Chapter 77: Concept Test

Page got up and changed behind a curtain separating the bed space from everything else in the room. She was conscious about how Kalender was on the other side of the curtain—that some flimsy piece of cloth was the only thing protecting her dignity. Of course, that was always the case, but it’s the difference between armor and a shield!

“Page?” Kalender spoke up. “Minimine isn’t here.”

Gah! Her emotions were leaking again! She needed to focus on Kalender’s feelings—to fill her mind with what Kalender might have been feeling at that moment. It was a little shaky, but...

“Thanks,” Kalender said.

She breathed a sigh of relief and finished up changing, all the while trying to keep her thoughts trained on Kalender. Unfortunately, it had her thinking back to when they were on the rooftop cafe, and she got all those cozy feelings again. Maybe she should ask him to comb her hair while she put on her shoes.

“Page?” Kalender said again. “It doesn’t feel bad, but you need to practice.”

“Sorry, sorry.” She pulled the curtain aside and found a seat on the only other chair in the room. Kalender was hunched over the work table, working on...something. “Hey, what’s that? It’s like you’ve been working on that for a while now.” Page asked, putting on a sock all the while.

“Ah, well, it’s called a magazine. My gun still needs magic to work, and I’m not sure how long my MP can hold out in a fight.”

“Which means?...” Page was putting on a shoe now.

“Ah, I mean, I’m putting bullets and air together in one package, so I just need to plug this whole thing into the gun and it’ll be good to shoot.”

“Oh, sounds useful.” Page was putting on the other sock. Time kept ticking. “Hey, can you comb my hair for me?”

“Sure.” Kalender carefully put aside his tools and found a comb from the shelf. He stood behind Page, combing out the knots. “Hey, mind if I walk you to the Guild today?” he asked.

Page almost leaked out her joy. She did manage to reel herself in, but with the need to focus on Kalender’s emotions, she saw something coming from him: purple spikes. “Are you worried?” she asked.

Kalender’s combing hand momentarily—almost imperceptibly—slowed. “A bit,” he replied.

That’s not a bit, Page thought. Thinking back to last night, Gellar did mention something about other ‘doctors.’ Sigh. It was still hard to believe she’d received the magical equivalent of a hot potato.

“Page,” Kalender said. Ah, crap. “Sorry,” she said. This whole “don’t be stuck in your head” thing was harder than she thought.

She tied off the last shoe and she was up and ready to go. As if the colors he was giving off wasn’t enough, Kalender still bothered to put on armor and a cloak, hiding a sword and a gun under it.

Her closest people were gearing up for battle while she was stuck thinking about work ... maybe she really should stop being in her head.

They left the room, going downstairs and greeting the Peak’s owner on the way out.

The sun was out, but calm, and so was the wind. It felt good to breathe, but when Page checked Kalender again, he was still the same anxious wreck. “Hey,” Page poked his side. There was a ripple of yellow from her poke, and it was fun to look at, so she poked him again. “What are you doing?” Kalender asked. Embarrassed, she stopped doing that, but Kalender’s smiling face was pretty good, so she left it at one last poke.

He poked her back. This was the day Kalender discovered Page’s ticklishness.

She folded like a house of cards at just a single poke. She stumbled to the side, a full five paces away from Kalender. This development...Kalender could take advantage of it, and they both damn well knew it.

Alas, Page would be late for work if he inflicted too much critical damage on her right now, so he just left it at that. They kept walking just a thumb away from each other, occasionally bumping into each other.

Page nearly panicked as she realized she wasn’t trying to reign in her magic anymore, but...Kalender wasn’t complaining. The aura around him wasn’t as bad as it was before. Rather, taking one look at her hand, and the aura coming off of herself was practically just the same. When she tried thinking of other things—terrifying things—her thoughts got pulled right back to this moment with her very own friend.

Surely, Kalender didn’t have demonic empathy magic, so what was this? How could Kalender’s feelings be reaching...her... Ah.

It should’ve been obvious. Of course Kalender’s feelings would affect her. She cared about him, and he cared about her, too. Even if they each had their own thoughts, they shared in the same understanding, making whatever they had between them such a strong anchor that her thoughts couldn’t escape the things that truly counted in the present.

She wrapped her arm around Kalender’s. He was a little surprised, but looking at Page, she looked happy about it, and it made himself happy, so that’s all that counted.

There was still a long way to the Guild. They talked about little things, Kalender commenting about Jyn’s “cost-effective” tastes, and Page dissing on how messy her coworkers were, and how one of them almost stabbed her in a scuffle.

Kalender stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“Don’t worry, we made up.”

They kept walking, though Kalender continued struggling to process those words at the back of his head.

The Guild was already in front of them, and they were hesitant to part. Their little chat carried on for a full minute, and they were only successful at parting by maybe four feet.

“Page? Kalender?” Jyn called out. The two were surprised, but in the first place, the Research Guild was on the same road on the way to the Company, so this shouldn’t have been surprising.

“Hi, Jyn!” Page waved as Jyn approached them. The Knight’s colors looked as calm as ever—maybe a little excited upon seeing Kalender. Page was glad.

“Good morning. Shouldn’t you have been in the Guild two minutes ago? Look, it’s time,” Jyn said.

“Er, but”—Page’s feet stuttered between going and not. Jyn sighed. “Just go.”

Kalender chuckled at the whole thing. Finally, Page went one committed step towards the Guild—then barreled right back to get one last hug out of the guy, then, finally, actually committing to a winning sprint before she officially clocked in late.

She zoomed right through the lobby and into the back offices. Cresh, who was quietly suffering “stomach pains” behind his desk in the lobby, squinted quizzically at the girl who didn’t need to be running. She was five minutes early.

Just as she signed into the attendance logbook, Manager Alsae spoke up from behind her, spooking the poor girl. Alsae smirked at the reaction, but that quickly disappeared from her face. She was here on business. “Librarian Turner, follow me to my office.”

Passing between two desks of Secretaries guarding either side of Alsae’s office, the first person Page saw, standing before Alsae’s desk, was Deckert. The second person was Gellar, still in the same doctorly getup Page last saw her in.

“Doctor?” Page asked.

“Librarian Turner. Good to see you in good spirits,” Gellar said.

Alsae sighed. Page had been nothing but a trouble magnet. Oh, sure, the girl herself was a decent employee—maybe a little enthusiastic—but the people who surrounded her? You know, the Sentinel herself walked into Alsae’s office just a while ago, just to get a specific Doctor as a specific Librarian’s assistant. What’s up with that, huh? She had no answers, only hunches and more questions.

“Librarian Turner,” Alsae said, “Doctor Gellar will be your assistant with regards to Deckert’s research.” She shook her head. “If at all possible, please don’t neglect the completion of this branch’s archiving system.”

“Of course! I finish what I start!” Page said, wondering how the heck she’ll finish it at all.

“Right. Take today off from archiving, however. The expedition is soon, and you and Deckert have not even taken the first practical steps.” She waved them off with one hand, taking a seat behind her desk. “Well? Why are you still here?”

“I’ll bring good news,” Deckert said.

“Bring results and data, good or not,” Alsae said. “Alright, that’s enough. Go.”

***

By the way, Jyn had actually seen Page clinging to Kalender, so right around this time, she was happily suffering clinging to his arm.

“You know, you don’t have to—” “Nonsense.”

Kalender sighed. He didn’t mind, but Jyn being uncomfortable made him uncomfortable. “So, what was that about Zee?”

“Ah, right. The schedule of the expedition has been pushed back as she ‘came down with the cold.’”

***

Page found herself in the magic training range of the castle. Deckert’s research was top secret, enough that Lord Shal-yen approved the use of the castle’s magic range to keep prying eyes away and well behind tall curtain walls.

The magic range was safe and controlled, with three walls reinforced by barrier magics fencing off the danger zone. Another barrier magic provided a ceiling to keep debris and stray magic from shooting off into the air, potentially arcing back down onto some poor townsperson outside the castle. The fact that no grass grew on the terracotta ground told of the amount of magic this place was holding back.

The firing line was an open shed, where bows and crossbows were laid about several racks along the sides. There were several grizzled and veteran mages waiting, all in full plate armor. Page, meanwhile, was busy turning several manuscripts into Collections. Soon, she would grant Access Collection to the mages, and the concept test would be carried out in earnest.

Gellar and Deckert shared tea over a wire table carried here by one of the castle’s Maids. They weren’t talking to each other—rather, Deckert found it hard to open any topic with the Doctor at all.

“How did you come to know Librarian Turner?” she asked.

“Work,” Gellar replied. That’s it. No threads for Deckert to latch onto at all. She knew the type: people much too skilled in evading conversation ... as much as they were skilled in extracting information. Her mother, Alsae, had barely said anything about who Gellar was, other than “the Sentinel put her here.”

Really, that was a completely adequate explanation! Who were they to snoop around, anyway? Surely, on a ranking of top secret stuff, their Combat Librarian research was at 1/5, while Gellar’s origins and real work were at MAX.

“Alright, I’m ready!” Page announced. She’d needed to take a few minutes to replenish her MP.

“Positions!” the mage captain ordered. She was armored by a silver-gilded cuirass and an articulating skirt-of-plate, all partially obscured behind a purple capelet with a gold-embroidered insignia of a snake coiling around a smith’s hammer. Part of her golden hair had been braided into a small wreath.

As a noble, she wasn’t sure about Page’s decorum. Despite being the daughter of one of the more important nobles, she acted much too loose. Still, the girl carried conversation smoothly, and hardly offended any particular sensibilities.

The captain’s four subordinates lined up on the range. It was a piss-poor basic formation that no sane soldier on a real battlefield would take, but this was just a test of the most basic components of the Combat Librarian concept, namely: the use of virtual magic circles from one’s System interface. It had been long-established by people far more enterprising than Deckert that such a thing could be a done. There was simply no reason to do so.

For this first test, the metric being measured was the amount of time it took for a mage to open a Collection, find the needed spell, then cast it. In this case, the Flare spell was the perfect candidate: mostly harmless, well-known, with low MP consumption, and yet it somehow had such a ridiculously long chant that the magic circle version was always preferred.

Everyone had their Systems off, and only when Deckert gave the signal would they start. A host of Timekeepers kept track of the captain’s four subordinates; they could only be precise to the second, but it should suffice for a test as simple as this.

Deckert held her teaspoon ready near the bell on the table. She looked to the Timekeepers, then to the captain. With a delayed upbeat, she hit the bell.

The mages’ hands started moving, interacting with unseen panels in the air in front of them. The first mage sent out a bright Flare downrange on the 9th second, and the last mage, on the 17th. Most managed to get it before the 13th.

“Captain Artifice, your thoughts?” Deckert asked the captain.

“Researcher Deckert, I do not believe it has much utility. Backup, at most, or maybe long-range bombardment, but then a simple booklet or a stack of cards would do better.”

That was to be expected. Deckert intended for the Combat Librarian to transmit custom spells. Doing such a thing with booklets would require a small detachment of printers and foot messengers to accomplish. Compared to waiting half an hour for foot messengers to reach a little over half of all mages on an active battlefield, 17 seconds was nothing. Taking combat stress into account, 30 seconds to a full minute was still nothing. Deckert still had to find someone who could make those custom spells, however.

“Captain Artifice!” Page called. Artifice was a little surprised at the rudeness, but she gave the girl the benefit of the doubt. “I think one of your subordinates isn’t feeling well,” Page continued, tilting her head towards the second firing lane. Wait, wasn’t that—Artifice turned towards her sergeant. “Jarran! Off the range!”

“But, captain”—

“It’s maternity leave or marching to Chello!”

Well, that was a shock. The mage—Jarran—eventually succumbed to peer pressure as her fellow mages kept reminding her what irresponsible damage she might inflict on the second person if she were to accidentally zero out her MP. She sat on the sidelines, a little miffed.

Page Turner... Maybe Artifice shouldn’t underestimate her, after all. With just one look—nay one glance—she’d determined Jarran’s condition. A chipper and inoffensive personality she might be, she had an eye that rendered the truth naked. The lies and deception of nobility would be nothing to her, and with her upfrontness, she would dispatch them with little mercy, in full publicity. Inviting her to noble party would be like asking the Sentinel Herself to take care of some petty bandits: a pastime.

She glanced towards Page one last time. The girl was squinting at her with a concerned look. She quickly looked away, lest a quirk of her facial expressions give away something—anything—that Page might use as ammunition against her ... even if Page was just really confused about why there was a mixed air of fear and respect wafting around Artifice.

They moved on to the next test: simulated combat.

They were in luck. Shal-yen’s Maids, Guards—Guard Maids—were overzealous in their training, and had overbuilt the magic range to be able to project holographic enemies. There was a paved circle in the middle where challengers would stand, and ghostly “enemies” could be made to appear anywhere inside the range. Unfortunately, they only managed to make the simulation in monochrome white; they couldn’t get it working in color, but they did eventually realize that if they’d actually added color, they wouldn’t be able to tell reality apart from simulation.

Indeed, what one lacks may actually be a feature.

Page was smack in the middle of the paved circle, accompanied by four mages, including Artifice who had taken Jarran’s place.

This time, the Combat Librarian would play a more involved role, acting as a second brain for the commander. As walking libraries, they also possessed the ability to instantly traverse their Collections with little friction. As long as Page vaguely knew where certain information might be located, she could instantly recall and relay, for example, beasts’ weaknesses, or even the latest intelligence reports of the area.

For this test, Deckert asked the Maids to summon the ghost of a mana beast only ever seen once inside the Monster Wall. Among the documents she had given Page were records of the Princess Knight’s encounter with the beast, including its appearance, attacks, and weaknesses. Otherwise, Page and the test mages couldn’t expect it.

The Maids here were ... overzealous. They’d first materialized the ghosts of several trees at the end of the range to form an illusory treeline, just like what the Princess Knight had recounted. Then, the trees—and the ground—started to shake. It’s not that the ground was actually shaking, but it was possible to add superficial shimmering effects over the surface of the soil to make it feel that way. The Maids here seriously had too much time on their hands.

Page’s heart was apt to explode in anticipation. What could the beast be? Surely, it must be a huge, reptilian monster with the power to single-handedly raze Harmony itself!... Well, with the levels of the Maids in Shal-yen’s castle, that might be a stretch.

Still, she could see the anxiety coming from the mages in front of her. Even if everyone knew this was just a simulated environment, they still had to fire real magic. If they failed here, then they would fail out there. These mages, after all, would accompany Page during the expedition—minus Jarran, after today. Anything less than overwhelming success here would put the whole concept back on the drawing board, perhaps even pulling the plug on the project altogether.

The trees shook, and one of them even fell, leaves brushing up against other leaves, sweeping against the air with the creaking of wood, and finally, an explosion of dust as it landed on the forest floor. Artifice ordered her subordinates to spread out, trying to get as many shooting angles against the enemy. Page stayed behind Artifice, while one mage went left, and two went right, eventually forming a V-shaped reverse echelon formation. Whatever would emerge, they would swallow it in an unrelenting barrage of magic

But what emerged...was a horned rabbit.

The farthest mage to the right flank started laughing. Surely, this must be a joke! Horned rabbits were just magical rabbits! They weren’t any more dangerous than an angry hog—which was dangerous, yes, but the short of it was they were practically just like any other wildlife.

The mage happened to be nearest to the rabbit, so she approached it to point at it and mock it. “Fool! Get back in formation!” Artifice ordered. “But, captain! Look at it!” the mage said.

Page squinted at the thing. It looked familiar... Wait, it had a red streak over its eye! Furiously, she flipped through hundreds of documents in her mind, and within three seconds, she found that unmistakable story about how Arpeggio fought a rabbit for two days, obliterating entire hectares of the Monster Wall.

“It’s not a horned rabbit!” Page shouted. “It’s the Guardian of the Burrows!”

The mage’s mocking smile disappeared. She didn’t even manage to turn around when she saw the ghost of her dead “body” leave her real one, falling flat on the ground as a pile of unrecognizable viscera. The ghost of the Guardian of the Burrows, meanwhile, was standing on its hind legs some paces away, beautiful white fur stained in green...and paused, as a video would.

Did I mention? The simulation painted blood in green.

“Okay, you’re dead. Raise your hands and leave the field,” a supervising Maid said from a short wooden tower beside the shed, speaking through loudspeaker magic.

Artifice turned to the Maid. “Can you give me some time! I need to berate this fool!” she shouted. The Maid gave a thumbs up.

***

100 push-ups later, the mage’s punishment continued in the shed, where she squatted with two pails of water hanging from a pole across her back.

Deckert figured putting them up against the Guardian was a little too much. On the other hand, the Timekeeper watching Page reported 8 seconds between spotting the threat and her first warning, which realistically meant a lag of about 10 to 20 seconds between spotting the threat and reporting the threat’s information to a commander or the rest of the team. A few seconds could also be shaved off if Page were given properly trained so she wouldn’t needlessly freeze up upon seeing something for the first time.

Artifice approached Deckert at the tea table, making the latter cock an eyebrow and set down her teacup. “Researcher Deckert, thank you,” Artifice said.

“Captain Artifice? What for?”

“For giving my subordinates the opportunity to experience defeat.” Artifice’s eyes were truly grateful, and the way she stood, astute. “This will go a long way to making sure foolish decisions are not made in the Wall.”

“O-of course.” Deckert politely smiled. She really just made an honest mistake setting them up with an impossible enemy, though.

Page, meanwhile ... well, after seeing a ridiculous amount of gore for the first time, she wasn’t the same person. It may have been simulated, low-resolution, monochromatic gore, but that mage’s shock was real. She hadn’t expected to “die” so suddenly, and against an apparently-harmless foe, at that. Artifice’s anger was real, too.

Don’t be complacent. Don’t make stupid decisions. Respect the danger. Page was beginning to realize exactly just why Jyn had gotten angry with her back then, and why Kalender was so anxious.

She had to take it seriously ... and y’know, what? That was fine. This was something she’d decided on. Being Kalender’s companion from here on out meant facing scary things. She didn’t fully understand why Kalender believed in what he did, so she couldn’t latch onto his reason as her reason, and anyway, it wouldn’t be her reason if she did.

The motions of the wider, uncaring world around her didn’t really matter as much to her, compared to the motions of the people she held the hands of. So, even if just to be more courageous for the people around her, she’ll take this seriously.

The final test entirely fell on her shoulders. A Combat Librarian who couldn’t fight on her own was just a Librarian.

Page stood on the firing line, ready to unleash whatever magic she could, even if she barely had the MP to do anything more complicated than bullet spells.

Deckert approached her from behind. “Remember, focus on support and defensive spells.” She turned to Artifice, who was watching from the next firing lane. “Captain Artifice, please advise Librarian Turner on what support spells you would prefer.”

Artifice nodded. “Librarian Turner, please allow me and my subordinates to focus on dealing damage. We would highly appreciate anything that would highlight, flush out, distract, or divert enemies.”

“Of course,” Page replied. Artifice noted the change in tone. It had more...respect laced between the words.

Part of that was because of how Artifice handled her troops, but the other part was that Page had never had a client make such a clear request before. The life of a Librarian was a life of dealing with vague requests—dealing with people who didn’t know what they wanted! If she could, she’d cry right here and now, but she’ll show Artifice good gratitude through professional attitude.

Highlight, flush out, distract, or divert—Page thought long and hard about it, flipping through random Collections to see if any of them had something about it. The Flare and Flash spells were straightforward, but they were hefty MP sinks for someone as low-leveled as her, so there must be alternatives. Kalender’s special light magic would’ve been nice to try out, but she didn’t have a copy of it at the moment—bummer.

When it came to defense, for barrier spells, she didn’t have enough MP. The only thing she could do was a partial reinforcement spell, but that would only work for objects she were touching, like shields or armor.

She sighed. “I don’t have enough MP for most things...”

“Flare and Flash will suffice, Librarian Turner,” Artifice said. There was no ill-will behind those words. Rather, the glow around Artifice was warm. She’d meant it with the care of a commander who didn’t want her troops doing things beyond their ability. “Remember to call out these spells in particular, or else you’ll blind your own team.”

Calling out spells: a matter of courtesy in the middle of heated combat.

“Even Flare?”

“For someone close enough, it can be blinding, even to yourself. I suggest you squint when you launch it.”

Page faced downrange, bringing up several copies of the same page for the Flare spell. As a Librarian, bringing up multiple panels of references was a matter of course.

Deckert took a step back. “Can you even launch more than one spell at a time?”

“You can,” Artifice said, “but your typical mage only has so much MP to spare”—

As it stood, Page was just slightly below army standard, and she fired off four Flare spells without so much as a warning. Of course, she regretted this the moment she willed MP into the magic circles.

“F.” That’s all that had come out of her mouth when the world turned white. Artifice had the mind to close and shield her eyes with her capelet, raising her arm in time. Deckert didn’t have such reflexes nor experience, and as with Page, she suffered the wrath of staring into a miniature sun.

However, that was not all that Page suffered, for she massively underestimated just how much MP the Flare spell needed. She stumbled backwards, knees weak from the crushing realization that the path she had taken was one of violence. Her rosy life of happiness and adventure had always been just a dream. She was too weak. Nothing she would do would amount to anything.

Gellar caught her in a princess carry before she hit the floor. “I’ll take care of her,” Gellar said to a cussing Deckert and becringed Artifice. Page was mumbling something, radiating the black tendrils of life-sapping depression. “If being alive means losing everything...” Page mumbled.

It was always this way. Gellar carried her out of the practice range, letting her magic soothe Page.

***

Jyn endured holding onto Kalender’s right arm as they walked down Harmony’s main avenue, and then off into a side road where The Retirement Plan was. They greeted the old lady manning it.

“Where’s the old man?” Jyn asked her.

“Off to the blacksmith’s,” the old lady answered. On the wall above her, the sword that was supposed to be there was gone. She pointed at the vacant rack with a thumb. “Started to get rusty, you see.” She looked to Kalender, then to Jyn. “Same as last time?”

“If you’d please,” Jyn said.

As Jyn and Kalender sat down, the old lady kept glancing towards the two. It hadn’t even been a week, and there was already something different about them. She broke the silence and spoke up, “How about you, young man? Do you fancy anything other than a Monster Slayer?” She gave a hearty laugh, if only to lighten up the atmosphere a bit.

“Ah, well”--Kalender scratched his head--“what else is there?”

“How about an Orville’s Wreath? Leafy greens and potato slices garnished in this here secret sauce.”

“Oh? I could go for something like that right around now.”

A total of 25 Notes slid over for their meals, irking Jyn’s sensibilities, but she didn’t say anything about it.

In fact, neither of them said anything for a while. Jyn was just too busy absorbing the fact that she had extended tactile contact with Kalender in public!

Kalender, on the other hand, wrestled with the idea that Jyn might actually be in love with him. In his mind, there were enemies potentially around every corner, and that sort of cautious anxiety wouldn’t let him spare any thoughts about being in love. Even now, he was looking over his shoulder.

Jyn reached out to his shoulder. He looked to her. “There aren’t any around us,” she said.

“But I can feel someone”--

Jyn squeezed his arm, pulling him closer for her to whisper, “The Inquisition, agents of the Throne, or Lord Shal-yen’s, and even Minimine’s Temple, they are all watching over this town.”

“How do you know that?”

“I worked with these people for a long time.”

They pulled away from each other, looking into each other’s eyes for a moment. Kalender nodded. “Alright, I trust you,” he said. Jyn smiled. Her smile caught him off-guard.

The old lady came swooping in to the rescue, with their meals in either hand. She set them down and watched them masterfully ignore their emotions under heaps of meat and salad. Honestly, these two were quite lucky with each other to be communicating as much as they were. Do you know how long it took her husband to spill the beans? Fifteen long months, and it took another five months of development for the man to fully open up about it! Ah, well, the First Wife position was worth it, in the end.

...Speaking of wife rankings. “Kershel!” The old lady waved to another, who approached the stall with a basket of vegetables balanced on her head. “Good morning, Merleen!” Kershel greeted back. She set down the basket in front of the door to the kitchen. She was younger than Merleen by almost a decade, and really, Merleen and Lairs had been married for seven years before she came into scene.

Jyn and Kalender watched with some interest as Merleen pulled out a dart board and laughed as Kershel missed her three throws, somehow managing to throw one of them Merleen’s way. The latter pulled up a round shield just for the occasion—one already riddled with holes.

Kershel clicked her tongue. “One of these days, I’ll be the one manning this here stall with Lairs.”

“I’ve got seven years of darts more than you, youngin.” Merleen laughed.

While the two women continued bickering, in Jyn’s mind, she saw herself in Merleen’s place, and Page, in Kershel’s—which was strange, because the two never seemed to be any closer than as they were in front of her, so what was she thinking, seeing Page by Kalender’s side? To give credit where credit was due, the girl was daring and forward with her emotions, and she was happier for it. Maybe Jyn would be happier, too.

“Kalender.” She looked to him. “Say, what if we got married?”

He chuckled. He was expecting that sort of question, wasn’t he? “It’d be alright, I guess,” he replied.

“You ‘guess’ ?”

“Are you really sure?” Kalender asked. “About marrying me, I mean.”

Jyn took pause at this. Why did she want to marry him, anyway? It was just the obvious thing to do: if you build up such a stalwart relationship, may they be a simple friend or soulmate, you wouldn’t let go of that, would you? “I’m certain,” she replied.

But Kalender wasn’t. Even without the looming threat of a corrupt god and his Cult, there were things he couldn’t reconcile in his head. Just—imagine the whole logistics of it! “Where would we settle down, anyway?”

Jyn smiled. “Harmony and even Clarinets are a little chilly. I can’t imagine the winters here... Perhaps somewhere south would be milder weather.”

“How about outside Lyrica?”

“What, the Eastern Colonies? Life would be hard...but free.”

“ ‘Eastern Colonies’ ? There’s something like that?”

“Beyond the Whistle Mounts is a vast, untamed wilderness, filled with lost colonies and tribes. I don’t suggest we go there.” She shook her head. “It’s only for those with nowhere left to go.”

“I see.” Kalender nodded. He chewed on a tiny and thin potato slice, feeling out what the secret sauce was made of. He turned to Jyn. “Jyn, I’m sorry. I know what you want to mean, but I need time to think about it.”

She gently smiled. “I’m always your friend, Kalender.”