“Oh my God,” Todd groans. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

Nayira skids from a light jog to a stop. “Oh.” She frowns. “It’s pretty important though. You alright?”

“It depends. What’s your opinion on animal people from the stars.”

Nayira’s lips pull back to her cheeks in an expression of distaste. “Is that a movie?”

“Okay, in that case, second question. Did you happen to pick a [Skill] that would let you hit an airborne or flying object?”

Putting her knuckles against her hips, Nayira squints suspiciously at Todd. “No. Although mine is pretty cool though. Listen, this is important.”

The human quarter contains 30 or forty people, most of them clustered around the shop crystal. Two or three figures jog in a long loop around the quarter, with extra berth to avoid the last remaining redburr tunnel, while his other friends huddle in a tense conversation with Dr Chowdhury.

“We’re happy to help Miss Seacole,” Randall supplies on Todd’s behalf. “What can we help you with.”

“Well last evening, you know,” she pauses, sweeping a hand to bring attention to the floor. “We had a couple folks stay late carving up bugs.”

“Oh, gross, yea? How’d it go?”

“I’d say mild success, medium disaster. It was good in the sense that we figured out you only needed a hundred parts, not a hundred full bugs.”

“Oh that sounds way easier. See Todd, I told you we should have done that.”

“Sure, but a hundred is a big number. In eight hours? That’s like uh, a bug spleen every five? Minutes for eight hours straight. And stress was still pretty high. I think we only had four people complete the quest in time.”

Suddenly, Nayira has Todd’s full attention. “Only four?”

“It’s a little bit of a sore point,” Nayira chuckles humorlessly, “we had about twenty people trying… and a bunch of them got real close.”

“That sucks.”

“Yea. Yea. So getting to the point. The reward is another magic crystal manual. But this one is for magic potions and stuff.”

“But?”

“But the ingredients are expensive. The good news is this instruction manual, well we’re thinking that someone could learn to make more of those healing pills.”

“And we don’t have a lot left.”

“We do not. Or maybe more like, we have a bunch of people with zero and maybe a lot of people with two or even three.”

But that’s an easy problem to fix, isn’t it? “People can share –” Todd starts to suggest.

“Think so? Well after yesterday, you know how many Drew has? He’s got five. We asked him to contribute to the common good, you know what he said?” Todd clearly doesn’t, so Nayira tells him. “He said to go stuff ourselves in our little commie butt holes.”

“Jeez.”

“I mean, with filthier language though. But! We got two people we think are gonna be good at this magic potion stuff, but it’s a long term investment. That manual is potions 101, you got me? Introductory shit.”

“So why come to us?”

“Because you’re not a raging egomaniac.” Nayira winks at him. “Probably. Jury’s still out. And more importantly, whether you noticed or not, most of the rest of us are not rolling so easy into this magic stuff. You and your friends, you got your heads on level, and I trust you, and we need that right now.”

“Yea?”

“Yea.”

Movement along the yard draws Todd’s attention. He sees Ciforre land gently on the ground a dozen yards away, pressing her fingers agains the tile. As she closes her eyes, her violet glow dims, and a warping distortion bends the light around her.

“Okay. So what do I do, what do we do? Am I giving you Nexus Coins?”

Nayira shakes her head. “Non-transferable. Nexus coins can only be spent through [System] stuff like the shop, or with special arrays. The Tutorial windows call it the [Merchant] system.”

Todd watches as strange dark shadows appear deep beneath the surface of the blue stone floor.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” Randall interrupts. “What’s an array?”

Ciforre opens her eyes, nodding in satisfaction as the first of a dozen figures breach the surface of the stone. Each one is shaped like a person, or more accurately a mannequin and they appear to be constructed of burnished metal, with posable joints. They emerge from below, like rising out of a pool instead of through solid matter.

“I think this is it,” Todd croaks. “This is my limit for weird. This is my fucking maximum.” Something in his tone frightens Randall and Nayira, and their mouths snap shut. “I literally just walked out of an amnesia field away from a fur people turf fight. Now you wanna start a wizard coin tax, to make magic potions, so we can fight the aliens and – and I still don’t know how any of this stuff works yet!” Todd chokes up, and the act of losing composure just makes him angrier at himself. “Arrays? Fractals? Look at that, what is that? What’s even happening over there?”

Flinching, Nayira and Randall follow his line of sight to see a dozen more of the human-sized metal dolls floating up through and out of the floor.

“Oh, uh yea.” Nayira says apologetically. “She does that. That’s actually how they got rid of the bugs after the quest timer ran out last night. She just >ploomp<” The rescue tech puckers her lips to make the noise of a pebble dropped in a pond. “Sank all of what was left down into the ground.”

“How?! Those things are only like four inches thick! We clearly know there’s dirt underneath them. That doesn’t even make sense.” Todd sucks on a ragged breath as he tries to maintain control.

Nayira leans closer to Randall “Is he okay?” she murmurs.

“It’s okay, he’s just more of a bury it ‘til you explode kind of guy, and this’s been a stressful couple days. He’ll be…” Randall stops in the middle of the whispered thought, then a perplexed look overshadows his face. His voice rises to a more normal volume as he redirects it to address Todd. “– fine. Dude, what the heck are fur people?” He demands in concern.

The metal dolls come in three varieties, in reddish copper, whitish tin, and black iron. The plates of their bodies are decorated by intricate whorls and embossed patterns, and their joints swivel via simple ball and socket connections. They’re also monstrously heavy.

“If you could set it down one point eight meters lateral, point nine longinal further.”

Todd limps forward. Now that the adrenaline has run out, his leg is acting up again. He wraps his arms around the waist of an iron doll, then readjusts trying to support it under its armpits. “Um, where?”

Ciforre points to a position on the floor. “Just over that way,” she smiles. “See, children? Look how helpful Mister Kalogeropoulos is! Jingshu, Abigail you could learn a thing or two from him.”

The teens grumble uncharitably as they drag tin mannequins awkwardly by the waist. Unable to lift them, they drag them along their heels, making a grating metal noise.

“Why am I helping you,” Todd growls, feeling the weight of his burden bunching up in his lower back and knowing it’s not healthy. With his leg still oozing and sore, he reprimands himself that this little charity is all the dumber.

Her trailing textile folds ripple in the absent breeze, and Ciforre casually floats down to trail alongside him. “Because you’re a smart boy. And very responsible!” She takes a moment to direct her other assistants. “A little bit further! That’s wonderful!”

Todd sets the iron figure down with a weighty clunk and glares at his imprisoner.

“And because you’re fishing for information,” the pixie whispers conspiratorially. “I see you’ve met our friends the Ishiate again.”

“You don’t seem angry.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Sister Defour is furious enough. She wants to put your ‘skin in as a quest reward’ – her exact words, mind you.”

Todd pales. “You wouldn’t let her,” he claims; as much a plea as an assertion.

“Pick up the target dummy, Todd,” she instructs him coldly. “I really thought I was being clever there, insinuating about the array. Calculated it would take you another day at least to muster up the points; that way it might have looked like an accident. Now they know it’s my fault.”

Cycling cosmic energy through his body, Todd finds the burden easier to carry. The drain is still high, but his improved channels have tightened the efficiency of these new abilities. He still struggles to distribute the energy evenly through his muscles, and as he drops the iron doll into position he feels a straining yield in his left flexor and mid abdominals. Until he gets a chance to Cultivate again, he’s got naught to do but hope nothing’s torn. “Ow. So what’s your sister planning?”

“Obviously, to whip the Ishiate into a state of paranoia and vengefulness. To nurture their power through hardship and pain until they’re strong enough to be unleashed on the humans.” Ciforre adjusts her frames, and the lenses reflect a fragmentary image from a bloody future that has not yet come to pass. “You noticed it didn’t you? When you were fighting the redburr? That in two hours of killing, you advanced your level further than you could have by Cultivating for days. That’s her plan: once she’s yoked them to her will, to exterminate you, and pave the straightest road she possibly can for her candidates to reach the E grade.”

Todd’s anger is a pressure, a compression. He can almost feel it pushing outward against his skin. “So why don’t you stop her. I understand Befor’s crazy, but Aefore isn’t. Why would she let this happen?”

“Because, Todd. Obviously, Aefore’s plan is to whip the humans into... a state of paranoia and vengefulness.” Ciforre’s irises deepen, their dark recesses tunneled off to some lost lonely place between the stars. “To nurture you, until you are strong enough to wipe out the Ishiate and pave the straightest road: a road in bones and blood to the E grade.”

Struck by vertigo, Todd wheels in a full slow circle – like if he can just spin the other way it will counteract the dizziness. “Fuck,” he says.

“An... understandable response.”

“And you? Is that what you want from me too? E grade, whatever that is?”

“Did you know,” the pixie wistfully floats past him, facing away towards the slowly reawakening human community. She folds her hands behind her back and continues. “In the development of mortal babies – of children, that the greatest measure of mental and spiritual growth occurs in the first six years of life? Language, values, temperament, geometric awareness…” Her head tilts backwards, and she looks at Todd through the corner of her eye. “Even in that span, potential is a decaying exponential. A soul in its first two years taking breath, will learn and remember more words than most old men can achieve in twelve. It would not be a stretch to say that your destiny is practically written before you can walk.”

Ridiculous. “I don’t believe that,” Todd declares.

“No? Certainly, a lifetime is spent learning. You could become a doctor, a soldier, a drunkard... any number of mortals can wear any number of these meaningless masks. But the foundation, your foundation! Are you a judicious man or a cruel one, do you wilt or thrive when the world presses down on you? As the tree is to the mountain, neither can stand unless its roots dig strong and deep. Everything that you are to become, will be built upon the choices you make now.”

“What if I just want to go home.”

Ciforre faces him, her expression inscrutable.

“Okay. I get it. So you want me to get to this E grade.”

“I have other options. But yes. A mortal like you, just starting their path to cultivation is classified as F: of which there are seventy five levels of progression until you have a chance to evolve into E. Even then, E is nothing more than another step, one of many on the path to immortality.”

“I’m not going to fucking kill people just to live a little longer,” Todd resolves. He makes it an oath to himself, a steel-strong promise.

“Is that so?” Ciforre rasps. “Then prove to me that you don’t need to. Show me what it means to be a lion that eats nothing but green.” She draws her stone book from the inside of her robes, and with its corner, jabs it warningly against Todd’s chest.

Todd thinks for a moment, rubbing his ribs. His body aches with little hurts, and his deepest heart is weighed down by little fears. He remembers the redburr that could have killed him, their elder which would have destroyed him, and the Ishiate who are being groomed right now to finish the job. He considers his fear, his doubts, and his weakness and in his mind he sees the faces of the people here, friends and strangers who are braver and kinder and better than he is. He thinks about what it means to be strong.

“Well in that case,” he asks suddenly, “shouldn’t I want to be an elephant instead?”

Ciforre’s mountain root tome swings round, clubbing Todd in the side of his head, and he cartwheels in the air before landing painfully on his side with his arm under him. The world reels as he lifts himself groaning off of the blue.

“Don’t be smart with me, Todd. Now fetch your lazy backside another dummy. We’ve got a hundred left to go.”