As I lead our procession up to the Loft, I reach out to Sandro through our Contact interface.

  [Fyre: Good evening, Sandro. I’ll be stopping by shortly with some guests if that’s alright.]

  It takes a minute for him to respond.

  [Sandro: oh, sure! I’m just getting the wyverns settled in for the night]

  The boy has taken to his new profession with surprising enthusiasm. At first I assumed it was merely out of relief that he had a simple way to satisfy his Role without having to slay any creatures. However, once we discovered that the expanded definitions of his Requirement (to subdue or defeat a member of the dracus family) also included beating Sora or Ollie at a simple game of stones, Sandro surprised me by continuing to dedicate himself to being our city’s Wyvern Master. He genuinely seems to enjoy the position, even if he frequently emerges from the mail tower with fresh scratches and bite marks on a daily basis. At least the System tends to heal anything superficial overnight.

  [Fyre: One of the guests is a Traveler,] I go on to tell him. [He also has a remnant.]

  He’s also a homunculus made of glass, but I figure the remnant point is a bit more pertinent.

  This time, the pause between messages takes longer.

  [Sandro: okay. It will be okay, right? I mean, he won’t hurt shroud, will he]

  I glance at Kanin as we climb the spiral staircase up the Loft’s tower. I haven’t seen a hint of Ink since our first encounter, though it was certainly present when I was speaking to Kanin through my Psionic Touch. It might have been suspicious of me at the start, but by the end it seemed to be warming up.

  I hope so, anyway.

  [Fyre: You and the Shroud will be fine. I’ll be there to moderate everything just in case.]

  I can almost picture Sandro taking deep breaths as he tries to keep the Shuddering Shroud from overreacting. He’s been growing better at controlling the remnant, lately, but it’s still a work in progress.

  [Sandro: okay, thanks for the heads up]

  The Loft is still a work in progress, but I’m impressed with how quickly Sandro has turned the place into a mail room. He’s already lured over two dozen wyverns into the tower, where they now nest and feed. Training has been a different process, and only two or three can really be said to be qualified delivery wyverns, but even that many is impressive for the time he’s been at it.

  The top of the spiral staircase is heralded by a din of wyvern chittering. When we step out into the room, Sandro is halfway buried in one of the many wyvern boxes he’s erected along the walls.

  “Now come on, Bituin,” he says, his voice muted by the wyvern’s nest. “Don’t be like that. You know you don’t get the grubs unless you let me put the harness on, first. Hey! No bite. Cheeky little…”

  The Shroud ripples at our presence, and Sandro jerks upright, slamming his head on the inside of the box. I sympathetically wince as he swears, hurriedly extracting himself from the nest and spinning around to face us.

  Sandro tries to grab the Shroud, but it whips around him before he can stop it. At the same time, something from behind me blurs past. My heart leaps as spears of darkness stab from Kanin’s jacket and slam into the cloak.

  Sandro lets out a startled cry as the lines of black thud into the wall all around him, pinning the Cloak in place. “Don’t kill us!”

  Mirzayael and Zyneth are already moving—whether toward Kanin or the lances of void he’s produced, I don’t know. I do know that they’re almost certainly spurred on by opposite motivations.

  “Wait!” I shout.

  At almost the same moment, Kanin calls, “It’s alright!”

  Mirzayael and Zyneth both falter, looking to each of us for direction.

  Kanin slumps. “It’s over—everyone calm down.”

  “It’s okay,” I add to Mirzayael mentally. “He hasn’t hurt Sandro.”

  “But he—” Mirzayael stops. She must have also noticed; every spike of black is aimed at Sandro’s cape, not the man himself. The Shroud is struggling desperately to free itself, and Sandro is shaking, eyes wide, clearly overwhelmed by his remnant’s mental state. But Ink isn’t hurting the Shroud; it’s just keeping the cloth pinned to the wall.

  “You should probably get that remnant of yours under control,” Aquenno casually remarks to Kanin. It does not escape my notice that he didn’t even lift a finger in the midst of the unfolding conflict. Was that because he knew there was no threat, or because he was willing to watch if there was?

  Sandro slumps against the wall as the spears of void release his cape, then lets out a yelp as the Shroud immediately wraps itself around him—forming a protective barrier, ostensibly, but this only results in him toppling over. Ink’s void creeps back toward Kanin like waning shadows until every line of darkness vanishes beneath his coat.

  “Er, sorry,” Kanin says, raising a hesitant hand as Sandro struggles to extract himself from his cloak. The glass man looks like he wants to go help, but he draws his hand back and keeps his distance. “That probably wasn’t the best of introductions.”

  “N-no, it’s okay,” Sandro stammers. He manages to peel a corner of the Shroud off his face. “That was the Shroud’s fault. I’m sorry. It’s very jumpy and was just trying to protect me. Um, thanks for stopping it.”

  “Yeah, don’t mention it,” Kanin says, clearly uncomfortable. His head turns, as if looking between me and Sandro.

  I grimace. It’s taking every one of my instincts to not step in, but Sandro has asked me in the past to wait for him to try to gain control of the Shroud, first. He’d given me a nervous smile. “You won’t always be there to help, right?”

  “Um, I’m Sandro, if Fyre hasn’t said,” Sandro continues to ramble. “I… I guess you’re like us?”

  “I’m also from Earth,” Kanin says. “You can call me Kay.”

  Ah yes, he did say the gods only knew of him by name; probably for the best to use a pseudonym in public. I’ll have to remember that when I’m introducing him to others.

  Sandro laughs nervously. “Oh—Okay. Hah. Kay. Like, OK. That’s—that’s funny, right?” Then, he lets out a defeated sigh.

  [Sandro: it’s not listening. can you help?]

  [Fyre: Of course.]

  I activate an Emotional Radiance spell, channeling “peace” and “calm” through the sphere of magic that expands through the room.

  Zyneth draws in a breath, unsheathing his blades in the blink of an eye. Mirzayael steps between him and myself, even as the cambion’s gaze lands on me.

  I quickly end the spell. “Sorry,” I say guiltily, raising my hands in a gesture of nonviolence. “I should have warned you all. I’m afraid the spell affects all individuals within an area—myself included.”

  “See?” Mirzayael thinks to me, her mind swirling with angry, protective suspicion. “He can’t be trusted. Too quick to jump to violence.”

  Now, who else would I know like that? “I think it’s rather warranted to be startled when subjected to mind-altering spells without warning.”

  Mirzayael grumbles at this, but doesn’t argue.

  Sandro, at least, appears relieved, and the Shroud has also settled down, now allowing the young man to untangle himself from its hold.

  “Thanks, Fyre,” he says, standing back up and dusting himself off.

  Zyneth merely nods at my explanation, slipping his blades back into their sheaths and also lifting his hands in a gesture of understanding.

  “Dragon Slayer?” Kanin abruptly says, his voice colored with surprise. He must have finally Checked Sandro.

  “Oh, yeah.” Sandro grimaces. “Not great, right? But Fyre helped me make it work.” He looks up at the tower with a proud smile.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “...By slaying wyverns?” Zyneth asks skeptically.

  Sandro glances back down in shock. “No!” Then he winces. “Okay, well, that was the original plan. But I found out that training them works, too!”

  “It’s a linguistic twist on the specific wording of his Role,” I explain. I’m very curious what Kanin’s Homunculus Role means for him, though that’s one aspect of his story he didn’t delve into. “We’ve all had to find ways to work around the constraints of our Role Requirements.”

  Even so, Kanin nods along. Lacking the ability to make eye contact, he gestures to Sandro—smart work around to help indicate who he’s speaking to. “And that’s why you’ve become the Wyvern Master?”

  “Yeah!” Sandro says, excitedly fiddling with a pouch at his waist. “Here, let me—Mayumi!”

  A blue and green wyvern immediately launches from a nest above us and spirals down to Sandro, landing on his arm. It curls its tail around his shoulder, then leans down to his hand to excitedly snatch a beetle out of his fingers.

  “Pretty cool, right?” Sandro beams in obvious pride, and the expression fills me with warm affection, like I’m being subjected to an Emotional Resonance spell myself.

  The conversation becomes more relaxed after that, and I let Kanin and Sandro chat amongst themselves for a time, merely watching. Kanin seems to be far more social than his partner, which makes me wonder what the glass man would be like without the burden of his actions weighing him. I can’t help but smile faintly; probably a menace.

  But like Mirzayael, I do find myself curious about Zyneth. I never really questioned before why cambions seem so much rarer everywhere we go than any other species. Excusing Yua Tin’s champion, Zyneth and Attiru are the only ones I’ve met. Out of curiosity, I ask Echo about it.

  [Cambions are native to Mount Shale, a volcanic island in the South Emerald Seas,] Echo says. [Their insular culture has resulted in very few cambions emigrating from the country. Similarly, its location at the base of a Ruin that emits ambient fire arcana means few outside species are capable or interested in immigrating into the country.]

  I suppose Attiru’s wanderlust and mapmaking profession explains why they’re one of the few cambions I’ve met. But what is Zyneth’s story, I wonder? Looking past Kanin’s physical predicament to pursue a relationship with him certainly demonstrates a level of open-mindedness that doesn’t seem congruent with the insular culture Echo is claiming.

  “Are you already working with cities?” Zyneth asks Sandro and I as Kanin steps aside to finally write his letter. “I hadn’t heard about this at all. One would think the Drifting Isles becoming a sovereign nation would be more widespread news.”

  “Right now, we’re not particularly advertising our city’s relocation to the Drifting Isles,” I explain, deciding further speculation can wait until a later date. “We think it would be best to get a bit more settled first before we open the floodgates. And since we’re mostly obscured by the Isle’s clouds, it can be easy to pass overhead undetected, when we want to. That said, we’ve established good relations with a few cities in Dunmora, mostly because it’s where our initial contact took place. We have traded with a couple cities in Valenia as well, and plan to slowly expand our partnerships with likeminded cities in the future.”

  Zyneth raises an eyebrow. “Likeminded cities?”

  “Fyre has a specific dream for how she’d like to see the Fortress develop,” Mirzayael says, a teasing note to her tone.

  “Not that I think we particularly have much control over that,” I stress, faintly embarrassed by Mirzayael drawing attention to my vision for The Fortress. “It’s the citizens who are driving our development and how we interact with the rest of the world.”

  “...But?” Zyneth prompts.

  “But, I would love for this to become a hub of knowledge,” I admit, grinning self-consciously as I feel Mirzayael’s amused affection. “Where anyone could come to learn and share. Can you imagine the potential? A traveling World Library. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  “Sounds great,” Kanin pipes in. I watch curiously as a pair of floating glass hands fold up the paper and deliver it to an astonished Sandro as Kanin walks back over to the rest of us. “The world could use a new and improved Athenaeum.”

  I have to tear my gaze away from the floating hands. “What’s that?”

  “Er, don’t worry about it.” Kanin hastily waves the question off. “Well, I’m all done here. Thanks for helping out. It was nice to meet you, Sandro.”

  “You, too!” he says with a start, snapping his gaze away from Kanin’s extra set of hands, which have now deposited themselves back into his satchell. Sandro rolls up the letter and slots it into a tube fixed to a wyvern’s harness. “See you around!”

  “Do you have more of those?” I can’t help but ask him as we head back down the stairs. Yes, I realize it’s probably not the most diplomatic question, but I’m far too curious to keep my mouth shut.

  “More of what?” he asks, sounding genuinely confused.

  “Those glass hands,” I say, gesturing to his bag.

  “Oh.” He tips his head, like he’d legitimately forgotten about them. Maybe he had. “Yeah, I suppose. I usually have two or three formed at any given time, in case… well, in case of a lot of things.” One of the hands floats back out of his bag, moving with us as we descend. It’s not one piece of glass shaped like a hand, I realize, but dozens of smaller pieces that appear to be stuck together with invisible glue. Each glass piece is roughly equivalent to a bone in a human hand, and when he flexes the fingers, they all articulate independently. I watch in unrestrained fascination.

  “Attuned glass?” I guess. I wish my affinities could be something this practical!

  “Yep.” And just like that, all the pieces of glass in the hand separate, becoming a cloud of glass parts. “Though it takes a separate spell for them to Chain together into one connected form.”

  “Amazing,” I say, unable to stop myself from poking one of the floating pieces. “Can you feel through it, like real hands? I can’t imagine how useful an extra set of hands would be in the lab!”

  He chuckles. “Maybe not as useful as you’d think,” he says, the glass pushing lightly back against my finger in demonstration. “It can only carry something that weighs less than itself.”

  I don’t have much trouble stopping the piece of glass with my finger, and am able to push it back with only a faint force. Yes, I could see how that would be limiting; one hand probably isn’t even enough mass to lift a textbook. But enough glass would be.

  My mind is already spinning with potential applications.

  “Mostly, I use them for signing if my primary hands are already occupied,” Kanin admits. “And I can feel through them, yes. See and hear, too, actually.”

  Kanin laughs then—no doubt at the expression of surprise that crossed my face before I could contain myself.

  “That’s amazing,” I say. And it explains how he’s able to hear us and see his surroundings. I’d just been assuming it was another function added into his translator.

  But now I wonder if there’s some intentional reason for the shape of his head. The five-sided prism would potentially allow him to see in each direction at once. Has he been doing that this entire time, I wonder?

  Absolutely fascinating!

  “Do all sorts of types of glass fall within your affinity?” I ask.

  “I suppose so,” he says, sounding uncertain. “I’ve Attuned obsidian, at least. And Zyneth helped me make some fulgurite. So, yeah, I guess I have a couple different types.”

  “And what all have you done with it?” I ask eagerly. “So many possibilities! Fiberglass, ceramics, metallic glass—”

  “Wait, what?” Kanin interrupts. “Metal? That’s not glass.”

  “It can be,” I muse. “Glass is really just an amorphous solid. So if you could take some metal and break up its lattice into a non-crystalline structure, then chemically it would still be metal, but from a materials standpoint it’s glass.”

  Kanin shakes his head. “How can something made of the same chemicals be a different material?”

  “Well,” I consider, “glass isn’t really an element, you know? It’s not something you find on the Periodic Table. In fact, you can use lots of different elements to make glass—silica being the most common. So it’s more accurate to think of glass as a type of structure than a type of material.”

  Kanin stares at me for a long moment. “Fyre you’re blowing my mind.”

  I have to stifle a laugh. “I can’t blame you for not knowing—I doubt you’ve had much time for glasswork since coming here!”

  “I, uh… Huh.” Kanin taps a finger on his glass head, producing a small series of musical tinks. “Actually, I apprenticed with a glassworker for a while. She even taught me some ways to mix other elements into my glass to make it stronger. I guess I just… never really thought about what made glass, glass.”

  To be fair, I don’t think most people outside materials science courses have spent much time thinking about the scientific definition of glass.

  “Well, if you’re interested in experimenting with some alloys, the Dungeon Core and I could try to whip something up,” I tell him. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure it would work: I haven’t had the Dungeon Core structure elements at such a precise level before. But it should be fun to try, if nothing else!

  “Thank you,” he says, voice quieter than I would have expected. It takes me a moment to understand the tone being produced by his translator; he’s touched. Like I’ve just offered him something of incredible value. Though, I suppose, providing him with material that he needs to experience the world is something of incredible value to him.

  He shakes his head with a small laugh. “How do you even know all this stuff? Were you some famous scientist back on Earth?”

  “Hardly!” I object, amused. “Just a run of the mill aerospace engineer. I wasn’t exactly a materials science expert, but I became familiar enough with composites on the planes I worked with.” I smile guiltily as I recall my original experiment with sodium. Definitely not a materials science expert.

  “Okay, so not someone famous,” Kanin says. “But definitely smart smart.”

  I laugh. “Definitely not.”

  Mirzayael snorts.

  “I’m not!” I cry, giving her a teasing shove. “Honestly, why does everyone think engineers and scientists are intelligent? Some of the most… the most ignorant people I ever knew were engineers.”

  “She means stupid,” Mirzayael says. “But she’s too nice to say it.”

  I give her a good natured eye roll. “And what about you, Kanin?” I ask, changing the subject. “What was your profession? If it’s not insensitive to ask.”

  “I’m—I was an actor,” he says. He actually sounds a little more proud and less regretful than I would have expected, given everything he went through to try to get back to Earth. Though this does explain his extroversion.

  “Oh!” I brighten. “Were you in something I would have known?”

  I can almost see him perk up. “Did you ever watch Cryptid Hunter?” he asks eagerly. “I played the main character, Jack Stone. We were just wrapping up season two!”

  “I see!” I carefully maintain my smile, as I have absolutely no idea what show he’s talking about. “Were you in anything else?”

  He’s quiet for a moment, and though I can’t prove it, it feels like he’s staring at me. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “None,” I reluctantly admit. “I didn’t really watch much TV, actually.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I have a feeling, if Ollie were privy to this conversation, he’d have strongly agreed.

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