Stone made her way to a bench placed before the enormous stone statue of a stoutland that dominated the central square of Treasure Town. Ulysses - the founder of the town. The stars twinkled around the massive dog, and the light of the moon shone in the glittering gold that had been laid over his eyes. It was nearly midnight, but they'd been at Jasper's for far longer than expected, and then had to find an inn to stay at.

By the time they'd gotten settled… Regardless, this conversation had to fucking happen. She turned towards Magnus, who floated beside the bench, his many stones twisting in different directions.

"Hey." A grunt came to signal he was paying attention. "For what it's worth, I'm glad we got to meet up again."

The runerigus's eyestone swung in the lycanroc's direction, looking pleased. "Likewise! It's been wonderful to catch up again, Stone. But that sounds like a sentence that precedes a very unpleasant conversation."

"I mean, yeah. You just go around handing out human innovations to villages? To towns? Cities? That's crazy, Magnus," said Stone, frowning. "Imagine what kind of bullshit you could be setting them up for. Imagine how much you could fuck this place up!"

The runerigus scoffed. "Stone, please, don't be ridiculous. I haven't tried to get them to build a cellular tower or a prototype fusion reactor. I wouldn't know how to anyway. I was a mechanical engineer, that's all. And I was attached to historical survey teams for most of my tenure before I died."

"You know what killed you?" asked Stone, cocking her head.

"Strange device that I tried to make work with a strange crystal we found in another ruin. Don't you remember?"

"No. I was walking on the Swordsfall Plateau when shit just…ended."

"Does Karan remember?"

"She got shot in the heart."

Magnus recoiled. "Gods above, that poor weavile. Do you remember the trip here?"

"The trip… what? You remember coming to this place?" asked Stone, slack-jawed. "How the fuck-"

"Oh. Guess I was special? Unless Karan…?" At the shake of the lycanroc's head, he nodded. "Alright, so probably just me based on our sample size of three. But yes, I remember. Weird tunnel of light, streaks of nonsense. Felt myself tear apart in a way I didn't think you could." He pointed to his many stone fragments. "Whatever forced me into this body did so as some kind of joke, I guess. All my pieces are in different parts of my body."

"In the stone itself?"

"Nah, just…the stone is like a locus. They feel like they concentrate in those segments. Lots of other stuff in there too. The Consensus was really alarmed when I showed up."

"The what?"

"Consensus! The other souls in here. They weigh in on things from time to time. Some of them are… old. Really, really old. But their memories are shot to the Abyss and back. Can hardly remember anything."

"Magnus, you never told me any of this shit!" said Stone, looking thoroughly confused. "Why?"

"Wasn't important. We were looking for ores, stones, gems… stuff to make a profit. The odd ruin or two if we could hack it. Why does any of this matter? Besides, I already said I wasn't telling anyone back then I was human. Only way this makes sense is if I'm human and the Consensus…isn't? Maybe it is, who knows, really?" His eyestone looked positively gleeful and shook up and down as he laughed.

He sobered in an instant. "But really, what's this nonsense about messing things up?"

"Do you think this place would exist if it wasn't for him?" asked Stone, pointing at the statue of Ulysses.

"We're in a natural harbor that forms at the base of a gentle slope up to a plateau that ends in a sheer drop! We couldn't have asked for a better place for a port town if we… if we… asked one of the Titans of Hoenn to shape it themselves!"

"Okay, sure, but this place is so obviously designed by a human!" said Stone, her tone becoming desperate. "Just look how things are laid out!"

"This city is not planned by a human, Stone. Show me a single thing that makes it clearly human"

"The businesses that exist-"

"Stone! If you're going to keep moving goalposts, then I'm not going to entertain this conversation anymore."

"The structure of the society here is completely different, then. That's my argument. It's human, it's obviously human. Ulysses founded this place and laid out a bunch of human laws with human reasoning and human consequences and now no one here is acting the way a pokemon should." She could say this at least – she still remembered her travels with Magnus, and the many laws she'd seen broken and the justice she'd seen served seemed all too familiar to her now.

"Because you, the human, know exactly how they should act?" asked Magnus, crossing his arms.

"They solve problems by fighting! Even I knew that shit, and I fuckin' hated school! It's all over the reports on their behaviors in any fuckin' pokedex you pick up!" said the lycanroc, shaking her paws at him in frustration.

"You need order in a place for things to make sense and run smoothly. How would we do things if this were back 'home', so to speak?"

"Well-" she trailed off and stared down at her knees. "We have rules, consequences and shit too. But solving a problem with a fight isn't like… something you're gonna catch a ton of heat for? You'll be-"

"Reprimanded and told there's better ways to work out your differences? Is that human or is it just maybe reasonable? Everyone here can think. Weird ways of doing it, but they can think."

"They could think back home too!"

"Some of them. And that doesn't exactly help your argument."

"Oh for the love of- forget it. I can't make you see my point here," said Stone, standing up and heaving an enormous sigh of frustration. She didn't leave though, and instead simply started pacing.

"I can see your point just fine, Stone! You think I shouldn't be trying to improve lives with anything I might happen to know. You think I'm meddling in some kind of great big clockwork I can't comprehend."

"Yes, exactly!" said the lycanroc, rounding on him and clasping her paws together, a pleading look in her eyes. "That's exactly what I'm saying!"

"And I'm saying I don't agree. Simple as that." He shrugged at her. "Sorry. Make a better case for it if you want, gods know I've got time. Pretty sure ghost-types live longest out of any other type as a rule. I don't even know if I can die of old age."

"Forget it, I'm going back to my room," said Stone, waving her paw in the direction of the runerigus like he was an annoying gnat, but she'd taken no more than four steps when she stopped. "Are you leaving tomorrow?"

Magnus shrugged. "I just kinda wander, Stone. You know that. I'm the Runewright. The world's my cloyster."

"Yeah. I miss it sometimes."

"Want me to keep you guys company on your travels?" asked Magnus, the expression on his eye softening with his tone.

"You don't have to do that, Magnus. We could probably pay you for it, but you'd make more doing other stuff-"

"Charge you for my presence? Oh come on, Stone. Don't you want another lesson about runecrafting to ignore?"

The lycanroc chuckled. "I don't think it's my decision to make." She considered her friend for a moment and then shrugged and said, "Ah, fuck it. I'll make the decision anyway. Welcome aboard, Magnus. I'm going to talk your ghostly godsdamned ears off about your meddling."

The runerigus's entire eye stone rolled in an excellent approximation of the act. "I'm sure you will."

The sunflora had offered them a small satchel of items to give to their contact at the north gate. A goodra, she'd said, one that would be wearing goggles around his neck and brilliant red armband.

Karan approached the gate with her friends in tow and looked around. It was a brilliantly sunny day, with a gentle breeze to offset the warmth of the sun, but the ample lighting wasn't helpful. No goodra. An open air cafe serving aromatic teas was nearby, along with a cart bearing ripe berries and a small covered structure for the guards to stand in when it rained. The gate itself was hardly reinforced. None of the walls were really reinforced.

Stalwart had no walls either, though that was in an attempt to avoid the problems Crag had more than anything. Vigilance was a good substitute for static defense. For now, anyway. She looked back at the group, and saw Stone and Magnus bickering about something in the distance. The lycanroc pointed in the direction of some small structure bearing a painted staraptor with a wax-sealed scroll in its beak.

"Mind joining us in reality?" asked Karan, unamused.

Stone turned her attention to the weavile and gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry, sorry, what's the-"

"No goodra," said Thea, sounding irritated. "What exactly do we have to do to help that guild out anyway? Did they even explain?"

"Said they would explain everything," replied Karan. She looked back at the cafe in time to see a goodra lumber out from behind a building and approach a server with a teacup. Their gaze drifted over to the group, and all at once their entire body seemed to perk up. They set the teacup down, tossed a small bag onto the counter with it and hustled over to them.

"You must be who Lizzie was talking about," he said as he drew within earshot. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting long. Just needed a cuppa before we headed out." Karan considered the dragon with a small frown. Faint scars marked their body, which was rather less slick than it should have been.

The dark, sagging bags beneath his eyes and faded quality of the green spots on their head confirmed it. They were old. The goodra caught her eye. "I know that look. Appearances can be deceiving." He held himself up a little bit straighter for a moment, and then returned to his gentle slouch. "But I'm not what I was in my prime. My name's Jace."

"What are we helping you with?" asked Valor.

"Checking on a ringer. Indigo chimed home, so we'll be running either a recovery and hauling a pangoro home, or doing an impromptu burial before we finish clearing out a dungeon. Did Lizzie give you a package to hand to me?" The incomprehension that wove its way across everyone else's face twisted the goodra's face into a frown. "Sorry, you're all… new to this?"

Karan nodded, and handed him the satchel Lizzie had given her. "To dungeons, yes. Traveling? Combat? No. Very familiar."

"Well, that's two-thirds of it done, at least," he said, nodding in approval as he took the satchel from the weavile. He rummaged about in it and removed a very large gold looplet that he promptly fastened around his neck. His posture improved immediately and his eyes seemed to turn back ten years in time, from a dull viridian to a brilliant emerald. "Gods above, I'm glad Vaulter finally got back from whatever he was doing out in the northeast."

"What is that thing?" asked Thea, frowning.

"Bit of kit to keep me perked up. Don't ask how it works." He tied the satchel to a leather belt around his waist and rummaged in one of the pouches on his bandolier before removing a small folded map. As he unfolded it, he continued, "Anyway, that 'indigo' comment. Short version: we've got these useful orbs that pair to a central one we keep back at HQ. Different colors of the rainbow for each of them. When one of the orbs breaks, that color starts flashing in the "mother" back home. Means the team with it has hit trouble and someone has to get out there and give them support. Usually it's just support and nothing more – sometimes you just need more bodies. Rarely, we find a corpse. We're hoping it's the former, not the latter."

"So, support effort?" asked Karan, her arms crossed.

"Yup. Or rescue, if shit went sideways. Pardon the language." Jace traced his hand along the map and then turned on the spot and made for the gate. "Did you pack provisions?" he called over his shoulder.

"Yeah, but it's not a ton. Enough for about a week for all of us?" said Valor, his hands tapping different bulging pouches he had tied around his waist and hanging from his own bandolier. "We were told the dungeon was only a few days away."

"Well yeah, but we don't know how long we'll be in it. S'fine, either way, the wildlings stay edible," said Jace, looking back at him and shrugging. "Hope you don't mind foraging though, don't expect you're one for meat."

"That's about all of what would be relevant, I guess," said Jace, taking a swig from his oversized canteen. "A life of rescuing, plumbing and plotting maps. It's repetitive work but it keeps you sharp, and the pay's not half bad either." A distasteful look crossed his face and he added, "Well, now it's not half bad. Took almost all of the guild threatening to resign if Overseer kept skimming so much off the top for that bastard to finally give us something decent." His expression shifted into a wide smile and a chuckle filled his belly. "That old songbird still bitches about it."

"That big enough for ya?" asked Stone, pointing at his canteen.

"Age catches up with you in weird ways. I'm drier than I'd like so I gotta compensate any way I can," said Jace, looking down at the container he held. "Plus, I just like water." He took another swig before capping it.

Thea flicked her paw up, beckoning the flames of the campfire between them all to soar higher. She brought her wrists together, holding her paws open like the maw of a monster and raised them into the air, calling the tongues higher still. She snapped her hands together and a plume of fire erupted up into the air, a brilliant scarlet that contrasted with the orange and yellow of the rest of the flames.

Stone smiled. "Nice job. When'd you learn to do that?"

"I got bored one night and started goofing off with a candle in my room."

"It's cool looking. Any point to it?"

"I'm trying to make it turn into a red swirl. Like a fire tornado, but harmless. But every time I try…" She stood up and gestured for everyone to back up. They obliged her, and the delphox stood up and spread her legs just enough to give herself a more stable stance. She clenched her paws so tightly her arms began to shake, and then with a flourish of fur sleeves a cyclone of flame erupted from the campfire and spiraled into the sky. The fires dancing on the wood went with it, and the snaking flame exploded soundlessly above them. A wave of intense heat blasted over them all, earning Thea a snarl of disapproval from Karan and a whine from Candrila. For his part, Valor simply winced.

Guilt spiked in Thea's stomach. "Sorry, sorry," she said at once, clasping her paws together in a pleading sort of way at the two of them. "I didn't mean for-"

"Don't. Do. That," hissed Karan, pointing a single claw at the delphox. "Not around us."

Her ears drooped and Thea nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry."

Jace shrugged. "Doesn't seem that dangerous. Just heat."

Thea flicked a wand at the campfire and set it alight once more. "It's not supposed to really be anything but a neat display. Just showing off, you know?" she said in a low voice.

An enormous weight clapped her on the back. "For what it's worth, I thought it was a cool display. Just need practice."

"I am practicing. I just… I'm too rough I guess," she mumbled, seating herself on a fallen log. Valor sat down beside her and patted her once again on the back. "You've seen how I fight. I think I've lost the ability to be subtle."

"You just don't practice it much," offered the chesnaught, shrugging. "Give it time and I'm sure you'll do it."

"How much time, Valor?" she asked, looking at him meaningfully. "Feels like I should know how to do this shit already."

"Well, you don't really have a teacher, so…"

Thea stared back into the campfire and said nothing.

Valor squeezed her shoulder. "You alright?"

"Yeah."

A low grunt of doubt rose up in the chesnaught's throat. "I doubt it."

"Let's just finish up out here. Now's not the time for my garbage."

"Mom, I'm bored, how much more walking do we even have to do?" whined Candrila.

Karan could hardly blame her. Three days of nothing but walking along a simple trail before abruptly turning off it and heading into what looked like entirely unremarkable wilderness was a lot to ask of her. "Unsure. This is what travel is, Candrila. Boring, yes, but hold your tongue. You sound like Valor when we first arrived in Crag," said Karan, offering her daughter a stern look. The sneasel bowed her head. Beside Karan, Valor made a series of bewildered motions and several sounds playing at speech, but ultimately fell silent.

"Have a point, though. Jace. How much longer?" asked Karan.

The goodra stepped over a fallen bough and then turned and looked at the group. "We're here," he said, his expression serious. He pointed at the bough. "Get over that, quickly."

Karan crossed first and felt a tingle of electricity spread out from the base of the feathers over her ears all the way to their tips. A bitter taste filled her mouth for an instant and then it was gone. "What happened?" she asked, looking at Jace.

"Bitter?" Karan nodded. "Yeah, this one does that. Not sure why."

The rest of the party followed Karan, and each of them had a similar response. Except for Magnus, who instead said aloud, "No, we did not cross into Air, what are you on about? No, shut up, I don't need your sass right now."

After three days on the road, no one really paid it any mind, but it still bothered Karan. Hearing voices was never a good thing in her, admittedly, limited experience.

"I can see why the rumors about you are so fantastical, Runewright," said Jace, regarding the runerigus with an amused grin. His expression became serious once more as he said, "Alright. We're in the open air portion of the dungeon now. Keep your eyes peeled for wildlings. They're more aggressive here but we might not get attacked in a group this big."

"The wildlings outside of Crag were extremely aggressive," said Thea, following behind Valor. She swore as her fur dress caught on a bush and tugged it free, leaving a clump of rust-colored hairs behind. "Why wouldn't the ones here be?"

"Do I look like a Convert to you?" asked Jace, looking back at her. "I don't know, I'm not part of the research team and I didn't wander into town from the nearby forest one day. Wildlings are just probably as varied as any of us are." He shrugged and gestured to a winding path through a series of trees that had locked their canopies together into a long archway. "That way."

"That doesn't look natural," said Stone, frowning.

"Natural doesn't really apply here," said the goodra, beckoning them along. "Here's a perfect example, actually." He plucked a tightly closed, glittering flower bud from the ground and peeled it open, revealing a shining green stone. He considered it closely for a moment then smiled. "Well, dry me out, won't say no to that," said Jace, beaming. He pressed the stone against the looplet around his neck, where it fused into the metal.

"What is it?" asked Stone.

"Just something to keep me in the fight longer," said Jace. "Shame none of you have any looplets." His eyes lingered on the equipment Karan wore, the shields strapped to Valor's arms and the sword on Stone's back. "They're glittering. Weren't before."

Karan looked down at her gauntlets. He was right - they'd been covered in a light sheen that reminded her of the rainbow colors across the surface of an oily puddle. "Odd," she said. "Hopefully not a problem."

The archway eventually broke apart into plain old forest once again, and just when it seemed that the most unusual thing they'd see this trip had already passed them up, Jace said, "Stop!" Karan dropped low, and brought Candrila down with her.

"What?" she hissed up at the goodra. He gestured into the clearing ahead of them, and Karan crawled forward to get a better look. She parted a bush and peered ahead. The clearing bore three ariados locked in some kind of incomprehensible argument with a poliwrath and an obstagoon. Behind them sat an entrance into a cave, the granite stones stacked and leaning against one another into a roughly triangular mouth. An enormous glittering geode stuck out from the rough point created by the entrance.

This was unlike any experience she'd had with wildlings – until they all abruptly fell silent and returned to simply milling about the clearing. One of the ariados disappeared up the trunk of a nearby tree, while the poliwrath made its way over towards a small puddle of muck and sat down in it. The obstagoon simply paced back and forth.

"What was that?" whispered Karan up to Jace.

"Argument, I guess. Don't ask me over what," said the goodra, shrugging.

"They can have arguments?" asked Thea, looking bewildered.

"I don't know, I don't study them, I just kill them if they get in the way. Speaking of, they're in the way, so get your claws out," said Jace, his face setting into a hard glare. He tweaked several belts on his waist and in his bandolier and took a deep breath.

Karan wagged a claw at Candrila. "You stay out of sight, understand?" she breathed.

"Yes, Mom," said the sneasel, bowing her head.

Karan gave her a swift kiss on the forehead and then rose into position, preparing to pounce out of the bush and slice her way to the obstagoon. All around her, she heard the sounds of the others preparing to spring out into the clearing.

Jace went first, bursting from the clearing and spewing a brilliant sapphire gout of flame at the nearest ariados. A hideous screech filled the air as Karan exploded from the bush and cut her way towards the obstagoon. She wound up twelve feet above him and four feet short.

"What-" was all she managed to shout in her surprise before the obstagoon took note of her and leapt up towards her, his fists drawn back and face set in a snarl. He delivered two chops to her chest, one after the other and sent her flying further into the air, screaming in pain. The world flipped and spun around in her vision as she tried desperately to right herself. The sound of snapping twigs filled her ears as branches broke her fall, cutting and poking all the while. She slammed stomach first into a large bough and clung to it automatically, her entire body shaking.

It had been a very long time since she'd been in this much pain.

She dropped down from the tree into a waiting bush and got low to the ground, doing her best to ignore her screaming chest. Her eyes focused once more on the obstagoon, who had joined the poliwrath in a brawl with Valor and Stone. A sense of vicious satisfaction flared up in her as Stone side-stepped another vicious chop and followed it up with a headbutt that snapped the obstagoon's neck into an impossible angle.

Her attention turned to Magnus as he dove into and out of combat alongside Thea and Jace, each of them contributing streams of blue or red fire, tails slams, and brilliant purple swipes to the rest of the ariados. The one that had ascended the tree earlier skittered down to join its brethren.

She got to her feet and sprinted back into the clearing, ready to fight once again, but instead saw Stone tugging her sword free from the chest of a poliwrath covered in needles while Valor watched with a vague expression of distaste. Magnus and Thea both set the last of the ariados alight and watched as the spider rolled over and over again, screeching before colliding with the corpse of one of its own and stopping. The screams faded shortly after. Jace lumbered over to the entrance to the cave, consulting a map and chugging more water.

Karan's daughter collided with her from the side a second later. "Mom! Mom, are you okay? I saw- I saw-"

This was a terrible showing on Karan's part, but she did her best to ignore that for now. "Fine. Gauntlets unreliable here, like back in Crag," she mumbled, looking down at the sneasel.

"But you got hit in the chest with-"

"Fine," repeated Karan, her tone now carrying a bite of impatience. "You're safe, all that matters." She ushered her daughter along towards the others and nodded once at Stone. "Good work.

The lycanroc offered her a small, concerned smile. "You alright? You took a pretty nasty hit there. Anythin' broken?"

"Fine," said Karan once again, her annoyance now clear.

"You're mad you got knocked clear of the fight, aren't you?" asked Valor, walking up beside Stone. The weavile scowled. "It happens." He held his hand roughly at Karan's height. "You're this big and lighter than Thea. Had to come a time that'd work against you instead of in your favor."

She crossed her arms. "Not interested in making it habit," she growled.

"Hurry it up," called Jace back at them. He peered around into the mouth of the cave and then shook his head. "That was just an appetizer. If anything down there heard that scuffle we're going to have a mess to deal with."

As Karan approached the goodra she said, "How do we find our target?"

"That's the rub, Karan," he said, frowning down at her. "Not sure. Can't really track someone when they're down in a dungeon, just have to brute force it. We'll find them, but it could be quick or it could take us a day or more."

"Anything we need to know?" asked Stone, frowning.

"I covered the basics while we were walking here, but I guess try and keep it down? Don't know if making a ruckus really does much but it helps to be able to hear things before they hear you." His eyes drifted to Candrila and a frown immediately spread across his face. "Uh… maybe you should leave the little one topside."

Karan looked over at Candrila and mirrored Jace's frown. "With who? Can't stay alone."

"Wait, I wanna go!" said the sneasel, looking around at the adults around her in a pleading sort of way. "That's not fair, I hid up here and nothing bad happened!"

"I'll watch her," said Magnus, drifting over to the sneasel and dropping a hand on her shoulder to pat it once. "You can go into a dungeon some other time, Candrila. Maybe once everyone else has more experience. Otherwise they're just going to spend all that time worried about you."

"But we're only doing this as a favor! Mom said so; when are we gonna go into another dungeon?"

Candrila crossed her arms in a perfect imitation of her mother, but the pout that formed on her lips was more adorable than effective. Whatever she mumbled was unintelligible, but at the look from her mother, she stomped over to a nearby boulder and reclined against it.

"Back soon," said Karan, nodding at her daughter. "Promise." She looked at Magnus and offered him a nod of thanks, then to Jace and gestured into the cave.

"This sucks," mumbled Candrila, kicking at a stone on the ground. "Why couldn't I go too?"

"Your mom's got enough to worry about without her only daughter in danger," said Magnus, coiled up like a snake atop a small boulder. His stones clacked and knocked against one another now and again.

"I can hide just fine! I can fight too!" She raised her unnaturally long claws up and shook them once at Magnus for added effect. "I know how to fight wildlings, Mom taught me!"

"Does she let you fight them alone?" asked Magnus, his head stone leaning forward, the eye upon it unblinking.

"Well… no. She doesn't. Mom usually hides somewhere and watches in case something bad happens." She pouted again and turned on the spot to kick at another stone. "But sometimes I sneak away from 'Sam and Syas and fight wildlings." Candrila froze and wheeled around, her paws clenched together and her expression pleading. "Don't tell Mom I told you that! Ohhh…" She wrung her paws and looked around, clearly scared. "She'd kill me for that!"

"Don't say that, your mom doesn't look like someone who makes those threats lightly," replied Magnus, his tone thoroughly amused.

"I just want to get better at fighting! Everyone in Stalwart does it, and Syas is always looking at me like I should be better at it…" She crossed her arms and scowled. "He's such a smug mienfoo, too."

"Is he, or are you just jealous?" asked Magnus, his eye twinkling.

"It's not fair! 'Sam lets Syas out to do stuff alone all the time! I have to sneak out if I want to try anything." She stamped her foot. "So he always wins when we spar."

"He's a mienfoo," said Magnus, offering Candrila a meaningful look.

"So?"

"He's got you at… well, let's just call it more than a slight disadvantage."

"Mom always says that too." Candrila sat down next to Magnus and dropped her head into her paw, still frowning. "Did you know Sava almost killed Mom?"

"I don't know who Sava is, Candrila," said Magnus gently, reaching out to pat her once on the back.

"That feels really weird," she said, looking back at the runerigus and shivering.

"Sorry. I forget sometimes."

"Um, right, Sava, uh… she's 'Sam's wife. And Syas's mom." Candrila looked around and mumbled, "She's even scarier than Mom."

"Scarier than your mother?" said Magnus, chuckling. "Stone tells me Karan has quite the reputation, so that's a surprise."

"It's true! But Syas always tells me Mom is scarier." She shook her head. "She's just like that, she stares really hard at stuff. But Mom's always giving me kisses on the forehead and stuff, she's not that scary."

"Do you like living in Stalwart?" asked Magnus, leaning over to the sneasel and regarding her with professional interest.

"Yeah, I guess. It's home." The sneasel looked up at the canopy of leaves above them and shrugged. "Never been anywhere else. Treasure Town is cool! But it's really big and really loud."

"What does Stone do there?"

Candrila tapped a long claw ato her slight chin. "Um… Re- recomma- rec-" She trailed off and then waved the word aside. "Scout stuff. Recon? Auntie calls it that all the time."

"Do you think she's a good aunt?"

Candrila smiled and nodded. "I love Auntie Stone! Not as much as Mom, but close." Her grin became sly. "She takes me out to fight wildlings sometimes. But Auntie's usually busy so it's not often…"

The runerigus shifted his position on his boulder, unfurling so that he now simply hovered over the rock. "Has she told you about who she is?" asked Magnus, his tone becoming serious now.

"You mean a human?" asked Candrila, her head cocked.

"Yes."

The sneasel shrugged, looking disinterested. "Once? I didn't pay a ton of attention and Auntie Stone didn't really seem to care that I didn't either."

"Does Syas care?" asked Magnus.

"I don't know. I don't think he even knows. I never told him 'cos…" She paused and frowned. "I don't know." She sagged against the rock she was reclining against and whined, "This is so boring! How long are they gonna be in there?"

Magnus offered her a shrug, but continued to consider her words. I wonder how many don't really care.

A steady tone, surer than steel, came alive within him. A better question: how many of them care too much?

The next tone was neurotic, its speech bounding across the ether of his thoughts in a halting sort of way. Hardly a better question. Perhaps an equally important one.

Cold, sure steel. The lycanroc has a point.

A much softer voice, carrying a lilt that danced like flower petals on a spring breeze. So does Magnus.

His voice prevailed. Loudest, and from the solid core he'd fashioned behind his very eye. An impenetrable ball of phantasmal rigidity. I think I've got Stone beat. I've seen what this world is like. I can help.

Soft breezes and darting eyes alive in his essence, staring back at him as they cry in unison. You mean we can help.

Magnus was firm. I meant what I said.

Steel. And so do I.

The nameless confluence that swirled around his closest friends. No, so do we.

The Runewright had had enough. Shut up.