Sunit and Madigan took charge. Sunit set the priorities: confirm the greenhouses were safe, put out the fires, then tend to the injured. That may sound harsh, but in the domain people could not die. Madigan may be a piece of shit, but he wasn’t in charge arbitrarily. He got his students moving. At least a hundred people went to fight the fires from the explosion on the other side of town. A good two hundred went to check the greenhouses. Fifteen minutes later well over half came back with materials to assemble portable structures and medical suppliers. They went to work providing aid and shelter to the wounded.

I almost went to help with the effort, but Lola place a hand my shoulder, “Please wait,”

“I can help,” I said. I tried to shrug her off but the strength she had was beyond description. I simply couldn’t oppose the gentle hand on my shoulder. Hell, somehow its presence held my feet in place.

“I am certain you can, but they need to have this moment of both fear and resolution. They need to pick themselves up.” Lola watched them, her expression impossible to read.

“You planned for this,” I accused.

“Not quite,” Lola admitted. She flashed a faintly sheepish smile, “I expected Grond to make his move against this place during the Mob Rush. I also did not plan for so many goblins to arrive, nor for the Techna Coast’s forces to arrive so soon. You surprised me greatly.”

“And yet you somehow got exactly what you wanted,” I realized.

Lola kept her hand in place, when she spoke there was a trace of contrition, “I did not mean to manipulate you. I simply recognized you would have both the power and the empathy to resolve this clash between my followers peacefully.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me for help?” I felt my fist clench.

“Are you going to say if I had just asked you to risk your life to protect the lives of two people you didn’t know just because you would think it is the right thing to do?” Lola asked.

…it was the cynicism that got to me most of all. “Yes!” I shouted despite the rasping pain it caused in my throat.

Somehow the crowd didn’t notice this. They were still dealing with the injured. That said somebody should be playing lookie loo. I mean there were thousands of people over there, one of them had to have a rubber neck. Somehow everyone was ignoring their actual god getting yelled at.

Lola was quiet for a very long time, “I am sorry, Doug. I misjudged you. I do not believe you will like what is about to happen next.”

I braced for impact.

Surprising me again, Lola turned her gaze onto Philip. I felt a surge of panic expecting violence. Instead she nodded politely, “Hello Philip, welcome to my holy place.”

“Um, Hello Ms. War Goddess,” Philip stated, clearly wrong-footed by the divine revelation.

“Please call me Lola,” she said magnanimously.

“Hello Lola,” Philip managed.

Lola smiled gently, “I am guessing you are looking for a place to weather the Mob Rush.”

Philip stared at his feet, “If it is not too much trouble.”

“This place offers shelter to all of my followers,” Lola said. It sounded like an invitation but it could have just as easily been a closing of the door.

“That is the hard part,” Philip said. “None of us follow any of the living gods.” He tensed after speaking. I doubted telling a god ‘no’ went well for most people.

Lola shrugged, “You can change that. I can only shelter followers. I am sorry, but my power is not infinite.”

The goblin sagged, “Then we are to face the mob rush alone.”

“Perhaps your people could join my following,” She almost sounded coy. It was a small twitch of Mental Resistance blocking some systemic effect, probably a Persuasion skill roll. It sounded reasonable. Hell, you could probably spin it as a quick gaming of the system, paper work even. I don’t think Lola is even the bad guy here. That said she wasn’t the good guy either.

The pitch was just a little bit off. It was transactional. There wasn’t any humanity to it. Lola didn’t have skin in this game. She may not want the goblins dead, but she wouldn’t shed any tears if they died either. In this moment before tragedy she was trying to gain.

Lola was right: she wasn’t like Grond or Adora, but she wasn’t really better.

I pulled up the menu and it let me do what I wanted.

Ignore Gore Soaked Condition: Yes/No?

I hit yes.

I felt the film of Vitae vanish. I could see the red tint fade from the skin around.

“Please take no offense, but your followers have slaughtered us for centuries. Riding out this disaster together is one thing, joining them as brothers is almost certainly too much,” Philip continued not noticing the doom was no longer impending.

That may not be true.

Lola did notice my pallet swap, she kept her gaze on Philip but the weight of her peripheral vision was substantial, “Our history does not need to be our future. Please, share my message with your people. Anyone who will follow me is welcome here.”

“I will,” Philip promised. He was putting on a brave face but he was obviously dreading telling his people the news. “I must go and prepare for the Mob Rush.” He waited for a nod Lola before turning to me, “Do you know where my son is?”

Even as Lola let me go, the fact that my immediate answer wasn’t yes, caused an icy stab of panic through my system. I spotted Spine a moment later. He had moved to the edge of the crowd. He was standing in the shadow of the icewall watching us.

I took a tentative step, and when Lola didn’t stop me I kept going. Philp, not wanting to be left behind, fell into step with me.

“Yeah,” I managed, “I’ll take you to him.” as we walked away from Seth and Lola I said, “Don’t worry about the Mob Rush. It won’t happen.”

Philip almost stopped in his tracks, but kept pace. “How? Did you remove the Vitae?”

“I am ignoring the condition. The clock is stopped until I say so.” I made it a point to say it out loud. The system would be coming back and the Narrators would likely want to circumvent this. Best set the precedent on screen for the audience now.

Time stopped completely with an almost audible ‘Thud!’

Huh, talk about crackerjack timing. Fuck you Narrators… also fuck you Snow Lions.

Spine and Philip were locked in the moment they spotted each other. In that instant stretching into infinity Spine looked so young, uncertain. That didn’t feel right.

Not surprisingly a prompt popped up

Arbitration Begins in…

5…

4…

3…

2…

Angelica, Spine, Lola, Grond, and I were in the conference room. Grond and Lola were on the opposite side of the table.

I hefted Spine immediately and pulled him behind me. He shouted “Oh Fuh-!” Rather than complete his cussing he pulled his crossbow out and proceeded to draw the mechanism back.

I readied for the inevitable fight, expecting Grond to attack. Instead he basically ignored us. He nodded to Lola, and sat in a chair. Grond stared at a spot of wall about three feet to my left.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

Spine had climbed up my back and from the perch on my shoulder he aimed his crossbow vaguely in Gond’s direction, “Yeah. What he said.” Spine probably shouldn’t talk shit. He would not survive getting hit. Then again if I had sub-twenty hitpoints I probably would go full honey badger too.

Grond just sneered at us. Lola took a seat two chairs away from him.

“We are in Arbitration, Doug.” Angelica explained. She kept her eyes on Grond and Lola, “Did either of you request this?”

“Nah, Bitch,” Grond muttered.

“I did not,” Lola replied, not quite glaring at Grond.

Everyone looked at me, “Don’t look at me.” No point admitting, I didn’t even know how to do that. Besides, life is too short to voluntarily interact with Narrators. A quick glance at Angelica and I saw she had a black eye and there was a lot of blood on her hands. “Are you alright?”

“Huh.” Angelica blinked. “Oh, yeah I am fine. Bigfoots attacked the green houses. I took care of it.”

“Thank you,” Lola looked around, “Normally the Narrators are here by now.”

Angelica nodded politely but before she could speak we were interrupted.

“It has been a challenging time,” Denise said, appearing behind me. Seriously, why do they do that? Does it look dumb when they appear?

Grond snorted a laugh, “Why do you have that stupid thing on your head.”

“I would prefer not to talk about that,” Denise said, stepping into my view. She had a bright orange top hat on her head. A sign pinned to it read: ‘Dumb loser cheater timeout hat’.

“Then tell me why I am here,” Grond demanded.

Denise jumped back immediately. I stepped forward. “Don’t.”

“Or what?” Grond scoffed.

“I will put you in your place,” Lola cut in. Threats aren’t as easy as people think they are. Certain requirements have to be met. For example the target of the threat needs to believe the person handing it out will deliver.

No one in the room doubted Lola. No point in gilding the lily.

“Doug, who the hell is the blue lady?” Spine asked, no small amount of concern in his voice. He hopped off my shoulder onto the table getting more room to move and increasing the distance between him and Denise.

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“I am Denise, I am an Intern to the Narrator Wilson. Grace asked for this meeting to drive alignment on recent events.” she said. Denise’s voice carried a lot of that customer service energy.

“What does ‘alignment’ mean?” I asked.

Denise snapped her focus to me, “I am sorry, but due to a potential exploit I cannot speak to you beyond this statement.”

I frowned, “Are you being punished for something I did?”

Denise gave me a plastic smile, “I am sorry, but due to a potential exploit I cannot speak to you beyond this statement.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it too.

Before I could process having empathy for someone directly participating in whatever strange abuse this system was, Grond laughed and said, “Simp.”

I gave him the fingers, still watching Denise. Spine did as I did instantly. After a short beat Angelica shrugged and flipped Grond the bird as well. A united force of ‘Fuck you, Grond’. Sadly Lola did not join us. Doesn’t matter, we could probably take him outside of his domain anyways.

“I am sorry, but due to a potential exploit I cannot speak to you beyond this statement,” Denise said, with an over-polite tone, and a gun-to-her-head smile.

The bubbling gurgle of a bong sounded off behind us. I turned to find a new Narrator sitting at the table behind Spine. She had the trademark blue Narrator skin tone. Her short cut hair was black but her eyebrows where white. She had horn-rimmed glasses that dominated her slender face. She was wearing a white t-shirt with food stains visible even under her tweed jacket. She was also wearing skin tight booty shorts, and no shoes. She exhaled a cloud of smoke that stank of cannabis. “Bruh, she isn’t into the apology. Let it go.”

“Doom Bitch!” Spine screamed, his voice going really high. He jumped into my arms and was lucky I caught him.

The Narrator laughed, “Yeah, that nickname is killer. Call me Marge.”

Lola, being just that bit quicker to the jump, asked, “What is your role here?”

“Me?” Marge asked, setting the huge bong down under the table, “I handle Goblin stuff. Mostly slapstick mob death sort of reels, but I do get the occasional emotional arc. The stuff at the Tower or in the Deep beneath the Fantasy Coast,” She closed her eyes and sighed before saying, “That is the cathartic tragedy people crave. The audience normally doesn’t care but ever so often a cute one gets hurt… not one dry eye.”

“Nanny Shiv told us about you,” Spine declared pointing, “She said the blue skinned woman would take bad goblins away.”

“Honestly, I have no moral alignment at all. It is really about ease of access.” Marge said as she pulled some sort of small brown bottle out of her pocket. She unscrewed the lid and pulled the dropper out, as she proceeded to drip the liquid into her eyes she continued, “Normally, when we have these meetings we pull in a random goblin. You were selected because you were closest narratively. Gotta say you understanding what I am saying is kind of a trip.”

Spine almost lunged at her. I held him back. Not because I wanted to protect Marge, but because I knew it would not go well for Spine. He felt my iron grip and paused. I could feel him counting to ten. He almost launched himself at her anyway.

“Where are the other Narrators?” I asked Marge.

“They are dealing with some sort of mess.” Marge said with a shrug, “I am kinda surprised WIlson isn’t here already. I learned to handle stories from him. Sure, mine had a few hiccups but some simple course correction and a hard pivot fixed my stuff.”

“I have actually complicated stories,” Wilson explained, appearing behind me.

Maybe if I spin really fast in a circle the next one to appear will launch themselves into a wall. Meh, not in front of the War Goddess.

Marge shrugged, “You would be amazed with the complexities of quick cutting to a Goblin getting crushed by Sasquach.”

“Evening, WIlson,” I forced my voice to remain neutral, “What are we doing here?”

“Dealing with little bitches throwing tantrums,” Wilson said. He walked past me, and flicked the back of Denise’s hat as he approached the head of the table closer to Marge. He sat down and put his feet on the table, “They are probably going to be a minute.”

I studied Wilson. He looked about as put together as he did the first time I saw him. He did have some bags under his eyes, but his hair and clothes were neat and clean.

“Doug, seriously what the hell is this?” Spine whispered in my ear.

“A parade of bullshit,” I explained.

“I prefer to think of this as the Wilson Supremacy Show,” Wilson said reclining further in his chair

Angelica sat down, “Hey, Lola.” The greetings seemed to be something the Fantasy Kingdom put a lot of emphasis on.

“Hello, Miss De Leon, It is quite nice to finally meet the Chosen of the Angels,” Lola said with a polite smile.

I really should follow up on that one of these days.

Angelica looked uncomfortable. She was doing that thing where she was trying to see if I was looking at her, without looking at me. Basically this meant we were side eyeing each other in front of gods, and Wilson. He was just leering at the tension in the room. He may have engineered it.

“Angels are real?” Spine asked. Still in my arms.

“That’s actually super complicated. Are you talking about the quiet gods?” Angelica said, seizing the out.

“Let’s go with the quiet gods thing first,” Spine said.

“Then I have no idea,” Angelica answered. Seeing that this disappointed Spine she added, “My dad is pretty sure they are real.”

“Mine too,” Spine said.

“Is there a particular reason you are snuggling with your boyfriend,” Grond asked.

Spine gave Grond the finger again.

Grond stood, “I kill you, you little bitch!”

“Lola, would you be so kind?” I asked.

The war goddess seized Grond’s arm in a bone crushing grip. It was like watching a pneumatic press go to town on a stick and a jam jar. Grond howled in pain. Lola slowly, purposely levered Grond’s arm until he lowered himself back into his chair.

“Thank you,” I said, setting Spine down in a chair. I took one myself.

“Think you’re a big man, hiding behind Lola’s skirt?” Grond growled.

“Yep,” I said with a friendly smile. I knew that would piss him off more. I also hoped it would trick Grond into saying something incendiary about Lola and she would kick the shit out of him.

No such Luck.

“...talks are ruined. The Eternal Kingdom is on its last legs. The Steam Meister could possibly knock them out of the fight with the Queen's condition. Then, he could literally Steamroll the Countess back to Australia.” Brandon whined.

“Enough,” Grace said in her flat voice. “We will deal with this one step at a time.” She walked to the other head of the table, her heels somehow clacking on the carpeted floor. Grace seemed to really want people to be aware she was pretending to be a person but was something else.

Lindsey glared at Denise as she walked to her chair next to Grond. “What’s up with the hat?”

“That is the punishment I decided on after you spammed the exploit button, like a coward.” Wilson explained, as he examined his nails.

“That’s it?” Lindsey demanded.

“It demonstrates my commitment to meeting your expectations,” Wilson’s smile widened.

“That isn’t good enough,” Lindsey said to Grace.

“Tell you what,” Wilson cut in, “You wear the hat for this meeting, and I will beat Denise like a rented mule.”

“What?” Lindsey stared at Wilson.

His smile sharpened, “According to you the punishment isn’t that bad. Prove it, wear the hat.”

Lindsey glared at Wilson, “No.”

“Cool, moving on to non-petty bullshit,” Wilson began. He paused and looked at Brandon. “Sit down, pencil neck.”

Brandon looked at the chair next to Lindsey and Lola. “I’ll stand.”

“That is the steady hand that drove Europe to its current situation,” Wilson grinned. He turned to Grace, “Go on.”

Grace gazed at me. She kept doing that. She looked like a fairly normal lady other than being blue, but her gaze was legitimately baleful. I mean it was jam packed with bale. Full of it even.

Deeply unaffected by this. Yep, in no way intimidated, I asked, “What?”

“There are still claims that you are somehow responsible for the disruptions to the system we are experiencing.” Grace explained. She kept her cold eyes locked on mine.

“What makes you say that?” I asked. I was legitimately curious. Yeah, I was guilty, but how’d they figure that out? Now, only use this advice for good but the trick to effective lying is to be believable when you lie. Feed into your marks expectations when possible. These clowns were convinced I was stupid and they were only partially right. Still that was enough to trick them…

“He clearly fucking did it,” Lindsey accused.

… or not.

“Let’s work through this” Wilson took his feet off the table, “Starting with the least likely candidates for the system failure and going to most likely. The highest Demigod Scale player was on the can. I don’t think she did it. Next, let’s dig through the Divine Scale players. We have four getting railed, eight traveling through the afterlife, two trying to force their way into Antarctica's dungeon. The rest were doing fuck all. They probably didn’t do it. That takes us to the Titanic scale players. Adam was stopping an antimatter engine from annihilating half a continent. Cole was locked in battle with a Divine Dragon of the Sea in a desperate attempt to wrench his daughters from its stomach. It's not like he was fighting in the middle of the ocean during that. No wait, he was. Aella was cutting the heart of a Xenocult out of her desert society. That is only the culmination of eight years of effort balanced on the edge of a knife. Then, Zach was pursuing the leaders of the impending coup that nearly took his kingdom from him. If things weren’t locked down there and then, that would have started a civil war killing millions and upset global politics. Nadia was playing Solitaire. No idea what the Titan was doing. Clearly none of them did something to disrupt the system.“

Wilson turned his sharp eyes on me, “Then there is this maniac. He was talking fun facts about the radio. Truly he must have unique magic powers to enable his master plan to babble inanely. We should kill him before this gets out of hand.”

“His story was the only one of yours to go off the rails,” Lindsey almost shouted.

“Huh,” Wilson tilted his head. He stared at me for a long moment, “That is damning.” Lindsey opened her mouth to say something but Wilson spoke over her, “Unless there is some other connection.”

Lindsey glared at Wilson, “What are you saying?”

The smile slid from Wilson’s face, “That every part of this story that has gone off script has your hands on it. Unless you wanna end up like Fiona, get away from my stories, amateur.”

Lindsey grew disturbingly still. She and Wilson glared at each other, still as statues. Lola slowly leaned back in her chair, so she wasn’t directly between them.

“Enough,” Grace ordered. “Lindsey, provide actual proof of your claim or drop the issue.”

“He shouldn’t have followers,” Lindsey pivoted as she pointed at me.

“Why not?” WIlson asked, in a sickly sweet voice.

“He is not a god,” Brandon piped up.

“He finds his voice, but is still just dumb.” Wilson tapped Denise’s shoulder, “Read the requirements to be a god.”

Denise pulled her phone out of her pocket, “in order to be a god a player must…” she scrolled. “One, have an avatar. Two, have an aspect. Three, have a divine domain. Four, be Divine scale… or higher” Denise had to scroll again for that last bit.

“There it is,” Wilson said with a shit eating grin.

“That is bullshit!” Lindsey shouted. Her hands slammed on the table.

Marge leaned over to Wilson and loudly whispered, “You weren’t kidding. She is way too noisy.”

“Shut up, Burnout,” Lindsey snapped

Marge shrugged, pulled a joint from behind her ear, and lit up.

Wilson took the hat off of Denise’s head to waft the cloud of smoke away, “Unless someone kills Doug in the next 24 hours, he Is going to get the Real God Now achievement.” He then set the hat back on Denise’s head.

Everyone looked at Lola.

She shook her head, “I see no reason to fight that.”

“He is going to take away your Mob Rush,” Brandon pointed out. “Your followers are going to miss out on so many levels.”

“Meh,” Lola replied.

Grond glared at Lindsey, “You were setting me up. The whole building up the mobs. It was just going to go to feed this cuck.”

“Little-man-says-what,” I said quickly.

“What?” Grond asked. After realizing what he did he yelled, “Fuck you.”

“Sorry, I am just not into you. I have this thing… standards. So no.” I quip back.

Grond, being a moron, argued back on reflex, “I am better than any guy you could ever get!”

“Sir! I tried to let you down gently, but since you won’t stop hitting on me, I will be direct. I am straight. Even if I wasn't, I still have standards. I will not have sex with you. No matter how many times you beg me.”

Grond stared daggers at me. “You think you’re funny you…”

“Quiet, both of you,” Grace crushed our antics. Somehow while being completely emotionless the threat of extreme pain hung heavy on the words. She gazed at us all impassively. “Marge, do you have any objections with the goblins participating in the next story arc?”

“None,” Marge said, stubbing her blunt out on the table. She gave Wilson a thumbs up. She gave Spine a wink.

“I have several concerns,” Lindsey said leaning forward. “The goblins could disrupt the…” Lindsey stopped and glanced at me, “Several established plots.”

“The Demon of Frost’s storyline has been stagnant for too long,” Grace said, dismissing both the concern and Lindsey. She turned her gaze on Brandon.”Is the Nameth Brand Storyline essential for the overall integrity of Europe's plot?”

“Um… Yes.” Brandon managed as he backed away from Grace. After a beat and having his back to a wall, he added. “Otherwise, Someone is just going to win. Probably the Steam Meister.”

Grace looked at me again for a long moment, “Then it is decided. Doug will win the conflict at the Spire.”

“I’m sorry what?” I asked.

Angelica froze.

“The next Arc will be you, the goblins, and Angelica De Leon fighting the Demon of Frost and his allies. You will win,” Grace explained. After another moment she said, “I think we are done here.”

We were back at The Mandir. Philip stopped short about three arms lengths from Spine. “Don’t you have a hug for your old man?

“No,” Spine said.

Shit, more family drama… and impending existential dread.