Today's Earth date: January 25, 1992

I realized I wrote yesterday that I was single. I don't know why I did that. The repetition of grinding is starting to melt my perception of time.

Anyway, we got a visit from the Governess of Iomallach today. A monster has been sighted climbing up from the Cuts to attack villagers living outside the Iomallach walls, dragging them back into the jungle, never to be seen again.

Our gains have slowed considerably. We don't get enough experience from the trash around the city, so we're all excited that this monster might be different.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Wayne expected Governor Dunton to represent Cuan in the ratman summit, but a lieutenant Wayne didn't know attended instead. Similarly, Bata's Governor sent a Master Cloos to represent the port city's interests. Both were accompanied by a contingent of soldiers who joined them in every meeting.

Though the two Royal Scholars were a pivotal part of the effort to address the ratmen threat, many of the meetings had more to do with relations between cities than warfare, so they weren't invited to those.

The one meeting that required their presence took place in a small auditorium with proportions akin to a university lecture hall on Earth. No one was in uniform, so Wayne couldn't immediately tell who represented what city, but that ultimately didn't matter. Knowing his audience wouldn't change the information he had to share.

After General Poltur finished introducing him, Wayne spotted someone he did know as he and Fergus took the stage.

Lord Blackwell offered Wayne a warm smile from the back row. Wayne nodded back and began the presentation, enjoying the pleasant discovery that he wasn't afraid to be in front of this crowd.

Summarizing the whole of their research took a little more than three hours, and the Royal Scholars answered questions for the next two. The bulk of the queries could be answered by callbacks to the presentation, but one line of questioning starkly shifted the tone of the gathering.

Wayne would learn later that the man who asked this question was a captain from Cuan: "If the rats can get Diary access, does that mean our soldiers can too?"

"The logic tracks, yes," Fergus answered.

"How much progress have you made on that front?"

"On the front of getting soldiers access to the Diary of the Gods?"

"Yes."

"None at all, sir." Fergus caught Wayne's eye. Neither of them liked the direction of this topic.

"Shouldn't that be a main priority?" the captain asked, more to the rest of the room than Wayne and Fergus. "We should equip our soldiers to the best of our ability. If the rats have the Diary, then so should we."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that is beyond the scope for this meeting," Fergus said.

"I don't see how that's the case. We were just told ratmen are accessing the Diary of the Gods, and the two people telling us this figured out how to do the same. Neither of them were Chosen Heroes."

Wayne stepped forward. "I woke up in this world with the ability to open the Diary. I've learned more about how to use it, but I didn't have to gain access for myself. Yes, I was able to unlock a party function with my Christmas List ability, but as we said in our presentation, we don't believe two users can learn from the same page. We learned that in our battle with the ratmen near Asplugha. Anything he unlocked was unavailable to me. The chances of another Four Score page being out there are very slim."

"I saw for myself how many lives the Diary could save when you fought the banshee, so I find it curious that the first people to get it without being Heroes are avoiding the subject."

"What am I avoiding?" Wayne asked.

"Your actions could suggest that you are deliberately withholding information to preserve your own advantage."

"The Royal Library can confirm that I have been transparent about my Diary knowledge from the day I got here. I didn't hide that I found a way to use it, and I didn't hide that I later found a way to connect a party to my Diary. I'm confused about what parts of that suggest we are withholding anything about the Diary?"

Hearing his own words echo back to him, Wayne was surprised by his level of confidence. Earth Wayne got into disagreements, sure, but he was never this unflappable. He never had this much poise. Was that a side effect of the system or a result of surviving multiple dungeon crawls?

"I'm just saying it's curious. That's all."

Wayne shrugged and shifted his attention to the others in the room. "Any other questions?"

General Poltur raised her hand, her eyes suddenly seeming harder than before. "If you learned how to give others Diary access, would you share that information?"

"Does this feel like an interrogation to you?" Wayne asked Fergus with Voice.

"It does have the hallmarks of an ambush."

"Yes, and that's already happened."

"But what if you found a method that didn't require a connection to your Diary?"

"You don't have to answer that," Fergus said.

Wayne wrinkled his face in thought before responding. "My answer is that I don't know what I would do in that situation. I think that's a very complicated question that I can't answer on my own. I'd rather face that dilemma with the help of the smartest people this world has to offer. Again, just to be as clear as possible, we don't have any theories as to how the rats are accessing the Diary, and we don't know how to give humans access beyond what we've already shared."

A woman who Wayne would later learn was a member of the Vientuls guard asked, "What will you do if the ratmen attack?"

"Help, if we are permitted."

"And follow the orders of the commanding officer on site?"

Wayne scratched his head. "We're spending an awful lot of time here on me and my Diary access instead of the rats, but to answer your question: We will always help when and where we can. If we don't jump in immediately, it would be because we were ordered not to. We're still private citizens."

Fergus stood and held his hands up. "That's all the time we have for the day, I'm afraid," he said to the crowd. "We have other obligations but thank you for your attention and your curiosity."

Before General Poltur could get to her feet to stop them, Wayne and Fergus walked out. They were nearly to the door of City Hall when she caught up.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Dinner, I suspect," Fergus answered.

"We didn't adjourn."

"All due respect, General," Fergus said. "We're Royal Scholars, not soldiers."

"And I am in the employ of the kingdom, tasked with protecting the King's people."

"We are charged with the same mission and take it just as seriously. In fact, the royal family personally appointed Wayne to the Royal Scholars."

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Wayne stepped between Fergus and General Poltur. "We've already shared everything we know about the system," Wayne said. "I understand why the military-types would ask about it, but that many vague hypotheticals quickly felt accusatory, as if I was already a liar. When you have more questions about the rats, let me know. Happy to help."

"The prisoner died from the glitch, you know," she shouted after him. "The next could be someone innocent."

He ignored her and walked out.

But he'd heard her. Even if fixing a glitched prisoner was unlikely, Wayne was still unhappy to hear that he didn't make it.

Wayne and Fergus returned to the Blackwell estate late that evening, having enjoyed a long dinner and a great deal of wine.

Lord Blackwell, in finely pressed clothes and with perfectly straight silver hair, sat with his cousin in the main common area of their family residence. They too had enjoyed wine that evening.

"Ah, Lord Blackwell," Fergus said, dipping his head in respect. "I hope you weren't waiting on us."

"I was, but we didn't have an appointment. Besides, I haven't caught up with Billy in some time."

Billium twitched when he heard his name delivered as "Billy."

"Join us?" Blackwell asked.

Wayne and Fergus both found a chair and gratefully accepted a whisky from a house butler.

"We didn't know you'd be in town until we saw you today," Wayne said. "Did we miss a letter or a message?"

"No, nothing like that. I heard of the convening and wanted to be well informed. The travel plans that followed were hastily made, I admit."

"Well, it's good to see you, regardless," Wayne said. "Did you have a chance to see the Veintuls dungeon on your way through?"

"Far too briefly, but yes. It's as your letters said: delightfully unusual. I am riding out to the Lighthouse in the morning to see our work there."

Wayne didn't remember using the words "delightfully unusual," but the sentiment was accurate. "Did you reach an agreement with the city on the Lighthouse?"

"Billy here took care of it. We have a year to conduct our own research, and then we open to tourists one floor at a time. We'll make a tidy sum on our share of the tourist revenue when that happens."

"Glad that worked out."

"But!" Blackwell briefly turned and waved for a refill. "That's not why I've sought your company. Not directly, at least. We have a good bit of billings to settle up on, projects to discuss, and a frivolous lawsuit to put to rest."

Wayne and Fergus both raised their eyebrows.

"Master Sanders– I suppose he's just Sanders now, actually. Sanders is dropping the suit. I have the paperwork for you to review, but you can consider it resolved. When he heard that two of my dear cousins were injured in the chaos, in the safety of box seats no less, he was more willing to drop the suit. Harming one noble draws the ire of others. It's in all of our best interest to discourage any behavior that might harm nobles specifically."

"Thank you for doing that," Wayne said, raising his glass. "That's a relief."

"My pleasure, my friends. Billy will get his share of the arena soon enough as well."

Billium took a long drink.

"Your letter mentioned researching the Dead Zone. Has that begun yet?"

Fergus shook his head. "With the Sanders business settled, we can pick it back up."

"I'd leave tomorrow if we could," Wayne added. "We'll need at least a day to get our people in order, though."

Blackwell waved his hand. "I have no concerns about your time management. I was hoping you could do me a favor while you were in the Cuts."

"Yeah, of course."

"I would love to add a siren trap to my garden in the Capital. I'd like you to procure one for me."

"Umm…"

"I understand the risks," Blackwell assured Fergus. "This request is at your discretion entirely, and I would not consider a failure here a reflection of our broader work together."

Wayne involuntarily narrowed his eyes. He was still on edge from the convening earlier that day, so he wasn't sure if that was a veiled threat. Then again, Blackwell had always been good to them, and they'd never given him a reason to pick up the stick instead of the carrot all of a sudden.

"We'll do what we can," Fergus answered. If he was bothered, he didn't show it.

"Thank you. That means a lot to me. I understand if you're tired from the day, but I'd love to hear some of your latest adventures. A zombie cyclops is quite the story hook to leave dangling in a letter."

Fergus grinned. "How would you like to see it instead?"

And then Wayne spent the next two hours as a living slide machine. Using Replay Camera was relatively trivial, but Fergus had very specific requests. That was a problem for Wayne because he wasn't exceptionally organized.

Wayne tried a date and timestamp file naming convention when he first experimented with Replay Camera, but no one ever asked to see something based on the day and time. They always asked about content first, like a specific fight or when that one thing happened, leaving Wayne to cycle through footage from multiple days before he found the right date.

Then he tried naming his files according to their content, then he tried descriptive names such as Vientuls-SharkDungeon-Fergus-AlmostBlowsHimselfUpwithDynamite. That worked better, but then he started to mix up the order of his naming conventions and it turned into a mess again.

Now, he had folders based on location. Vientuls had its own folder. The Cut had its own folder. Mudsville had its own folder within that folder. Trying to separate groups of clips with the same event name in the title was easier, but he still wasn't entirely happy with the system.

The worst part of all of this is that he had given a half-hearted effort to renaming his old files. Many of them were still in the main directory with one of his many failed naming ideas.

But Blackwell treated him well. If his patron wanted to watch a few home videos, Wayne was fine with that.

Wayne woke fully rested in just two hours, thanks to a Railroad Tycoon unlock, and was surprised to find Blackwell awake and reading.

Was he up early, or had the noble not gone to bed?

"Good morning, Wayne," Blackwell said, looking up from his book only briefly. "You look rested. Oh how I envy your magic youth."

As Wayne finished making himself a cup of tea, Blackwell invited Wayne to join him. Since the Lord looked occupied with his book, Wayne didn't force conversation. Instead, he did his morning ritual of reviewing his system menus. The eclectic nature of his spells and skills made it easy to overlook something he hadn't had reason to use recently.

For example, he had all but forgotten about Jury Rig from Buck Rogers. For how excited he was about unlocking that game, he hadn't made any progress with it. Wayne realized this ritual wasn't too far from checking emails in bed, but he pushed that thought aside.

"May I offer unsolicited advice?" Blackwell asked.

"Please."

"Being a good man is admirable, but if you're too quick to jump in, your desire to be good will be used against you. Yesterday was an example of that."

Wayne sipped his tea and thought. "What would I do differently?"

"Warning the city about a threat, yes, of course, that's the right thing. That doesn't obligate you to ride out into the countryside to help the town guard, for example."

Wayne thought about that.

"You know why we never see old Chosen Heroes?"

"They die young or go into seclusion."

Blackwell pointed at Wayne. "Yes! Because they get sucked dry for five years and can't bear to deal with anyone ever again. The good people come to them asking for help, and bad people do the same, knowing that a Hero's commitment to 'doing good' is a reliable path to getting what benefits them. A few years of that? They have nothing left to give. The stories want you to believe that drivel about respecting their earned retirement by not tracking or reporting on them when the quest is over. The truth? They don't want anyone to see how bad it is for an old Hero."

The Chosen Hero journals reflected that tension consistently, generation after generation. The pressure put on them to be heroic wore them down and did so with frightening speed. They were kids, wholly unprepared for what was asked of them. Suffering in a fantasy world didn't make the suffering any easier.

But Wayne hadn't considered that he could be vulnerable to the same traps. To him, the Chosen Heroes were like child movie stars. He felt for them, but he also didn't think of himself as being one of them.

"I misread you," Wayne said. "I took you to be a Chosen Hero fan."

"I am. I like the story, and I like history. Make no mistake, though, the story is a tragedy."

Wayne returned to his tea. Decades of Uncle Ben "with great power" propaganda made him feel obligated to help any time he could, but holy shit did Spiderman have it rough, in almost every dimension. Was Blackwell on to something? Was he right that doing all the good you possibly can would always come at the expense of your own quality of life?

In that moment, Wayne wished he could ask Horcus if he ever read Alan Moore's The Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan's detachment from humanity suddenly had a new weight to it, the result of a feeling he hadn't understood until he felt it himself.

"Thank you for thinking of me," Wayne said. "That's a lot to consider."

Blackwell raised his coffee cup to Wayne and went back to reading.

When Wayne finished his tea, he went to Fergus' bedroom and let himself in.

"Ferg, hey. Wake up."

Fergus woke with a snort and jumped when he saw Wayne standing over his bed. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked, squinting.

"We need to go do something irresponsible."

"Right this moment?"

"It's urgent."

Fergus rubbed his eyes. "Okay, okay. You can stay and watch me put on pants if you want, but you should know I sleep in the nude when it's this hot out."

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