Blood Will Tell

[Phil Goshawke]

July 24, 2019

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
(Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)

The year or so that Phil spent in RhyDin did not go according to plan. Or, if Phil indulged fully in his cynicism, it went exactly as he had expected. Some part of him hoped that RhyDin and the RhyDin Institute of Magical Technology would be a further extension of his Camford University days, learning from the best professors in the multiverse and finding a new group of friends in his cohort to bond with. Instead, he found prejudices that wouldn’t have been out of place in Coalhold. Almost all of the school’s students possessed some sort of magical talent, either innate or studied, and on occasion Phil overheard talk of “muggles” such as himself. It happened (and it bothered him) more than he cared to admit to himself. It curdled much of his curiosity -- his abandonment of his observation journal only a few months into his stay served as some proof of that.

Even the best part of his time in RhyDin, the duels, was at best a mixed bag. He found the sport he watched on delay for much of his childhood much different than he imagined, especially when he finally set foot in the rings for the first time. Attempts at testing the Ward of Gondar’s effects on himself ended with bruises at Penny’s hands and scars on his shoulders from Eden, after nearly bleeding out from the cuts she inflicted on him. He was such a magical non-factor that not even healing wards worked on him. Still desperate to participate in the sport he loved as a kid, he broke into RIMT’s artifact storage center and stole a coat he’d heard provided protection for those who wore it, only to discover it was sentient. A friend of his from the duels, Mallory, brokered a contract between himself and the coat, wherein the garment agreed to “accompany” him into dueling battles in exchange for safe haven at the Annex and Arena and some assistance in tracking down one of the many mages that previously imprisoned him at the school. Things seemed to be going well, until, of course, they weren’t.

They discovered the theft and kicked Phil out of school, naturally, and it was only because of the efforts of his new mentor, Mallory, that he didn’t wind up in prison or in debt to the college. Her tenure in the Tower of Earth enabled her to mine gems whose value easily paid off his debts -- and served as more money than he could ever remember seeing in one place. The magnitude of her kindness astounded him, both in the little things and the big. Yes, she’d fixed his glasses when they were stepped on, and retrieved a book of his that fell behind her bar, but she also veilstrided him to the hospital after he nearly bled to death testing the wards, cut a deal with a sentient coat to protect him while dueling, erased his debts and ease the guard’s pressure on him for his larceny, and took him under her wing for mentorship. He could live a thousand lifetimes and not come close to being able to repay her for her efforts.

And that didn’t even include what she did for him when Coat broke its part of the Pledge between the three. When its unease shifted to hatred and horror towards the “dark arts” it thought Mallory was teaching him, and when encounters with Matt and Runt left him fearful he could defend himself even with his magitek gun, she gave him his Spark. An oath, a bond of blood, an infusion of power he dreamed of since childhood and resigned himself to never experiencing. With it, he served as a crucial team member for the Nocturnal Sect’s victory in the Trial of Light and Dark, and also won the All Ranks Magic Tournament in the summer, gleefully sticking it to everyone in Coalhold, Camford, and RhyDin who made him feel like less of a person because he wasn’t gifted. After all he had gone through, it felt like his life had gotten back on track.

And then things got worse yet again.

***

Inklings of the trouble to come arrived the night before, with text messages sent by various family members. Long group threads asking for prayers, discussions of medical tests and diagnoses for the mysterious ailments plaguing his older brother Lennox and his brother-in-law Kristeffer. He stayed mostly silent, sending individual messages of support to Lennox and his sister Freya, but the worry did not abate. Not helping matters was the fact he had already gone back earlier in the summer, when some sort of fatigue syndrome had struck Lennox and left him bedridden with exhaustion. Lennox’s children -- Phil’s nieces and nephews -- were nearly old enough to care for themselves while Lennox’s wife, Kerstin, kept constant watch on her husband, but leaving them alone for long periods of time in the summer was far from ideal. Phil came home for a week to give her a hand and keep her from exhausting herself as well. When he left, he thought Lennox had been getting better, but the recent stream of texts clearly indicated a relapse, if he’d ever gotten better in the first place.

Some time in the early morning hours in RhyDin, Phil’s cell phone began insistently ringing. He managed to ignore the first two cycles of its insistent chirpy tune, but when the third repetition started, he groaned, leaned over, and picked it up without seeing the caller. The line clicked and hissed more than usual, a clear indication that the call came from not just from a long distance away, but from another world entirely.

“Hello?”

“Phileas-”

“Mamma? Mom, it’s really really early here in RhyDin and I have a really really busy day ahead of me-”

“It’s your father. On top of everything with your brother and Kristeffer, your father -- he is trying to quit drinking, but he didn’ go to the helbreder, sorry, healer, and now he’s in the hospital.”

Phil sighed, biting back the sharp retort lurking on the tip of his tongue. “Mamma, what do you want me to do? It’s the middle of the night, the portal service won’ open for another -- “ Phil paused to lean over the side of his bed to see the time on his alarm clock: 2:38 a.m. “ -- six hours or so and that’s the only way to get to Coalhold from here.”

She either didn’t listen to Phil, or didn’t care. “Come home, Phil. We all need you here.”

He let the line sit silent, save for the pops and static marring the connection, long enough that his mother eventually chimed in again. “Phil? Are you there?”

“Yeah - yes. Yes I’m here mamma. I’ll get there as soon as I can, I promise. I…” His usual motor-mouth pace slowed as he stumbled over the words. “I love you, mom.”

“You too. Good night.” His cell phone beeped as the call disconnected, and he sighed yet again as he looked at his arctic fox, Kit, sleeping on a balled-up plastic bag in the corner of his bedroom. Phil clicked his tongue, waking Kit up, and then patted the edge of his bed. The fox gladly leaped up onto the usually forbidden furniture, barking a complaint when Phil sat up right as he nestled in beside his owner. “Sorry, but we’ve got to pack up real quick and I have to do something that’s going to hurt me a lot but I think should work.” Kit tilted its head, not really understanding what Phil had said, then watched curiously as the warlock quickly filled a backpack full of clothing and books. A few months ago, the nearly bursting bag would have staggered him to carry around, but the blood bond between himself, Mallory, and Malleus had strengthened body as well as mind. Phil went to another corner of the room, empty, and began drawing sigils in chalk upon the wooden baseboard floor, in imitation of what he had seen Mallory do before. When he felt confident the circle was correctly drawn, he removed a leather knife sheath from a drawer in his desk and pulled out an obsidian blade like the one he’d first used to forge his pact with Mallory. He brushed the tip of the blade against the palm of his hand, hesitating, imagining where he wanted to go. A forest filled with dead and dying trees, a couple of miles south of Coalhold. Forbannet Forest. The rumors were that some ancient magic had poisoned the woods, so few residents of his town ever bothered to visit. A perfect place to open and close his gateway. After three soft, tickling strokes, he finally slashed through the skin. “ανοίγω.” He balled up his fist as he had been shown, but instead of the droplets of blood that Mallory typically had to shake out to power her portals, Phil’s blood flowed in a steady trickle. He had cut too deep.

“Shit,” he gasped, reaching across his body for an old t-shirt in his laundry basket to staunch the flow. He barely noticed the shimmering crimson energy anchored in white chalk near the door to his bathroom, more concerned with binding his wound and making sure he hadn’t splashed any blood on the walls. With his uninjured hand, he tried to gesture for Kit to jump through to the other side, but the strange magic scared the fox, and it whimpered at the opposite end of the portal in his room. Phil gritted his teeth and, with a yelp from both of them, hoisted Kit under one arm. Before his pet could bite or scratch him, Phil dashed through the gateway back to his hometown of Coalhold.

[Phil Goshawke]

“See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there.”
(Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster)

July 25, 2019
Coalhold, Midgard

“What happened to your eye and your hand?” The sharp question from Phil’s mother turned his attention from his paper plate, half-full of kjøttkaker, brown sauce, cabbage stew, cranberry relish, and Bintje potatoes. The two sat on a flat uncovered concrete patio in plastic deck chairs, watching a group of kids -- Phil’s nephews and his mom’s grandsons -- play-dueling in a backyard that was as much dirt and weeds as it was grass. The oldest ones, Wyatt Goshawke and Kristeffer Peregrine, Jr. were acting out the Fall 2018 Warlord Tournament match between the Deathlord’s minion and Mairead Harker, though Wyatt kept complaining that he didn’t want to be the bad guy and didn’t want to lose. The younger ones -- Cameron Goshawke, Aksel and Hjalmar Peregrine -- were trying to re-enact the 2019 Valentine’s Megabrawl, except that Cameron and Aksel kept insisting that Hjamar be Runt, and the youngest of the trio was just as adamant about not being a “filthy jötunn.” The play, and the reminders of his own time spent dueling, distracted Phil from an immediate answer, which only came after a “tut, tut” and a finger poke from her.

“I was working with some volatile reagents in the laboratory and I didn’ take the right precautions.” The lie came as easily as breathing, with nothing in his posture or tone of voice to betray him. “A beaker exploded and I got some glass in my eye and I cut my hand trying to clean up the rest of the shards, but I’m fine mamma really I am.”

“Why didn’ you wear-”

“Safety goggles?” Phil interrupted, attempting to keep his eyes from rolling. “I just said that I didn’ take the right safety precautions. It won’ happen again.”

“Hrm.” She forced the noise out like she wanted to say more, but decided against it. Or, more likely, she couldn’t think of anything else to add on. Instead, she looked over at her grandchildren roughhousing, sighing quietly to herself. Phil watched her in profile -- had she always appeared so old? It had been years since he had visited her in person, but pictures had been sent, so he knew about the crow’s feet around her eyes, the gray in her dark brown hair, and the marionette lines near the corners of her mouth. But it was one thing to see it in images on a phone, another to be confronted with his mother’s aging in person. He turned away, following her gaze back towards the kids playing.

“Did you make many friends in school?” Phil bristled at her question. He knew what she really wanted to know, and maybe if his dad, brother, and brother-in-law weren’t all sick, he might have called her out. Or maybe I wouldn’ anyways, he thought. Instead, he lied, again, with just a handful of words.

“Yes, I made a lot of friends.” How many lies were there, how many omissions and minimizations and outright fabrications rested in those words? Or in nearly everything he had said and allowed his mom to think about him since he’d come home? No, I didn’ make a lot of friends. No, I’m not even in school anymore. No, I am hot in this long-sleeved shirt but I can’ show you the tattoos on my arms because I know they are anathema to all in Coalhold. No, I didn’ hurt my hand and eye in a lab explosion, they’re two separate incidents and I can’ tell you that I signed a blood pact with a witch and her avatar and that my blood-clouded eye is proof of that or that said pact allows me to use magic to teleport myself back and forth between Coalhold and RhyDin if I cut my hand. No, I’m never... His thoughts stopped short. He couldn’t bear to go further, not right away.

“Anybody special?” Phil’s fingers dug into his temples, before he shoveled the rest of the meatballs into his mouth. It took him two attempts to finally get the words out through the food.

“All friends are special, mamma.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean don’ you?”

“...Yes, I do.”

“So?”

Phil craned his neck around to get a better view through the screen door and window looking out on the patio. He could see the shadow of his sister washing plates and glasses at the sink, and it prompted him to stand. “...I’m going to help Freya with the dishes.”

“But-”

Phil paused with his hand on the doorknob, giving his mother hope he would stick around and actually answer her question. However, he just shook his head with a sad smile. “Mamma, not now.” With that, he turned the handle and slipped inside.

[Phil Goshawke]

July 26/July 27, 2019

Phil stood at the bottom of a snowy canyon, looking up at the twin peaks to his left and right. Djevelens Fjell stood on the left, all sharp angles and jagged outcroppings and impossible to climb faces. Englefjellet, on the right, stood shorter, gentler, softer than its neighbor across the ravine. Snow and boulders hung overhead from both mountains like Damoclean swords, waiting for one wrong move to bury anyone unfortunate enough to still be in that gorge. Someone like Phil.

He stood there despite everything that just happened. The trio of dead jötnar piled before him like bullet-ridden stacks of firewood testified grimly to Phil’s resilience, his creativity, the inner strength to fight a battle that seemed impossible at the onset, the knowledge gleaned from Mallory and Malleus. All the secrets they shared, and the power that had been provided him. And still…

His left arm was broken, or, at the very least, his shoulder had been dislocated. It hung there limp and useless, while blood dripped off of his palm and into the snow. Perhaps he’d severed a nerve in the process; he could barely feel any pain from the cuts that caused him to bleed. Or maybe his body was too busy focusing on his other wounds. A hard shot to the chest cracked a full set of his ribs, if not outright broke them, and the dull ache in his upper left abdomen suggested his spleen had been nicked if not punctured as well. The frost giants also landed several swings of their axes along the length of his legs, leaving him shaky on his feet. A punch to the face both broke his nose and forced several sharp shards of “shatter-proof” polycarbonate lens through his right eye, blinding him. If not for the pact he’d forged, he likely would be dead. He felt the energy surging, pumping just like Mallory’s lifeblood from her place of power into and through his arteries and veins, and still, it didn’t feel like enough. It took every bit of energy not to pitch face-first into a snowdrift.

At his feet rested the remains of his weapons. Crumpled bits of aluminum firing pins and white Bakelite dust were the only proof he fired his nåler, the single-shot Derringer-style pistols he’d grown fond of over time. Dents studded the length of Dødsbringeren’s barrel, blood slicked the grip, and the cylinder had been bent such that it no longer neatly slid into the frame. Even his newest creation, Verdensmorderen, had not survived unscathed, though it fared better than the others. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher fired mana-fueled rounds, much like his other guns, but he had concentrated more magical energy into each grenade than with the glass vials that powered the nåler and Dødsbringeren. The first jötunn he faced injured his left arm almost immediately, and so he tossed the launcher behind him in favor of weapons he could fire one-handed. Several long scratches marred the wooden heat shield where it struck an outcropping of rock. Now, though, he picked it up, leaning against the breach with the grenade portion stuck into the ground, despite knowing how unsafe it was.

“It is not over yet, Phileas,” a woman’s regal voice whispered in his ear. He started turning to his right to face it, remembered the blindness in his right eye, and switched directions. Falcon’s feathers brushed against his neck, attached to her cloak. His gaze first fell upon the cart she stood before, pulled (somehow?) by a pair of cats: an orange-and-white tiger-striped tom and a tortoiseshell with green eyes that studied Phil intently. By her side stood a long-tusked boar who also watched him. The woman, on the other hand, seemed to stare past Phil, down the canyon, her warm brown irises turning hard at what she saw. He examined the glimmering gold torc around her porcelain throat, her blonde hair spilling down her shoulders. Beneath that feathered cloak, she wore a simple thin green dress and no shoes, attire that couldn’t possibly keep her warm. Yet she took no notice of the bitter chill in the air as she rested a hand on Phil’s right shoulder. The breeze shifted, and he caught a whiff of honey from her. He nodded briefly, then focused his good eye down the gorge.

“Still they come, Phileas. An army of jötnar, intent on the revenge denied them for 15 of your generations. Look-”

“I-” he interrupted, then unexpectedly trailed off, pointing at his ruined eye. “I can’ see fully anymore.”

“Use my eyes. Use hers.” Somehow, she knew. The pact, the bond, the secret he kept from nearly everyone, and she knew. He wanted to ask her how, but something in her posture -- the rigid stance, the way she locked her fingers together in front of her -- indicated they were short of time. So he drew deeper from that wellspring of power, until both eyes saw the whole world in red.

In red, and much farther than ever before. Kilometers away, through skies so thick with snow he almost missed it, the frost giants marched. Ice blue against a crimson background, wielding more axes, maces, claymores, shields nearly the size of Phil’s body. Words lodged in his throat, stuck like bones, and he couldn’t force them out just yet.

The Great Barrier was gone. Coalhold’s citizens had fled, but eventually, the jötnar would reach the town, pillage it, keep going, keep trampling everything they found even vaguely reminiscent of humanity until it all sat in heaping ruins. When they caught the humans (and he knew it was just a matter of time before they did so)...

No. The thought screamed through his brain, but - “I can’ lift this. My arm-”

Fingers curled and wrapped around his left bicep, and impossible warmth flowed through the limb. He assumed it might hurt more, magical healing, but instead it felt safe. It wrapped a blanket around his soul, even as his bones and muscles and tendons twisted and knitted themselves back together. He gasped sharply when she reconnected the nerves, but another wave of calm crested over him, leaving his eyelids fluttering with the desire to sleep. Her next words jarred him back into the moment.

“You must, Phileas. For Coalhold. For its citizens. For the Families.”

“No,” he declared, before pulling the RPG up and aiming it squarely at Englefjellet. “For me.” He squinted through the optical sight, began depressing the trigger, ready to bring it all down --

* * *

He woke with a start, twin tracks of blood and saline tracing their way down his cheeks. He went to wipe them away, only to find a piece of paper wedged inside his hand. He uncrumpled it, unfolded it, then read the note, rubbing his right eye as he scanned over it. It didn’t take long, even reading through it twice, and when he was done, he neatly folded it back up and slid it inside his wallet. He scratched at his right cheek, then picked at some of the dried blood on the opposite side, and sighed. A million thoughts raced through his mind, most of them dark, but he clung to the one that would get him through that moment.

“Dammit, now I’ve got to shower.”

[Phil Goshawke]

October 20, 2019
Coalhold

Summer bled into fall in Coalhold. It started first as a cut in late August and September, as the warmth drip-drip-dripped away each night, and gray skies became more and more prevalent. In October, fall stabbed summer with a fatal blow, not long after the autumnal equinox at the end of September. Overnight, deciduous trees erupted into a riot of reds, oranges, and yellows, and temperatures dropped to the frost point, leaving icy crystals on blades of grass for Coalhold’s citizens to find when they woke up. From that first frost on, the days stayed chilly, blustery, and mostly gray, and it was only a matter of time before the trees would be bare, the ground covered with their leaves, only to be replaced with blankets of snow.

In a similar manner, Phil’s relationship with the older Goshawkes turned icy as well. Once his nieces and nephews returned to school, there was less need for him to babysit, especially when Lennox finally recovered enough from his illness to return home from the hospital. The nature of his ailment remained unclear, despite numerous tests from doctors and healers, but the family didn’t care much about the mystery that remained. They (Phil included) were happy to have him back, even if Lennox could not do as much with the Great Barrier as he had before.

The real trouble came, though, when Phil’s father returned home from rehab. The old tensions resurfaced, and old behavioral patterns tried to reassert themselves, but Phil was no longer the scared, starving child willing to put up with being yelled at and insulted just to get the table scraps of his parents’ affection. They pushed him on getting married and having kids, and he shoved back, pointing to his brother and sister and the seven grandchildren they had provided. It led to quiet dinners, when Phil actually bothered to stick around for meals with them. Sometimes, he preferred the barely organized chaos of dinner with his siblings and his nieces and nephews to the stultifying silence of home.

Home. When was the last time Coalhold had felt like home to Phil? Or had it ever really been home? Camford served as home while he attended college, but once graduation hit, his friends and acquaintances at the school spread out across the multiverse, and rare were the times he texted, talked, or visited with them. And RhyDin? Well, that was endlessly complicated. The fount of his newfound power sprang from the city and one of its citizens, but as much as RhyDin gave to him, it took away. Because of RhyDin, Phil would likely progress no further in organized post-secondary education, and it was only because Mallory stepped in on his behalf that he remained out of prison to this day. He had accomplished great things in the duels, but he bore a pair of scars on each shoulder that served as a reminder that nothing in this world comes for free. The blood in his left eye functioned as an additional stamp on that. Thrice branded, once by accident, once by pact, and once by choice at the hands of tattoo artists, RhyDin had changed Phil in a way that might have ruined him for anywhere else. Coalhold? Too provincial, too stifling now that the kids no longer needed babysitting. Camford? All the juice had been squeezed out of that particular fruit; the university held no more secrets for him to discover. For Malleus to discover.

All roads led back to RhyDin, but there were tolls to be paid first. Monetary and personal. Phil needed a job, but pride wouldn’t let him ask Mallory for his old position back at the Lyceum. He felt like the physical distance and the focus on making things right with his family had pulled the two of them apart, even as freelance work for the Lyceum had slowed down. No, the solution to his dilemma was clear: he had to find a job that took advantage of his particular skillset.

Luckily for Phil, such a job happened to practically fall into his lap...

[Phil Goshawke]

October 28, 2019
Horace Daniels Amalgamated Magitek & Thaumaturgy Offices

“Come in, come in, Mr. Goshawke.” Phil peered through the floor-to-ceiling window beside the sleek metal office door, before entering his interviewer’s office. Inside the room, sunlight poured in through similar windows that gave Phil a bird’s eye view of the city of Londinium, overlooking rectangular apartments squeezed in and around concrete and glass-clad skyscrapers. A little ways in the distance, towering over every other building in the city, a steel and glass wedge asserted itself among the hustle and bustle of trolleys and aerocars. The office furnishing, spare as it was, consisted of a small brushed metal desk, two simple leather desk chairs on opposite sides, and a pale blue sofa that may or may not have pulled out into a bed.

The man addressing Phil was as sleek and minimal as the city and the office he resided in. Phil guessed the man was a decade or so older than him, though the guess came more from his bald head and elevated position in the company. He wore a slim black suit with a white dress-shirt, no tie, and as soon as they had finished shaking hands and took their seats, he removed the jacket.

“Can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee, tea?”

“Thank you, Mr. Koettner, but I’m alright right now.”

“Please, call me Rodger.” He smiled, showing off two gleaming rows of teeth for Phil.

“Alright, Rodger. Then you can call me Phil?”

“Phil it is!” At Rodger’s desk, just within arm’s reach, rested a coffee mug, and the man picked it up and took a sip before setting it right back down, steepling his hands, and leaning slightly across the desk. “Can I say, Phil, before we formally start this interview, that I was surprised -- pleasantly of course! -- that you contacted Nancy after you filled out your application. She remembered you from the Camford University Engineering Job Fair -- said you talked for a while about innovations in mana storage using, uh, was it ori-something?” Rodger scratched his head as the details escaped him.

“Orichalcum nanotubes. A good idea in theory, but magitek hasn’ yet progressed to where making them isn’ going to use an astronomical amount of energy.” Phil nudged his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, the tubes! That’s not my area of speciality -- I’m the head of Non-Projectile Weapons Development -- we’ve had some promising breakthroughs in forging swords out of hihi'irokane. But everything’s up in the air with the opening of our new RhyDin subsidiary. The position you’re applying for -- it’s a 50/50 appointment with Projectile Weapons and Magic Storage -- the head of Magic Storage is on vacation and the head of Projectile Weapons used to have the position you’re applying for, so HR handed this off to me.”

“I see.” Phil glanced down at Rodger’s left hand as he reached for the cup, taking another sip. He wore a simple gold wedding band on his ring finger, and a chunky jet black ring on his pinky. “Well, I’m happy to be here and to answer your questions and interview for this position.”

“Right.” Rodger set the mug back down with a delicate *clink*, folded his hands, and straightened up, which instinctively pulled up Phil’s back. “Down to brass tacks, right?” When Phil nodded, Rodger opened a desk drawer and retrieved a dark green file folder, flipping it over and paging through several sheets of paper. “Application, phone interview, skills test, virtual interview. All very good, all very impressive. Your references -- Mallory Maeda, Doctor Rigoberto Tran, Professor Jaime de Gama -- all spoke highly of your intelligence, your creativity, your motivation. There’s just one thing -- honestly, after all the work we’ve done and with what we’ve seen and how quickly we’re looking to fill this position, you’d already be in the door otherwise -- your tenure at the RhyDin Institute of Magical Technology.”

Phil tried not to slump in his seat, or let the color drain from his face. It was a valid concern; everything about his academic record at Camford University suggested he would have had little issue keeping up with the workload or the intellectual rigor of RIMT, and yet he had left the school after less than a year under circumstances that were murky at best. His tracks should have been covered by Mallory’s gifted trinkets, but Phil had no way of knowing if their research went further, if they sought out a disgruntled university professor for dirt on him or not. All he could do was to spin the story he had prepared ahead of time. “We had philosophical differences on the nature of the academic work I was to perform. They wanted me to study the histories, the past attempts by scientists and alchemists and artificers to create things like the philosopher’s stone or Esper crystals or Materia, and do these very controlled lab studies, while I wanted to get out in the field and move fast and break stuff. Honestly, I learned way more studying under Mallory at the Lyceum and in the Tower of Earth than I ever would have learned at RIMT.” He smoothly segued from the half-truth about his departure from the college into the whole truth about why he left RhyDin. “I likely would have stuck things out for as long as Mallory would have had me or as long as she held one of those Towers but there were some illnesses in my family that forced me to go back home and help out with family stuff, you know, babysitting and all that.”

“What made you apply for this job -- decide to come back?”

Phil laughed a good-natured laugh at Rodger’s question. “Well, when I saw the job posting I honestly wondered if it had been written just for me. I made my own weapons to duel with on Twilight Isle, and I studied large-scale mana storage at Camford University. It’s a perfect combination of my interests. As to why I was looking for work, well, the illnesses sorted themselves out and with my brother and father back and with my nieces and nephews going back to school there wasn’ as much need for a babysitter anymore.” He kept the depth of his family troubles hidden from Rodger with an eager smile, one his interviewer matched quickly.

“Sounds good. Do you have any questions for me?” With that, Phil finished the interview with the usual inquiries a job candidate makes: dress code, performance evaluation methodology, work hours flexibility. When he finally left after shaking Rodger’s hand, there was a long-missing pep in Phil’s step as he left the office.

***

Once Phil left, Rodger dialed a familiar four digit extension, and the person on the other end of the line answered right after the first ring.

“Rodger?” A man’s voice answered the call in crisp Received Pronunciation.

“Yes, Mister Daniels, it’s me. You wanted an update on the interview related to Project Ragnarökkr?”

“I did. Did you find a suitable candidate?”

“I did, but --” Doubt trickled into Rodger’s voice, and Horace seized on it.

“But what, Rodger? Be brutally honest with me.”

“It’s almost -- the lead candidate is almost too perfect for this position.”

“How so?” Horace tried his best to hide his curiosity, but the way his tone pitched upward at the end of his simple question made his interest clear.

“You wanted someone with both Projectile Weapons and Magic Storage experience. You know how rare those sorts of candidates are, yet almost as soon as we posted the position, a candidate with experience and interest in both of these areas of studies finds it and applies for it?”

Horace cleared his throat before answering Rodger. “You think he is a corporate spy.”

“It feels like a distinct possibility. If it weren’t for his mysterious departure from RIMT -- Phil has a clean background otherwise. He has no corporate experience, no connections to anti-corporate or anti-capitalism groups or protestors -- he’s your basic academic engineering student turned RhyDin duelist. It’s almost too clean.”

“Almost.” The voice on the other end of the line trailed off briefly. “This is the candidate who had Mallory Maeda as a reference?”

“Yes,” Rodger replied reluctantly.

“And if not for these concerns, is he the best choice for this position?”

“Yes, no doubt.” His hesitation disappeared with his quick assessment of Phil.

“Then hire him.”

“But--” Rodger only got the one word out before Horace interrupted him.

“Hire him, and I will pull one of our Internal Affairs/Corporate Security operatives from Franmil Three to shadow him. The unrest there seems to have been pacified. Ragnarökkr and RhyDin are far more important to me. Plus, having someone in the orbit of a dueling Baron and Tower Keeper is bound to prove useful to us. Do I make myself clear?” A note of irritation crept into Horace’s voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Rodger could practically hear Horace’s smile from his end, as the annoyance washed away. “Keep me posted.” And without any further words, fanfare, or even a goodbye, Horace hung up.

“Arsehole,” Rodger muttered to himself as he put away the rest of Phil’s paperwork and began preparing for the rest of his workday.