Pest Control

“Are you enjoying the sensory experience?” Lidea found Sunny in the backyard of their rented bungalow, feet buried in the rocky sand. Looking south out of the yard, a sea of solar energy collection panels carved a small chunk out of the landscape right up against the horizon. Farther to the south were sand dunes, great yellow things visible from the tallest building in town. Beyond those dunes, following the river to the sea, was the seat of the Myrian Empire. The farther from the capital, the less direct control the Imperial government bothered taking. By the time you reached the far north coast, tapping against the arctic circle, the influence was minimal. Political rumor was that this was almost totally by design. The far north vassal-states were welcome to secede really at any time, but there had yet to come a time when it benefited them to do so.

Currently, they were smack in the middle of the empire, doing a short education-vacation in the small city-state of Kalia. Working at the print shop had made Lidea more interested in the industry as a whole. The Art School of Kalia offered classes and workshops in different fine and commercial arts, and two of the week-long courses opened up simultaneously. There were plenty of gate tickets open to Correlan from Latolan during the off-peak times in the middle of the week. Then their industry passports let them skip the occasional queue as they made a few short hops across county via circle pad.

Not that it would have mattered if ey caught this round or not. That was the beauty of the Kalia Schools. They’re entire focus was specialized and post-graduate technical and professional education. There was always some kind of class happening. Sunny had decided to go ahead and get his bi-yearly continuing education hours for his Grand Mastery. Kalia was also home to the largest book publishing and distribution company in the entire northern hemisphere, if not all of Correlan, so their relevant industry classes were particularly good.

Lidea sat down next to Sunny on a cushion, spreading eir own legs down the slight incline and crossing at eir ankles.

“It’s really nice sand,” Sunny replied, picking some up and letting it run down between his fingers. “It’s weirdly uniform, so there’s very little energy spark between grains. It’s just…liquid. Super satisfying.” He ran his fingers through it again, digging in down to his knuckles.

Lidea swayed sideways to lean against him, pulling eir sweater tighter, the top of a few layers already. The desert got cold at night, and the winter sunset was coming on quickly.

“We should probably go inside before it gets too cold,” Lidea said. Eir hands drifted into Sunny’s, and they stacked on top of each other, resting in the sand. Ey pressed a quick kiss to his temple. “Actually, if we go now, we can catch that one little restaurant before it closes.”

Sunny moved to stand immediately. 

“Actually, yeah. Let’s do that.” 

They moved through the double glass doors back into the low-slung, one-room bungalow, locking the back tight against the possibility of sandstorms, crunching on the floor sand left behind from when they failed to do so earlier in the week. 

“Your bag is chirping,” Sunny said. Lidea had already heard it and was taking the few quick steps to get there. Ey swung around the table where eir bag was perched and dug inside to the elbow. Ey came away with a small black box that pulsed a pattern of multi-colored lights from a translucent pinprick dome. Further down the dome, peeking through a small window, was the code of the radio beacon the signal came from.

“It’s the proximity beeper,” ey said. “We need to stop by a phone-radio booth on the way.”

Sunny chuffed as he put on shoes.   

“This is the time you decide to bring one?”

Lidea pressed a button underneath the box to bounce the signal back that ey confirmed the alert. 

“I need to do my on-call hours. I figured out here I’d be the least likely to actually get pinged. It’s probably nothing.”  

Sunny just grumbled, gently taking Lidea around the wrist and leading them both out onto the street.

The coming evening was still as they hunched down the street, Sunny pulling close to Lidea so eir height would break the wind for him. It had been difficult finding this little patch of bungalows to rent. Even with a population that mostly commuted in from just beyond the border, there was a strong lack of rental places. Most people who came in for classes stayed on campus in the fancy, single occupant dormitories. The pictures were nicer than Lidea’s previous room at the Thýlalykófoton.

People who had to stop overnight while passing through just stayed at one of the inns near the circle pad travel hub. The various corporate entities had their own little residences for anyone who needed to stay on-site overnight. If you got locked in by sandstorm, every bit of interior floor became a place to bunker down. There just weren’t a huge number of reasons to stay in Kalia for very long, and it was a terrible place to actually live for the vast majority of people. If the desert didn’t take you out, the side-by-side pockets of non-median magic density would make your skin crawl.

They had been lucky the bungalows were on the same side as the schools. Crossing the border between density pools on a day to day basis would have made them both sick.

The radio-phone booths here were painted a bright pink that would be annoying in any other scenario but worked surprisingly well with the local scenery and native building materials. It was roomy, but not enough space for two, so ey left the door open for Sunny to lean against.

Against one of the dumber regulations, someone had etched the telephone number into the signal receiver box, so ey didn’t have to go digging in eir bag for it. At the automatic exchange, ey keyed in the code to take em to the right beacon operator. They were both old enough to remember a time before automated switchboards even existed, and on Correlan it wasn’t a reliable wager what you’d get when you picked up the phone outside a big city.

The beacon operator picked up with a feminine sigh.

“That was super fast,” they said by way of introduction. “I just launched it.”

“I was near my bag. Kýriolykós Eliadea kat Panapole. ID: TH 583711. What do they need a magician for out here of all places? Because you’re getting a two-for-one special. My partner’s with me.”

Sunny felt his face crunch up in an emotion he hadn’t quite pinned down, yet. This was secretly an upgrade. He had been calling eir his fiancé almost as a reflex. As manifestation. Lidea slowly settling in to calling him eir “partner” was organic. A reflection of how eir interpretation of their relationship had changed.

Maybe that’s why it felt weird. Because it was earnest.

“It’s a non-emergency,” said the beacon attendant, “but they were hoping someone might be within stopover distance. The formal requests can take awhile where they are.”

“We’re heading out tomorrow anyway, so if you give me the coordinates, I can see.” Lidea dropped eir bag as ey tried to dig our eir notebook. Sunny lunged down and supported the bottom of the bag before it slipped all the way down eir arm. Ey made a kissy face at him as thank you as ey pulled eir notebook out.

Sunny ambled away from the booth slowly, doing a little lap through the intersection of the road. Not like there were any cars or carts to worry about. He stamped on the packed-in caliche, studying the little bursts of the dirt that poofed up from the impact of his boots. Unlike the sand, these particles sparked with magic as they collided with each other. It was probably hauled in from a higher magic density area just outside the country, and the inherent currents were conflicting with each other.

“One circle pad north,” Lidea said. “Farm is having a pest issue.”

“We’re not…pest control?”

“Wild xochina burrow,” Lidea explained. “Need to disable their electro-magic currents to capture and release.” Ey made little grabby hands with eir fingers in mirror of the xochina’s sharp little paws that shot electricity.

“They don’t have a gas for that?”

“I don’t know. But I said we’d stop by and see if we can help.”

For half an instant, Sunny considered arguing, then he paused. Why? They had a gap before their next job, and Lidea would get a consultation fee at minimum. Hell, if he had to actually do anything, he could probably draw up an invoice himself and submit through the proper channels. He wouldn’t probably, but he could.

If doing this little job made Lidea happy, why was he antsy?

He shook his head.

“Alright. Now! Sandwiches before we miss them.”

Lidea then Sunny stepped off the transport pad with a wobble. Lidea always seemed a little more magic sensitive than Sunny, but moving between different densities quickly was enough to set both of them off. The transport attendant, a dark-skinned ariesian with bleached hair offered them both a wooden trash can in turn just for this sort of sickness. Lidea was able to turn it away quickly, but Sunny almost faltered.

The distance to the coordinate points was on the far end of what they had done on-foot, but that was usually in more agreeable weather. The guild would pay for a rental, though. According to the station attendant, there was an electric car shed just up the road, but neither of them had driven more than a handful of times. There was no guaranteed there was a place to plug-in at the other end of the journey, and they had no idea how long a single charge would last them. Sure, they could ask for a car that came with a pedaling recharger or solar panels, but resorting to those meant adding an unknowable amount of time to the trip.

They weren’t strong riders, either, but hiring an animal was the thing left after they had talked themselves out of a car and the added expense of a trap driver. A bulky, humped-back pesokoh was a little too much, so they chose a pair of comparatively fleet-footed horses.

Their wings, fluffy-feathered and flightless, curved back from the shoulder blades and settled on Lidea’s legs, keeping the sun off. Every few dull clicks of its three-toed hooves over the uneven ground, little bits of tan feather fluttered up and scattered over eir skin. Sunny’s ride was slightly more difficult, buried deeper in the crescent of wings. His hands were firm on the reigns, so he wasn’t in immediate danger. Still, it was a good thing the horses knew where they were going.

“Prefer the Latolan type,” Sunny grumbled. “No wings.”

“Yeah, but they’re skittish weirdos,” Lidea countered. A distant sound behind them got close enough to resolve into the trotting of hooves on the dirt. At the same time, a pinprick of magic that had been hanging on their shoulders became something that had shape and form.

“On your left!” They both turned just in time to see a streak of red and white on the back of a gray-brindle horse with grease yellow wings thunder past them down the road.

“That was intense,” said another voice adjoining from a perpendicular road, curving around a small hill. They had been so focused on the flashbang of motion and magic, the other riders had been lost in the shuffle.

Lidea saw the black armor of a pair of monster hunters first, dropped down to just a vest. Their horses were bigger. A little beefier across the shoulders to hold slightly larger people.

The one who spoke was an ariesian. Lighter skin with plum hair that was waxed down into a hard, structured shape. Horns the color of half-used charcoal wrapped around the side of his head before they dipped down toward his collar. He had tied some decorative leather around the thickest part of each horn that flicked with silver threading when his head moved.

The human partner was unnaturally sun-tanned with washed out brown hair. He was young, maybe twenties, but he had a little early hardness on him. His face scrunched at them actively.

“You’re welcome to overtake us,” Lidea called out to the monster hunters as they merged onto the road behind them. They had a brief, unintelligible conversation, then their hooves picked up speed. The pair of hunters passed on the left and kept on down the road ahead of them, the ariesian nodding as he made eye contact.

“They pair the most…intense…of the humans with ariesians, so they have someone to hard balance them out,” Lidea said as they kept moving slowly down the road. “That’s why you’re safer with an ariesian monster hunter. Especially out of Myria. They over-compensate, so things stay calm.” Lidea felt eir hands growing tighter on the reigns.

“I always heard the ariesians refuse to work with particularly aggressive humans. That’s why you can trust those teams more.” Sunny countered with a hum, trying to reseat himself in the spread of wings.

“I guess,” Lidea conceded. “Sallah’s husband was on an ariesian mixed team, and I would assume Sallah wouldn’t be with a total asshole. So maybe you’re right.”

“I don’t remember shit about Sallah’s husband.”

Lidea thought for a moment.

“Me neither come to think about it,” Lidea said. “He was good-looking, I think. I was startled by the sudden appearance of monster hunters and got nervous, so I don’t know that I remember everything.”

“All these years, you think you’d get over monster hunters eventually.”

“And you should be more nervous,” Lidea grumbled and trotted forward to be just ahead of Sunny.

It didn’t feel quite close enough to the river for a farm, but look here it was, the industrial sort that sprawled over an almost inconceivable acreage. They were well past the most recent round of harvest, but they recognized the leftover stalks of some kind of cereal grain at a distance coming up the road.

It was fenced, and they stopped at the gate, ringing the intercom.

“Hi! Hello! We were expecting you let me ring you in.” The voice was bright and young but out of breath. The gate opened with a ding and a shuttering yawn, screeching a little on its hinges.

They were halfway down a long drive when another rider met them, a pre-teen ariesian kid on a smaller, thinner horse to match their wiry build. Their horns were the uncolored middle saturation of someone who hadn’t quite started growing into their adult colors.

“Hello, sers.” The kid circled them as they moved. “I’m Elirah. Do you need my Illurian..uh…words?

“You’re pronouns?” Lidea clarified. “Only if you wanna give them.”

“Hm, I think the boy ones,” he decided before moving to trot just ahead of them, setting the pace.

“How’s your Myra?” Lidea asked Sunny.

“Shit,” Sunny replied. “Everyone east of the isthmus speaks Illurian, so I never bothered.”

“I’ve got bits and pieces,” Lidea replied. “Barely anything useful.”

Elirah hummed a little bit as he rode, his heels pitching against the side of the horse with a bounce.

“I always had this job,” Sunny said. “The kid who escorted the strangers through the compound.”

“You’d think that would have made you more personable,” Lidea said.

“You’d think,” Sunny agreed. His gaze drifted over a small outbuilding with two beefy horses parked next to it. They had blue-black leather saddle bags, the emblem of The League of Monster Hunters emblazoned on the side visible from this distance. Sunny glanced over at Lidea. Ey was looking the other direction and missed the horses completely. He decided he would wait to inform em until it was relevant.

“What the fuck are those?” Lidea said loudly as a creature ambled into view around a barn. It was stocky and square, walking on four limbs with a horned, square head. Big black splotches painted its white hide, and a bell hung around its neck, clanking as it walked and bellowed.

“A cow,” Elirah replied. “For milk. We got a government grant to do a test run on them.”

“Huh, weird looking things,” Lidea said. They moved through another layer of gates and up to the main house.

They entered the house to a combination of loud and argumentative Myra, the front foyer vibrating with negative energy. The white flash that had passed them on the road was now tearing around the farmhouse kitchen, mad as bug stuck in a jar and letting it all out on to an older ariesian woman. The older woman, to her credit, was taking in stride, choosing to pinpoint her focus on a large pot of soup that probably didn’t need as much stirring as she was currently giving it. She piqued at the people entering her house and moved over to greet them.

“Calla,” she introduced, ”Thank you for coming.” Her Illurian had the expected slight accent that came with Myra and Illurian as a dual native language. She bustled back toward the stove to shut the fire down underneath. “We went up to our…oh what’s the word…government representative for help. We’re part of a few agricultural pilot programs, so we have to do everything through the right channels on and on, you know.” She waved her hand. “Didn’t expect half the empire to show up.”

“Which is why you should have waited for me to get here,” said the angry ariesian.

“Hannar, cool your heels. I’ve been running a farm longer than you’ve been alive.”

Hannar was young, mid-twenties at the most. The white impression she had left in passing started at her horns, the color of dry bone. Her hair was a pinky-red that brought out the tan in her skin. A pastel dress finished the look of a flashing blur. It was a simple long-sleeved shift, belted with a wide sash not so much to cinch her waist or give her form but to keep the billowing fabric from becoming too overwhelming to move around in. Under the shift were loose pants, and a detachable hood hanging off the back gave her away as someone low in the parochial hierarchy of the Church of the All-Mind. The ariesian adopters of the originally drakkaken religion had the more striking and recognizable raiments

The longer Lidea stood in a confined space with Hannar, the higher the magic that was rolling off her body pooled into liquid energy in the small kitchen. Ariesians already came with a strong, low-level endorphin boosting aura — their cal-ten-rah — that was easy to grow accustomed to the longer you spent around one. But then there was something else in the wash, a river of denser magic that ran through all of it.

Hannar was a magician. Ariesians only had only type, a special kind of multi-pathic magician that could use their naturally occurring cal-ten-rah to actively alter the general mood of a room at a distance.

The sense of unease at entering the house was a symptom of her contagious rage.

Hannar crossed her arms and flung herself angrily against the kitchen counter.

“We could handle this in-house,” Hannar said. “I just need to go up to Kerr and rent an industrial magic dropper. I know how to use one.”

“Then we wait three days for government approval then need to call in a specialist anyway because the dropper doesn’t solve the problem.” Calla replied in a practiced, steady tone. “Or, I put a request at the beacon, and professionals who come with pre-approval show up the next day and cut to the quick of the problem.” Calla turned. “And, honestly, until your father and I are underground, you don’t really have a say in how things are run, here.”

A bubble of anger popped in the center of the kitchen.

“And if you’re not going to control yourself, turn your necklace on,” Calla followed up. “And if you’re not going to do that, go bother the cows with it.”

Hannar let out a frustrated shriek and stormed out of the kitchen.

“Sorry about that,” Calla said, leaning on the counter herself. “She doesn’t get that the government contract means we have to take extra steps sometimes.”

“You know, she can become a guild mage,” Lidea said, trying to help. “Plenty of guilds take cal-ten-narry.”

“Oh, we’re all well-aware,” Calla replied. “It’s pulling teeth to even get her to control the damn thing herself. She’d sooner giver herself a heart attack than let someone else do it.”

“Clergy was an interesting choice,” Sunny muttered.

“It’ll pass,” Calla replied with a lift of her eyebrows. “And if being an acolyte is what sticks, then good. The structure will be good for her.” Calla cleared her throat. “Here I am complaining about family when you’re here to work. Ray is with the Hunters out toward the grain silo if you want to join them.”

Lidea tensed up. Damn Hunters.

“Come with me.”

“This is technically your job.”

“I don’t want to deal with Hunters by myself.”

“And I want to go poke around. You’ll be fine.”

Sunny had parted with a kiss to the pack of eir hand, and now Lidea was picking eir way across an open field. Elirah met em halfway with a small electric cart, and drove them just past a cluster of buildings along a side road.

“Don’t go near the grain storage without a farmhand with you,” Elirah instructed. “Or the harvester. Or…you know what?..Don’t touch anything unless someone says to. This shit’s dangerous.” His mouth clicked shut like he was in trouble. “Pardon my language. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Lidea said. “Lot of idiots out there who need it spelled out for them. Anyone who takes offense at you being blunt about safety measures just needs to learn the lesson the hard way.”

“Not in front of me, please,” Elirah huffed. Smart kid.

The Monster Hunters formed a loose square with two ariesians in overalls, one that was an aged up version of Elirah and another with dark skin, light pebble blue horns, and lavender micro-braids pulled back with a pink ribbon.

Lidea introduced emself immediately to cut through the weird professional titles.

“Ray,” Elirah’s dad offered. “Head picker, Safira.” The darker-skinned ariesian shared a handshake. Lidea turned gently toward the nearest Hunter, the ariesian one.

“MaKray,” he said with a wave. “And that’s Reeve. He’s void, so…you know…” MaKray glanced toward eir staff. “He won’t be offended if you give him distance.” Reeve had wandered away, looking through the grass for something.

“He also doesn’t talk much,” MaKray continued, hands rubbing the back of his neck.

“I know what that’s like,” Lidea shrugged.

“So I was filling in these two,” Ray said. “But I don’t know what direction to go from here.” He gestured they should follow him over a small rise. The dirt here was overturned into a scatter of small hills.

“Underneath here is a big ol’ warren of xochina,” Ray explained. “We don’t usually have a problem keeping a small family around.”

“Yeah, they eat the little pest bugs,” MaKray added.

“Right. Let them have some of the bad grain stock, and they don’t usually go for the good stuff. Then I don’t know what happened. Suddenly they’re breaking into the silo and gorging themselves. No big deal. If we relocate them to across the farm, over by the milking barn, they won’t come all the way back up here. Except…”

Here he stopped next to a mound with a small hole down into the ground. Next to the hole was a humane trap, lying on its side, broken. He pointed to a trail cam on a spike nearby.

“They’re breaking the traps. There’s a mini anti-magic field inlaid into the bars, but it’s not working on them. They keep zapping the bars and breaking the lock with a feedback loop.”

“They shouldn’t be able to do that,” Lidea said to emself quietly.

“Yeah, no shit,” MaKray said, turning toward em.

“Just thinking out loud,” Lidea said, but MaKray had moved his focus back to the toppled cage. Reeve had moved past the rest of the group, walking slowly over the expanse of ground between burrow holes. He squatted, pulled off one of his gloves, then brushed his fingers over the dirt.

“How would you normally move these things?” Lidea asked, inadvertently inturrupting them in the middle of another thread of conversation. MaKray shifted back upright from his more bent over shape.

“Tranquilizer gas through the burrow then excavate carefully is one option, Or try to find all the lead females and pull them out. Rest of the xochina will follow.” He tilted his head at he ground, thinking. “Another option is to flush them all out with water or pepper gas, then seal everything up. You lose pups, that way, so it’s not ideal. But it’s also not breeding season, so there won’t be too many of those. Either way, we have to turn off their magic first.”

“Why, specifically, do you need to turn off their magic for those particular techniques?”

“Look.” MaKray’s demeanor shifted immediately. “I get that you were beaconed here, too. Great. But we don’t really need you for this. It’s our specialty. So-“

“Okay, bye.” Lidea turned on eir heel and walked back toward the house. MaKray’s vocal confusion that ey left had a petty little thrill to it, but there were no further objections.

No one stopped Sunny as he wandered a little between the house and toward some of the outbuildings. The compound he grew up in had gardens, but nothing to this degree. He ambled toward the area he had seen the “cows” to find the edge of a fenced-in pasture.

An anko rubbed against one of the nearest stretches of fence, bending up between front and middle limbs to try to reach a nearby low tree branch. It turned its placid head toward Sunny, dropping its chin on the fence to beg for scratches on its head.

From what Sunny understood of industrial agriculture, they culled the males and most of the females at birth, leaving mostly hermaphrodites behind. Cutting down half the population on purpose must have a solid agricultural reason.

“Why are you even here? This isn’t a dairy operation.” Sunny scratched harder around the anko’s ears while it grunted and snorted. One of the cows ambled down the fence, and Sunny pulled his hand back. The cow nuzzled into the anko, and let out a low bellow. Sunny offered his hand, and the cow taped it with a velvet smooth nose.

“Huh. You’re kind of cute, I guess.” Sunny gave the cow a scratch, as well.

A bell sounded outside the barn at the edge of the fenced area, and both the anko and cow tromped off. They were joined by a handful more cows and a few anko, converging on a point in the distance.

Sunny followed along the edge of the fence until it met the side of a large barn. Inside, were open stalls that the combination of cows and anko were currently shuffling into. A pair of ariesians—a teenager and a kid, maybe nine or ten—were shuffling some kind of high-density feed into shoots. The teen looked up as Sunny came in the barn, then pointed over his shoulder toward the back of the barn.

Sunny just sort of shrugged then moved down the aisle between the shoots. As he reached the back, some voices picked up, arguing in Myra. One he half-recognized as Hannar, the other an ever so slightly deeper but very close cadence. Sunny knocked on the jamb of a half-open door into a back area of the barn. A young adult ariesian, maybe mid-twenties, pulled the door in harshly, then made a face of apology when they saw who was on the other side.

“Grandmaster,” they said, nodding a little. Their horns were more curled than Hannar’s and had a sort of mid-range silty color to them, not dark or light enough either way to imply a strong hormonal gender. Not that he was particularly good with color contrast in that regard.

“You don’t need to do the title. Just Sunny is fine.” He leaned against the doojamb. “Just seeing if there’s anything I can help with.”

They made a noncommittal sound and moved back toward a tray where they were preparing something.

“That’s Lior, and ne’s rude as fuck today, apparently.” Hannar was further back in the room, changing out of her vestments into some overalls stored on a shelf behind her.

“Cool tattoo,” Sunny muttered at the depiction of a moon orbiting a sun on her flat chest, nestled snugly in the space between her clavicle and the midpoint of her sternum. She brushed it with her fingers before pulling a thermal shirt on.”

“Thanks. It hurt like fuck. I don’t recommend the location.”

Lior cleared nir throat loudly and turned to look at Hannar with a hard gaze.

“What?” she snapped at nem. Lior stared at her longer. In the little space between them, a gentle threat of compulsion magic. Lior was also a cal-ten-narry but had the necessary fine-point control to theoretically turn it into a weapon.

Hannar chuffed at nem.

“I apologize for my outburst in the kitchen,” Hannar said. “You’re just here to do your job.”

“It’s fine,” Sunny replied. “I was a young magician once.”

Hannar sort of stared at him, eyebrow raised.

“Why are you so nervous?” she asked.

“Am I?” Sunny asked. He tried to sense out his own body, looking for the usual physical markers of his own anxiety. “I don’t know.”

Hannar hopped forward and gestured he should step farther in and over to the cart Lior was working from.

“We need to do blood samples on the cows,” Hannar said. “You can carry the ampule box.”

“Milk on a couple of them,” Lior added.

“What exactly is the story with these….cows?”

“The family’s always kept anko around if just to make their own butter and cream,” Hannar said. “They’re pretty low maintenance and can live easily on crop waist product.” Her movements became sharper as she started stacking vials in a little array. “Then the Interworld government comes along and bribes us into trialling these off-world animals, so now we have to do whatever they want.” She hauled a tray of the vials off the cart and back into the main barn, heavy footfalls slamming on the metal grating of the floor. Lior leaned on the metal cart and heaved a deep, frustrated sigh.

“It’s genetic agricultural research,” ne said. “They were at the real-life trial stage. None of the proper dairy farms could accommodate some weird new animal; we’ve all got really tight margins. We had lost a chunk of anko to a screw-fly infestation, so we had the space to add some units. The yearly stipend more than pays for the added expense, and puts cash in the farm improvement fund.”

Ne was more careful as ne arranged nir own set of vials, tapping a role of labels back into a donut shape along the way.

“That’s why we also leased five acres to the Empire for the next few seasons to trial a magic-particle pesticide. The grant is paying double what the max potential profit of that acreage would have been. And the pesticide works. So…” Ne gave another long sigh. “I don’t like a lot of the…parameters…we have to follow now. I agree with Hannar that it’s annoying we have to call in someone off a roster to do certain things. Or that we have to run all our farmhand hiring through our various caseworkers. I don’t like that sometimes the Empire rules and the Interworld rules conflict, and I have to spend two days on the radio phone resolving the issue.”

A flare of magic came off nem, and ne tamped it back down.

“But the money is really really good. And Hannar’s not even here to deal with it, so she needs to shut her fucking mouth about it.”

A little simmer of magic ran through the room, and Lior’s hands unclenched from the metal cart.

“Sorry,” ne said.

“Don’t be,” Sunny replied. “Clearly, you needed to vent.”

Lior scratched behind nir ear, nervous.

“You ever wish you didn’t have magic?” ne asked.

“I don’t know,” Sunny shrugged. “I was born with an extremely rare form of magic that lent itself to becoming an atificer. It was just a bonus that I actually like the profession. I haven’t done any traditional artificery in years, at this point.”

“Why?” Lior turned, one hand leaning on the cart, giving a steady attention to Sunny.

“Um…okay how old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Just a baby, alright. Um.” Sunny took a moment to put all his ideas and conjectures together. Lior stood silent and let him.

“When I graduated, I had the option of working corpo or going freelance. Latter seemed more…fun? I don’t know. Ended up becoming mercenary auxiliary, worked in their artificer pit, got my mastery, went on jobs to artifice in the field a few times and really liked it.” He paused to think some more. A warm pulse of magic popped in his chest, and the words started to feel looser in his throat.

“Then I saw this…half-elf from across the plaza one day and just…” The memory suddenly felt fresh again, clear in his mind’s eye. “I dug around to find out who ey were. Then I started going on more field jobs with the hope I’d run into em. Eventually I did. It got to the point where I was arranging all my jobs to work with em if possible. Now we’re getting married…at some point. Hopefully.”

Lior considered him carefully.

“That’s a little pathetic,” ne decided.

“Love does that to a person.”

Lidea found Calla in one of the little sheds off the main house. It was lit and partially air conditioned with a small desk and shelves of files across one wall. Calla was at the desk, comparing some numbers across ledger books. It had a small porch of its own, and Lidea sat on a small stool in the open doorway.

“We keep the administrative stuff in its own little room,” Calla said. “Easier to lock it up.”

“I imagine it keeps the paperwork safer from something like a house fire, too,” Lidea said absently. Calla made a sign of warding against bad luck across her forehead, a sigil from one of the smaller ariesian religions.

“You and the Hunters figure it out?” Calla asked, putting down her pencil and turning in her swiveling chair.

“Oh, they don’t want my help. I’ll give them a few hours just in case, but I just assume let them handle it.”

Calla tapped a portable radio on the side of he desk.

“Your partner is finishing up helping with some veterinary stuff. Should be done soon.”

Lidea hummed then rested eir head against the exterior wall of the shed.

“That’s cute,” said Calla. “When I mentioned your partner your aura gave a little poof.” She flared her fingers in a little bloom of motion.

“You’re also cal-ten-narry,” Lidea said, forgetting to maybe think a moment in eir surprise. Ey couldn’t feel it coming off her.

“Yes. Never quite as strong as the kids, and I learned to control it better earlier.”

“And you never considered becoming a guilded mage, either?” Lidea asked. Ey was suddenly realizing that had never seemed like an option. If ey was going to bear the burden of being an aberration on all sides, ey needed to do something worthwhile with it.

“There are more magicians than there are jobs for mages,” Calla chuckled. “Some of us have to be farmers.”

“I think I just see Hannar’s point, I guess. Membership doesn’t mean you actually have to do any actual…I guess…magework. Just something to have in your back pocket for things like this.”

Calla rocked back in her chair.

“No, see, I don’t think I like that. You two aren’t particularly precious with your titles, but they still have to mean something. If they don’t mean something, what’s the point?” She brushed her hands on her pants. “Besides, for something like this, we’d have to call someone like you, anyway. I don’t know why the little cretins are overcharging.”

“Alpha Lidea.” Reeve appeared around the side of the shed, staying back a measurable distance.

“What do you need, man?” Lidea stood, leaning aginst the railing of the small porch

“I’m going to be upfront with you; I don’t like working with mages.”

“Okay, I don’t like working with Hunters. What’s your point?”

A little wash of calm down energy seeped through the door of the shed. Calla doing mind-magic. Lidea breathed out. Reeve made a weird shake of his head. If he was void, he’d feel the magic differently. He cleared his throat in annoyance.

“Whatever’s happening with the xochina is new to me. I did an energy scan through the warren. Half of them are dead, the other half are over energized. If I pull the magic out of the system, I don’t know what will actually happen. It might kill them. I might fuck myself up. I’d prefer neither of those.”

“Okay…what do you want from me then?”

“For the immediate future, we just need to move them. Or get them to move. If you could excise part of the burrow— ” 

“You can do that without magic,” Lidea said sharply. 

“Admittedly—”

“Why did you come find me,” Lidea asked, cutting him off with ey hand. “Why not MaKray? I would expect an apology to pair with this request for help after blowing me off.” 

Reeve stood there, gloved hands clenching and unclenching, body slowly condensing in irritation. He wouldn’t hit em. He might want to, but he wouldn’t do shit in front of a client. That was what irritated em most about hunters. They were hypocrites. Didn’t like people with magic then, after some years of service, could make the choice to go through a magical transformation themselves. They could alter their bodies to be magic vacuum machines. Yet magicians were the danger.

“If you’re going to beg me to come do your job because you’re too lazy or stupid to do it yourself, you can do the bare minimum of being nice to me,” Lidea said.

“You don’t have to be a fucking bitch about it,” Reeve said.

“Whoa, hey!” Sunny stopped short of full-out running, sliding in front of Lidea, putting a hand on eir chest. He turned to the monster hunter. “Chill out.”

The wave of “calm-down” magic washed up and folded over them. Calla was standing in the doorway of the shed, hand gripping the frame. Another little shot of agitation moved up behind them, and Sunny saw Hannar approaching from a distance, watching the monster hunter specifically.

Reeve chuffed then left, heading back upfield toward the silo.

“What is your problem, today?” Sunny said. “Is it just the monster hunters”

“Is that not enough?” Lidea snapped back.

“Okay, nope.” Calla clapped her hands and stepped down from the porch. “I already know how this goes down. You”— she turned to Sunny — “don’t understand why your partner has such strong negative feelings about hunters, and you’re trying to rationalize it logically. Then you” — she pointed to Lidea — “are going to be upset that he doesn’t understand, while you’re also mad that you don’t really understand it yourself. And on and on and on, and no one has time for this. Come here. Hannar, you too.”

“What?” Hannar said.

“You effuse more than me. I’m going to borrow it. Hop over. Put your hands out all of you.” Calla pulled Sunny’s and Lidea’s hands together, forcing them into a tight hold. She set them down into Hannar’s upturned palm then laid her own hand on top of the stack.

“Close your eyes, clear your minds. You know the routine.”

They did. It was a common practice when doing magical training.

Through their shared hands, Sunny felt the rush of synthesized emotion from Lidea. Directed anger. Frustration. Fear. That one was the deepest, something seated so far below the surface it had become charcoal and embers. Still capable of burning and flaring up with a little extra fuel.

And in the face of that hot emotion, he did understand a little better. If anything, ey was keeping it together more than he probably would when faced with the same level of visceral horror.

Lidea felt sick immediately. The emotions coming from Sunny were a hodge podge of confusion and concern. That was fine. The problem was the familiar branding attached to the emotions. It was em. Every emotion Sunny had was tinged with the constant magical refrain of LideaLideaLideaLidea.

Lidea pulled away, snaking eir hand out of the tumble, and falling into the dirt. Ey scrambled just far enough away to be sick behind a rock.

“Sorry,” ey said, rolling over to sit with eir knees up and head between them. Sunny started to walk over, and ey put eir hand up to stop him. “Feedback loop. Give me a minute.” Ey sat, leaning against the rock. Hannar dropped to sit nearby, a little lick of magic still trailing off her body and seeking out gaps in the magic.

“Why do you have to turn off the xochina magic before you can tranquilize them?” Lidea asked, the question bubbling up in the space where ey had pushed other thoughts out from.

“They have a reflexive instinct,” Hannar said. “If they get injured, they start emitting to keep predators away. If you gas them as a group, then they all start sparking on top of each other, and it’s…yeah…a problem.”

“Okay…okay okay okay.” Lidea sunk eir fingers into the sandy dirt, thinking. Every active and reactive magical action came with a commensurate passive underpinning. A person…or creature’s…body was immune to their own passive effects. But if the energy or frequency or whatever was outside what the body was accustomed to…

“Metabolic breakdown,” Lidea thought out loud. “The xochina are killing themselves with their own magic. Which means it’s an external environmental alteration not a natural mutation.”

Lidea stood up.

“Which the hunters may or may not figure out because most of them fall short on the actual biomagic,” Lidea said. “They know how to shut it off and react to it, but they never bother learning the science.”

“That particulate pesticide, Lior told me about,” Sunny said, turning between Calla and Hannar. “From the Imperial grant.”

“When did you add that?” Hannar protested.

“Leave it,” Calla said sternly. “Let me get you the documentation.” Calla swung back into the shed and started rattling through metal cabinets.

“What specifically are you thinking?” Lidea pinched eir nose.

“Bioaccumulation,” Hannar answered instead. “Xochina eat bugs and grains.”

“And if they can’t metabolize all of the excess particulate out,” Lidea picked up, “it sits in their fat cells. Only fat cells can’t hold magic for long without bursting and releasing all that energy.”

“I should have thought about it,” Calla said, coming out of the shed with a binder. “We’ve used magical particulate fertilizer before, and didn’t think twice. But pesticides would be different.” Sunny took the binder from her.

“The government should have thought about it,” Sunny said, opening the binder and looking for a frequency table. Lidea moved around to read it upside down. Out of the corner of eir eye, ey saw Hannar settle into something akin to smug.

Lidea tapped eir finger to a row of data showing the density of particulates just as Sunny found it.

“Let’s go run the hunters through it,” Sunny said.

Their recommended solutions would probably work if the hunters implemented them, but they weren’t going to stick around and wait.

Sunny used a combination of chalk and magic pulses to mark out the boundaries of the warren. Lidea recommended sealing all but one of the holes and using a very very light magic pulse generator to gently encourage the colony to leave. Then do whatever with them once they were out. Maybe magic resistant traps.

Whatever.

Ey wasn’t a monster hunter, after all.

The long-term solution was the the xochina just had to “sweat out” the excess magic, which meant no longer consuming bugs and grain that had been exposed to the pesticide.

The farmers, pickers, and field hands would have to negotiate with the Imperial government to work that out.

Sunny and Lidea had plenty of time to ride back to the transport pad and do a few more jumps before the day ended.

“Sunny honey, there was something during that little emotional resonance exercise,” Lidea said, shifting eir horse to press a little closer to Sunny’s.

“Yeah, are you feeling better?”

“What…exactly was is that I got from you?”

“I don’t know? I don’t know what translated over.”

Lidea considered the shape of his nose and shoulders and hips as they tried to hold on to the horse. He glanced at her then looked back at the road quickly, a nervous driver.

“Are you obsessed with me?” ey asked.

“I love you,” Sunny replied. “I’m in love with you.” He said the words like he was testing them to hear how they sounded.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Sunny took to that stillness that meant he was thinking and picking his words.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Would that be a problem?”

“I want well-thought out compromise, not you giving up the things that make you happy because you don’t want to lose me because you have an unhealthy attachment.”

“You’re what makes me happy,” Sunny said curtly. “Everything else is…everything else.”

Lidea sighed.

“I’m remembering this next time we have a disagreement,” Lidea chuffed, smirking through.

Inside, though, something laced with fear started to rumble.