While traversing the balcony, Omet watched their siblings head downstairs and join the Indians and the half-dozen or so remaining Greeks. After a moment’s pause, they continued their circuit along the balcony and finished at Quet’s door.

They opened the door partway and knocked. “It’s Omet.”

“Come in.”

Omet opened the door to see Quet standing in front of Mark, who was hunched over a scrawled-over sheet of paper with his head in his hands.

“Mark realized he doesn’t read books,” explained Quet, “so he ended up coming back to the RPGs. He’s going to use his imagination, whether he likes it or not.”

Omet looked at Mark’s paper. “You started him with the mage one, didn’t you?”

“What’s a Quintessence?” mumbled Mark numbly.

Quet pulled on a handle on her wall, sliding out a person-sized computer server. “I’ll look it up on my copy of the wiki. You know, times like this vindicate my decision to download so much stuff before the internet collapsed. If I wasn’t such a procrastinatory info-hoarder, this knowledge could have been lost to history. Crazy.”

Omet sighed. “I keep telling you, the vampire one is the best way to introduce people to the system and setting, the mage one dumps too many systems on you at once to be new-player-friendly.”

“I don’t care how many movies you show me, vampires are for people with an overabundance of black makeup. Mang will be shown the superior ways of the wizard, and he will come to thank me for my wisdom.”

Mark pulled his knees close to his chest. “I thought you stopped calling me that…”

Omet looked around the room. “…I thought Waia was with you?”

Quet pushed the server back into the wall. “She went downstairs about ten minutes ago; you didn’t see her?”

Omet shook their head. “I’ve been checking up on the rest of the family since before then.”

“For the whole…?” Quet nodded towards the scattered papers bundled up on the corner of the desk.

“Partly.” After realizing how long they had been standing in the doorway for, Omet shut the door and stepped into the middle of the room. “Just kind of… wanted to hear your thoughts on all this. I mean, you haven’t exactly gotten a firsthand look at our guests downstairs, but I’m kind of talking about the situation at large.”

“Oh, y’know, pretty average reactions across the board. Discomfort on a gut level about bringing a Domain like the Indians into our own home and asking them for help, which is kind of being overridden by the aftershocks of being shot out of the sky and bailed out by a mysterious stranger with a magic ghost-car. Same as you, I assume.”

“More or less.” Omet glanced at Quet’s beanbag chair, then at Quet. When they received a nod of permission, they sat down. “But if I’m being honest, the Indians aren’t… the absolute worst?”

“Please allow me to fetch a fire extinguisher for those pants of yours.”

Omet held their hands out. “Yes, okay, they’re pretty bad. But Horan’s holding out that they’ll end up being nicer than we’ve been saying they are, and I will admit, Kuravaan – that’s the guy in charge – isn’t really being very dismissive or anything to us. Admittedly, I’m not really sure what he is, but… I don’t think it’s that long of a shot.”

From across the room, Mark shrugged. “I dunno, Quet, I might start to buy this. Horan has never really been the best judge of character, but from what he’s shown me of better-off Domains like the Norse and Greeks (at the time), I don’t think these people are gonna be unreasonable. People never really are, anyway, they’re usually just wrong about whatever. And I don’t see how the Indians can be wrong about the army-cult trying to kill us all.”

Quet shrugged and folded her arms. You know what? Sure. I’ll be willing to buy that, generally insufferable as these people probably are–”

“I won’t fight you on that front,” said Omet.

“–They probably aren’t stupid. It’s usually the New World Domains who used to get stereotyped as the dumb ones, right? I mean, that’s us, and we’ve got a pretty decent idea for how things are going down, and also stereotypes are stupid and bad.”

“That’s… a train of reasoning,” said Mark, pushing the paper in front of him to the side. “But I kind of get your point. They don’t have any halfway rational reason to leave us to the wolves, so I’m kind of feeling like all this worrying about what they’re gonna do is just pessimism. And I should know, Horan has called me the CEO of pessimism more than once.”

Quet glanced at her papers. “…Does this mean that Operation Netherworld is a no-go?”

“I would like to repeat,” said Omet, “it’s a contingency. A worst-case scenario.”

“Awful lot of effort for a backup plan.”

“It’s… Yeah. But sometimes, having a backup plan at all is worth this kind of effort. Not like there are any easier options that I can think of.”

Mark turned around in the swivel chair. “If I’m allowed to ask, what is this operation… never-world, or whatever?”

Quet and Omet both chuckled condescendingly. “Like I’ve said,” explained Omet, “It’s either not worth the risk of the secret getting out, or it won’t have ever mattered. You might see soon, it might not be worth worrying about. We will leave it at that.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Mark shrugged. “If you say so. I know it was planned by Omet, so it’s not like I’m gonna be able to help with anything. Your priorities are a bit too… domestic for me.”

“Did you j–?”

“Sorry, sorry, wrong word. You’re too chill for me. That’s better.”

Omet nodded. “Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that one. I don’t like judging myself, but I can say with confidence that I don’t exactly present as a menace to society or anything like that.”

“Not really something to be ashamed of,” added Mark. “I feel like after being exposed to six hours of unfiltered Waia, I need an equivalent amount of chillness to balance things out.”

“Oh, uh…” Omet winced and stood up. “I’d love to take you up on your hangout offer, but, um, Waia is apparently downstairs, so I should probably get back to my party-management job. I’m officially off my break.”

They leaned towards Quet and held up a hand. “You’re doing great, by the way. See you soon.”

Quet gave them a high five. “And you’re doing better. See you, uh, sooner. Bye.”

Omet scurried out of Quet’s room and shut the door behind them. “Okay…” They leaned out over the balcony railing and scanned the foyer to try to find Waia. It proved to not be an easy task, but they eventually noticed her waterfall of unkempt black hair spilling over the back of one of the couches.

After scurrying down the staircase and passing across the foyer, giving a curt greeting to anyone who made eye contact, Omet rolled over the back of the couch across from Waia and landed on the empty cushions. Only then did they realize that Waia was the only person present by the couches. And also that she was asleep, slumped partially in her seat with her head hanging down.

“Uh…” Omet sat up, stared at her for a moment, and cleared their throat.

Waia snapped awake, looked around, focused on Omet, and relaxed. “Oh, you’re here now.”

“Indeed I am.”

“Sorry, I don’t know when I dozed off. Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.”

“Didn’t we give you a spare room last night?” asked Omet.

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean I went out like a… a rock the minute I walked in.” Waia stretched her legs out. “I spent two months drifting in the Pacific. For the next two or three weeks, my brain is gonna be too busy trying to deal with the fact that it isn’t sloshing around on top of a bunch of waves to let me do the whole REM-whatever sleep thing. Best I can do is a light nap, and that messes you up long-term. That’s sea legs, baby.”

“Neat.” Omet folded their legs and scooted further back into the couch. “So, how did the ground floor treat you pre-nap?”

Waia shrugged. “Pestered some Indians. One of them was secretly that shapeshifter guy from earlier. His name’s Rachna, by the way, I don’t know how I know that. Add that to the weird-stuff list.”

Omet nodded. “Yellow-me met him a few hours before purple-me did. He’s okay.”

“Yeah, just a little hard to get used to.”

“Yup.”

The two Primoi sat in silence for a few moments, eyes drifting across their respective fields of view in an attempt to think of something to talk about.

Eventually, Omet gave up on the promise of casual talk. “So, um… We know what happened on your and Mark’s trip out, but I figure you’re much more of a person of opinions, so, uh… What’re your thoughts on…” They waved in the direction of the door.

Waia shrugged. “In terms of what the Servants are gonna be like to deal with? I think we overestimated them. They’re definitely a rung or three below the giant glowing lightning ball from back in February.”

“Didn’t you say that the Servants have more of whatever Orsinus turned into?”

“Yeah, but believe it or not, lightning powers aren’t a very common feature among humanity. With that one exception, most are basically just animals, if a little unpredictable. I’m pretty sure Mark killed one. Alone.”

Omet decided to remember that unexplained tidbit for later. “Yeah, but… There are, like a lot of these guys, aren’t there? They won’t stay manageable forever. I’m not really sure if we should even really be presenting all this to the Indians as if we should fight them.”

“Remember, Omet, they’re a lot of humans. And Deus isn’t around to rein us in anymore. The more they send at us, the more we’re all just gonna snowball. It’s worked for me, at least. I did say earlier that a tank shot me in the face. Like, I’m fine, it’s crazy.”

Omet added that to the list as well. “I feel like we’re missing something if that’s the case. They’ve got some kind of trick up their sleeve if they’ve gotten this far, they have to.”

Waia folded her arms and sneered. “Yeah, their ‘trick’ is called ‘being lucky’. They’ve only gotten this far because every Primus in the world, barring the ones in this building, are either too spoiled and short-sighted to see anything coming, or too mortal to be noticed. I was able to get a few dozen eyes on me before they started shooting, and things turned out fine. It’s that simple.”

Omet pulled their cardigan tight around themself. “…Are you sure that trick is gonna work every time for the rest of us? I mean, what if they start checking people, or won’t let anyone new in, or try and act preemptively, or…?”

“I’m sticking with what I said,” replied Waia. “They’ve run out of free chances, and it turns out that that ‘scouting trip’ with Mark actually turned out to be pretty useful, seeing how we know how to play their game. They’ve run out of cheap tricks to catch us off-guard, that’s it.”

“I… If you say so? I guess? A stance like that will almost definitely make things go over better with the Indians, if they think that we’ve got an in to… survival, fresh attention and power, however they want to spin it. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have an optimistic view of things for once.”

Waia nodded. “They’ll finally get the chance to see what happens when they listen to people who actually have half a brain. But, y’know, probably not gonna happen if I say it myself. They don’t like me. I’m sure it’s just because their parents told them to avoid people with tattoos.”

Omet chuckled. “Okay, sure, I’ll try and phrase it to their liking. By which I mean I’ll ask Horan how to do that and he’ll end up doing most of it himself. Still, uh, it’s nice to hear something like this from an, uh… authority on the matter? Do you think that’s the right thing for me to call you here?”

Waia gave a shrug and a half-nod. “Sure, it’s not like I’m new to the business of messing with humans to come out on top. Also, insert joke here about how I’m the authority now.”

Omet stood up. “Okay, um, the band’s probably getting tired by now, I’m gonna start preparing to swoop in and get things going. “You wanna go do anything? I just, uh, I don’t see you as the type to have a ton of fun while sitting on a couch and trying not to drift off.”

“You make a good argument.” Waia stood up in turn and dusted her inexplicably crumb-covered lap off. “I’m gonna go see how Rachna’s doing, he’s basically the only new person who’s halfway cool.”

“Knock yourself out.” Omet turned and went off to look for Horan. They had not been lying when they said they would be asking him for help in formulating a final pitch for the Indians. “Moment of truth…”