The rest of the night I mostly spend with Teemo, confirming the affinities of my scions. Unsurprisingly, looks like everyone has Fate affinity, probably because of me. It makes me wonder if we could actually avoid accidental kills. I’ve been wondering about when it would happen. Yeah, I know, doesn’t seem like something I’d worry about.

I’m not exactly worried about it, but more because I thought it was kinda inevitable. Parks and stuff back home have more safety measures than I do, and don’t tend to involve any actual fighting, but people still accidentally die, right? I’ve had a few close calls, but the medical ants have been able to get people at least stabilized so someone with better healing magic can actually save them.

I had thought I was just lucky… but now I wonder if it’s that Fate magic. I don’t think I’ve ever used it, but if my scions have it, maybe my denizens have at least a little? Either way, it makes me hopeful that I won’t actually need to make a memorial or something for the fallen. I’m still going to leave some room in the graveyard, maybe even use the central mausoleum, but I don’t designate anything just yet. I can still hope.

Anyhow, back to my scions. Pretty much everyone’s affinity isn’t a surprise. I had actually expected Grim to have Death affinity, but I guess groundsreaper comes with Earth, rather then death. Maybe he’ll get something weird like Burial or something later, if that’s even a thing.

Man, I desperately need more information on how magic works.

I do my best to explain some of the basic ideas to my various scions, without using Teemo to relay it. For one, I don’t want to hurt him again. For two… I don’t know if specific concepts actually will work to explain. I worry it’d be like Teemo when he got overwhelmed, if I tried to just explain every detail. Instead, with the empathic bond, I think they’ll be able to figure things out a bit on their own.

And I’m not in a rush, which helps. I know I’m not simply fabricating a new thing, I’m practically having to invent stuff here. Making something new, whether it’s an idea or a physical thing, takes a lot more time than a lot of people think. It’s like getting flat-packed furniture. You have everything you need, you even have instructions, but it’s going to take a lot of time to actually put it all together.

Except here, only a few things are labeled, there’s a few extra pieces that won’t fit, but we won’t know that until we get into it, and the guy with the instructions has to try to mime them out, instead of telling you.

So yeah, my magitech Rome isn’t getting built in a day. Still, there’s already progress. Everyone has been testing things, seeing if any of the concepts feel right. Tiny, for example, has started playing with his webbing and integrating his kinetic affinity. Tension is a concept spiders understand instinctively, or else they couldn’t build webs, and Tiny’s pretty bright besides. He’s been using a few sticks and branches as pulleys and just seeing how things work. I have no idea if it’ll be applicable to his magic, but he’s still interested.

Coda has been devouring every bit of engineering concept I can get through to him, even if I’m not sure it’ll work with his Sonic affinity. Yeah, everyone else calls it Thunder, but I’m calling it Sonic. Anyhow, it might work for him, it’s hard to say. If his affinity is more for pressure than waves, it could help him a ton. Pressure is just a distributed force, and engineering is all about forces in their forms.

Rocky has been the biggest surprise in all this, though. I dunno if he’s a savant, or what, but he’s been able to move thermal energy around. I don’t think he’s quite crossed the threshold into what anyone else would consider Ice affinity, but he’s been able to do a lot with his fire just from that bit of advice.

I’m not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed that he still hasn’t managed a hadouken yet. Either way, I’m still proud of his progress.

Teemo, I’m also proud of, though his progress is a lot slower than the others with the concepts. I can’t blame him, either. Non-Euclidean geometry is a difficult enough thing to grasp, without me trying to pile on the relations between temperature, pressure, and volume. Besides, he’s a natural with the odds-calculation stuff. The Fate affinity seems to come naturally to him, which is great. Aranya and Yvonne are having more difficulty with it, so he’s happy to give them pointers and what help he can.

Queen and Honey are both Knowledge affinity, which seems to be a bit of an ironic mystery. The only thing my Residents could really say with any confidence is that it’s the opposite affinity to Illusion. That makes me suspect they’re two sides of the same coin, but I can’t really think of anything to test those two. I might be able to ask Torlon about it, but I don’t know how much he’d be able to explain. He’s kinda busy what with running a church.

Dawn approaches, and even with all the theorycrafting distractions, the first iteration of the Gauntlet is ready to go. With it ready, I tell the healing ants to go ahead and heal the jerks to full before clearing out. I also tell Leo he should be there when they wake up, and Teemo, too.

My Voice entertains them both with throwing pebbles at the trio to try to get them to wake up. He finally gets one to awaken when he tosses a pebble right into the troll’s mouth when he starts to inhale a massive snore. He awakens with his eyes bulging for a moment before he coughs up the small rock. He looks around for a few moments, adrenaline clearly coursing through his veins, before he kicks his companions.

“Wake up!”

The wood elf yelps and curls up from the kick, before groaning and looking around with bleary eyes. I don’t think he’s a morning person. Or he’s still a bit sore from being bounced off the roof. The halfling grumbles something that would probably make her little thorn plants wither, and sits up to glare at the troll. The leader doesn’t meet her glare, though. Instead, he’s still looking around the cell they’re all in.

“Where are we?” he demands of his underlings.

The elf shrugs. “Jail?”

The halfling just growls at him. “Who uses a dead-end cave as a jail cell, idiot?” She turns her vicious look on the troll. “We’re still in your toybox, Vnarl.”

The troll rounds on her with a snarl. “I get it! It’s not a toybox!” I wonder if the two are actually going to throw down, but Hark speaks up before they can.

“So… what do we do?” They both turn to him to shout their ideas, but it seems like neither can actually think of anything. There’s not a whole lot of options for them to do stuff. There’s no clear door, they’re in just regular clothes, there’s not even dirt for the halfling to grow her vines.

At this point, Leo decides to make his entrance, stepping in front of the bars so they can see him. All three notice the movement and relax a little in relief. Mlynda speaks, authority in her voice.

“Ah, you escaped, wolf. Get us out of here.” Her smug look fades when he takes a seat and lets his tongue hang out of his mouth, giving his best wolfy grin as Teemo speaks up from his shoulder.

“You’re not in any position to order him around, Mlynda.”

She shrieks “That’s what you think! Enthrall!”

Teemo and Leo just continue to smile at her. “That’s adorable that you thought that would work.” She shrieks a few more enthralls at the two. “Less adorable now. Anyway, welcome to the Punitive Gauntlet!”

Vnarl and Hark look a bit confused, and everyone ignores Mlynda as she wears herself out trying to enthrall my two scions.

“Uh… this looks more like a cell than a gauntlet,” points out Hark, and Teemo nods.

“Thedeim wanted to give you three a proper chance to prepare yourselves before having the challenge presented to you. I think you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

With that, the back wall slides down, and the three get their first look at the challenge I’ve made for them.