I gave a slight nod as I glanced away. “Yeah.”

  “I had to explain both of those references to Aoibheann. Movies, easy topic. Video games, less so.”

  I blinked. “Geneva Checklist isn’t a game reference.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. “Look, I know you grunts probably have loads of jokes about the checklist but let me assure you there’s a Rimworld mod by that very name.”

  “Hold up—”

  Jenna’s eyes lit up. “Is it really unbelievable that someone wrote a mod to keep track of your war crimes in gaming’s favorite war crime simulator?”

  I offered a guilty shrug. “To be fair, I haven’t played the game in years.”

  Some random thought brought a smile to Jenna’s face. “I’m actually happy we got sidetracked into what a video game was instead of me having to explain how or why gamers call Rimworld a war crime simulator. Explaining what a war crime is was bad enough.”

  That shouldn’t have been a hard concept. “How so?”

  “She thought the idea was quaint, almost comical. Evidently wrapping your head around the idea of a war crime is really hard when civilization doesn’t the ability to kill on industrial scales.”

  “So, what’d she have to say about either of those?”

  Jenna shrugged. “Once we got past explaining the plot of the movie or the point of the mod, not much really. Neither of us could really figure out what the checklist might possibly do, and the other one is too vague to really know what to expect. She said she looked a little closer at me but didn’t see anything particularly out of place. Now, the magic one caused a bit of stir though. Is there a reason why she asked me if there were any other Byrnes in the truck with us?”

  One guilty chuckle later, I provided an answer. “One of the traits I have makes magic targeting me unpredictable. Literally any part of a spell aimed at me can randomly change to just about anything. She tried to give me a blessing so I could at least understand the Syr and instead of just being able to understand elvish, I ended up being able to speak every language.”

  Jenna’s brow came down and the gears turning behind her eyes were readily apparent. “That’s— well, interesting for one, concerning for another, and exploitable as hell for a third.”

  “It almost killed me once so far, but it’s also saved my ass a few times, too. So yeah, as exasperated as she was after accidentally gifting me a lot more than she intended, I think she expected more of the same with you and probably hoped she only had to deal with the two of us. Hey, are you hungry?” When she nodded in reply, I jerked a thumb toward the door. “I’ll take you upstairs to the kitchens, we can eat and talk at the same time.”

  We were most of the way up the stairs when Jenna spoke up. “So, I asked what the deal was with those two, but honestly, I don’t know what’s going on here at all. I guess now that I’ve had a decent night’s rest, I’m a little more clearheaded.”

  I shrugged and stopped to open the door before answering, “Well, I know I’ve been here a month longer than you, but I’m not sure how accurate my take is on things. I’ve spent most of my time here getting my ass beat so we could come rescue you. Big picture, things are in a lot of flux, and they were a bit fucked up to begin with.”

  “How so?”

  We ducked into the cafeteria area as I replied, “Well, first off, about fifty years ago they essentially had a zombie apocalypse. I think. It’s a little confusing because what they told me started off with something about creatures they called the Vore and ended up entirely dealing with something else entirely that they referred to simply as the Infested or the Corrupted.”

  Walking beside me, Jenna motioned for me to continue.

  “So, details on the Vore were a bit sparse. Probably should’ve asked more, but the gist I walked away with is they’re vicious, remarkably hard to kill assholes that have some degree of immunity to magic. They might feed off magic, but I don’t know if I remember hearing that or if I’m remembering something from a game.”

  Jenna made a sour face, and we paused long enough to look over the posted sign with today’s menu.

  After flagging down one of the staff, Jenna asked, “Is it safe to assume the Infested were the zombie part of the zombie apocalypse?”

  I nodded. “I actually know a lot more about that than I ever wanted to, but I don’t know how to explain it to you in a way you’ll believe. You noticed the fortification on the hill?” Jenna nodded. “Well, the place is kinda haunted. If I had to stretch D&D definitions, you could say the place has a wraith infestation, but they’re not technically undead as far as I can tell. The Syr call them Wardens. I set up camp there first night I was here.”

  I expected the squint Jenna aimed in my direction and was already shrugging when it arrived. “Look, I didn’t know what was going on when I first got here either, you know. Place looked like an old European keep, busted up like it’d been there centuries. Seemed secure, defensible, so I just walked in and set up camp. Didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Spent the night, no problem. Rowan— uh, that’s the elf that you met at the end of the skyway yesterday— well, she lost her shit when I told her I’d camped up there. Didn’t believe me because anyone who walks in there doesn’t come back out, so she brought me back to get my gear, only this time the Wardens were everywhere.”

  Jenna nodded. “Aoibheann told me a little bit about that. Something about us not being from here isolated us from most of the supernatural.” She glanced toward the kitchens. “Not to be that guy, but is the wait time here usually long? I’m starving.”

  “Only when it’s really busy, but they start setting things out buffet style when it gets that busy. It looks like we just missed the breakfast rush. The Syr are relatively early risers, or at least the families here are. So, like I was saying, the Wardens were everywhere, right? I managed to get back to my camp, largely without getting noticed, only to find the lead Warden investigating everything I’d piled up. He, ah, tried to forcibly enlist me via magic and it backfired. Instead of turning me into one of them, I kinda absorbed him.”

  Jenna froze and her head cocked to the side ever so slightly. “You absorbed him? Like how? Sorry, it’s not like I think you’re lying; it’s just this world clearly doesn’t operate by the same rules. I’m trying to understand what’s different.”

  Nodding, I noticed the server coming out of the kitchens with a tray of food. A quick nod on my part sent Jenna’s attention in the appropriate direction and within seconds we were treated to a selection of cut fruits, fried roots that looked and smelled quite a bit like potatoes, a helping of meat, and some sort of bread.

  The presence of food preempted any conversation, and it wasn’t until we’d scarfed down most of it that Jenna attempted any communication at all.

  “God, you know, I hate goat’s milk, but right now that might as well be a little mug of heaven. How the hell do they have chilled goat milk at this tech level?”

  “Magic?” I asked back. “I mean, most of what I’ve seen that’s close to our standard of living, they use magic for. They have some sort of system up on the roof that provides hot and cold water. Maybe they have something similar for refrigeration? They have a mage here; you should ask him.”

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  Jenna grinned. “Fiachra, I think. Aoibheann said I should apprentice under him to learn magic, if you can believe it. She let me see my stats and they’re clearly geared towards caster stuff, but I have no idea how that shit’s supposed to work. Do you? According to her, my INT stat is unreasonably high, even by Syr standards.”

  I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. The sudden doubt in her voice struck me as both endearing and just completely out of place. “Oh no, the woman who designs stealth orbital vehicles for a living thinks magic is complicated.”

  “Samuel Byrne,” Jenna quietly said. For an instant I wasn’t sure if the frown she directed at me was playful or serious. “Physics and engineering have centuries of work underpinning them. Everything I did was because someone else, decades if not centuries earlier, made a discovery. And then everyone and their grandfather argued over whether or not it was a math mistake instead of an actual discovery, and maybe over whether or not it was even useful. What Aoibheann described to me sounded entirely ad hoc, like people were just tacking on things here and there without really understanding what they were doing.”

  Her comment knocked a memory loose, a conversation I’d had with an artillery officer during my last trip to the sandbox. “Wasn’t it sometime in the early 1900s when a bunch of math nerds got together and bitched that the entire field of mathematics was basically put together the same way? Maybe that’s what you’re here for then, to build an axiomatic system of magic?”

  For a moment, the look she responded with made me wonder if what I’d said was the stupidest thing she’d heard in years, but then she blinked and snatched the last bit of potato analog off her plate. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sam. The elves live for centuries; if it was that easy they would’ve done it by now. Besides which, it wasn’t a lone mathematician that did that, it was dozens over decades. I’m just one person. I’m certainly not a Hilbert or Dirac. So what was this about you absorbing that guy again?”

  “Oh, well, he tried to introduce me to the Borg collective and it kinda went the other way around thanks to magic not working well on me. It’s not like he lives in my head; I just have memories that aren’t mine and the Wardens all think I’m their boss now.”

  “Hold up, you command an army of the undead?”

  “First of all, they’re not undead. If they were, they’d be subject to the equivalent of Turn Undead, which they aren’t. Second, I wouldn’t say I’m in command exactly. I haven’t figured out how that works yet. I evidently summoned them when we rescued you, but I have no idea how and when it came up last night, Rowan had never heard of anything similar. As far as the Syr knew, the Wardens couldn’t leave the keep so we’re well off the beaten path.”

  Jenna swirled what was left in her mug about, clearly unhappy at running out of something to drink. “Did Fiachra have anything to say about it?”

  “He wasn’t there. Though, I get the impression it’s way outside his specialty. He’s a— uh, utility mage?” I scratched my head, trying to remember any of the conversations where he’d come up recently. “I might be wrong, but I get the impression he’s more of their equivalent of a technician or a field engineer. Either way, I relived some of the Warden leader’s memories and got a front row seat to the tail end of the apocalypse and the Infested.”

  My sister shifted in her seat, but just before she spoke one of the kitchen staff walked up. After a short apology concerning delayed service that I translated for Jenna, the elf left a carafe of water and two smaller glasses for us.

  Once she’d filled her glass, Jenna gave the concern on her face voice. “Front row seats to that kind of thing, probably not the sort of event you can even give away free tickets for.”

  Unbidden, those memories flickered through my mind as I shook my head rather rapidly. “Not even a little. The whole thing gutted the established order. The Syr and their allies were essentially the core of the civilized world and the Infested carved a bloody path through them all. Back home, imagine an actual zombie apocalypse that reduces the continental United States and the bulk of Europe to little more than ash and ruin while leaving most of Russia and China untouched. Where we’re at now, we’re basically living with the last few American survivors from Alaska and Hawaii.”

  After a few moments of pregnant silence, Jenna said, “And they’re not only dealing with the fact they’re no longer the biggest dog on the block, but now they’re surrounded by enemies they can’t really fight.”

  I nodded. “Exactly, and this is the farthest the Infested ever got. The remaining military here fought a delaying action to give those left behind a chance to fortify what they could, which turned out to be that keep on the hill. The damage you saw? That was the infested, not centuries of wear. The Warden commander’s memories I have were from that last fight. It was a huge clusterfuck and basically everyone died or became a Warden when a powerful spell went awry. The Wardens put down the remaining Infested and have been there ever since, undying and silently guarding against a threat that presumably no longer exists.”

  Jenna blinked. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, and then there’s the fact we kinda kicked a hornet’s nest during our little rescue operation. Two of them, technically.”

  “How did you even know I was going to be there?”

  I filled my glass before answering, “Aoibheann. After she did something to anchor me here, I asked her to find you. She said you’d be in that village on that particular night.”

  “And these hornets?”

  “Well, things were supposed to be relatively simple. Sneak in, find you, get out before anyone notices we’re even there. Well, if things remotely resemble how I’d expect shit to go back home, your arrival set off some sort of early warning system the survivors of the Vore and Infested put together to spot a reemergence. They sent someone to investigate. Well, someones. We’ll call them NATO 2.0 for now. Their investigators decided you were interesting, and they were going to take you. I wasn’t about to let that happen. Long story somewhat shorter, I barely voiced an objection before they tried to kill me. Turned into a bit of a gunfight, which is the opposite of quiet and stealthy. Local lord mustered his troops while NATO got curb stomped and then made the bad decision to push his luck afterward. So, on one hand we have NATO 2.0, who is now keenly aware and interested in things going on out here when they weren’t before. As far as I’ve put together, they’re the remains of the Syr’s allies on the far side of the trail of destruction ending here, but since the Syr aren’t an ongoing concern anymore, they don’t feel bound by any prior treaties when it comes to us. We’re kind of at a diplomatic impasse right now.”

  Jenna sipped her water. “And the other hand? I’m assuming that’s whatever kingdom the local lord belonged to.”

  I grimaced and ran a finger around the rim of my glass. “Fiddler’s Green used to belong to one of the Syr’s allies before the Infested showed up. This was a distant border outpost for the Syr, relatively lightly manned. Well, that ally fell, leaving the village clinging to the Glade for survival. Then one of the neighboring kingdoms, the Kharkans, decided they wanted more lebensraum or whatever, so they took the village a number of years back. The Syr didn’t really have any forces to contest how things went, so that’s just how it was. Well, I kinda shot the local lord in the throat and his troops scattered. Not that I blame them, mind you, but there’s literally zero chance me shooting the Kharkan king’s cousin won’t be interpreted as an open act of war. Things haven’t changed. The Syr still don’t have enough forces to deal with that. The villagers, or their mayor at any rate, seemed pretty keen to swap back to Team Syr, but who knows how that’ll turn out. If we’re lucky, it’ll turn out well because it sounded to me like most of the Green’s inhabitants are retired mercenaries or former military.

  “Oh, and to make things even more spicy, the Kharkan iron mines are evidently starting to play out and the reason they expanded over here is because someone found a sizeable magnetite deposit. On top of that, there’s a coal deposit kicking around somewhere in the crater rim, too.”

  “Magnetite?” Jenna’s eyes lit up. “And coal? You could bulk produce steel with the right equipment and know-how.”

  I nodded. “That’s where our giant friend comes in. The deity his sect worships is evidently the human god of craftsmen or some shit like that. Millwall—”

  Jenna blinked and interrupted with, “As in ‘Fuck you, I’m Millwall?’”

  “Yes. His real name sounds like you’re gargling rocks while trying to say William, so I nicknamed him Millwall. I told him it was the name of an honored warrior back in our world. Either way, he’s supposedly this world’s equivalent of an accomplished metallurgist and forge master.”

  “Gargling rocks saying ‘William?’ That almost sounds Welsh. Maybe some other Gaelic or Brythonic root language, in our world anyway. And the half-elf? Tomas?”

  “He’s basically been the eyes and ears for the Syr outside their borders, seeing as he can pass for human. Even most highwaymen leave traveling bards alone out here, from what little he’s said. Oh, and I should warn you—it should be pretty obvious that things haven’t been all sunshine and rainbows between the Syr and the humans over the last few decades, but most of the Syr do not like humans. Like, really do not like humans. My association with Rowan and the Harvesters has probably helped with that, but I don’t know how they’ll see you.”

  Jenna made a sour face and polished off the rest of the water in her glass. “It’d be weird if they didn’t have problems with humans from the way you make things sound. If Russia and China are the stand-ins for most of the human kingdoms that are still around, I’m going to guess they fell on the wounded survivors to loot what still stood and probably fought each other for what couldn’t be carried off quickly.”

  I nodded grimly. “So there you have it. It’s a bit of a shit sandwich and everyone’s taking bites.”