For the first time in her rather short life, Neveah was torn between two choices.

Not that she hadn’t faced difficult decisions in the past. Her bond with Randidly had dragged Neveah through dozens of scenarios that had opened her eyes to the complexity of the world. This current conundrum was just another facet of the wide and wonderful world that Neveah had found when Randidly pulled her gently out of the darkness.

Yet somehow, something was different this time. That usual incisively detached logic that had prodded her in the past was absent. She felt… unmoored in a way that she couldn’t capture.

Perhaps to her detriment, Neveah didn’t often self-reflect. So instead of pulling back and examining the source of the feeling of bewilderment that plagued her, Neveah just continued to frown and consider the problem.

There were times when Neveah wondered why she was there, or what she really was, but this was not one of those times. Although Neveah technically had some free reign with her decisions, she wouldn’t waste it considering unrealistic options. She wouldn’t lose track of time and eventually discover, to her horror, that her buffer period had expired.

She wasn’t human, after all.

Yet now Neveah had to struggle with two equally attractive options and a suddenly absent inner compass: should she push herself through more problems regarding living Engraving for the forging of Randidly’s arm OR should she study the mysterious methods used in the Bizarre Stake?

Randidly was currently within his Alpha Cosmos, to speak with Wendy. From what Neveah could tell, he was there for his arm, and also to get some feedback from a talented engineer about the feasibility of some of his plans for Kharon Academy.

With this extra time, Neveah considered her options from the comfort of Roy’s kitchen table. It was because both were so attractive that she ended up here. Her entire mind was focused on the preparations to fight Kaan Swacc.

Neveah glanced over at Roy. For the past several days, he had become surprisingly accepting of their arrangement. Which made things more convenient, but Neveah somehow found herself missing his small rebellions. No longer would he spit out a ridiculous phrase in response to a normal action from her. He was positively mundane.

Honestly, considering the problem of Roy was something of a nice break from the struggle of the two extremely inviting options in front of her. Neveah leaned back in her chair and released her breath that contained all the stress of the choice. “Huuuuuuuu…..”

Roy was at the stove, methodically cutting vegetables. Neveah’s noise didn’t even earn her a look from him, so she continued to study his back. He didn’t even add a little extra violence to the motion, as though he was slaughtering the vegetables. It was a perfectly economical movement. He was a robot, designed for these tasks.

Suddenly, she had a strange thought as she looked at his back. Recently he had been acting as though Neveah wasn’t even present in his house.

Neveah’s face twitched. Soon. Soon I’ll be done with this diversion and back to work. “Hmph. Well Roy, where’s my afternoon tea?”

Without comment, Roy filled a kettle with water and brought it outside the house and to the fire pit. Although she couldn’t see, Neveah could hear him snap his fingers and reignite the blaze. Soon he walked back into his small cottage and set out an assortment of loose leaf tea that he possessed in front of Neveah so she could make her selection.

Feeling strangely hesitant, Neveah looked down at the neatly labeled paper bags in the larger wooden box. All of Roy’s teas were present. Even the special kind that he kept from a specialty shop Roy raided very early in the System’s arrival. It was a tea that for the foreseeable future, couldn’t be replaced. No one was growing tea right now.

To Roy, tea had always been a special thing. Now it seemed like dried leaves in crinkled paper bags.

For some reason, that made Neveah very, very annoyed. She knew it wasn’t a logical reaction, but this new version of Roy… he vexed her. Was it possible that he was doing it on purpose?

“What the fuck is up with you lately?” Neveah demanded. And this worm of a man had the gall to look up from the cutting board and smile sadly at her.

“I’m resolved for what’s to come.” Roy replied simply. Then he looked back down, picked up the knife, and continued cutting the vegetables.

Neveah knew that her feelings toward Roy were weird. They didn’t quite make sense. But in a way that even Randidly couldn’t understand, Neveah was truly a monster at her core. It was another’s face that she wore in her daily life. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t even humanoid, like Helen or some of the individuals that were birthed by the Alpha Cosmos.

Although Roy started as a human, something he had seen changed him. There were a few times that Neveah had needled him to try and get him to reveal what he had seen while dead, but he had refused to speak about it at all. But even if she didn’t know the details, the changes wrought on him were unavoidable. He had been irreparably marked by the other side.

So to see him like this…! Neveah ground her teeth.

“I guess I’d better be going,” Neveah said loudly as she looked at Roy’s back. “Don’t worry about dinner. In fact, you might as well just throw those vegetables away. You’ve cut far too many for just yourself.”

Without even saying anything, Roy swept the carefully cut vegetables into the trash bin. Feeling furious, Neveah walked out of the cabin and went back to Yystrix’s tomb. If nothing else, she was determined to push forward and figure out a few more tricks for Randidly’s living Engraving.

She was just so fucking excited about her options today.

*****

Tatiana sat at her desk with her hands folded. After passing all of Kharon’s systemic problems up to Randidly, her days had been refreshingly peaceful. When the issues she had addressed in her report came up in the daily operation of Kharon, Tatiana told everyone who would listen that Randidly Ghosthound had decided to make a change. She understood there were current problems, but they were currently being addressed.

Feeling heard, the crying voices in the city went silent. Obviously a temporary silence, but still one worth savoring.

With that assurance of the Ghosthound’s involvement, the pressure she was under was cut in half. As Wolfram and his cohort of ogre scribes began gaining significant Skill Levels in areas related to bureaucracy, Tatiana found herself completely without work. It was the first time such a situation had occurred since she had started running Kharon.

Now she understood why CEOs took so many vacations.

Yet while she had taken a few of the days since sending the report to relax, she had felt a mounting sense of dread as time passed without a reply from Randidly. As though drawn by a magnet, Tatiana was pulled back to her desk. Without any work in front of her, she could only wait for the inevitable bombshell of a decision that Randidly was going to drop on her.

Because the source of her anxiety was obvious: it was her innate Skill connection to Randidly. The strange thing was that the feeling transmitted through the connection kept expanding and contracting. Sometimes it felt like Randidly was about to announce something that would require a vast amount of work to manage without a thought to the consequences. Other times it felt like he had created a rather concrete plan but would need her help

Honestly, Tatiana would welcome the latter. Despite the fact that she was sad that Randidly was leaving, if she was honest with herself, Tatiana’s true fear was the fact that she would soon be separated from Randidly’s guidance. Having a large project that he left behind would do a lot to keep her distracted.

She obviously would be able to send him a message once Randidly headed toward the Nexus, but he wouldn’t be on Earth; he wouldn’t be able to sense the changes in the image around Kharon or the other Zones and know what that meant for the future of the planet.

Yet at the same time…

Tatiana rubbed the back of her neck and grimaced. “Whatever he’s doing is making my Skill going haywire. If I had to guess… Randidly has a crazy idea, begins to work out the details in an effort not to make more work for me, but then gets inspired by something new in an entirely new direction…”

Shaking her head, Tatiana pressed a few buttons in her communication terminal at her desk. If nothing else, she should keep her finger on the pulse of the city. A few seconds later, the terminal buzzed and lit up as the line connected. Commissioner Arrietti blinked in confusion but still bowed to the terminal. “Tatiana, is something wrong? I was just about to leave my office when I saw your call.”

Tatiana glanced to her left toward an antique clock sitting on her shelf; she was surprised to find that it was a little after 7 P.M. It seemed like not having a set agenda meant time moved even more fluidly than in a day that was packed with meetings and activities. Tatiana also didn’t miss that Commissioner Arrietti had fought tooth and nail for set working hours, but here he was in the office, a little over an hour after his shift should end.

He might bluster a bit, but Tatiana knew that few people loved Kharon with the same overwhelming purity of their chief of police. It was why he remained in the position, even as his individual power began to make that amount of authority less than ideal.

Probably will need to force this issue. Perhaps… he would respond better if I sent Helen as a training partner…?

“Ah, Commissioner. I’m sorry to trouble you. I just wanted to check in on the situation with the refugees.” Tatiana quickly supplied. “We moved so quickly back toward the established Zones, but we stopped this morning to let the Order Ducis handle the monster horde we encountered. Because most of the refugees were on the platform, I understand that many of them saw the entirety of the fighting. Not that these people are squeamish, but were there any… complications…?”

Commissioner Arrieti’s face crinkled into a frown and Tatiana struggled to keep her face under her control. Great, that’s one more issue that we didn’t need...

The refugees floating on platforms behind Kharon had been drawn from the six bubble cities that they had encountered heading to the Nether Equator, as people had taken to calling the area that the Ghosthound himself had gone to repair. But the situations in those bubble cities were vastly different. One had been a chaotic free-for-all, practically overrun with monsters from the get-go, with several powerful groups disguising themselves to survive.

That bubble city had, in pre-System Earth, been one of the richer neighborhoods of Paris. It hadn’t weathered the storm well. The refugees from there were particularly unpredictable.

“...truth be told, it does appear that there will be some trouble in the future because of it, but it’s more for Naffur than either of us.” Commissioner Arrietti shook his head.

That certainly had Tatiana’s attention. “Are you saying that the Order Ducis will need to put down a riot? We kept the number of people per platform as small as possible, but it just wasn’t feasible to create too many platforms.”

“Oh? Oh! No, not that.” The Commissioner looked chagrined. “No, I’ve just been constantly badgered by questions about how to join the Order Ducis. My patrol officers are honestly tired of hearing it.”

After thanking Commissioner for the information, Tatiana ended the call and tapped her nail against her cheek. Maybe it’s time for the Order Ducis to recruit a few more individuals… or at the very least, start another six-month training camp…

Tatiana’s eyes flashed. Perhaps the good Commissioner would be willing to volunteer as a training partner… heh.