Chương 57: Preparation

Some people dig their own holes. I was basically strip-mining the floor underneath my feet, only kept from falling by sheer audacity. An angry-faced homing projectile made of plasma flew past about thirty feet below me. I was currently stuck to the ceiling of the mansion inside the dollhouse, writing notes and organizing my thoughts. Because all said, I had a lot of work to do. I didn't have a plan for what it meant to create a whole faction of likeminded individuals. And if I did, it would be terrible.

Magical girls made friends, yes, but this was less 'let's hold hands and sing kumbayah' and more approaching politics. I was winging everything, hoping that whatever wrench inevitably made it into our gears could be removed before it revealed how incredibly out of my depth I was. The recordings of my little speech on pastries spread across the Custodian versions of social media like wildfire.

The reactions varied from 'aww, look at the little newbie Custodian trying her best' to 'typical joy caster' to baking recipes. However, somehow the video jumped beyond these closed forums and onto the broader Society media sites, and from there, into mainstream media. They called me the muffin spider. It was not the worst nickname I could've gotten.

Where most of the comments were filled with people highlighting their favorite baked goods and sharing recipes, a good portion were speculating about the inner workings of Custodian Society. There were haters too, but I let Tanya handle those. Jumping into the verbal pigsty and wrestling in the muck seemed to invigorate her more than anything. Some people need to get a hobby. Regardless, the reaction of people outside The Society was at the moment less important than the ones inside it.

My mental mailbox was filling up with follow-up questions, tinkerer self-promotion, and one whole death threat. Hey, that means I finally made it big. It's just an ol' copypasta, I think I can ignore it. Now, time to organize our first poker night, and from there, we can expand, expand, expand. Gotta be quick though and take advantage of the hype. A fireball swerved and flew directly towards me.

I dropped the anticipation charge fueling [Sticky], immediately falling from the ceiling and onto a party of werepeople that were only just now looking up. I shot one with an acid glob, which stuck to their shield before oozing through and in through their eyes, then did the same to the second out of three. A tad basic, but the soulcoin limit for consumables was set to 100 today. Gotta be economical.

"You cur!" said Momo, the werefox immediately growing large into her warform to prevent me from getting close without being eviscerated.

"Traitor! We invited you into our den, and you stab us in the back?" I sighed. This wasn't about the dollhouse. A small, vocal minority of werefolk were convinced that I had taken advantage of their hospitality. While I was expecting to make some enemies, the sudden turnabout was giving me mental whiplash. How could anyone object against a chill poker night for the curious, the chill, and those who don't fit in?

I thought there were so many different Lodges precisely because the policies of every one catered to a different type of person. It hurt even more since I knew some personally, even if for only a short time before.

"It's nothing personal," said the body double I sent running left while I went right.

"The Lodge is my life," she shouted, nipping at my heels with gravitational spells.

"They gave me everything and didn't ask one thing in return."

"They certainly didn't give the old associate Trent everything," I countered. She chose the wrong me to obliterate, letting me circle around and stick myself to her back.

"You're a Custodian, Momo," I whispered.

"You're valuable. Of course you get everything. That's why you feel so indebted."

"What do you know?" Too little and yet too much. I'd done some research, helped along by Addy. There were ten times as many Lodges as vampire Cabals, and each was on average larger as well. Werefolk had developed a stronger collectivist culture, which now was expressing itself in these institutions that were naturally accumulating power and wealth more efficiently than any individual could.

They were acting as agencies for single or groups of Custodians, often with a network of entire crews of support staff or associated Lodges. The benefits were great, but posed a problem: Anyone who wasn't on the inside didn't benefit, which in Custodian terms meant less efficiency, and therefore less soulcoins. The problem for those inside came from their obligations towards the group.

Any associate could make a quest which, if approved by the system, could be made available to all Custodians in the area, or specific groups. The quest maker had to pay out the reward from their own pockets. So, some lodges made a series of one-soulcoin quests which nobody on the outside would take, while at the same time mandating that their associated Custodians take these quests on — either through social pressure, or straight up contractual coercion.

A Custodian was already paid by killing alien invaders after all, why pay them on top of that? It was their job, it was what they were supposed to do — except the lodges naturally prioritized making quests that benefited themselves and associated collectives. Thus, the safest places to live in were those neighborhoods near a lodge. This was concentrating Custodians in single areas instead of spreading them out to address the threats that could pop up anywhere.

And while some areas were hotbeds of convergence event activities, those were inundated by the larger lodges with Custodians to spare, leaving unaffiliated Custodians competing with entire groups ravenous for soulcoins. It was, in one fell swoop, both incredibly capitalistic and at the same time approaching a feudal character. And the problem was that some Lodges already didn't like me just for my harmless stunt. If I actually spoke out against this practice, I would become a pariah. And that just wouldn't do.

"Graah!" Momo cried, flailing and failing to reach behind her. The one thing the large werefolk warforms were bad at was range of motion. That was why Addy insisted on the most joint-popping, spine-bending, stomach-turning stretches every single morning." Away!" Momo's magic pushed against mine. Three of my hands were flung back, but that still left the rest of my body stuck to her. Personally antagonizing her wasn't helping anyone. But I suppose I was a tiny bit embittered by this whole shebang.

"I'll concede that I did use your party to self-promote." With a defeated sigh, I jumped off of her, giving up my advantageous position so we could see eye to eye.

"If it at all helps, it sorta just happened. I didn't plan for it. I can't offer more than an apology for that."

"Offer your head!"

"I sincerely hope you only mean that in the context of the dollhouse." I pulled my Lucky 7, aimed, and shot her in the head with a bullet charged by honest sadness. It hit her shield and cut out a perfectly round hole before continuing on through her neck. Sadness bullets were shield-piercing. And right now, nothing was easier than feeling blue. I sighed as she disappeared halfway through a snarling leap. Dollhouse days were supposed to be my favorite days, and usually they were.

It wasn't because of my level advantage, or because I was discovering new ways every week on how to use my spells, but because I was finally starting to feel the week-to-week difference from training my base stats. I was on a streak of four perfectly charged spells in a row, while my mind was running hot like a high-performance engine. But the best feeling was still the burn in my limbs and core, only tickled out after a series of high-speed chases and close encounters I had no business of surviving.

And yet, here I was. Am I turning into a gym-girl like Addy? No, of course not. I'm still an adorable, cute little spider. I jumped out from around a corner, yelled 'BOO!' at a poor girl with fairy-gossamer wings flying low to the ground, then grabbed her wrist through a shield that only worked against high-energy and high-velocity projectiles. Knife, meet chest. She disappeared after the third stab, and I gotta say, that was a bona-fide spider ambush. One problem: Why was she flying so low?

Was she trying to avoid detection or… One moment. The world turned to molasses, leaving just enough time to recognize the shadow at my feet slowly turning bigger. I jerked to the side. A split second later, the plastic dollhouse floor cracked and shattered under the weight of a familiar fuzzy friend.

"Sam!" Addy yelled.

"There you are." Too close, way too close! The current game of 'hunt the mimic' was quite simple: It was a team game wherein everyone was limited to two weapons or tools they could reasonably get their hands on, except for one person who could have as many tools as they wanted below a certain threshold. That was the mimic, and it gained some extra features the dollhouse simulated for it for free: shapeshifting, camouflage, and three free escapes it could use to get out of any tricky situation.

Awfully similar to how hunting an Ur-mimic went in real life. The mimic could also convert people which, once they were 'killed' by the mimic, simply switched teams. They gained one of the three extra mimic abilities, though in turn they didn't create more mimic servants when defeating another contestant. Even just one servant made cornering and catching desirable servants that much easier, and finding the real mimic that much harder.

I didn't like the implications at all, but hey, I was the first person to admit that having extra lives didn't save me from being led around by the ur-mimic like a puppet. Regardless, Addy was here, and given that I hadn't seen her for five minutes since we split up, there was only one reasonable assumption: She'd been turned. I split a single body double off me. It was no use, as expected. Addy could single me out by the smell alone.

I leapt off a balcony, grabbing the ledge with two hands to swing me further down. Addy didn't allow that. She grabbed my hands just as I let go and flung me further down, down, down. The floor came quickly as I caught myself on six arms. All of them hurt, but none were broken judging by how the dollhouse was still allowing me to move them. Grabbing my Lucky 7, I aimed it right above me when a half-ton weretanuki hit the floor, arms and legs arched around me.

Her grin was feral, even as she tugged my gun-arm away and switched into her hybrid form. And then she kissed me. Deeply. Sensually.

"So," I muttered around her lips.

"Addy. We're going to have a talk about boundaries."

"Mhm?" She broke the kiss, face flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly.

"If I were a mimic, I could've snuck a deathworm down your throat by now."

"Yes, that is totally why you were kissing me," I deadpanned.

"I don't mind your public shows of affection, y'know."

"— hafta send everyone a message, make them know what's what, especially if they want to start something," she muttered.

"—which is only part of why I don't mind that." The other part was her sheer enthusiasm, coupled with how quickly she was becoming as good a kisser as I was. The unexpected upsides of stats and single minded perseverence, I suppose.

"It was fine, up until martial arts started getting involved. And other people. And now, dollhouse time too." She managed to look somewhat chastised. Addy was the one who always said gym-time was sacred.

"I'll try to hold back."

"Good." I shoved a handful of pink letters fastened with spider-shaped wax seals into her arms. Only 2 soulcoins for a box of 100!

"Also, can you give every person you kill one of these invites?" Addy groaned.

"Whyyy?"

"Because physical invites are harder to ignore than digital ones. And because your girlfriend asked nicely?" I was seconds away from rubbing her ears affectionately when a devious idea popped into my mind.

"Hey, if you manage to distribute all of them before my last class of the day, I'll…" This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Her ears perked up, face turning redder and redder as I gave her something to charge her anticipation off of. Empowering my foe was probably not my best move. Then again, I'd be joining her side soon enough. I had plenty of ways to avoid getting caught, but once she had me pinned there was no escape. Unless I pulled some very illegal moves.

Like, say, if I pinched her right there at the side of her belly—"Eep!" Addy flinched and, since she wasn't in her war form, I managed to roll her off of me. With six arms I could punch myself off the floor into a standing position, faster than she could recover by a few hundredths of a second.

"Hah, catch me if you can!" I yelled as I rounded a corner, only for something that looked awfully much like a vending machine to come crashing through the wall behind me. Oh, I made her angry now. That's fine though. I can handle an angry Addy one way… or another. Dollhouse time ended, and we segued into the less heartthrob-inducing task of grinding ECC efficiency. Custodians were lined up at the far end of the gym.

There were firing ranges with targets ranging as far as half a mile out, which was fairly insane even for a magical gym that was bigger on the inside. A pile of third-rate firearms, wands, and other implements was nearby. Alright-o, time to train [Arms & Arms proficiency] with some weapons that won't bankrupt me immediately. Maybe I should practice clearing jams, or quickly swapping weapons with multiple arms at a time— A glint of light, caught by my rear facing eyes.

I threw myself to the floor mid-reload as a thick bolt of lightning cracked over my head. My heart was pounding as barely half a second later, an incredibly angry-looking instructor BlazeBlue appeared right behind.

"CUSTODIANS, HALT!" Her voice physically hurt.

"I have gone over the rules in gym time twice now, and if I have to go over them three times I will gut someone, is that clear? NO SPELLS FIRED AGAINST CUSTODIANS OUTSIDE THE DOLLHOUSE. Now, we all make mistakes. Will the culprit of this unfortunate miscast kindly step forward?" Nobody presented themselves. My heart was pounding even a long while after I got up.

No matter how much I tried to focus on the targets ahead of me, every twitch of movement behind me nearly caused me to send body doubles in every direction and jump for cover, even though I had seven lives. Nobody from our class uses lightning. Unless… is there someone else hiding their level? Whatever. Who cares? Stay focused. That had to be an accident. Right? [Your ECC efficiency for Fear has increased by 1%] +++ We'd settled on a name for our group.

'The Free Poker League'. Orianna helped keep it neutral; evoking even a single idea that was tied to either Cabal or Lodge might send the wrong message to either groups, or to individuals looking to join. It was a bit of a loose idea so far, but the basics were coming together. First, we had to make people socialize. Then we had to make it a habit. Once a week, we would meet at a designated dorm to play poker and various other card and board games, with tournaments held once a month.

Ensuring that the dorm had a TV meant anyone not interested at the time could bond over a shared interest or disinterest in movies. The entry cost was one bag of snacks or pack of drinks, anything beyond that was taken from a collective fund, bankrolled by yours truly. I was strapped for time, so planning had to be done simultaneously with my other classes. We were going through the phony war in Cultures of the Worlds today.

I'd had to cram the general gist of it into my poor brain in way too short a time, but it was a necessity. The thesis today was that the the two fae factions The Court of the Rose and Seven Green Groves had launched their incursions into earth in the past not for any territorial gain, but instead to impress the Xanthous Queen in Beige — not to be confused with the Kingdom of Xanth and Be-gee, nor the Xanthous Queen in Ochre, who to this day was a rival for her title. <<So, this Queen in Beige is some sort of…

political figure? >> I texted Mason, since it was rude to talk even at a whisper when a lecturer was lecturing. <<All the references are vague and just… treat her title like a noun I should be intimately familiar with. >> The giant werehedgehog was sitting in on the lecture on the chair to the left of me, in part to make a statement, in part because he needed to stay in Madagascar to go through some followup checkups with Hua Tuo, and in part because he was bored as heck.

I took the opportunity to rope him in on my various schemes, and also to iron out a few kinks in my understanding of the sister worlds. <<It's a sort of pagan god the fae have learned to fear and court, >> he whispered back. <<Like the godly pair of Titania and Oberon. >> <<God? Context, please. >> <<Short version: Some fae screwed up, and bound their soul to something too big. Something huge and terrible. Mucho grandissimo. >> <<Like… a real god? >> He snorted. <<Depends on your interpretation.

It's less a judeo-christian omnipresent father and more concept, an idea, or a location. Fae magic is about interpretation; it hinges on the collective consensus on what a given statement or offer constitutes. Rules must be followed, and a price paid for every mistake no matter how small. As the bodies of those who are inundated with said rules are laid to rest, so too do the rules sink into the very ground. The result is that some places respond to these rules in a very physical sense.

>> <<So, this Xanthous queen woman bound herself to, what, a continent? >> <<In Oberon's case it was land, in her case, it was an idea. If your entire civilization uses idioms around the color yellow as a metaphor for senses and intrigue, and you manage to screw with them… let's just say you get an insane fae that can listen in on any conversation within earshot of an object or creature colored yellow. >> <<And the other fae wanted to impress them to join their side, >> I said.

No doubt the intel gained from someone with such a ridiculous power could tip the scale in any conflict. Too bad their method of gaining approval was raiding military complexes in China, Russia, and the US. From there, the phony war emerged, and finished within three weeks. I looked to the side at Al, the yellow-skinned bat-demon. Idly, he scratched behind his ears. <<I am barred from ever obtaining a visa. Or local visa-equivalent.

>> He clicked his tongue, wiggling his flat nose in what I'd learned was irritation. <<Human, why is this translation so impure? I wish to say the word 'visa' for the permit to entry, not 'visa' the payment card, nor 'visa' the payment card services corporation. >> <<Welcome to homonyms. >> <<You mean to say that one word referring to multiple objects and ideas is by design? >> he asked. I shrugged. <<Dunno if language is exactly 'designed', but yeah, that's how it be.

>> He raised his flat nose, which I'd come to understand as a sign of displeasure. <<If meaning is not lexically clear, how do you ever agree on anything? >> <<Context, >> I said. <<People rarely agree on most things, >> Mason added. Al sneered. <<Abhorrent. >> <<What, you don't have semantic disagreements between demons in The Fun Place? >> I asked mockingly. There was a pause as he gathered his thoughts. <<We do.

They are serious disputes concerning the integrity of every contract, contracts which are holding our society together, and which can change if even one word changes in meaning. >> He formed a closed hand. <<To ensure utmost clarity, every word expresses precisely one thing. The bureau for word clarity publishes a report of newly crafted words each trimester. There are seventeen million words in demon vocabulary. >> <<Woof. Sounds like you never stop studying Demonic, huh? >> <<It is…

considerably easier for those born into more mentally astute classes. They did not allow me into the halls of learning; thus, I had to find alternate paths of education. >> Demons have castes. Fae have castes. Connection? <<If there's one thing we can agree on, >> Mason said with a grin. <<It's that certain things should only be used for certain situations.

Take Samantha here and physical training as an example: Everyone is trying their hardest to win soulcoins, yet she seems to be using hers as some form of courting ritual. >> <<Interesting. Is this a normal occurence? >> Al stared at me while I was trying my best to bury my face in my many arms. Goddammit Addy. I just wanted to have a certified normal magical university experience. You stole that from me. Thief! +++ I have made the thief pay. The bed was warm, my tanuki-girl girlfriend too.

It was 4: 30 AM and I just woke up. The memory of the day before returned in a blur, a blur that ordered itself soon enough. I got up, stuffed my feet into soft and quiet slippers, and shuffled into the common room. Honestly, the biggest factor that told me I was getting further and further away from being human was that four hours of sleep a night was considered long, now. Even having extra arms felt more natural than waking up an hour before sunrise.

I wouldn't be surprised if I could support eight primary spider eyes sometime soon, though the fear-charge cost of anything beyond that turned prohibitive. With coffee and toast in hand, I meandered over to my notes, which I'd left sprawled across the couch. There was a little post-it sticker on them, reading 'please don't leave unfinished food in the common room - Orianna'. Fair. Should probably not add to Addy's habit of leaving small messes everywhere.

After reorganizing, and a quick clean-up of discarded wrappers and plates with half-eaten food in the kitchen, I checked the clock. It was barely 5 AM. I have… so much time. I could do anything I want. Correction: I could do anything I wanted if I was an irresponsible student who didn't care about perfect scores. Or, alternatively, if I'd just taken the first semester easy. I did all the organizing I could. Most non-vampires are asleep around this time.

Now I just have to wait for the plan to unfold and see what comes of it. That means it's time for studying. The books were calling to me. Magical theory wasn't any more interesting than learning chemistry or biology. It was a bunch of rules and theorems, a bunch of math for balancing out equations of relative gradients of magical power, and so, so much trivia. But every Custodian had to learn even this much in the final two years of high school, so I better learn it as well.

I had an idea for a little project after all… Among my crammed calendar for the first semester, I was taking a tinker class. I wasn't a wizard with a solid foundation or education in applied long-term magics — the kind of chargeable or self-sustaining effects people called enchantments — but I did have one benefit: Magical vampire blood. Now, the amount of things you could do with blood was limitless, but the amount of things you should do was quite the opposite.

Magic wasn't exactly new to earth, but only the last two centuries led to unified theories, best practices, and magitechnical safety procedures. The books I had to read for the seminars were older than I was, filled with anecdotes about horrifying transmutation results or mind-swaps with caterpillars and pillbugs. A man by the alias of Konrad Faust joked that there had to be more wizards in the animal kingdom than among humans by now.

He joked a lot for someone writing a treatise on Human Transfiguration into an Approximation of the Divine. A coping mechanism, no doubt. I couldn't stand the guy. Historians correlated the start of his experiments with an unusual uptick in disappearances in the surrounding villages. Mainly young girls. And yet he's the only source on implementing and expanding Aldebrandt's Animatic Argument. I tapped the pen against my mouth, suffering through the egomaniac's rambling writings.

I wonder why we aren't more afraid of humans? The thought made me pause for multiple reasons. I… wasn't counting myself as human, really. Human wizards existed, though I wasn't one of those either. I was a Custodian. Was not being a human scary? Or was it the anticipation of how the rest of society — most of it made up of humans — would treat me? Was I going to be barred from entering certain countries for being a spider person?

Were there going to be conspiracy theories about how people like me secretly ruled the world? Were people… no, they were definitely going to make a fuss if the Society came out and said 'we can cure your disease, but also it's not worth it, sorry'. In the end, even those who genuinely wanted to believe that Custodians were 'the good guys' wouldn't have much say in the fate of the entire world.

And if they didn't have a say, they would gravitate towards those people who promised that they did, even if that promise was demonstrably false. People like Glen Powell. … this is going to be another problem, isn't it? Before I knew it, I had tabled my studies in favor of flicking through news feeds and talk shows. They were all about the only two things anyone was talking about: Mimics and Custodians. The mimics at least made it easy to tell who the bad guy was.

But even then, all it took for the talkshow host to take a visibly defensive posture was for the Custodian to make any sudden movements.

"Oh, I'm sure Micheal — can I call you Mike? Mike, there's this thing about mimics…"

"Absolutely. Yes, we are deployed worldwide…"

"Nothing stops us, not pain nor fear of death. Well, I suppose pain does a little. Makes it hard to lift cars and toss them at the pinkies, doesn't it? Sorry by the way to the owner of a black Mercedes on Willow Street…" People didn't know much about Custodians and their extra lives, heck, they didn't even know about all the extra planets.

So far, the narrative was that the aliens were coming from a heretofore unexplored star cluster, from a single planet, and that they were here to supplant the local ecosystem which, tragically for many people, included humans. The veil is lifted. Behold: Yet another veil. Anything more would cause panic. Anything less would cause outrage. And yet, the lack of commitment to the bit was palpable between interviews.

Some Custodians were all too happy to repeat the information they'd sold the public again and again on every new talk show. Some looked like they wanted to bite the camera and spit the remains into the audience. A full three quarters of the interviews ended with the Custodians straight-up leaving, supposedly to respond to a convergence event. Which was bullshit, obvious to anyone with access to the uncensored version of real-time google maps that included said convergence zones. Which of course didn't include 99.

999% of the public.

"I refuse to comment."

"No."

"You do realize I haven't had a single civilian casualty despite being classified as an artillery build. I mean, I, er… can we cut that part?" Compared to the recording of my speech, the comments under these videos were considerably less polite. People weren't dumb. They could smell when someone was keeping something from them. Politics and public perception are going to be the death of us.

I sighed and resigned myself to scrolling through some useless feeds until either Addy woke up or Orianna returned from her night classes. I could pound the rest of Faust's musings into my brain at a later date, assuming I wasn't busy— My backpack fell over. I nearly jumped out of my slippers as Moe crawled out from inside it, and then sprinted right towards me.

"Hey little guy, you need uh, a snack?" He shot me a flat look.

"Okay okay, I get that was a bit presumptuous, but in my defense, have you ever asked for anything else?" The little gnome rolled his eyes, before grabbing my sleeves and tugging.

"You want me to follow?"

"Mo!" Guess that means I'll follow. He led me to the spider backpack, its straps fashioned in the vein of eight spidery limbs. Its top was open like the mouth of a great predator. It was beautiful, and apparently Mo wanted to show me the insides. Maybe the renovations were finally done. I squeezed inside, the entrance expanding magically to accommodate my shoulders. It was dark when I only had my head inside, and dark when the tips of my slippers slipped past the entrance.

The surroundings were a bit cramped, but not too cramped to move.

"Mo." A gnome-finger poked my leg.

"Yeah, yeah, I won't hold you up. Just keep crawling, right?" The entrance, as wide as a crawlspace, slowly opened up. I noticed it by the sound, the shuffling of clothes on cloth ground no longer reflected by the walls without delay. There was light ahead. It was a metal lamp hanging peacefully next to a small wooden door fashioned after some cottage-core hobbit-hole. I squeezed my way through the door and then I was inside a replica of Clem's mansion's hallway.