Horan was ten feet from the door to Quet’s room when Mark and Quet both exited. Horan stopped and gave a confused wave. “Oh, uh, hey guys. What’s up?”

“Omet came back and told us that they’re gonna try and wrap things up,” said Quet. “We figured we’d get some fresh air before we’re most likely summoned downstairs. By ‘we’ I mean ‘me’, but I don’t trust Mark alone in my bedroom.”

“I would spill something,” agreed Mark. “What’s up with you?”

“…Same.” Horan gestured down the hall behind him, towards the small staircase on the far side of the building. “Shall we?”

The three travelled along the balcony towards the stairs. As they passed by a view of the party and the air was filled with the sounds of music and conversation, Quet hunched her shoulders and clenched her fists.

Mark stepped between Quet and the foyer. “You alright?”

Quet nodded hastily. “Just gotta move past, sorry.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Horan shot a glance at Mark. “By the way, uh, Mark, remember that anime guy we killed, like, two days after we met?”

Mark stared at Horan, visibly confused. “…No?”

“Good, we’re taking that to our graves.” Horan looked back ahead.

The three travelled up the stairs before arriving at the outside balcony, benches arranged outwards towards what had once been a view of a forest and the night sky. Two or three Aztecs, and even an Indian, were scattered around the wide-open space, minding their own business.

Horan looked out at the tangled sea of dead trees. “Man, I don’t come up to this place often.”

“I don’t think about this place often,” mumbled Quet, taking a seat on one of the benches. She gave a casual wave to one of the nearby Aztecs. “Not much of a point to, these days. View’s a bit, uh…” She tilted her hand from side to side.

Horan sat beside her. “Well, not much to be done about that these days, unless someone here starts to feel like getting into horticultural magic. And I, personally, would rather die, so it seems unlikely.”

Mark sat on the other side of Horan. “Yup. So, what did you want to talk about?”

Horan shifted in his seat. “…Uh, who says I want to talk about anything? Maybe I just wanted to get you both out of–”

“You do.”

Horan sighed. “I do. But don’t act like it’s some big, uncomfortable discussion, I just wanted to catch you up on a few things before the night…” He looked up at the impenetrable clouds above. “…Before the afternoon-to-night reaches a head.”

Quet shrugged and slumped in her seat. “Works for me. I have spoken to a total of four different people since you and Half-Omet came back.”

“Yeah, so speaking of Omet, they’ve assembled a bit of a sales pitch for the situation, to make it look good to the Indians. And, I mean, they were pretty confident about it making things work out, and… I dunno, I might agree with them a little?”

Mark raised his eyebrows and buried his hands in his hoodie pocket. “That right? You and Omet in this specific case?”

“I… Yeah, it’s a pretty decent middle road,” said Horan, “and I think it paints all that–” He waved at the darkness beyond the balcony– “in a pretty decent light. Because Omet’s been catching me up on what happened out there, and it sounded pretty rough, but… Apparently, Waia thinks that if we play our cards right, we can kind of ride the wave of human attention like she’s been doing and just kind of… match whatever they throw at us? Omet said that she said it wasn’t that hard to–”

Mark swatted Horan on the shoulder. “Waia of all people was almost gassed to death after catching the entire army with their pants down, and you think we’ll have the same luck with everyone else here?! You think Quet is gonna live up to the same standards of not dying as Waia?!”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“I would die very quickly,” agreed Quet.

“I… Just…” Horan held his hands out to put some space between himself and Mark. “We don’t need to put this under any rigorous deductive scrutiny, nor should we. The two-and-a-half-hour mark is the minimum amount of time that an invited Domain is obligated to attend any one social event, and I feel like the Indians are gonna run out of patience very quickly after that point.”

Mark buried his head in his hand. “I can’t believe it. You’re an idiot. I–” He placed a hand on his thigh. “She got stabbed. Did you notice that? Did you notice the big knife-wound-shaped hole in her pants that appeared by the time she came back? Because she did, in fact, get stabbed. Do you like being stabbed? I don’t!”

“Whether or not it’s a proven fact isn’t important,” continued Horan, now visibly uncomfortable, “it’s just a way to make the Indians feel safe enough to say something conclusive in our favor. Omet and I can’t lie, and they know that, so anything that the two of us say is gonna sound credible, inherently. If we start to legitimately believe that our current pitch is wrong, we won’t be able to present it to them. We can examine it critically in more detail later, but we don’t have that luxury right now, okay?”

Mark glanced halfway at Horan. “You don’t even think it’s true?”

“I think it’s… shaky. I can be conclusive later, like I said. It’s not whether I’m right that we should be confident in, remember, just that I– that we, me and Omet, can use it convincingly. And I am confident that this is our buzzer-beating trick, just for the record.”

Quet pulled out a glyph, squeezed it, and stared at it for a moment. “We only hit the two-thirty hour mark in fifty-six minutes.”

“…Metaphorically buzzer-beating.”

“That… That’s not what ‘metaphorically’ means, in any context.”

Horan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please, just… work with me here. I knew you two would be the only ones who might have any objections if Omet started to bring this up with the Indians with no warning, so… I’m asking you now to just play along. Omet managed, and we’re this close to finally sealing the deal by now.”

He stood up and took a deep breath. “I’m meeting up with Omet to do this in five or six minutes. You two have that long to make peace with that being how we’re going to do things.”

While Horan walked off towards the stairs leading back down, Mark slumped in his seat to mimic Quet’s posture. “…So… You seem, uh… pretty neutral about this. Are you? Neutral?”

Quet shrugged and threaded her hands together. “Not like I have any idea on how this works. I mean, Horan seems to be trying to circumvent the dubiousness of the situation with the whole ‘still kind of true if I don’t think about it too hard’ thing, but not pondering the ethics of the situation doesn’t remove any ethical factors from it, you know?”

“…So, what is your stance on it?”

“Neutral. Profoundly so. I am so wrapped up in square one of unraveling all this, it’s like being rolled up in a weighted blanket and thrown into a lake. A lake of… confusion. And comfort. I wanna do that now, actually.”

Mark covered his eyes with one hand. “For once, I actually have an idea of what you’re talking about… You know what? I’ll give this one to Horan, as long as we actually figure out something to do about all this, some kind of plan that doesn’t involve running at the Servants and hoping we all become bulletproof before we enter shotgun range. Which is further away than you think, by the way, they have some reach on them.”

“That’s nice.”

“My point is,” said Mark, “we had better hope that the Indians are willing to stick around after we reveal that we’re actually doing something completely different and there’s a very real chance that everything we said about human-snowballing will lead to an unceremonious death.”

“…Yeah, they won’t like that.”

“No they will not, my point exactly.” Mark stood up and strolled towards the balcony’s railing. “I’m really not trying to stop us from playing dirty to come out on top, that’s the last thing I’m worried about. What’s worrying me is that Horan can say that the Indians are sticklers for the, quote, rules, unquote, but a plan like this is really pushing that to the brink in the long-term.”

Quet shrugged and looked at the ground. “It’s not like we can really afford to all think about the long-term right now. If our survival methods involve us laying tracks right in front of a figurative bullet train – That’s the word Horan wanted, by the way – so be it. But we’re not in a position to do otherwise, not right now.”

Mark looked over the railing and down at the four tiers of the ziggurat that led to the ground. “…Can’t argue with you there.”

“You can never argue with me. I am always right about everything.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Well, it always pays to have someone to worry about anything there is to worry about. Might as well be me who does that.”

“All the more power to you.” With a soft groan, Quet got up from the couch. “Okay, we can’t keep moaning about our various anxieties, we should probably head back down and support Omet.”

Mark chuckled and turned back to face Quet. “C’mon, do we have to?”

“Don’t make me be the socially responsible one, Mang, I’m gonna flub it. Don’t push me.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re right, we should go.” Mark headed towards the stairs.

“I keep telling you,” moaned Quet, “I’m always right! Stop acting surprised!” She glanced back at the Aztecs still on the roof. “You guys too, by the way. Omet needs all our powers combined, like it or not.”