Okay, so where do I begin? I've been playing around with the SYSTEM a little here and there since arriving on Satyrus. Early today, about two weeks into teaching Rohn's brats, which I'll get to later, something came of it.

Discovered: 3.5 Mind-You can peek around corners no one else can even see

Though the uses of this perk are not well understood, some benefits are well documented.

In conjuntion with Spacial Calculation Assistance, you may use Leylines. The obelisk network may freely be used by you and anyone who you physically escort since there is no activation resource cost

In conjunction with race, abilities that allow astral travel will not leave behind your physical body [note: You do not currently possess an astral travel ability]

In conjunction with class and SCA, summoning and calling abilities are more energy efficient [note: this does not affect contractual obligation costs]

Improves psionic growth [note:Will Shaper psionic class available, recomended when tertiary class slot becomes available]

Improved EE recovery

Since then I've discovered all kinds of new things about the SYSTEM, Like this, the secure journal. Only existences above moderators can read it. I say read but you can save memories in it too. You can use your eyes and mind as a scanning device. You can take a book, a class lecture, a jumble of disorganized theory and condense them into a set of symbols and re-digest them into purer understanding. Although there's limits on how much one can safely absorb in a certain period of time, all the information can be put into a queue and as new information comes in it will gravitate towards the part of the queue it is most relevant to.

The most important part of this discovery, at the moment,is that combining the Arcane Awakening packet with records from the archive I've figured out how to guide awakened talent to conscious understanding. Not only that, but with a good dose of intuitive searching and spiritual digging I'm pretty sure I could awaken latent talents as well. I mean, and I think this is a big deal, I'm fairly certain that this is how the SYSTEM does what it does. It doesn't give us anything except a nudge with deep understanding of, well, everything and cold, dispassionate spiritual guidance.

I mean, whoa. I'm convinced that the SYSTEM, as they call it, is alive. It's alive and freely sharing anything it knows, can be coerced into showing you how to achieve even the pettiest of your dreams through even the narrowest path available to you. It's just that it's really hard and scary dangerous to try to understand it unfiltered. That's where the directors, moderators, hosts and operators come in.

Although, at this point it's just conjecture, I even think I've figured out their organization. The directors were the ones who originally figured out how to interact with the 'SYSTEM'. Their subordinates, the hosts, are the ones in charge of inhabitable places in reality and relegate SYSTEM related activities to their subordinates, the moderators. The operators, if compared to mere mortals, are likely supernatural powerhouses but in hierarchy they are just peons who act as middle management between us and them.

This leads me to some scary, hypothetical, conclusions:

My secret buddy figured out how the first ones did it

I think my interface is something akin to an advanced model of the one directors developed for moderators but without the unneeded filters that exist to control moderator growth and understanding

on the assumption of the first two, I'm in deep shit and need a long heart to heart with my secret buddy to keep from doing anything to fuck myself to oblivion

Discovered: Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades

Recommended Immediate Purchase: Race Enhancement- Interspacial Consciousness

1000 (glitch) 100 (glitch) remaining achievement points (damn you're poor.)

Outside of allowing you to interact and function non-suspiciously among the little people, your brain is mostly just a decoration. But then again, it wasn't much more than that to begin with.

Yes(flashing gold) or No(can hardly see it)

P.S. Everything from this purchase up to just after 3.5 Mind will be erased from logs and your journal. Fuck you, and have a nice day you smart cookie

Of course, I do all the things I need to keep it Safe, Sane and Consensual like any high-functioning masochist...

My hard-ass teacher act kept the little shits in line and earnestly learning for all of a week and a half before they started getting all fidgety and starting to subtly probe me. And by subtle, I mean their jackhammers were rubber coated and well oiled. After another two days of that and I was ready to sign a murder-suicide pact with them but since they didn't seem that willing to die with me I gave them a couple of days off for me to make a serious effort to figure things out...viola, I am the miracle worker, maybe. Need to find some guinea pigs first and I have two very special people in mind...No, not my best lady bud and that guy, the mummy and mommy dearest. Though, I have to admit, now that I've had a chance to calm down I'm not really all that mad at her. She's actually kinda pitiful and after the fall of this regime I hope she can get over everything and find someone who will love her for the scheming snake she is instead of a baby maker. 'Not really mad' and 'not mad at all' are two totally different states.

The only thing that's making me sad in my pants is that while Troy and Lilly are having proper training montages to get more bad-ass, I'm doing a decent rendition of the Riddler from Batman Forever. I just hope I don't end the same way.

It's not that I haven't tried to beef up on fighting but there's not really anyone I pair up well with. Grimalkin literally stabbed himself with his practice dagger to keep from scratching me when I was going to dodge right into it. The one time Troy had a bit of free time I could steal from him he practically ran circles around me with his practice foil, sexually harassing me. His intermittent exclamations of 'that's the spot' and 'feeling good yet?' put a kibosh on asking him ever again and to be honest, unless I was using 'maiming intent' levels of power output I can't really touch him. You couldn't pay me to fight Lilly and it's not because of foolish sentimental reasons. I think she believes that scrotum and punching bag are synonymous terminologies and if you can get Jaden to do anything that doesn't involve Lilly with more than a quarter of his maximum effort I'll give you a cookie...note to self: never try to get a guy to help with sparring practice by saying it'll be a chance to show off to his girl especially if he's actually good at fighting and you're not.

On a personal note, I can't seem to catch a break with any ladies around here. Despite people seeming to be cavalier about such things there do seem to be some rules about it that I didn't catch before. On a rational level it's complicated as hell but on an intuitive level it's pretty simple. The whole experience has inspired me with a new term: Polynogamous. Means once people in this society find everything they're looking for, they close up shop. The most popular dynamic that I've found is one gal and two dudes but I've seen two gals and three dudes. At first I thought that was all there was to it but there's more. Seems there are quite a few ladies who would still give me a night of comfort but for three reasons: some think I'm Rohn's (my mistake really), Some think I'm THE RIVERSON's (have no fucking clue where this comes from) even if I deny both vocally and profusely and everyone is dead convinced that a certain psycho fourteen year old girl will make their lives a living hell afterwards( I believe it but don't know what I can do about it.)I could try to take my libido into town, so to speak, if there wasn't a group of fascists out there waiting to catch me with my pants down (and I hate turning the figurative into literal.)

I've made peace with celibacy for now but moving on from that, my request for an additional bed for the pavilion was initially approved but returned by Troy under the auspice that it wasn't necessary since he would be spending the majority of his time under Ephyra's tutelage and hospitality. Well, this was true but I've woken up being grappled a total of three times over the past two weeks. The first time was just two days after the whole bed refusal so I was a bit surly about it but was forced to admit I did feel a bit better and less edgy, damned bond thing. The second time, out of sheer spite, I grumbled and stomped around enough to make sure he didn't get to sleep in before carrying on about my day, seriously wondering why I don't wake up when he sneaks in. Troy brought up that the benefits of the bond work both ways and it helped him bounce back faster from the more rigorous parts of Ephyra's training which pretty much got me to accept it considering how fatigued he looks most of the time when I see him. I'm not dumb enough to ask what could be so strenuous about 'music lessons' considering I have first-hand evidence that he's getting more fit, uncomfortable to think about evidence. And I'm nowhere near suicidal enough to ask why Lilly isn't trying to climb in my bed, as a counter argument.

By the time the third incident happened, over a week after the second and I woke up grappling him back, I had to start forcing myself to accept a few facts. Yes, I like women, am still very much attracted to women but because of the bond, maybe and likely other reasons as well, being close to Troy feels good, feels right even. It's not the same as sexual attraction, if anything it's deeper, more intimate and disturbingly more invasive. If anyone tried to call it love though I'd sneer at them. Whatever I have with Troy, which I'm not even okay with trying to label at the moment, is more nourishing, affirming and bolstering. If love is like your favorite ice cream on a summer day then this is like your favorite food when your starving, a crackling fireplace with thick blankets and a shot of brandy when you're freezing, a deep tissue massage and hot bath followed by a small coma on an Amerisleep AS3 when your aching and tired. All of those rolled into one. Maybe knowing all this but still insisting on ignorance and platonic interactions is asinine but before all this I was a technical 2 but a practicing solid 1.5 on the Kinsey scale. It was gonna take a lot more than 2 1/2 weeks and a little mental toe dipping to be cool with more than the cuddles. But damned if I don't get the whole 'it's not a choice' thing.

Last thing I want to throw in this journal, for now, is the experience I had yesterday. Well technically it was late last night to the 'wee' hours of the morning but who cares, except for Lilly maybe...sorry Lilly. And a special warning to my secret buddy and whoever inherits this from me in the future, if anyone doesn't want to read about my pleasurable little self run experiment 'aka: absurdly long monkey spanking'

then skip to the second set of asterisks

***

Alright, so I said I had accepted celibacy but that was not full blown, brothers in the monastery flog themselves instead, kind of celibacy. And I'm kinda laughing at myself as I write this because I feel like that time when I was thirteen and just discovering how everything worked for the first time because A: it technically was in a manor of speaking and B: this body was nothing, I repeat, nothing like my original body. It would be like trying to compare a beat up but dependable pick-up truck to a Ferrari.

So, I woke up not too long after falling asleep, for the second night in a row, feeling agitated and pent up. Troy wasn't here, Little Gray wore himself out more than usual and was sleeping deeply so I mentally said 'why not' as I padded off to the washroom. I fed AE into the heating glyph and cooling glyph on the trickling waterfall part till the steam and fog was rolling in the mostly enclosed space like a small house-fire. Slipping into the stream-pool and briefly floating on my back, I sat on the cushioned wet-bench that laid at the end facing the oncoming stream, flipping the back wedge around to the 45 degree angle side while appreciating the design of it all. The water didn't quite cover the top of my legs, instead the ebb and swell of the water lapped at the tender parts of my inner thighs, nuzzling, clasping and releasing the underside of my nuts as I spread my legs and leaned back to better feel it. The mixing and alternating hot-tepid-cool sensations no less stimulating than the questing tongue and lips of a lover. The rhythmic and ever changing sensations were priming the engine nicely.

Pulling a bottle of wine out of my space, cork pre-loosened (hehe,)I wrenched the spongy wood out with a satisfying 'pop'. I admired the beautiful ruby 'beeswing' crystals that decorated the back of the cork before lightly scraping them over my lower lip and chin, dragging them down my neck, swirling them around my nipples, all with agonizing slowness, the teasing fingernail of some decadent deity of intoxication. First a few drops on the tongue then a thin trickle of ruby sin running down the shallow cleft of my pectorals, marking and overflowing the river and tributaries of my abs before filling a navel lake. I lazily traced the crimson trail with a fingertip before circling the flair of my desire's head, grazing the clear pearl gathering at the tip, sending a static thrill ricocheting up my spine intense enough to make me bite my lip to stifle the gasp trying to push past it.

I raised the finger to my lips, a heat rising to my cheeks painting the edges of my ears,as I let bashful curiosity guide my tongue. The bittersweet of fine wine mingled with the saltiness of my finger and personal flavor. As my own whisper quite, raspy laughter tickled my ears I leaned my head back, an aftertaste of something otherworldly lingering on my tongue, dilating my pupils. I was a foolish, besotted serpent not immune to it's own venom.

Suddenly, everything was not enough, the hunger at my core needed more, craved a release my body stubbornly relented to give. Confused lust echoed from other places but, lost in myself as I was, it only added to the raking need. Intuition and ancient memories buried in magic answered. Fingers of earth playfully scratched and kneaded, lips of water nipped and pulled, tongues of air darted across sensitive skin and whispered profane enticements in my ear. This self inflicted orgy of caressing beats of silken wings, of scraping claw and fang, of magic infused flesh meeting dark fantasy given form pushed me over the edge as I finally come undone . I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and my frame shuddered as the source of my ardor pulled painfully tight against me, erupting pearlescent plumes of ecstasy filled devastation that shot into the skies of my imagination and laid waste to the landscape of my reclined body.

I briefly indulged in the afterglow among the wreckage and nearly dozed off. I gathered the remains of my dignity and cleaned them, myself and the surrounding area to the best of my ability, responsibly tidying up the crime scene till no evidence remained.

***

If that was the end of the story it would have been great, pressure valve released then to rest and recovery, but no. Glaucous was waiting for me and felt it was necessary to praise my innovation and skill in the art of self-gratification and not willing to play the 'kid who got caught surfing porn' I played the fool instead, giving a flourishing bow, wishing to some benevolent entity that my face didn't feel like it was on fire. Unfortunately though, he wasn't there to make sport of me.

To soften harsh deliveries he started off with the lighthearted and amusing tale of how Troy managed to not only embarrass himself, during whatever-the-hell lunar meditation's supposed to be, but also had a little accident that apparently was copious enough to soak through and be noticed by Ephyra. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was having difficulty finding the time to take matters in hand. Knowing that I was the guilty party left me chuckling for a moment before I was hit with the realization that he would know why it happened and I would have to face him.

Then on to the real reason why he was there. To inform me that although my little solo performance didn't affect Lilly as strongly as it did Troy it had enough for Glaucous to be here informing me of a 'successful courtship'. The poor girl already had her common sense and rationality pushed to the limit by teenage hormones, add an exotic boy who was probably leagues above anyone who was showing her interest back home and was dog balls over crazy infatuated with her...well, at least I didn't have to feel too guilty about it. Aside from the hour long torture she endured before she snapped, my emotional over-spill probably just shaved a week or two off the inevitable, probably. Glaucous' gratitude came with a quick lesson on how to apply emotional filters to my bonds. Apparently the fae man had plenty of experience with such phenomenon as he had a version of it himself.

***

After digesting the experiences of the past two weeks and a little guidance from Glaucous, Wren had a couple of minor epiphanies.

Discovered: Upgrade- Rudimentary Psychic Shielding>Psychic Shielding

Discovered: Upgrade- Rudimentary Psionic Sever>Psionic Sever

Discovered: Upgrade- Bonded Sending>Controlled Bonded Sending

Discovered: Addition- Tier I Combat Tulpa Lustitia

A complex tulpa with minor psychic and elemental influence [note: possesses the ability to act autonomously, not recommended outside of emergency situations]

It took another two days to get an audience with The Matron and Rohn. Apparently they really did have official clan business that they had to attend to. Even or maybe because of the impending events it was important to keep up image and at the same time try to acquire as many resources from semi-hostile families as possible. Within the Suncave complex it was difficult to know what the situation was outside of it. Not that Wren, Lilly or Troy really had time for worrying about such things.

Troy was busy doing his thing in Glaucous' demi-plane and it would likely remain that way till it was time to set off the fireworks, so to speak. Lilly was lost in a blend of sex and violence which would keep her from doing much outside of having small talk with Wren after midday meals for who knows how many days to come. The absolute joy and contentment rolling off of Jaden set Wren's teeth on edge, Wren desperately trying to convince himself that it was annoyance and not the small hole of loneliness forming from the last few familiar things in his life changing to things less so.

With a deep breath, organizing his thoughts he walked into the reception chamber.

“Wren, it's been what, about half a moon cycle since we last talked? My feelings are a bit slighted for the lack of social calls on your patroness.” The Matron said a bit moodily.

What the hell does she think I'm here for? Oh, maybe she thinks I want something. Either that or she's displeased with the progress I'm making with the kids. What the hell did she expect, That I would pat their heads and they'd be throwing fire balls around or something? Well, whatever her reasons I'll be damned if I'm gonna be treated as a beggar coming for alms when I'm here for her grandchildren's sake. Alright, let's approach from the polite but equally surly angle and see how that goes.

“As you have likely been informed I have been working diligently on unraveling the mysteries of how your ancestors kindled gifts within their descendants. A trick Grimshadow has very much kept alive but secret within their halls. During that time I have also rounded their education with some of the seeds of knowledge that sustains my world in the absence of magic. A world, I have to admit even as much as I like magic, that would scoff and pity the condition of the common people here.

“However, what brings me requesting your presence today is good tidings of great joy.”

Sorry, baby Jesus but it's such an awesome line.

“I believe I have teased this secret out. Though I'm fairly confident at success, I'd prefer to attempt it on someone who would benefit your household should I succeed but would not affect the family overly much, if on a small chance, I should not. A certain mother who has vested interest in her children's bright futures and convalescing runner for instance, mama Ku.”

That's right, your not gonna down grade me to bowing and scraping just cause you brought me here.

With a small frown at the breach of social etiquette the Matron said, “And this would have nothing to do with personal grudges?”

Wren decided to be candid, “It has everything to do with my grudge. If I scrambled something inside them I wouldn't have to lose any sleep over it. But don't take it that I'll try any less to do the procedure to the best of my ability. Besides, what experience I gain from the mother may broaden my insight on the children when it's their turn and runners in the Eldest's band have the highest blood purity outside of you and your son's own. I'm quite fond of your son,” Wren decided to ignore the smile that statement brought to Rohn's face as he pushed on, “and I doubt you'd like to volunteer, mama Ku. Unless I'm mistaken?”

The Matron shifted a bit uncomfortably over the intentional lewd and predatory look on Wren's face as she said. “Your words are sensible but I expect results. We'll proceed under your advisement, however, if there are only losses from this endeavor we may need to reevaluate your status in the family. And before that statement has a chance to bruise your ego, I'd like to point out what should be obvious to you. Your little sister is confirmed to be the bride of my youngest and nominal disciple of our guardian. Your eldest is the disciple of the last surviving matron of our guardian's family, retired though she may be. You, though a force in your own right, a force that has been turned on one of our own, are smoke and shadow. You represent promise without substance, potential without immediate practical benefit, my children's goodwill towards you and tolerance of the guardian not withstanding. At the end of the day our people are realists, show me something real.

Rohn's scowl at the Matron, which promised words after he left, mollified Wren to some small extent but did nothing to stop the hardening of Wren's heart towards her in the future.

I might have been willing to kiss your ass when you were being nice to me, Matron but if you want to play hardball I'm game. Damn if I haven't seen another woman I'd more likely let get away with murder, though. Down boy, we just decided we don't like her anymore.

With a cold face and stiff bow Wren said, “Very well. It will be as you say Matron. Having a practical and real discussion over the benefits of your patronage after I prove how very un-smoke and shadow-like I am suits me just fine,” turning to Rohn and adopting as much natural friendliness as he could under the current situation, “Don't worry brother Rohn. For as long as I'm here, you and your children's concerns will remain a priority and continue to weigh heavily in my considerations. Such talk between true friends is...distasteful.”

After a few clipped orders and a bitter but professional exchange of details Wren was being led to the resting ward where Rabas was recouping.