As soon as I landed in my living room, something tiny and fluffy shot through the air from the other side of the apartment and burrowed into my chest.
"Hey!" I said, amused. It was a sugar glider. "You're fine. I'm fine. I'm back."
Penguin shook and morphed back into a penguin. Then tapped his tiny wings against my chest before headbutting me again.
"It's fine. All good. You're safe, don't worry."
Penguin shivered slightly, then plopped into my arms.
Right. Well. I gave his head a brief pat and tried to take off my shoes.
[Bond strength increased: 79%.]
Great! At least leaving him alone for a bit hadn't caused problems.
Okay, first things first. I needed to take a shower.
Shoes finally kicked off, I shuffled to the bathroom, still cradling Penguin who refused to let go, clinging to my shirt with his tiny wings and flippers.
"I need to shower," I told him. "You can't come with me."
Penguin made a distressed sound.
"Fine. You can sit on the counter."
In the bathroom, I placed him carefully next to the sink. He waddled in a small circle, watching me anxiously as I stripped off my clothes and turned on the shower.
The hot water felt amazing on my sore muscles.
I closed my eyes as it washed over me, trying not to think about the fact that Ó Néill was almost surely referring to Penguin. What would happen if they discovered him? KARMA had a reputation for confiscating Destabilized Artifacts. Would they take him away?
I knew they couldn't sever bonds however, unless one of the bonded parties agreed to it—and I definitely wasn't going to. Would they arrest me too, then?
Penguin chirped from the counter, interrupting my thoughts.
"Almost done," I called over the spray.
I turned off the water and reached for a towel. Penguin perked up, relief obvious in his posture.
"Luckily, I told the System to send you home first," I said, grabbing a towel. "Ó Néill would've lost his mind."
Actually, that had been a good call. For a moment, relief rolled over me and my body slumped with it.
After ordering take-away, I made coffee and forced myself to focus on my shift. I kept an eye on whether there had been an increase in the negative sentiment expressed by Ó Néill earlier—but it didn't seem to be the case.
Penguin sat on my lap, peering up at me with round eyes as I scrolled through the feeds and stroked his head.
A lifestyle blog claimed Llewellyn only wore cashmere sweaters from a specific boutique in Innishae. This was an old theory, but the comments were now full of people who thought they had tracked down the shop, complete with badly edited photos supposedly showing Llewellyn browsing shelves.
Well. That one seemed harmless enough.
I checked the next notification. Llewellyn's mention was buried into a long thread on a non-owned page focusing on astrology—which I now had to read.
I grumbled, but sipped on my coffee and got right to it.
Someone had made a spreadsheet listing the dates of every known Knot and color-coded them according to planetary transits. Unsurprisingly, the comments under it were going wild.
-
[venusinfaeries]: ok yeah, Neptune cazimi lines up with some of the early cases, but we're way past annual markers now
[fifthquadrant]: you're not going to get 3–4 events a week off an outer planet. look at the Moon
[taurustheory]: Besieged moon. Waxing moon on the angles of Mars. Waning moon on the angles of Saturn. Full Moon on the angles of Mercury-Mars. Mercury square Neptune. Neptune square Sun. That's when we get the spikes
[orbital.bleed]: it's the Moon to Pluto transits for me. Every single overlap this month lined up with a Knot
[taurustheory]: also nodes conjunctions! every time the moon crosses a node, knot activity jumps
[eighthhousequeen]: frequency maps cleanest against moon + applying square + no earth planets grounding the chart
[transitcache]: that's a good point @eighthhousequeen, I hadn't noticed that
[eighthhousequeen]: the outer planet stuff's still relevant, but it's background pressure. literally just chart the moon's motion through the week and overlay with the actual events
[WorldAstrologer]: this is NOT how you do World Astrology, guys. you are NOT practicing World Astrology the way it has been historically practiced by 99% of astrologers in history. have you looked at the Aries Ingress for this year. are you looking at Great Conjunctions. have you looked at the Eclipses of the year. NO. what you're doing is natal astrology with world events taped to it!!!!
[orbital.bleed]: So what are your delineations?
[WorldAstrologer]: I give no delineations because I do not know how to delineate these matters yet!!!! and neither do you!!!! there are about 30 people in the entire world who practice World Astrology and none of them are on the internet because they've got actual clients!!! 2/9 of the historical framework for this tradition comes from two untranslated manuscripts that are currently in Turkey, you're working with fragments of fragments of fragments and you haven't even studied those fragments, you are NOT serious practitioners!!!!
[outerbanquet]: actually do we finally have Llewellyn's time of birth now or still nothing
-
...UGH.
NO.
I did not have time for this rabbit hole. I had no idea what they were talking about, so trying to find out would take time and I needed to get on with the rest.
I had seen the mention. That was enough.
I closed the tab.
…Waited three seconds.
…Then opened it again.
Goddamnit. Why was I like this?
It was not a surprise that they wanted to map Llewellyn's life over the Knots, however.
The earliest public record of a Knot was from about twenty-five years ago. It had been an isolated case that had left the experts baffled and had quickly been forgotten. Nobody had died.
Then, two years later, the first Distorted Realm had opened on a busy highway, killing Llewellyn's parents and younger sister. Llewellyn had been seven at the time and survived only because a fever had kept him home at his grandparents' house that morning, while his parents drove his sister to a regional school competition.
Llewellyn's granddad's health had deteriorated quickly after the accident, and he'd died about a year later. His grandma had raised him until she also died in her sleep when Llewellyn had just started high school. He'd lived alone since.
All of this was public knowledge.
Not much else was public after that. If he'd attended university or ever had a job, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or any friends—if he'd ever had a social media account or ever posted a photo or video, if he'd ever seen a concert or a sports match—any record of it, if it ever existed, had been scrapped. Online information only started again after he'd started fighting the Knots on his own and become Innishae's national hero and strongest person in the world.
With no System and no awakened people, after the very first accident nobody had known what the Knots were for a long time.
It'd taken several more years, and an escalation in Knots frequency from once every couple of years to several a year before the System appeared. And now, it wasn't unusual to see three or four a week on the news.
Which is what the astrological community was going on about, apparently.
I finally did have to close the astrology tab, however.
Because unfortunately, on the other channel, RightSideofHistory was active again.
-
[RightSideofHistory]: The System chose him for a reason. Ever wonder why? Maybe because someone who refuses to question, who just follows orders and stays quiet, is exactly what it needs to maintain the status quo.
[RightSideofHistory]: I don't hate him. I pity him. Imagine having all that power and using it to maintain a broken System instead of fixing it. That's not strength. That's cowardice dressed up as duty.
[RightSideofHistory]: His social media team monitoring these threads? Good. Tell him we see through the act. Tell him silence is violence. Tell him the blood of every Knot victim stains his precious reputation. Some of us won't forget.
-
My teeth were starting to hurt again. It looked like yesterday hadn't been a one-off and she was truly back.
Did I have to deal with this bullshit on a regular basis again, from now on?
Unfortunately, I couldn't just type: From his social media team—kindly fuck off. I couldn't ban her either, unless she became explicitly threatening or violent.
I tagged each comment through our escalation System, marking them as "targeted harassment" and "inciting hostility".
Penguin made a concerned chirp from my lap, sensing my agitation.
-
[RightSideofHistory]: Mark my words: when the truth about what really happens in those Dungeons comes out, you'll all pretend you weren't complicit. Take a screenshot of this. Save it. Remember that some of us tried to warn you.
[RightSideofHistory]: To his defenders: what will it take? How many more deaths before you question why someone with "transcendent" powers can't transcend this cycle of destruction? Use your critical thinking skills. Please.
-
Llewellyn had lost his whole family to a Knot.
He'd been fighting alone since day one.
Every time he stepped into a Distorted Realm, he risked never coming back.
But somehow she thought she was doing more than him?
Penguin nudged my hand with his beak, pulling me back from the edge of that spiral.
It really wasn't worth it. As long as she didn't direct violence his way, we could only monitor the situation, anyway.
Still. I wasn't good at disengaging.
Muttering curses under my breath, I finished my shift, tracking, muting, and sometimes banning users who went too far.
I flagged what needed flagging, filed my reports, and tried to ignore how RightSideofHistory's rhetoric was spreading again. Other users had already joined in, including one long rant claiming the System was using Llewellyn to harvest human souls.
Finally, I closed the tabs, clocked out, and shut down my laptop.
I brushed my teeth on autopilot and padded into my bedroom.
Once in bed, Penguin snuggled up next to me, curling into a small ball against my side.
"What a week," I murmured, reaching out to stroke his head. Honestly, I felt like an old laptop trying to run the latest games. "Have a good rest, Penguin."
[Bond strength increased: 82%.]
Nice. Just a little more to go.