Interlude: Zoe

Today was a good day. Zoe and the rest of her group had defeated three mini-bosses in the dungeon, mapping a new wing in the process. They’d gotten a great haul of loot, several pieces of gear that helped Swithin with his control over plants, and a whole lot of gold coins.

Despite coming from a time that she’d never have wanted to live in, the middle ages, Swithin was a real sweetheart, and had, as ever, arrived to the dungeon with a red flower that he’d cut from his little garden for her. She didn't think he was interested in her, he was just a really nice guy. The flower was called something like ‘Maiden’s Kiss’ in the local tongue, and she loved wearing them in the thick, curly black hair that had come along with her new body. Well, red eyes wouldn’t have been her choice, nor the fangs that thankfully weren’t accompanied by a lust for blood, but it was a hell of lot less dysphoric than what she’d had back on Earth.

Still, good day or not, she was tired as she and the rest of her group, Swithin, Tulok and Moarva, who was the only Alarian native in the group, entered the Guildhall and approached the very cute clerk wearing a smart white blouse—a rabbit-eared beastkin who Zoe’s gaydar unfortunately told her was very straight.

“Hello, Ms. Ritah. We have mapped a new area,” said Tulok in careful Valorian.

Despite coming from a non-literate culture, and one without paper, Tulok had taken like a duck to water with both reading and mapping, spending most of his free time devouring anything and everything with text he could get his hands on.

“Wonderful,” said Ritah, her rabbit-ears swivelling forward as she accepted the immaculate notes. “These are lovely, thank-you. Oh, and here.” She pulled out four forms from beneath her desk and handed them over. “This is probably new to most of you, but it’s the end of the financial year—you need to declare your income from Guild related activities, and pay a percentage in dues. If you don’t have it, don’t worry, you can take a one-year loan—the details and sliding scale are all written on the back.”

Huh, taxes. Zoe hadn’t thought much about it, but she supposed someone had to pay for all this infrastructure.

Tulok seemed to find the concept a little bit foreign, since he hadn’t used currency where he was from—exactly where or when, no one was sure—but it was similar enough to the smaller Outlander Union dues they paid that it wasn't a problem.

The common room of the Guildhall was rather packed with people eating, drinking, laughing, and playing games. Things had really filled up in the months since she had arrived, mostly with more experienced adventurers of Bronze and above—apparently this dungeon was a ‘hard’ one. There were, however, also a fair chunk of lower ranks, made up predominantly of Outlanders, who were all Coppers—with the exception of Charlie and Nathan, who were crazy, possibly fearless and/or unhinged, and had the first kills on each cleared floor’s boss to their names.

Said overachievers were in the corner, sitting with their two Alarian party members. Nathan, the dhampir and the grimalkin were playing cards, but Charlie was writing in a large journal, alternately carefully scribing Valorian symbols and nibbling on the end of their fountain pen’s cap as they consulted other notes. Zoe, once bemugged with beer, had intended to go and have a chat, but if they were busy—

Charlie looked up at Zoe unerringly, and gave her a smile. Right, no one’s emotions or attention was safe from Diana Troi over there, especially since two groups of people had tried to off them for being an awesome slave-breaking radical.

They put down their pen, and Zoe took that as an invitation.

“Grüß dich Zoe,” said Charlie, greeting her in German. Or, rather, the southern version that they preferred.

“Guten Tag,” replied Zoe, giving the others a nod before sitting next to the lion-like enby.

She knew Charlie liked speaking German with pretty much anyone who actually knew it. Which Zoe got, she would have liked to have spoken Swedish if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, no one else knew her native tongue. Well, Swithin knew how to swear in Swedish thanks to her, and he could sort of understand her because of shared roots of their first languages, but it did sometimes feel a bit lonely not being able to express herself in her mother tongue.

“Na dann, Guten Tag Frau Nordström. Wie gehen es Ihnen? Ich hoffe zutiefst, dass Sie einen wunderbar Tag hatten!” said Charlie, rolling their eyes theatrically and using what even Zoe recognised as impossibly over the top formal language, presumably good-naturedly mocking her stilted, ’northern’ German. “Good delve?”

“Great, thanks,” said Zoe. “We mapped a new area and found a new mini-boss—a huge wolf that moved like it was on roller-skates.”

“Weird,” said Charlie, taking a sip of their beer.

“Heard you’re on the third?”

“An enormous desert, it sucks,” said Charlie with a grimace. “Scorpions and shooting cactus and a puzzle in a language no one understands. Working on it, but it’s slow.”

“I'm not looking forward to the underwater level, once we’re confident enough to do the earth elemental,” said Zoe.

“It’s fine—just stay out of the kelp, and watch out for the giant sharks,” said Charlie with all the confidence of a mad-person.

“Oh, yes, the giant sharks, not a big deal, really,” said Zoe, rolling her eyes. “I think you’ve been in the dungeon too long, Comrade, you’ve become insane.”

“Blame them,” said Charlie, jerking their thumb at their group. “I just get dragged along.”

“Just don’t die, yeah?” said Zoe. “Then Nathan would become Union President.”

“My God, the horror,” laughed Charlie, waving a hand at Nathan who had looked up at his name and switching to English. “Just fucking around, no worries.”

“Wow, you even speak English like him now,” said Zoe.

Charlie blinked, then groaned. “Oh no, I do,” they said. “And yes, no intention of dying. Too much work to do, apart from anything else.”

“Don’t work too hard either,” said Zoe. “I don’t want to have to bury you from that either.”

“I don’t want to be buried; I want to be cremated and scattered,” said Charlie.

“Someone’s morbid today,” said Zoe.

Charlie shrugged. “Always thought it was gross, just rotting in the ground,” they said. "Also, you know, people trying to kill me now. Seems like I should let people know."

“Yeah, I guess,” said Zoe. “Personally, I’d like to go out like a viking—a burning boat, fiery arrow from the shore.”

“I figured—you’re Swedish," said Charlie.

“You know that’s not the norm, right?” laughed Zoe.

“I saw it on the internet; it must be true,” said Charlie, shaking their head and flicking their tail. “Can’t trick me.”

“Oh, you’re terrible,” said Zoe, taking another swig of beer and looking over the book as Charlie carefully wiped the ink from their pen and started to pack it up. “That’s one of your medical books? The ones Swithin wets himself over? Right?”

“Yep, this one is a bit more theoretical,” said Charlie, carefully making sure the ink was dry before closing the book and locking the latch. “Circulatory theory, immune theory, germ theory, viruses and bacteria, some basic genetics, at least half of which is about why eugenics is dumb racist nonsense, I’m not having these people repeat that stupidity if I can help it…”

“I’ve been thinking about writing down some of the stuff I know too,” said Zoe. “Engineering things.” She took a sip. “A bit worried though.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“Some of it could be weaponised,” said Zoe. “Like, I don’t think they’ve figured out rifling here, for example. Not sure I want to be the girl who introduces more deadly firearms and cannons to this world. Especially since it’d probably be the fucking imperialists who’d capitalise on it first.”

“Huh,” said Charlie. “Hadn’t thought of that.” Then they smirked. “And I thought you Marxists were all about the inexorable march of history through its stages; that capitalism and imperialism are inevitable if unfortunate steps on the road to glorious communism?”

Zoe flushed. “That isn’t- most people these days- that’s a very reductive reading of Marx, and in his letter to the Russian Social Revolutionaries he explicitly rejected such a deterministic…” she began, before trailing off, remembering who she was talking to. “You’re fucking with me.”

Charlie grinned widely.

“Fucking anarchists,” muttered Zoe, although she couldn’t keep her smile off her face. “You’re even worse when you’re readers.”

“I get it though,” said Charlie, sobering. “‘No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.’”

Zoe frowned. “Huh?”

“Adorno,” said Charlie. They shook their head and tutted. “And you call yourself a Marxist?”

“I call you a nerd—how did you have time to read Adorno while studying medicine?” countered Zoe. “And I wouldn’t have expected such pessimism from you, either.”

“Cute guy I was trying to impress. And ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,’” said Charlie. “That’s—”

“—Gramsci, yes, I know. Stop quoting Marxists at me, that’s my thing,” said Zoe, sticking her tongue out as the lion-like enby grinned toothily. “And yeah, I do… I do want to give what I know. But I need to think about how to do it, I’ve made some notes, better concrete, some stuff for building…”

She sighed.

“It’s tough,” she said, gesturing around. “Seeing the parallels to Earth history, and feeling so powerless to change the course. First as tragedy, then as farce, I guess…”

“We’re not powerless,” said Charlie firmly. “And maybe we won’t change the world, but we might be able to change this region. And even if we can’t, the work you and I do in the League matters—people’s lives matter, even if we might not ever get any absolute victory. Every slave we can help free, every life we can help save, every link we can help build between like-minded people, that all matters. One foot in front of the other, Comrade.”

Zoe smiled and raised her mug. “I’ll drink to that.”

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