low Light Vision training arena. She found a corner of the huge space that felt reasonably contained and spun up the diamond energy necessary to look into her Trial Space.

She found Lowly in the nest he had been constructing over the days he was left to his own devices, a tangle of bones tied together with sinew with a variety of skins stretched across every place a skin could be, like some massive polyhedric amoeba. She knew from the previous times she had visited him that the poorly cured building materials lent it a distinct aroma. For Lowly, this was an entirely positive attribute, as it attracted small scavengers from a wide area of the cave system, essentially bringing dinner to his door.

You can take the boy out of the Labyrinth… she thought, wondering idly how he had procured the grisly components.

“Lowly,” she called, projecting her voice into the space, a trick she had recently stumbled upon.

There was some scuffling from the interior.

“Lowly, it’s me. It’s time to go.”

She could see him, barely, with her thermal vision, curled up into a ball.

“Remember, I told you this would happen,” she called one last time, trying to keep impatience from her voice. “You’ll be fine.”

“I am fine now,” he replied at last, his voice a thin lisp from within his nest. “This is fine. Everything is fine.”

She had tried on several occasions to explain why he would need to leave her Trial Space, but Archons and Realms just didn’t fit in his frame of reference. The Academy had an extremely diverse group of Insiders, from all kinds of backgrounds, so she thought it might be worth a try to see if the little Labyrinthian could find a home there, though she planned to watch over him carefully at first. She wasn’t entirely sure what the criteria for admission were for Insiders, other than tempering, but she suspected just getting to the Academy was a big one.

She was debating whether she should rudely pluck him from within his shelter of bone and skin when he emerged, his large eyes blinking as he searched the darkness for her. She felt some satisfaction to see that he was no longer quite as emaciated, and that the fine white scales scattered over his pale skin seemed less ruffled, almost as if they truly belonged there. The strange clumps of hair sticking off at various angles from his otherwise bald head hadn’t improved at all, but that was hair for you. Entirely too much trouble, in her opinion.

“Here we go,” she said. Without waiting for his response, she summoned still more diamond energy and pulled.

.

.

.