A Furious Goose

@derlakernlins.bsky.social

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- editing an urban fantasy book about slutty dragons - GM for @livefromtheapocalypse - random fiber arts - parenting.txt - ruck ruck ruck ruck - permacultist - i block for AI

Joey’s crew, meanwhile, was a flurry of activity. Unloading crates, opening crates, making horrified faces and retreating, gagging, from crates…
“Hey Seb,” Joey said. He had a black bandanna tied around his face and offered one to Sebastian. “You’re gonna wanna cover your nose. We got face masks but the boys opening up the boxes need ‘em. They shipped everything with durian and fertilizer. Ain’t no drug dog getting shit through that. Gotta be a hundred percent with you, it ain’t makin for speedy progress for my boys neither.” He jerked his head toward Kimmy, who gave Sebastian a tired little wave. “She says she can filter for it once she rests up or if one us wants to do a strip tease for her. I said I’d do it but my crew is being all shy so we’re waiting.”
“Boundaries are boundaries,” Kimmy said. “I respect it.”

The cards were unhelpful. The High Priestess central, the ten of swords on the left, Judgment on the right, with Innocence above and Death below. “Yes, thank you,” Niamh said to the spread, crossly. “You have accurately described my problem of ‘being a dragon.’”
The next card she drew was an inverted Fool. She sighed and put the cards down. She loved her aspect, the divine Purpose that drove her collection and inspired her name. Prophecy was beautiful because it was open to interpretation, malleable, difficult to understand for both prophet and disciple. It was more art than science, and often more chicanery than truth. Which was a lot of fun, right up until her tools started sassing her.

But most workshops didn’t have a concrete floor that sloped ever so slightly toward a drain in the center. Most hobbyists had fewer long, sharp knives, and almost certainly didn’t keep them next to quite such a broad collection of antique medical equipment. And there were certainly not very many other sheds that had an old dentist’s chair with horrible stains that were not concealed by the drape of plastic sheeting across the back bolted to the floor.
“I’m not fucking sitting on that,” Charlie said when the door was shut and the shop light was turned on.
Riley snorted. “I put a tarp on it for you and everything.”
“Not comforting, given the context.” Charlie held up his wrists, displaying the zip ties. “These aren’t necessary either.”

“Charlie left! Charlie betrayed us! He betrayed you, Finn, just now, specifically! Why are you so hell-bent on protecting a traitor?!”
Finn snarled. “That’s my fucking brother you’re talking about you son of a bitch!” Then he started throwing punches.
Jackson hit the dirt and went for a grapple. Finn wriggled out of his grip and socked him in the gut. Jackson kneed Finn in the jaw and tried to scramble to his feet, but Finn kicked his injured ankle and knocked him flat again.
The remaining Owens brothers watched them scrap, arms folded. Finally, Riley sighed and turned to Thomas. “He’s not gonna wrap my eye, is he?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Riley let out an aggrieved sigh. “Fine. I’m going to bed then.”
“You don’t wanna weigh in on who leads the clan?”
Riley laughed, derisively. “Why should I? I’m the dummy, remember?” He shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s cause I was born a girl or if it’s cause I’m a disappointment in some other way, but nobody’s ever thought about me in the lead. Charlie got more leadership training than I ever did. So nah, fuck it. Lemme know if they kill each other, I guess.”

A woman wearing a multicolored ski coat and a white and tan alpaca fur hat stands over a fire in a silver solo stove. There are green cedar trees behind her and snow is falling

Penny raised a chilly eyebrow. “If there’s no hope of me surviving, there’s no reason for me to cooperate.”
He shrugged and crouched down next to her. Penny refused to flinch when his knee touched her arm. “There’s the promise that the pain will end,” he said softly. “That’s historically worked well for my family.”
“If you think I don’t have precautions against capture and torture in place, you’re an idiot. And anyway. You owe me.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You owe me, Loss.”
His eyes flashed gold when she said his name. He reached for her. Penny inhaled sharply and tried to summon some scrap of magical ability, but she was spent. Her gun was on the ground next to her. She might as well have left it at home.

Riley was the shortest of the Owens brothers, aftermarket testosterone not quite being up to the challenge of giving a man the growth spurts of his brothers. In appearance, Riley was a little clone of their father: square jaw, full lips, proud blue eyes, and a capacity for relentless violence that would be pretty impressive if if had been attached to someone with a brain.
But you do domestic terrorism with the dipshits you have, not the dipshits you want.

Julian Chase was a petty tyrant, everyone knew it. Those in power might prop up petty tyrants because it enabled them to be lenient and beneficent in comparison. But that relied on those tyrants remaining useful. They had to not fuck up.
And Chase had been fucking up. Penny was a better lab manager. Her research was not as polished, but by the time she was his age she’d surpass him exponentially. People wanted to work for her and nobody wanted to work for Chase. And now, when he’d fucked up in such an undeniable, massive way in front of the entire Vigiles Draconi in Concord… he tried to pin it on the more popular member.

Gary flexed its wet, horrible fingers. “I can help you, yes.” A sticky, reeking limb reached towards her, touching the inner edge of the circle. Its magic passed through the binding with disconcerting ease, though in this case it was beneficial. Penny felt the subliminal tightness behind her neck relax as the fog that still clouded her mind lifted.

“I’m not summoning a demon.” Niamh handed Harker Alternatives to Philosophy, indicating the page marked with a Chinese takeout menu.
Harker looked at the spell, frowning and muttering to himself. “Huh. Don’t recognize that name. And the binding architecture is… hmm.” His eyebrows furrowed, then climbed toward his hairline as realization dawned. He stared at the page, then up at Niamh.
“Jesus Christ, Niamh, why does a death guide owe you a favor?!”

Thomas stood in the lobby, industrially chilled air blasting through his army surplus coat, staring at the elevator as it dinged down, floor by floor. He put his hands in his pockets. Took them out. Clenched his fists. This was stupid. Armaments hated him. Prophecy ignored him until it was convenient. Why was he going to meet them? They should be coming to him, the assholes.
The little vial of dragon blood in his pocket forced him into the elevator and up, up, up to the penthouse level, where Armaments apparently owned half the fucking roof. Wasn’t that just the cherry on the sundae, that a boring-ass bitch like Armaments lived in style while fine, upstanding dragons like Thomas lived in converted fifth-wheel campers.

An upright spinning wheel on a 7th floor atrium balcony in the gaylord natjk al harbor overlooking a Final Fantasy photoshoot and the staff balconies

“Work has been… interesting. There’s some interdepartmental drama happening, and my boss is the actual worst human being alive, but other than that it’s pretty great.”
That sentence was just about the blandest thing she could say about her job, and it still somehow resulted in a jab of pain when she started shit-talking Dr. Chase. It wasn’t that intense, though. It felt more like a warning shot. A reminder to avoid certain topics.
If Abe noticed her flinch, he didn’t say anything. “What’s the drama? Anything juicy?”
“Oh, Jesus, strap in,” Penny leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Abe mirrored her. “So, it all started when Sarah, that’s the one with the hair, started ‘borrowing’ reagents from our lab.”
“That bitch,” Abe said.

White woman with glasses, tattoos, and pink hair stands on a balcony on the 8th floor overlooking the Gaylord National Harbor Atrium

“White brick is cocaine, yellow one’s heroin,” Joey said matter of factly.
Sebastian eyed the drugs. “Surely that’s not all there is,” he said. Smuggling mortal drugs through the port wasn’t the kind of damning evidence against Serena that he needed. That was practically what running the ports was for.
Joey shook his head, looking as grim as Sebastian had ever seen him. “Nah. Got a couple crates of guns and ammo. And some others with black lockboxes that I reckon got the magic drugs in em.” He rubbed the back of his neck, squinting into the distance. “I want Niamh to look ‘em over before we crack the seals. Kimmy agrees with me. They don’t feel right.”

A wood duck hen on an icy river

John glanced at her. “You should get out more, Niamh. it isn’t good for you to just mope about waiting for Music to show up.”
Niamh eyed him as he drove. He looked genuinely concerned, which was just so very like him. As soon as he had something nice he wanted everyone else to have nice things too. It was endearing, provided that you actually wanted the same things he wanted.
“I know. Ordinarily I would. But this body,” she gestured at herself. “This body just doesn’t seem to have the interest.”
John gave a sympathetic wince. "Unfortunate. It’s such a shame when these bodies don’t do what we want."
"I’ll take low libido over a great deal of other maladies," Niamh said. “If I have the very good fortune to meet Music and Companionship in this lifetime… it can’t be harder than dealing with being a different gender than is deemed proper or being vastly different ages or one or both of us already being married to someone else. We’ll figure it out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He handed her a pair of huge, plasticky earmuffs. “You’re right. I’m being crappy. You want the first shot?”
Niamh’s arm ached already, she wasn’t sure shooting was the best idea. “Nah, you go ahead.”
She was right, as it turned out. Her groupings weren’t bad, she just couldn’t hold the gun up properly with her injured arm and kept flinching in anticipation of the pain of recoil.
“I could have prevented this,” John said as she put down the gun shaking with frustration and pain. “I’m sorry, I should have gone with you.”
“I don’t think you could have,” Niamh said, sighing and taking a seat at the table. She lifted a hand to remove the earmuffs but thought better of it. John would probably want to keep shooting. “The benefit of being Prophecy is that at least I get the opportunity to choose how I’m going to get shot.”

She couldn’t think. She had to answer. “That dragon blood even exists is information only a few people have. That we have a source is known by under a dozen people, including myself,” Penny said, her voice measured and not at all calm. “I need to know. Where’s the leak?”
Thomas glanced at the gun in his hand, racked the slide, then looked back at her without holstering it. As threats went, it was inelegant and devastatingly effective. “I’m looking at her,” he said. “You’re the leak now, princess. You’re gonna tell me everything, then I’m gonna kill you.”

Dark brown and tan yarn plied together stretched out on a niddy-noddy for processing

Pale wooden Ashford kiwi spinning g wheel with thin, very dark brown alpaca yarn on the spindle. You can just barely see the spinners red christmas socks on the treadles

Sebastian soared above the field as a Banksian Cockatoo, dark wings blending against the dark sky.
Being such an exotic bird was a risk. Corvus had warned him about that when he first chose the form. The reason most vampires went with bats or crows wasn’t just affinity for carrion-eaters and vermin, but that they were common animals, and it was easy to hide in a crowd.
Sebastian hadn’t wanted to hide. Even now, when staying hidden was necessary for survival it was hard not to showboat. He spun and looped through the sky, and told himself it was to get as many angles on the potential conflict as possible. You know. To compensate for the parroty lack of depth perception.

This may have been a mistake, because when they stepped into the diner they both had to squint. Thomas’s aunt had turned on the massive, daylight bulbs above the bar and flooded the space with ultraviolet radiation.
Sebastian blinked and shaded his eyes with a hand. “Lovely place you have here,” he said, pleasantly. “I love the murals. Who did you have do them? They’re so much more a personal touch than wallpaper.”
Thomas’s aunt was a granite obelisk behind the counter, scowling like a thunderstorm. Her hands were on a shotgun filled with silver, salt, and rosary beads. He couldn’t see that, of course. It’s just what Thomas would have, and so it was a safe bet to assume it’s what any member of his family would have.
“Wrong type of vampire,” Thomas said. “He’ll die regular if you just shoot him.”
Sebastian turned to Thomas, pressing a hand against his heart as if wounded and gasped, “Mr. Owens, I assure you, I will die fabulously if you shoot me!”

But that was for later. Right now, Thomas looked sad and Kimmy didn’t want him to look sad anymore. She figured she knew a few ways to cheer him up.
Kimmy was perfectly aware that many, most, probably, people weren’t like her. Most people didn’t actually view sex as a solution of first resort to most problems. But she also knew that Thomas had enjoyed himself thoroughly the last time they’d been together. Well. Right up until the last bit when Kimmy’s trap had closed around him, but they could do without that now.

Charlie shrugged. “I’m coming to you about this and not them, because you’re not scared of me. You understand how bad my family is, and I think preventing the Owens clan and the Lunartics from having a shootout in the middle of Corvus Shipping would benefit pretty much everybody.”
Sebastian’s lip curled. “That’s one of Serena’s project,” he said. “Why not go to her instead?”
“Oh. Uh. I may have stabbed her in the neck before I left the family.” Charlie rubbed the back of his neck, wincing as if he were admitting to some embarrassing personal problem. “I may have stabbed her in the neck a lot. So. She doesn’t like me much.”
Well. That explained her high leather collars anyway.

Middle aged woman in a black striped sweater and jeans standing in her kitchen grinning madly while holding up a wrapped jamon iberico and pointing to it as if displaying a fish she'd caught

Fuck it. If she had to choose between pain and this listless confusion, she’d take pain every time. Chad had helpfully reminded her of how linked pain and pleasure were, but this had to go.
She had weeks and weeks of PTO accrued. She had plenty of money in the bank. She could fuck off to an all-expenses-paid luxury resort in the Caribbean. She put in the PTO request. It was immediately approved by Dr. Chase, as if he’d been waiting around to receive it. Penny ground her teeth against the pathetic surge of gratitude that washed through the fog. Something wanted her to feel grateful to Dr. Chase, to be subservient to the hierarchy of the Vigiles Draconi. Was that the NDA or something new?
Regardless, that mental magic was barking up the wrong tree. Penny was only subservient in bed.

“Fuck me he hit the warded container,” Joey’s mental voice sounded almost conversational. “Just booped it like a goddamn puppy’s nose.”
“You’ve gotta move,” Kimmy said, anxiety causing her to speak out loud to the empty cab. “Get out of there, Joey!”
“Yeah, nah. You gotta get this crate and I just shot him. Wait a sec.” The container started moving again, faster this time, swaying slightly. Kimmy got out of the truck and ran a couple meters away, she didn’t want to be in the cab if Joey fucked this up.
But he didn’t fuck it up. Prophecy be with her, the container clonged and creaked into its place on the truck like it did in the goddamn training videos. Kimmy ran around the truck, doing her security checks at lightning speed, then threw herself back into the cab and started the engine. “We got it, get down here Joey.”
“Please fuckin’ hold, we are experiencing an—FUCK YOU, YA FEET-A-CLAY-ASS BITCH!— unusually high call volume.”

Sebastian ignored them both and floated over to the man. Jackson tensed as the vampire moved past, but didn’t spin the gun around. “Simon Harker, thank you for coming.”
“Why couldn’t we have met at White Chapel?” Simon Harker groused. “You know the Aston doesn’t like the wet.”
Jackson actually perked up at that. “That’s your Aston Martin out there?” At Harker’s nod, Jackson whistled. “Beautiful car. Collaborating must pay well.”
This was a strange thing for Jackson to say in the circumstances. Thomas shot a glare at Sebastian, who gave him a demure little shrug. The psychic vampire was flooding the space with friendly vibes the same way Thomas’s aunt had flooded the restaurant with light. It felt different, now that Thomas was aware of it, than Kimmy’s emotional touch. She’d been the subtle brush of cobwebs, he was the barely noticeable touch of a mosquito’s legs.

John’s cabin was nestled on a substantial bit of woodland that backed to a public wilderness. His apartment in the city was the place he kept his human life, but the cabin was far more clearly run by the dragon. The apartment contained a few pieces of the secondary collection, but the primary lived at the cabin. The whole space was decorated and furnished with items he and other dragons he cared about had made in this life or past lives. That rocking chair on the cozy, covered porch had been carved by Niamh herself, two lifetimes ago. The blanket draped over the back had been woven by Silk. She touched the bright fabric as John unlocked the door, as always a touch envious of the skill involved.
John saw her do it and smiled, a bit sadly. “I saw them three lifetimes back, they were very old and I was very young. That old tragedy. My parents at the time were involved in a church that was very focused on charitable acts, though, so I got to volunteer at the retirement home they spent their last years in. I’d have liked to have been there when they moved to their next life, they went peaceful, no explosions, but it happened while I was in school.”

Two clean cars and a boat full of snow in a shoveled driveway on a snowy day

“We’ve got to go,” Sebastian said.
Either Niamh ignored him or she was too deep in whatever spellcaster trance she was locked in. He stepped forward, meaning to put a hand on her shoulder, steeling himself for whatever fury would come his way, when the werewolf that had jumped onto the tall Owens fucking exploded.
Nope.
“I’m leaving,” he sent to Charlie. “Meet at the extraction point.”
Charlie, at least, gave him a quick nod. Niamh, on the other hand, straightened and walked directly into the line of fire.
God damn it.

The NDA had nestled in every crevice and fold of cerebrum and cerebellum, and the Dragon of Loss tore it all away with the energy of a man rip-starting a chainsaw.
The clarity was so pure and so painful she almost came.
“There,” he said as she writhed and panted on the forest floor. “Debt repaid. Now talk, because I can rip through every layer of protection you have the same way. It might take, what, half an hour?” He holstered the gun, finally, as if acknowledging he no longer needed it. “I’ve got time. Do you?”
Penny stared at the patches of sky she could see through the canopy. Her mind was clear. Truly clear for the first time since Chase activated the NDA. No, before that. Since she first put on the Vigiles Draconi’s wristwatch and accepted their influence and control in exchange for her freedom.
She hadn’t realized how dim the world had become, how shaded her eyes had been made.
“It’s gone,” she said, her voice filled with wonder.
Thomas shrugged, irritable. “I’m Loss, dipshit. Start talking.”

Niamh walked through the shop while she waited, running her hands over the furniture, the artwork, the musical instruments and jewelry. She loved this place, this jumble of stuff. It wasn’t the same as a collection, but it was close. And it had been violated.
She missed her real collection. The fullness of it, the expansiveness of it. She missed when people come to her for blessings or for insight. She missed the role of divinity as much as she missed the wings and scales. Doing tarot for Harker wasn’t the same. A shop that any dickhead werewolf could smash into and steal from wasn’t the same.
But this is what she had. So she’d make the best of it.

“TPI does good work too,” the man said, a trifle belatedly. “Like, stuff that genuinely helps people. They’ve got some stuff in the pipeline that might revolutionize oncology. But the magic stuff is universally shady. That’s why I came to you guys. I’m worried we’ve got an Omelas situation. I don’t know if the good we’re going is worth what’s happening below the surface.”
Oh, of course they were gonna fuckin’ cure cancer on top of all of it. This guy, this poor guy. This is why organizations shouldn’t try this half-assed, barely get your feet wet version of magic. Friendly nerds wound up knowing just enough to be a danger to themselves.

She pulled out her work laptop, gritting her teeth through the warning throb of pain that seemed to start in the roots of her teeth and spread into her vision. She ignored it. She didn’t respect this pain.
Unfortunately the pain was not the only barrier. Upon entering her password, her watch should have beeped, the diamonds should have flared white, and the system should have opened for her like an eager lover. Now the watch was silent. The diamonds remained stubbornly carbon-black and the laptop rejected her password.
Fuck. “Well, that’s the easiest road closed,” she said aloud, raking a hand through her hair. How irritating.
Still. She hadn’t spent a significant portion of her adult life doing experimental design for nothing. She moved to her personal laptop, a much less fancy machine primarily used for Netflix and porn, and began drafting an exposure plan.

“For the future we have the five of wands. Conflict. Anger coming from multiple directions, many voices making demands. Below the surface, we see the Nine of Swords, reversed. Inner turmoil spilling out into the world.” Niamh’s eyes swept across the cards. “Your turmoil, the turmoil of others. The conflict we see in your near future must be contained, treated carefully. At the end, the potentials of the situation, we have…” Niamh placed the card without ceremony. Harker snorted.
“Death,” he said. “Even I know that one means ‘change.’ What a spectacularly unhelpful card. The potential impact might be change?! You don’t bloody say!”
Niamh glanced at the images below. “Death means change, but it can also just mean death.”

Niamh was not human. Her book was a part of her, and she was part of it. That gave her some protection from the cloying power promised by foresight. It still wasn’t something she consulted lightly. But she was furious now. Someone had invaded her space. Someone had taken her necklace. Some lesser creature had dared to rob a dragon and she was going to roast them alive.
The book sat on a gilded lectern surrounded by soaring windows that looked out into empty Bright. This was the farthest from the material would one could be while still existing within Niamh’s collection. Unreality was a physical force here, something that could, without Niamh’s consciousness to guide it, rend minds and bodies asunder.

“Hey, man, you invest in people and they invest back in you, know what I’m sayin’? You want people to treat you right, you gotta treat them right. Shit, that’s what’s wrong with half the world today is that folks in charge forgot how to treat people. The bigger you get the more people you gots to be kind to.”
That was so profoundly in opposition to the tenor of the meeting Sebastian had just left that it took him a moment to respond. “You don’t find that people take advantage of you?”
Joey laughed. “You know, that’s never been a problem for me.”
“Such trust,” Sebastian swirled the ice in his glass, hoping his own steaming envy wasn’t obvious. “How many of them know your secret?”
This time Joey’s laugh didn’t touch his eyes. “What secret? Ya boy Joey Fitz is an open book. I ain’t got secrets, I just got the hookup to whatever kinda party you wanna throw.”

Penny sat. Niamh didn’t. Under the dragon’s glower, Penny took out her phone and began tapping out the sequence for Camilla’s portable warding, which would shield them from the Crusader’s senses.
“No magic, Vigil,” Niamh barked.
Penny’s hand shook but did not move from the screen. It was a bizarre feeling, to be afraid of this woman who looked so powerfully like Penny’s third grade teacher back in Norton, Virginia.

Thomas laughed. “Your magic court does trial by combat, doesn’t it?” He asked. “Two of us fight, one gets a lethal wound… we take out the whole pack of ‘em in one go. Distraction and weapon all in one tidy package.”
“I have people I care about in this city,” Niamh snapped. “I’m not suiciding for this.”
Thomas shrugged. “Suit yourself. Detonating is a perfectly reasonable solution, in my experience. These bodies start to go to shit once you hit 40. Shuck ‘em off, start again.”

“The woman’s name is Niamh Molina,” Jackson supplied, as if giving a hint. “I found her picture on Facebook. The one who fired first… we can find that out the easy way, right now, or we can let Riley off his leash in the city and he’ll find out the hard way.”
Riley perked up at that. “Really?”
“Sure. You put new soundproofing in, right?”
“Nah,” he said. “But I can take their vocal chords first. There’s a trick to doing it without nicking anything lethal.”
“Seems like it would defeat the point of asking questions,” Charlie said as if it didn’t rattle him, but Thomas didn’t need dragon senses to hear the wavering of his voice or notice the sudden pallor of his skin.
“You’d think, but you just leave ‘em their dominant hand,” Riley chirped cheerfully. “People write truths they’d never speak out loud anyway.”

Later, Thomas wouldn’t really be able to say what motivated him to make a second deal. Maybe it was the pressure of the dragon blood lingering in his mind, reminding him that things were going to change, fast and soon. Maybe it was the fact that Ezekiel was dying, and that his name was a large percentage of what stood between the rampaging supernatural world and the death of the entire compound. Maybe it was Thomas’s obscure, obscene loyalty to a family that treated him like cannon fodder. Whatever the reason, he asked the entity to protect the whole compound in exchange for letting it have the time of its fucked up and nasty life in the Owens family composter.

A tiny red crab holds up a metal pen, with colorful text reading "you have been visited by the PERMIT CRAB you may do 1 bad thing today"

Things from the Bright didn’t belong in the material. Fae, demons, and gestating dragons straddled that line, but beings of pure spirit strained the veil between the material world and the spiritual. Their psychic mass did strange things to reality in the same way that Niamh distorted the Bright. While it was unlikely that this spirit had the weight to do any permanent damage, there was no universe or plane of existence where a dragon permitted an unauthorized incursion into her collection.

Harker shook his head, eyes still fixed on the dragon treasure. “No,” he said softly. “That’s not all it is. It feels like…” He stood abruptly. “Come with me.”
Harker led her up the back stairs into a small, clean apartment. It looked a lot like where Penny had lived during grad school: neat and spare and barely lived in. He invited her to sit on a folding chair, went into a back room, and came back with a solid gold torc.
“Your necklace feels like this,” he said. “And this belongs to a friend of mine, but I can’t give it back to them. I tried three times and my hand won’t dial the phone number. I tried to drive to their place and I drove around the block eight times before someone called the cops on me for suspicious behavior.”

“They’re on me,” Thomas said into the walkie-talkie, his voice a lot steadier than he felt. He scooted backwards, trying to keep out of sight, dragging his rifle with him and hustled his ass down the ladder as quick as he could manage.
“Cover fire,” Finn said, and the answering sound of Owens guns was music to Thomas’s ringing ears.
He didn’t want to drop the rifle as he bolted, but he needed something for close quarters. Thomas sped around a corner. His brain said “Werewolf!” almost before his eyes actually resolved the mass of grey fur and yellow fangs barreling toward him.

Niamh spent much of her morning, as she always did, at work. She owned a small antiques shop, just off of the main drag of the shopping district of Concord. The shop, Legends Of Their Time, took up the first floor and the basement of her home and was laid out in the traditional antique shop jumble. People liked to hunt for their treasures, Niamh reasoned, though she always made sure the nicest and priciest things were easily accessible.

A toddler in a blue shirt, pink leggings, and a sparkly purple tutu leaps off the top bunk of her bed onto a giant beanbag

Thomas snorted. “Like any good cult we keep track of apostates. You gonna tell me what you were in there for or am I torturing it out of you?”
Penny’s libido furnished her with a series of increasingly improbable images of what that might be like. He sneered at her, probably taking her little shudder of desire for a shiver of fear. Was that a hint of disappointment in his face? Did he not like that she was afraid of him?
No. That was an absurd thought. She pushed down the thoughts about how fun he’d probably be in bed and straightened her spine. “What bargains I make are my own concern. What she reveals to you is hers.”
She went to push past him but he stepped in front of her so she had to either stop or run face-first into him.
“I didn’t say we were done,” he growled.
A porcelain hand clamped down on his shoulder. He turned and looked up, and up, and up into the serene, unmoving gaze of Penny’s Arcane Crusader.
“No,” Penny said, sweetly. “I think we’re done now.”

“Void existed before your work, of course,” Zhu said. “Long before.”
Penny was almost too amazed at the concept to be irritated at the of course. But she was certainly not too amazed to realize that this was almost certainly the final nail on the coffin of Chase’s hatred of her. He’d fought to have his name removed from that project because he’d thought it wasn’t worth his time.
“I’m very glad my work has been helpful at all. Thank you for bringing me here.” She eyed the molecule again. “You mentioned it uses whole blood product.”
“It’s materially expensive to produce,” Graham acknowledged. “But not terribly complicated.”
Alborez frowned at her. “Dr. Chase should have–”
“Dr. Chase saved research and development documents in his downloads folder,” Penny said. Zhu snorted. “I’m afraid I’ve had to waste a good deal of time doing systems archaeology and unable to read up on this project.”
Brooks silenced whatever Alborez was about to say with a raised hand. “Of course. Dr. Chase was a–”
Penny would never know what Dr. Chase was beyond a sexist piece of shit with bad file management practices, because the light from the glass wall suddenly switched from dim and gray to a dull, sullen red. All heads turned toward it.

Spaghetti with venison bolognese, a sprinkling of parmesan cheese, and a slice of homemade garlic bread

Something moved behind her. The ground shook slightly under its great footfalls. Penny turned around and looked up into her own, carved visage. A colorless valkyrie, Penny’s twin in every detail, from the tiny acne scar that never faded from her forehead to the way her hair draped to her shoulders, stared back at her. Its eyes flashed amber, then red, then blue, then the brilliant, sheening white of the diamonds in Penny’s watch.
“This, Vigil, is your Crusader,” Graham said. “Our first and finest weapon against our reincarnating enemy. Wounds given by our Arcane Crusaders will reappear across lifetimes, preventing dragons from attaining their full strength for generations. Here in the Pit they collect and store thaumic energy, allowing those Vigils who do not possess vast reserves of magical strength to cast spells like those of the greatest mages of all time. Through their eyes, we can detect the minutest disruptions and most occult origins of magic. And, due to the intricate and potent work of our own Judge Yanis Brooks, they can be veiled from the sight of most of Concord’s populace.”
The Arcane Crusader knelt before Penny, a movement which took the top of its head just about level with Penny’s own, and held up its sword to her. Its eyes did not leave hers. Behind her, Graham said, “Vigil, accept your Crusader’s service and ascend to your place among the protectors of humanity.”