“Mom,” Sarrah says, “It wasn’t Allia’s decision not to tell you. It was mine.”

  Rachel gives her daughter a confused look. “But you said you couldn’t tell me because it was her secret.”

  Sarrah nods. “Well, yeah, I wasn’t going to change our decision without consulting her in case she changed her mind.”

  Rachels makes a ‘fair enough’ tilt of her head then looks at Allia. “Well, have you changed your mind?”

  Allia looks to Sarrah. “I don’t know. Do you want to tell them?”

  Sarrah shrugs. “I mean, I think we have to at this point. If I don’t want them to worry more that is. Especially with the whole other J thing we had tonight.”

  “Professor Ja?k?skürden?” Gerrald asks, pronouncing the name nearly perfectly. “What does she have to do with this?”

  Allia tilts her head at the unusual hostility in his voice. “Do you have some animosity with her?”

  Gerrald hesitantly shakes his head, but Rachel speaks before him. “There are many in the league who are mistrustful of how much influence she has gained in it in such a short period of time. So, I’m sure Gerrald was just surprised at her name coming up again after her involvement last night. Isn’t that right?”

  Gerrald hesitates, but eventually nods. “She’s been redirecting a lot of resources to her various dealings. A lot of projects have gotten cut for her ambitions, whatever they are.”

  Allia nods, then begins speaking very directly and succinctly. “Good to know. Well, anyways. The short of it is that the demons attacked the school in order to steal a special project – a precursor artifact whose function she’s been unable to decipher. I semi-inadvertently foiled the scheme by an unexpected interaction between it and my manifestation that allowed me to absorb the orb into myself.”

  The parents stare at her in shock while Sarrah covers her face to suppress a laugh. Meanwhile, Allia looks at them completely unphased until a spark of insight brightens her face. “Oh! Would you like to see it?” She gestures at an open space and the orb appears.

  “That’s um… that’s rather big to go inside of you.” Rachel states the obvious.

  Allia shrugs. “Yeah, I have no idea how that works. At least I don’t think my power has anything to do with spatial manipulation… Oh! The layers have rearranged themselves again. We should take a picture!” She looks expectantly at them.

  Gerrald manages to speak first. “We um… have a camera in our survey gear. I’ll go get it.”

  As they wait, Rachel haphazardly examines the orb. It’s not until Gerrald comes back and begins setting up the cameral – a large enchanted box that requires a tripod and long exposure times to function – that she finally snaps out of her surprise fueled stupor.

  “Wait,” she says, snapping her head back to Allia, “you knew you had a precursor artifact inside of you and you took our daughter to the beach?”

  Allia shrugs lamely. “I mean, I didn’t know people could track me while it’s inside.”

  “People can track you!?” Rachel escalates her voice to a shout. “Ok, that’s it. Bunker, both of you. NOW!”

  Sarrah shoots up out of her chair, her hands slamming against the table. “Mom! It smells down there! This is why I didn’t want to tell you! I knew you’d overreact!”

  “Overreact!?” Rachel shouts, still pointing towards the bunker. “That thing has over a thousand symbols just on the first layer and they look like mithril. Mithril Sarrah! Who knows what it could when it activates!”

  Sarrah rolls her eyes. “Well, if J hasn’t been able to get it to activate in a year, then I doubt it’ll randomly activate now.”

  “And what if the demons know how to activate it not randomly?” Rachel asks. “Who knows what spies they still have here.”

  Allia shakes her head. “The spy we met said all the spies were leaving. It’s why the baited breath is here, to pick them up.”

  Rachel stares at her before nearly stammering in rage. “You met a spy? How? Did they try to take the orb?”

  Allia shakes her head. “No. The spy said they didn’t know anything about the attack and were as surprised by it as we were. It was just chance that I ran into him as he was trying to leave.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “And so what? You just decided to follow after him and have a conversation?”

  Allia glances up as if searching her memories before nodding perfunctorily. “Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he seemed interesting.”

  Rachel stares at her in disbelief before straightening up to loom over them. “We will finish this conversation in the bunker.” She says, suddenly calmly with each word emphasized in a way that sends shivers down Allia’s spine.

  Evidently feeling the resistance leave them, the two girls comply and follow them to the bunker whose entrance is a steel hatch in the basement floor. The girls climb down first, but instead of following them down Rachel says, “Reflect on what you’ve done for a while. We’ll be down shortly,” and slams the hatch shut, leaving them in the dark.

  Sarrah hits the light controls with a theatrical groan. “They’re always so dramatic.”

  Allia smiles with a soft giggle. “I don’t know. I thought the concern was nice.”

  Sarrah shrugs with an eyeroll. “Yeah, whatever. Come on, we can have some canned sweetroots while we’re down here. I love them, so Dad always makes sure to stock up, but they’re canned, so we never open them unless they think the world’s about to end.”

  “Does that happen often?” Allia asks, following her to the cramped ‘living space’ that consists of four cots bolted to the bare concrete wall and sits on one of them, climbing to the top one and dangling her legs off the side.

  Sarrah laughs. “Only every time a kraken surfaces. Well, I mean ‘is seen in close proximity’. MDC always takes care of it, but well… You know it’s funny. They’ weren’t alive for the old days, but it’s like they still remember them the way they act sometimes.”

  “Yeah, I get that… they aren’t religious, are they?”

  “Oh, here they are.” Sarrah says, fumbling through the shelves and pulling out a pair of cans, then glances backwards as she realizes the question. “Um what? Oh! You mean, ‘and the roiling progenitor shall awaken and her brood riseth to the surface and consume the land and those who survive shall be welcomed into her dark embrace’?”

  “Um, yeah?”

  She shakes her head. “Nah. I think maybe one of my grandparents were really into them – the Cult of the Deep Bliss I mean – but I don’t even know which one. Both my parents moved here from their small towns before they even met. I get the sense that they’d rather not look back so I never met them. But I guess maybe their… What do you call it? Hopeful terror? Anyways, their hopeful terror (or at least just terror) must have worn off on their kid even if they consciously rejected the belief.”

  Sarrah climbs up to the top cot opposite Allia and tosses her a can, to which Allia conjures a pair of openers and gives Sarrah one along with a fork construct.

  “Hm, this is good,” Allia says, munching on the sweet, spindly white tubes.

  “Yeah. I should really just buy some for myself. They’re not even expensive. Dad just has a weird fixation about long lasting food being for emergencies. Though maybe that’s more about his love of cooking than his paranoia.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I’ll start bringing a can to share at lunch.”

  Sarrah smiles. “I’d like that.”

  A few moments pass before Allia speaks again. “Do you wish you met them? Your grandparents I mean?”

  “Hm? Um… no, I don’t think so. I mean, I wouldn’t object. Or maybe I would, if there was some reason for them to cut off contact. But they’d just be like any other person to me. Some people claim they get some understanding of themselves from their ancestors, but that never made any sense to me. Like, it’s completely backwards. Sure, traits or tendencies might be inherited, but they won’t necessarily be. So, since you can’t derive yourself from your origin, you need to know yourself before you can even try to gain anything from your origin. But if you already know yourself, what else is there from your origin for you to learn?... What? Why are smiling?”

  “Nothing,” Allia says, continuing to smile with her annoying exuberance, “I just feel that’s a nice way to think is all. I like it. We are who we are, and our origin has no say in it.”

  “…Yeah, well… whatever… I don’t think that’s what mom meant about reflecting on what we did by the way.”

  “You actually wanted to do that?” Allia laughs.

  Sarrah laughs back. “No. But mom will probably have a quiz over the nature of our repentance or something.”

  “And you’re sure she’s not religious?”

  Sarrah laughs again. “Who knows. But I at least I think she has enough class not to go for one of the old cults. You know, go for one of the hip young ones. The Divine Blossoming? Maybe she sunk all our money into their products and is hiding it from me and dad out of embarrassment?”

  “Pfft. Those guys aren’t even new. They’re just reskinned Anavitalists trying to get in with the youth culture and make a quick absol.”

  Sarrah rolls her eyes. “Well excuse me. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of an expert.”

  Allia scrunches her eyes in confusion. “What? You don’t read the flyers they pass out?”

  “Hah! From those weirdos who harass you on the street? No. Who does?”

  “… I thought they were interesting. You know, to categorize mental contagions.”

  Sarrah shrugs a shoulder conceding the point. “I guess that is the most ‘you’ reason for reading those things. Just promise me you won’t start making donations.”

  “Um…”

  “Allia!” Sarrah says with such disappointment.

  “I’m kidding! Even I know not to encourage them that much.”

  “Good.”

  Allia suddenly lies down on the cot, placing the half-eaten can on a floating nightstand she creates and suddenly blows out an extended breath, pushing a strand of hair from her face with the gust. “So, how long are we going to be in time out?”

  Sarrah lies down too, setting her own can down on Allia’s construct. “We’re not in ‘time out’. They just… want us to be safe… or rather, they want to feel like they’re contributing to our safety. Mom knows she overreacted… probably, but doesn’t want to admit it, while Dad is probably trying to be reasonable. Once they come to an agreement, they’ll come down and present a unified front. You know how it is.”

  “…Yeah”

  “Anyways. Yawn. I think I’ll just sleep for a bit. There’s a shower over there, though the condenser only holds a few minutes so be quick. If mom comes in before I wake just tell her I’m deeply meditating on my actions.”

  “Heh. Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe.”

  “Yeah, safe as a… whatever…”