Quill, at Glue’s prompting, pictured a certain glyph and fitted it into a mental socket, unlocking banks of fog hiding away his deviant and anti-dragon thoughts. They had just been shown to their private room, and if they thought it odd that someone would specifically request the top floor, Parchment’s money made it a curiosity at most. Quill once again lamented to himself that he out of his cell was the only one not free to pursue his chosen vocation, before chiding himself that he didn’t know Parchment was following her heart; just that she was making a lot of money doing what she was doing. Noue was with them, though she was showing obvious discomfort with Parchment’s toy drake.
“It’s a baby dragon, right? It’s going to remember this.” Parchment shook her head, while Glue scratched Tome Junior’s chin. She replied that toy drakes, for all their superficial resemblance, weren’t truly dragons. She pointed between Junior’s eyes at a blank expanse of forehead and explained that, were he a dragon, he would have a third eye there. Noue raised her eyebrows. “I thought the third eye was a myth.” Glue looked up sharply, obviously sharing Quill’s curiosity as to where Noue had even heard of the third eye, a theory of magic which had been thoroughly erased to all but the Historians. “What? I’ve never actually seen a dragon, that’s how you wind up a dead thief. I’ve just read some of the books they invariably hoard.”
She could read Draconic. That was an impressive feat. It was an old, complicated language, rife with loan words and neologisms, as befit a tongue allegedly as old as the universe. Parchment affirmed, once more, that Tome Junior was a Junior in name only, and would never even make it into his third decade. He was just a lizard. But, Glue drew them back to center, discussing psi was why they were gathered, but not that of Tome Junior. Though, it was evidently not so urgent that they could not take a few thoughtful draws on the hookah. At Noue’s suggestion, they had branched out from their usual fruity mix to try a kind of Fireplains tea, and Quill found he preferred the taste; it was, however, very rich and so he paced himself.
“I’ve seen her a few times now. She’s brisk, efficient, and evidently commands entire squadrons of Tome’s personal guard. Not to mention that she conducted a search of my office while applying mental pressure to me… not in excess of what Burner could do, but certainly with more finesse. She acted like she was trying to burn through the fog when really she was planting curiosity.” Glue nodded. Quill had mentioned that when he called the meeting. They didn’t think he needed to see a fire sorcerer, not least because where could they find one that was trustworthy? Quill wasn’t about to suggest Parchment’s extracellular contact, firstly because it wasn’t his place and secondly because it would make him an ideal target for Burner’s brand of interrogation. One mind lost, three cells cracked.
Noue spoke up that Burner had approached her several more times, each time with a more colorful bouquet of flowers, along with something that straddled the razor’s edge between threat and proposition. Everyone winced at her choice of metaphor, and she snickered as she teased Tome Junior. She and Glue were making a game of tickling or gently pinching the drake’s tail in turn, so that the creature spun until he slumped over, dizzy. Clucking gently, Parchment gathered up Junior and hugged him to her chest, stroking him like a cat.
“Do we need to do something about Burner?” Glue looked to Noue, who shrugged. It didn’t seem like he was subtle enough to install the kind of mind magic Glue used, and she hadn’t seen Decontextualized. “Of course, if he was distracting you while she stayed out of sight…” Glue shook their head. They hadn’t seen any signs of mental stress in Noue’s mind, and even if the magic were from the fire sphere they would have noticed the… Glue rolled their hand thoughtfully, looking for the right metaphor. They finally settled on saying they would have noticed the bent and broken strands of thought, such as were clearly evident in Quill’s mind.
“But you only noticed the strands of thought for the headache she gave me battering my mind’s walls. You said we’d need a fire sorcerer to see whether she had actually implanted curiosity.” Glue sighed, and acknowledged the truth of what he said. They simply weren’t equipped to combat two different kinds of sorcery. “Assuming Decontextualized continues to be a problem, would it be viable for you to learn the fire sphere?” Glue stroked their chin thoughtfully. Ultimately, they shook their head. Too much research into mental controls would be dangerous in a city with records so transparent to Tome’s watchful eyes.
Noue asked why they called it sorcery when they knew it was psi. Parchment and Glue exchanged a look, and Glue sighed again. The terminology they used was to keep it in familiar terms. For all they knew that dragons possessed a theory of magic which differed from the conventional elemental spheres, they knew very little about its actual mechanisms. Dragons, even with their tendency to hoard, rarely kept books explaining the subject, and as Glue gathered they even learned the use while they lived on the chain of islands known as the Belt rather than having it written down. Noue looked thoughtful and asked if Glue could read Draconic. Not quickly, but they could.
Quill leaned back and drew smoke thoughtfully, thankful all of his cell could read it. As he shifted his balance back and spread his arms to take his weight, he laid one hand over Noue’s, reveling in the contact and remembering the firm “no” he’d gotten. Spine did not want to induct another one of Quill’s crushes into the ranks of the Historians. Which would inevitably mean Glue locking away Noue’s memories of what she had learned. That, in turn, would hinge on a choice by Quill. Glue could probably, given their abilities, turn Noue into a rock climbing enthusiast and affluent investor in truth. Or, she would move on to the next theft from a dragon and leave his life forever.
Quill had fallen hard and fast for Noue, and while he had emphasized his request with “please” he had to face the very real reality he would lose her. Even if she were inducted, he was probably just delaying the inevitable, given how well his cell functioned as was. That was the real decision, and it was out of Quill’s hands, because there was no way he would have Glue lock away so large a portion of Noue’s mind. It was out of the question.
He realized the warmth of her hand had distracted him, and came back to paying attention to the conversation. Evidently, Noue had an old, water-damaged book on draconic psi, which she would be willing to give to Glue. Quill sucked in a breath. That would be dangerous, as it would leave findable evidence of Glue’s heresy, but it could also be incredibly valuable. “Why don’t we leave it at the drop point? It would avoid risking Glue, and while any information in it would get back to us very slowly, it could also be disseminated to other cells.” Glue nodded and looked relieved not to have to hold a proscribed text. Noue, however, still held to ideals and asked if it wouldn’t be more expedient for Glue to read it and then send it to the drop. “I think the problem with that plan is that we’re all under a great deal of surveillance right now. Burner was not subtle, but Decontextualized engaged in three activities simultaneously.”
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“Did she?” Noue asked. “You said she gave you the burning headache, implanted curiosity, and went through your office.” She loosed her hand from Quill’s, much to his dismay, before planting it over his and giving him a reassuring squeeze. “But her soldiers could have searched your office, and we don’t actually know that you’re any more inclined to acquire information than you always are. As I understand, you’ve been unlocking your glyph a lot more lately, and my experience of having one is that my brain goes crazy wanting input and to process the things that it’s kept buried for even a few days. So unless Decontextualized has worked the same psi on my mind while Burner distracted me, which I’m not ruling out, it’s more a manifestation of Glue’s sorcery.”
Glue looked distressed, like they’d inhaled too much smoke, but their exhale was clear and from that Quill deduced Noue was inspiring the distress. He thought to himself about what Noue had said, as they passed the hookah around. Glue’s mind magic was cutting edge. He didn’t know the details, but Glue might have once been patronized by Tome, and thus had access to pre-Loss sorcery knowledge. They also had a sanitarium full of inmates to experiment on, about which Quill pushed aside his qualms in the name of the greater good. But that there would be side effects was something that quite simply hadn’t occurred to him. Glue had gone well beyond what they had attempted with their released inmate in tinkering with their minds, but they had done this to assure everyone’s safety. Still, they had been test subjects. Glue likely looked like they had swallowed a bug because doing harm was opposed to their nature. He went down a brief rabbit hole wondering how Glue and Parchment reconciled that Glue had helped Quill to concuss a dragon-sympathetic secretary with a small explosive, and that Parchment herself had killed an entire shift of miners and would do so again if need be.
“I don’t think that Glue has done us any harm, even if there are some unintended side effects,” he said slowly. Glue looked slightly less sick just at that pronouncement. “After all, they put similar sorcery into the mind of the inmate they released, and they’re doing fine. Aren’t they, Glue?” Glue nodded and affirmed that Z was doing quite well. “Speaking of, how goes tracking Decontextualized?” With an obviously relieved expression, Glue launched into an explanation of manpower and how quickly public opinion—and draconic opinion—would allow them to release inmates. Decontextualized was highly visible much of the time, going about with a cadre of Tome guards, but other times she seemed to drop off the map entirely. But with subtle magic—psi—Glue’s spies could, if they were known to the agents of Tome, be made to forget her passing by quite easily, within the framework of the same magic that kept them from whatever criminal impulses Glue had buried in fog. And given the transparency of Glue’s records, their inmates were quite probably known. “That supposes that their watching is something Tome knows about.” Well, yes. That was the game of spy versus spy, seeing who blinked first.
Burner wasn’t subtle, and Decontextualized—“Suffering Savior we’re calling her Deco, I am not spending nearly two seconds pronouncing the name of our latest nemesis!”—was either very subtle or simply more competent. Noue, then, was not a high-priority target, nor was Glue. “Which leaves me in the unenviable position of their linchpin. I wonder how they rationalize my association with two loyalists such as yourselves.” Nobody had anything to say to that, so Quill drew thoughtfully and exhaled smoke at Noue before handing her the pipe. And promptly getting a tea-scented cloud of smoke blown in his face.
Quill considered what they had figured out. Deco was perhaps not the threat they thought she was, or she was going to undo them with ease. Which, if she could simply invade their emotions with ease and turn them against each other, they were sarx out of luck and may as well baste themselves for Tome’s culinary enjoyment. So assume that Deco wasn’t an entire level above them, and that Noue was correct. Glue’s sorcery had side effects, which meant that a small army of former criminals-cum-spies wasn’t in the cards. If anything, it meant they had to go back to the drawing board with Z. Unfortunate, but they’d made it this far without an unwitting spy ring, and it was a little comforting to realize that you couldn’t just program a human.
Quill was naturally curious—he wanted to be a scholar, after all—and liked to feed his brain. He’d even gone so far as to invest a great deal of time and energy into an axiom spirit of lore to offset the limitations imposed by Glue’s sorcery that he had known about. This wasn’t dangerous, thanks in large part to Glue, and neither Burner’s brute force nor Deco’s scorching psi had been able to penetrate that fog. They knew he was hiding something, but to be fair he was a man with numerous strange habits.
He was a librarian who kept a dueling foil on his person, speaking of which he really needed to remember his forms that Saturday; he checked a brick every morning that he wasn’t running late, and gave the blackboard his personal attention. Clearly they hadn’t cracked that, if Spine wasn’t insisting on a new system. Unless they’d found and intercepted—but that’s not productive. So all they knew for certain was that he was the aforementioned linchpin, but it was a stalemate. Time was on Tome’s side, eventually the mine would be cleared despite Parchment’s best efforts. Unless Spine could tell them what kind of artifact they were dealing with, the simplest solution was to destroy it. They had contingencies for retrieving longer messages, but, probably yes they would have to destroy it. They lacked the resources to slay a dragon at this juncture, unless they wanted to swallow long-fuse rune explosives and hope the dragon ate them and then got blown up. If that gambit failed, there would be nobody—at least, nobody they knew about—to oppose Tome getting whatever artifact was buried deep in the mountain. It had been done, but in far more desperate conditions than they currently faced.
Having reached his own conclusion, Quill stopped idly passing around the nozzle of the hookah and sat up, realizing Parchment and Glue were talking quietly as well. Noue looked over at him curiously. “Parchment. I think we need to tell your contact we need a large rune explosive. Big enough to crater the mountain.” Parchment protested that there was a trade embargo on until the mine was cleared, and that they already had half a team of rune-empowered miners ready once Parchment had personally cleared the blast site, making sure to leave evidence of a natural cave-in. “Then we need the explosive as close to the lifting of the embargo as possible. There are two possibilities. Either we’re damned if we don’t, or we destroy whatever Tome is so intent upon obtaining.”
