The Bookwyrm

Bookwyrm glanced around the temple. "I had no idea this place existed."

Rym told the Adorable Grub to be quiet, then snuck up and continued eavesdropping. He tried to get a good look at who Cucumber Beard was talking to.

Rym walked over to where the muttering was, with the adorable grub still attached to his foot.

Rym yelped and tried to get it off without hurting it.

Rym walked up to the adorable grub. "Why are you saying my name backwards?" he asked it. "And are you eating these books? Because if you are, I'm going to have to stop you."

Granted, your entire history is projected into the minds of everyone around you every time you do it. I wish to gain cryptic visions of the past, present, and future that come randomly and only make sense as I have more visions and gain more knowledge.

Bookwyrm glanced around at the chaos. "Uh, Emma? Can I come with you?" he asked before she closed the portal.

Rym stood in silence for a moment, then left Mythos to read the scroll. That doesn't tell me much, he thought to himself as he walked through the library, but I'm sure I'll get answers if I stick around long enough. He continued walking through the library, occasionally taking a book of the shelf and glancing through it, making sure to be very careful with the ancient texts. These will come in handy later... he thought.

"Oh," Rym said. He looked embarrassed. "I misunderstood." He paused for a moment. "Who was your father, then?"

Rym appeared. "Does this mean that Thaidakar is coming back again? Or is your father someone else?"

One of Boushh's paymasters was none other than Eof.

It was a good thing she wasn't stealing her customer's money, because Nale the Skybreaker was standing nearby.

And everyone else screamed in terror.

Suddenly, Pineapples.

To find a magic pineapple.

It was very sad.

The sentient pineapples unfortunately overthrew them once they had been created, which made the two of them even more angry.

But the ones that were took over the universe.

Bookwyrm stepped back and watched the destruction. "Uh...Nameless? Is this the best idea?"

With a pineapple.

They decided to do something about it.

This one onlooker was the person known as Somepeople.

Yisten Iyřan stood awkwardly among the other cadets as they all waited for the Captain. He could see their nervousness in the way they stood and shuffled, in the way some of them whispered to one another. He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel some of that nervousness himself. The awkward air only got worse as they reached, then passed, the time that the Captain was supposed to come address them. He was late. But why? Yisten thought to himself. What's the point of making us wait? After a few more minutes, the Captain appeared. He wore an official Cytocorps jacket over his uniform, which was decorated with various medals and awards. Yisten snapped to attention immediately, saluting in the way he had been taught. Wait...he thought to himself. Can I get one of those jackets? The fact that the Cytocorps uniforms had no sleeves bothered him, not to mention that it got cold in these caves. "There are, as of today, three hundred and seventy-seven cadets in this cavern!" the Captain began. That roughly fit the estimate that Yisten had made earlier. "If I had my way, every single one of you would be faiemen-fighting material by the end of this regimen, and we'd have an army unlike anything the Cytocorps has ever seen!" the Captain continued. The other cadets probably saw this as a hopeful reassurance, but Yisten caught the words "If I had my way" at the beginning, and knew there was probably a catch. "I won't beat around this, you understand," the Captain said next. "This is no place for mincing words! I fully expect all but perhaps a hundred of you to leave these caverns in terror or shame! If this regimen is destroying your body day by day, then leave this place and never return! You'd be no match for a faiemen." And there was the catch. Yisten stood listening, but could feel the mounting terror of his fellow cadets-and himself-as the Captain continued. "And even then you won't have survived anywhere near the worst of it! By our estimates and calculations, if you survived this training, then you will die! Over two-thirds of all full Cytocorps soldiers are destroyed in their first battle!" Yisten's eyes widened at that part. Two-thirds? He knew the statistics could have been good, but...were they really that bad? Were they loosing that badly? "It's not until you truly understand the power they possess, the fear they invoke, the sheer perseverance of those creatures, until you have seen them tear your friends and family limb from limb, while even the power of the greatest structure mankind has ever created in your more-than-capable hands can do nothing to stop them!" Yisten understood that the Captain was trying to scare the cadets, make them understand how horrible the faiemen were. But Yisten had seen their horrors firsthand. He had grown up close to the surface, and his family had been fighting the faiemen for generations. He understood the helplessness that the captain spoke about, and while Yisten himself had only summoned a module once before, he clearly felt the sorrow that came with being unable to protect those he loved. He had joined the Cytocorps for his own reasons. "But I'm getting ahead of myself," the Captain said as he regained his composure. "We will begin here. We will begin now. The future is always forever away, and looking toward it is pointless without any focus on the now. I am going to send you through hell and back a million times over. You are going to grit your teeth, clench your fists, and carry on! Anyone that can't is dead meat! I wish I could even say you understand what I mean, yet you don't! Everyone is so impervious to pain until they actually feel it. We are going to push your bodies to a million times the limit they possess here and now. We are going to sharpen your minds to something like a god's! And we are going to hone your soul like a blade of glass. You are all fine. Even. Smooth, pointless, and weak!" There it was. He was still trying to make them feel like the had no idea what they were doing. Like they were completely inexperienced, and even if they would do great things someday, they were infinitely far from being able to achive those great things. He was trying to make them feel scared and helpless. It worked. The Captain looked each cadet in the eyes briefly, and as he met Yisten's eyes, Yisten felt himself stiffen. He was scared, now. Logically, he knew he had made the right choice. He just hoped he'd be strong enough to follow through with it. "Understand, young weaklings," the Captain finished. "We are going to shatter you. And then you are going to shatter them." Yisten hoped that he would make it to that point. But he hadn't joined the Cytocorps solely to fight the faiemen. He had joined to find answers. Answers to questions he'd been asking his whole life. And he would find those answers, no matter what it took.

Butt Venture, who was a rook, quickly took him. This was all according to Eof's plan.

Eof was secretly very good at chess, but his current plan required him to be a chess piece for a little bit.