ALL NOVEL Melonie’s Reason – Chapter 252
Introductions done, Melonie turns to Ben and the rest with a fire in her eyes.
Ace chuckles at this, “When you’re finished straightening things out, come by my office.” And he waves to Melonie as he leaves the house, closing the door just as she begins to bark orders at the others.
Bright and early next morning, Ace has a report on his desk, transcribed on a tablet of unfired clay as good paper wasn’t the easiest to produce, of how the people from up river all seemed to have a fire lit under their keisters. The actual text on the tablet is a little small to read normally, thankfully with just a small cantrip someone had figured out, you can manipulate the clay tablet almost like a digital tablet with pinch zooming. As long as there is enough space, the surrounding text will be shrunk even more and pushed to the side, while the selected area will be expanded. A nifty bit of unspecialized magic that will probably fall to the wayside once technology starts to flourish again.
The thing is, Ace had finished reading the entire tablet a quarter of an hour ago and at this point he was just waiting. Though he wouldn’t have to wait much longer. There is a knock at his office door and he invites them in.
Melonie enters the room with a dark look and immediately starts to vent. “Did you know about half those people don’t actually even care what happens up river? They’re going to abandon the cause now that I’m actually trying to advance things! Those, aaarrgh, yeah, they just stuck around because being a part of our group meant they didn’t have to do anything to live!”
Ace nods, “That’s actually better than we expected. My people predicted that the eventual drop out rate would be closer to three-fourths of them leaving.”
Melonie points at him, “You saw this all coming! Why didn’t you help Ben get ahead of it? Now I have to pick up the pieces for him!”
Ace sighs, he knew to expect this, but it was still annoying. “For yourself.”
Melonie frowns, “What?”
Ace chuckles, “Don’t try and pretend you don’t know what I’m getting at. Yesterday, you literally just went through an entire spiel about how he wasn’t a good leader. You’re picking up the pieces for yourself.”
Melonie rolls her eyes, “I’m just making sure he develops well. His dad might have been fooled by how things were going, but his mom never agreed. I’m not just his friend, but also assigned to look out for him by his mom.
“When they show up in the future, I need to have recovered his position or it will look bad. Sure, he really isn’t a good leader, but his mom understands that even if his dad doesn’t. Still, she wants him in charge of something and the town up river seems good enough.”
Ace shakes his head, “They’re dead. Both his parents are dead. Your mom? Alive, but your dad is dead. Every grandparent of all your people here, dead, and a large portion of the parents as well.”
Melonie freezes with her mouth open. It takes a moment for her to digest what Ace just said, “You can’t know that!”
Ace closes his eyes and lets out a sad sigh. He opens his eyes again and slides a sheet of paper across the table that Melonie grabs. “Within the next week, we are releasing this spell. It is one of the trashiest divination spells you come up with.
“The one upside of it is that as long as the system wants you to have the information it is completely accurate. Otherwise, you might as well flip a coin. A good spell to start a kid with the talent for prophecy to start on. Anyway, the system basically posts the list of people who survived and who didn’t survive when magic arrived.
“As long as you use the hair of someone related, any divination spell can detect this. We haven’t even fully checked our own people, but I made sure to check all of you. Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to be rolling into town expecting to see their boy in charge. Maybe if they managed to properly follow a religious creed, unlikely seeing how rich they were and how all the mainstream religions tended to be the charity type. Maybe they’re looking down on us from one deity or another’s heavenly realm.”
Melonie frowns, “What proof do you have? While I can confirm this spell should work how you describe, the system bit isn’t exactly spelled out anywhere!”
Ace hands her the clay tablet he had been fiddling with after wiping it smooth. “Give the spell a go. Ask it some other question multiple times and then ask it about your own parents multiple times.”
Melonie doesn’t like where this is going, but she gives it a try. First asking if the weather will be clear tomorrow and getting mixed results, if tilted a bit more towards it being clear. Then with trepidation she asks if her mom died when the system came.
The result was 100% that she survived. Then when Melonie tried asking about her dad, it was 100% that he died. This felt a little strange since her mom was the older of the two, but she also felt the system interact with the spell in a way that didn’t leave much doubt.
Melonie wipes the clay tablet clear and looks up, “How did you find this out? No one I’ve talked to has ever mentioned learning anything like this in the tutorial.”
Ace, “There is a woman named Daisy who dabbled in tarot and similar pre-system. While she seems to depend on what I would describe as reality warping luck, her foundation was strong enough and so she managed to throw together a few divination spells. Spells that she herself ironically can’t cast, as her talent with prophecy, is non-existent.
“Though I suspect it has more to do with being some kind of fate nexus. Kind of hard to see far if instead of just the ripples of a rock on the pond of time, you’re at the bottom thrashing around and kicking up mud. Anyway, she was ‘lucky’ enough to figure this out. My guess on why the system doesn’t just come out and tell us is so that people strive to get stronger so they can reunite with others.”
Melonie, “But if his parents are dead, I don’t have a purpose!”
Ace sighs, “You know? I wasn’t expecting this. I had the information prepared in case I needed it, but you being a part of his parents' coddling was out of my predictions.”
Melonie glares at him, her eyes wet, “And you’re just sitting there laughing about it!”
Ace rolls his eyes, “You’re their leader now. Not Ben, not someone else, and certainly not Ben’s Parents. Though I must admit, I was kind of surprised that both his parents are dead. Neither him, nor you, are particularly old. Sure, the others in your group are more middle-aged than not so their parents being gone is more likely than not. Ben though? He should be around 20, if that and you’re not much better.”
Melonie, “Our parents had us later in life.”
Ace slides another piece of paper across the table, “Speaking of ‘our parents’, I was shocked to find that is a little more literal than not. Did you know that Ben is your half brother?”
Melonie frowns at Ace, “You better not have shared this with him!”
Ace, “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on bringing it up, but I wanted to clear the air between us. Oh, and don’t worry, that spell can’t pinpoint siblings of any kind. It can only move down the bloodline and not up.
“Though I guess bloodline isn’t the best way to describe it? It can inform you if your bio-parents survived or not, but it can also be used to determine if adoptive parents are alive or not as well. It doesn’t even have to be an officially recognized adoption. The system just decides if the person had a significant part in raising you. The only catch is you can’t then jump to check on the grandparents. That extra step is only through blood relations. Oh, and you have to ask for a specific person and not just leave it vague.”
Melonie, “So what do you want? You’ve blackmailed me enough. Just tell me how to dance.”
Ace laughs, “On the contrary! I’m doing something much worse to you. I’m cutting your strings instead. Maybe you thought you could be a big shot by following along with Ben, but that wouldn’t even set you free.
“There is no blackmail, I’m not going to tell anyone else any of this except for the divination spell. If they want to know about their parents’ situation, they can cast the spell themselves. We’ve found this way has a greater chance of being believed, anyway.
“As for you? Everything Ben’s parents wanted to see in him, is in you instead. You’re the leader and going by what you just told me, likely always have been. Just because before this you were leading from the shadows doesn’t change that.”
Melonie sighs, “Fine! I’ll run the damn place. I’m not going to give up on Ben though! I’ve been watching over him for too long.”
Ace lets out a sad sigh, “The parentification of one child to help raise another isn’t healthy and your parents did you a disservice by forcing it upon you. Ben is responsible for Ben. You are Responsible for you. Mind you, I’m not saying you should toss Ben in the bin. Rather, even if you do decide to take care of him, make sure it is for yourself. Because he can be useful. He just needs to find something that interests him.”
Melonie rolls her eyes, “Any other large bombs to drop?”
Ace gasps in mock surprise, “How did you know?”
Melonie closes her eyes for a moment and then glares at him, “Be serious!”
Ace laughs, “Oh, but I am. Since yesterday, I had time to think about things and this last tidbit has too much of a chance of coming out in the future and blowing up. You see, it was me! I was the mastermind behind all the problems that were happening to your house.
“We knew about the problem that one style of building had before anyone started building stuff in the second ring. The house we gave you wasn’t even originally made in that style, either. My people secretly retrofitted it all so it would fail at the same time as the others.
“I’ve been trying to get you in charge for weeks now! I don’t want to start a kingdom or some such, but the place up river needs someone in charge who isn’t going to ignore the fact we have god damned magic! Ever since we found out that Ben just does not want to rule, and don’t you try to deny that. Ben does not want a leadership position that has actual consequences attached to it.
“Ever since then, we’ve been pushing you towards taking over. Now, of course, it is obvious why you didn’t ever bite. Anyway, we had to push harder! So we sabotaged your house and a hundred other small things. We even asked Ben directly to hand over the power to you, but he couldn’t seem to even mentally realize what we were asking. Once again, knowing more about his background makes it obvious why.
“The only thing we didn’t do is push people to act one way or another. We might have set up the dominos, but it was Ben who’s inaction knocked them over. Everything that annoyed you till the point of taking charge was 100% legit reactions on their part. Now, was that a big enough bomb?”
Melonie takes a couple of stumbling steps back and bumps into the chair behind her, causing her to abruptly sit down on it.
Ace smiles, “I hope this doesn’t cause too much of a problem with our working relationship. Be a bit droll if the leadership of two settlements so close together didn’t work together somewhat.”
Melonie just doesn’t seem to know how to react. “If you’re going through this much trouble, why didn’t you just put your own puppet in charge?”
Ace laughs, “People are going to find that controlling things indirectly doesn’t work as well anymore. No matter what legal structure you put in place, the person who owns something is whoever the system says owns it. Try and make a puppet king or a figurehead business owner and you’re just giving them those actual positions with which they can do whatever they want. No laws can stop them from changing things or even giving it away to someone else.
“So no, I don’t want to try and make a shadow kingdom. If I control something, it will be in my own name. The thing is, I don’t want to control a kingdom. I’ve said it before and I’ll likely have to say it many more times in the future. All I want is this town. It will be fully under the control of me and mine from now until the sun expands and eats us all. Though maybe by that time that would be a problem, we’ll be able to stop it as well.”
