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“So, let me just repeat for emphasis: we’re doubling our efforts to search for the Oculus and Philosopher’s Stone, we’re looking for a Seeker to go undercover in the Neverwinter Fire Department, and the office Candlenights party is off the table until the janitors — who, need I remind you, are paid about double the rest of you — stop finding marijuana leaves or Silly String on the bathroom floors every morning. That’s right, I’m holding the Candlenights party hostage until you animals get it together. Any last-minute questions?”
With a powerful snap of her fingers, Lucretia casts the Prestidigitation of Fantasy PowerPoint Clicker, and pulls up the final slide of the week, complete with question mark clip art, and even a brand-new cute cat picture, just to freshen things up from last Friday. Yeah, that’s right — she’s just that in her element. But she has to be, or this room packed full of hand-picked scamps and troublemakers will push her to her limits, the second she gives them just a taste of kindergarten question-and-answer time —
“Then where else do we smoke it?!” a halfling in the back calls out first, ignoring several people raising their hands, and Lucretia sighs.
“You just make a goddamn potion out of it, Robbie. I’m not a cop, but I know you know how to make it stink less. And here at the Bureau of Balance, we are very concerned with collateral damage —”
“Uh, Madam Director?” Johann speaks up next, sitting much closer to the front. “I don’t really want to be a downer, but are we gonna bring back any Relics soon, do you think? I just kinda thought we’d, like, get one by now, and it’s making it kinda hard to compose triumphant victory songs for the Voidfish. And if I was a Voidfish, I — I just sorta feel like I’d need those, for a healthy and balanced Voidfish diet —”
“Er.” This has lasted longer than Lucretia has liked, though to hear it from Johann’s mouth feels a little comical. “Look, we have more leads today than we had yesterday, Johann, and I don’t know what else to to tell you —”
“Madam Director! I have a question!” Killian blurts out, standing up directly in front of Johann, and putting her hands on her hips. “Like Johann said, we’ve been running this show for a year — and sometimes, it feels like it’s been even longer —”
Lucretia’s knuckles tighten around her staff. Oh, tell me about it —
“So let me ask you this, Madam Director — when are the Red Robes gonna finally catch wind, and start interfering with our missions?” Killian makes a fist, swinging it through the air, and bashing it into the palm of her hand. “And when they do, what’s our five-point strategic plan for crushing them?”
“I — I beg your pardon?” Lucretia’s heart rate soars. Residual magic sparks off of her fingertips, and the cat picture on the PowerPoint becomes animated, and meows. “I don’t — I’m not — I’m not quite sure I follow —”
“Oh, y’know — just us? Killing? Them? For everything they did to this world? To our hometowns, and our families?” Killian says, narrowing her eyes just ever-so-slightly at Lucretia — and mutterings of approval sweep across the room. Carey and Boyland even start clapping. “‘Cause you know they’re not gonna like it that we’re destroying their precious Grand Relics — or, uh, trying to destroy ‘em, and totally getting there soon, I just know it — and so, Madam Director, tell me: how are they gonna try to stop us? And how — how will we recognize them? What do we need to look out for? We need to know!”
The murmuring fades. Johann shuffles out from behind Killian, arms crossed and eyes rolled —
“Uhhh, I dunno, look out for robes that are red, maybe,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm, “just — just seems like a pretty telltale sign —”
“Very astute, Johann,” Lucretia deflects, mentally cursing her lack of PowerPoint slide for this — though what would she even put on it? — but Killian whirls around at Johann, scowling.
“Uh, we all know damn well that people can take their robes off! That’s — that’s a removable article of clothing, just gimme — gimme a robe, and I’ll show you, I’ll take a robe off faster than you can say ‘oh, that guy’s a Red Robe, we should kill them —’”
“Why are we talking about taking clothes off?” Carey blurts out, blushing electric blue beneath her scales, but Killian whirls back towards Lucretia, pointing a finger.
“So what do we need to look out for, and who do we need to look out for, Madam Director? I’ll lead the Regulators to my dying breath, but you know more about the Red Robes than anybody — so what are their stat blocks? What are their skill trees? And most importantly, what are their counters?”
Lucretia bites her tongue. Oh, how are you going to redirect this one, Madam Director? Killian’s intentions are noble, but Lucretia’s disposition won’t be able to stay the same, if she keeps having to hear about killing Red Robes. Her only saving grace is that she need not maintain her composure in front of Davenport, with his incredibly timely absence — busy on a stealth mission through the dorms, to hide confetti cannons under their pillows while she distracts the rest of the operation. You know, as revenge for the bathroom situation, obviously — since even in dire times, with Lucretia’s scaffolding of lies beginning to teeter and swivel around her, Bureau management’s gotta do what Bureau management’s gotta do —
Lucretia always does what she has to do, but gods, what on earth does she have to do and to say now?
“I… do appreciate… the enthusiasm, Killian,” she finally manages, weighing each of her words carefully before she says them, “but, I assure you, we need not waste time preparing for combat with the Red Robes. Not when, as we all know, the Bureau’s greatest threats come only from within. From our own corruption by the —”
Before she can even reach the word corruption, the room erupts into a din. A chasm of dread cracks open in Lucretia’s stomach, as within the first few words she parses of the outburst, she realizes the enormity of her mistake —
“From within? What — what does she mean, from within?”
“Does she mean — one of us? One of us is secretly a —”
“I — I — like, I knew it, man! Red Robes, infiltrating the Bureau — ‘cause sometimes, way past four in the morning, I see the craziest things,” Robbie drones, with no particular specificity and to no one’s particular interest — but all around him, more and more lucid voices rise up in agreement, and panic, and finger-pointing —
“Red Robes in disguise? Right here? Right now? Do you think they’re listening?”
“Do you think they’re in this room? Oh my gods, there’s probably one in this room! Who’s the Red Robe in this room?”
“Hey, I don’t like those shifty eyes you’re giving me, Avi — how about you back off —”
“Look, it’s obviously Brian, right? I mean, look at him! Look at his whole thing, and tell me he’s not a —”
“Oh, zis is but a misdirection, for surely ze Director will now reveal, ze true Red Robe among us is Leon —”
“Hey, Killian’s been almost too anti-Red Robe lately, don’t you think? Seems pretty convenient —”
“No, I saw Brad Bradson wear a red scarf once!”
“Leeman Kessler is sus!”
“ENOUGH!” Lucretia shouts, and slams the end of her staff against the floor, with a sound that thunders across the entire room. Every pair of eyes, and several less conventional eye arrangements, go wide and stare at her, in absolute dead silence. She steels herself, as she takes a breath.
“The corrupting thrall of the Relics is the Bureau’s threat from within. Not a Red Robe invasion. We must all focus our willpower on resisting that thrall, instead of — of wasting years, chasing — chasing crimson-robed ghosts —”
Several faces in the crowd grow sheepish, averting their eyes away. Killian isn’t one of them.
“But — but Madam Director,” she asks, frustration showing in her furrowed brow, “how do we even know there’s no invasion? The wars weren’t even that long ago, so — so how do we know the Red Robes aren’t still out there? That they aren’t still watching us, aren’t still planning —”
Oh, what a question — how does Lucretia know that Barry isn’t doing those very things, at this very moment? Because, gods, she would be worried for him, worried for what she’d done to him, if she were to learn that he wasn’t. But the moonbase is magically buttressed with the strongest anti-lich wards that won’t kill him outright, with Fisher’s ichor guarded even more, and Lucretia, of course, is keenly aware of how to spot lich possession, and — and — and —
And none of that information can be used to assuage her followers’ fears. Not because — or, not just because Barry J. Bluejeans is one crafty bastard — but because Lucretia completely, absolutely, positively cannot reveal this degree of familiarity with a lich. With a Red Robe. Frankly, even tossing the Animus Bell itself into the crowd of in front of her might still cause less chaos —
She takes a breath, and closes her eyes. At this moment, the only way to restore order — balance — must be a most articulate mix of both truth and lies.
“An honest question, Killian,” she starts stoically, “and so, I ought to be transparent. Before I founded the Bureau, and as I sought to search for the Relics on my own, I… also searched, for many years, for the locations of the Red Robes.” There, that’s how you do it — starting with a strong truth, despite all her reasons for that search. And, of course, despite her relentless failures. Emboldened, she continues —
“Over time, I began to personally discover, or hear convincing accounts, of Red Robes’ dead bodies. Many in a short timespan, in fact — up to the number of Red Robes existing in the historical record.” Another truth as she’s stating it, but on an almost criminal technicality. She’s withheld the fact that all the bodies came from just one, very specific Red Robe. But from this point onwards —
“And it would seem, as if a perfect microcosm of the wars — that the Relics tore apart trust between the Red Robes themselves, all from the inside out. From the moment of their creation, they drove the Red Robes turn on each other, and… to obliterate their own order, all from within.” Lucretia breathes in deep. Mourning the truest thing she’s said all day, regrettably. “And so, perhaps — I was mistaken not to tell you all this story before. For if we, the Bureau of Balance, are ever to be the antithesis of the Red Robes — the antidote to their poison — then, well, we will have no choice but to learn from their destruction.”
She stares out over the room full of faces, and is met with their rapt attention, hanging on her every word. And on a Friday afternoon, no less — so, she hasn’t lost her touch after all, then. Everything else in the world can go wrong, and will likely keep going wrong, but at least — at least she’s still a storyteller.
“Madam Director… how did you learn all this?” Killian asks, still standing at the front — but with a gentler expression, now, sincere curiosity in her eyes. Lucretia steps forwards, feeling catapult-level tension in her shoulders begin to finally dissipate — and meets Killian with her own stoic gaze, but softened in her own right, as she rests her hand upon her own chest. A precise, yet organic, perfect performance, drawn up from the true exhortations of her heart buried deep.
“Many obscure sources, for one thing. Mostly reinforcing each other’s credibility. But, of even more importance…” She tilts her head to the side, but without averting her eyes. She must look contemplative, perhaps even melancholic, but not guilty. “Towards the tail end of the Relic Wars, when Davenport and I were refugees, we were… cornered, by approaching armies. Dead-set on tearing each other apart for the Oculus, no matter who was trapped in-between — and we found ourself with only one escape. An unimaginable, terrifying choice, to… to take shelter, in… one of the Red Robes’ own abandoned strongholds, in its chilling, deathly quiet halls. And inside, as we hid ourselves from the fighting — I gathered all the information that I could, all the Red Robe’s own records that survived their successive schisms — and then, once the armies had gone, and I deemed it safe to emerge, I… I summoned all the magic I could muster, and I buried those empty halls.”
Ripples of equal parts sympathy, horror, and awe rush around the room. And Lucretia thinks, booyah. Nailed it. Finally, a question she’d had the foresight to whip up a proper backstory for. And, just to make it easier on herself — except for all the ways it still isn’t easier, actually — the empty halls, if nothing else, were very, very real. Just substitute stronghold for spaceship, and buried for locked inside this very moonbase, barely twenty meters behind my back, in fact; sometimes even I can’t believe my own audacity —
“…I don’t tell this story very often,” she says aloud, suppressing the part of her offended on the Starblaster’s behalf, “because it distresses Davenport greatly, you see. It was, as you can imagine, a… harrowing time for the both of us. And yet, I need all of you to understand — this the reality we face as an organization. The reality we face as the Bureau. Trust me, I — I know that it’s… easier, to brace yourself for war with spectral menaces than it is to brace yourself for a friend’s betrayal —” As she weaves her dramatic gestures through the air, arms opened towards her audience, her fingers imperceptibly tremble. “Or, even — to brace yourself for your own will changing, turning against everything that our mission had been to protect. Against every promise you made, every vow your friends had relied on you for —”
Shit, is that too far? Too personal? Perhaps not, not yet, but she cannot go any further. No mentions of a Red Robe who made a promise, to her friends, and then, made a Gauntlet. Or, alternatingly — a Red Robe who made a promise to her friends, and then, both in spite and because of that promise, made a terrible redaction.
She tightens her grip on the Bulwark Staff. Now that, that’s — that’s the embodiment of promise in its own right, to herself and to this world, that she cannot leave unfulfilled. So Lucretia stands tall, lifting her staff off the ground, as she dramatically spreads her arms —
“But no one here signed up for what’s easy, did we? Even as the thrall grows, we — we will be ready. We have to be ready, to be prepared to fight it — and moreso than any Red Robe. The greatest threat to the Bureau, to our mission, is not some grander-than-life villain, draped in a picturesque red cloak — it is the thrall, and by the thrall’s nature, it is also ourselves. So now, I ask us all — do we, together, have the courage to face ourselves?”
For a moment, silence in the crowd. But then, Killian grins, and pumps a fist in the air, exclaiming:
“Damn right we do, Madam Director!”
And the room erupts into cheers, into a chorus of determination —
“Fuck yeah! Hell yeah, we do!”
“To the ends of the earth, Madam D!”
“B.O.B. forever!”
— and Lucretia’s throat tightens, unexpectedly.
Gods, did she — did she need this? Even more than they did? With the weight of so many years, so many unplanned years, on her shoulders, hope grows harder and harder for her to conjure with each passing failure — but her Bureau, her young, ragtag, authority-undermining, bathroom-smoking Bureau — they can still hope like there’s no tomorrow. And somehow, even with all they don’t know, all the years they’ve never felt — she can’t even bring herself to call it naive. At the center of the rallying cries, Johann plucks out a triumphant tune on his harp — and that, she’d call inspiration.
As Lucretia reaches for her cheek, wiping just a single, damp corner of her eye, Killian catches her gaze. The chanting continues behind her, but her own face is sheepish, as she awkwardly rubs the back of her neck.
“Hey, uh. Sorry if I made it hard for you to do your thing back there, Director,” she says, and her Director in question suppresses the urge, sudden and without warning, to tell her Just call me Lucretia. Instead, she wraps both her hands around the handle of her staff, but smiles softly, and shakes her head —
“No need to apologize, Killian. If anything, that is precisely what I seek and expect, in my — the Bureau’s — top Regulator.”
“O-oh. Oh. Well, uh, shucks.” Killian flushes a little, but only for a moment, before her brow furrows, and she blinks. “Wait. Wait, was — was all of that just a test, Director? Were you testing to see if I —”
“Oh, well, now who’s to say, really? I know I’ll never tell,” Lucretia replies, enigmatically wiggling her eyebrows — even as privately, she thinks: yes, mutually. She really is lucky to have Killian, with no qualms about admitting that; it’s just that, well — it’s going to stab Lucretia in the heart to break the truth to her, inevitably, and that’s just yet another consequence Lucretia hadn’t planned for, back when she made her fateful, and her only choice. Not the fact that she would owe people such awful, devastating explanations-turned-apologies — but the fact that over the years, and with every time she found herself a spot of hope, the number of people she’d owe such apologies to would just go up, and up, and up.
Yet now, the meeting seems to be adjourning, with unspoken agreement that Lucretia’s message has been made to completion. A line is forming at the water cooler, and so is a longer, rowdier one at the charcuterie platter. Even those with no thirst or hunger to quench still rise to their feet and stretch their backs, like Avi, who nods to Lucretia and swirls his flask as he tells her:
“Hey, Director. Nice rousing speech today, really said what we all needed to hear. I do have just, like, a little question, though —”
“Well, hit me.” Lucretia doesn’t hesitate, or even fear, since at this point in the day, she knows she’s conquered far worse. By now, she’s ready for anything. “Whatever it is, Avi, no matter your concern, I’m sure that it can be answered —”
“Oh, it’s — no, it’s not important. It’s just, uh — why wasn’t Davenport here today? You just mentioned him and I realized, your whole news bulletin was kinda quiet, without his backup vocals —”
“Um.” Lucretia’s blood pressure spikes again. Shit, shit, shit — has Davenport had enough time to lay the confetti cannons? How long was it supposed to take him? Oh, he’d been so excited to help her take sweet revenge, even designing the cannons himself, and being so proud to show her the blueprints —
“Davenport! Davenport, Davenport!” comes a voice like music to her ears, as her sweet, reliable Captain himself swings open the door, hands on his hips and a cheeky smile on his face. A single square of confetti clings to the sole of his left shoe, and he winks at her. And Lucretia, even knowing it could compromise her hard-fought position, well… she just can’t resist winking back.
“Now, I’d say that answers that, doesn’t it? Impeccable timing as always, Davenport,” she announces, turning back towards Avi, and seeing his expression fighting with itself over just how suspicious to look. “He says that he’s sorry he missed the meeting, of course, but he simply just had to run some errands for me, as Davenport is wont to do —”
Carey narrows her eyes, crawling up on the back of a chair to whisper into Killian’s ear. “Heyyyyy, Killer. Suddenly, I just kinda feel — and like, for no particular reason, but I just kinda feel like something’s waiting for us, back in our dorms — after everyone was just distracted here for half an hour, you know —”
“I don’t know what you could possibly mean by that,” Lucretia deadpans, and Davenport puffs up his chest, crossing his arms with a huff.
“Davenport!” He’s obviously quite offended that someone would even imply such a thing, and he’ll have everyone know it. His expression is all he needs to say it —
But nevertheless, Killian stares at them, for a long, long moment — and then, she shakes her head, but with a grin.
“You and your secrets, Madam Director,” she says, her sigh transforming into a wry snicker, “you and all of your secrets.”
*
“The — the Red Robes! They’re attacking!”
“It’s finally happening! It’s all over! We’re doomed!”
“Well, don’t just stand there and cry about it, Johann! Get up and fight, fight for your life — or at least, get out of the way of my axe —”
Standing in the hallway, with her back to the dormitories full of carnage, Lucretia stares at her beloved captain, to whom she owes a lifetime of apologies — and she pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Davenport. Oh, Davenport. Did you — did you have to fill the confetti cannons with so many out-of-season ghost balloons from Fantasy Party City?”
Avi runs past her, screaming bloody murder with a balloon skewered on a shortsword he’s not holding remotely correctly. Carey delightedly rips another balloon to shreds with far more precision and efficacy, and Magic Brian assails a third with an enchanted fly swatter. Scraps of glimmering fantasy mylar, in a very distinctive hue, go flying almost everywhere.
“And Davenport. Davenport, Davenport, Davenport. Did you really think the ordinary ghost balloons just weren’t enough, Davenport? Did you have to — Davenport, did you have to dye them all red?”
Davenport just clasps his hands, and blinks at her, with the biggest, most innocent green eyes. And Lucretia sinks to the ground, back against the wall, and buries her face in her hands —
“Damn it,” she mutters, shaking her head, “dammit, dammit. Alright, alright, fine, Davenport — you’re right. I deserve this.”