“THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INTOLERABLE!”
Inji jumped as the thunderous croak echoed through the Library with enough force to rattle the table he was sitting at. His hand jerked sideways, knocking over a bottle of ink that proceeded to douse the scroll he had been studying in thick, black liquid.
“Well, damn,” Inji sighed as he tried to pick up the ancient paper in an attempt to save what was left. He’d gotten the scroll from some archaeologists who had been working near the sunken ruins of an old school on Dominaria, in exchange for assistance bypassing some rather tricky locks. The archaeologists hadn’t thought anything of the trade; the scroll had been the blueprints for a golem made of silver, and in their minds that made it worthless. After all, what good was a silver golem? It might make an interesting toy for a rich man, but there were dozens of metals that were both cheaper and more practical to work with.
Inji had mostly agreed with their sentiments, planning only to construct the golem as a sort of hobby. Then he’d gotten a good look at the plans, and realized whoever had drawn them up had been fiendishly clever. There were certain elements that Inji would have sworn had been borrowed from the Thran and then adapted, possibly improved. The final result would have been able to survive incredibly destructive energies, to the point where it might even have been able to manage a trip through the Blind Eternities! The only problem was the blueprint’s creator had written them in a rather complex code, to the point where even figuring out the scale of measurement used had taken several days to figure out.
“So much for this project,” Inji muttered as the scroll fell apart in his hands. The ink had turned it into a sloppy black slush, and picking it up had pretty much obliterated it. He frowned as he considered the mess. The notes he had made had survived the spill, and they included all the gross structural information for the golem. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a waste, after all. He’d have to improvise and make his own alterations, but he had been planning on doing that anyway…
“What project?”
Inji looked up as his usual partner walked out from between the stacks. Then he did a double take when he realized that Sydni’s hair was on fire, courtesy of the hydra hatchling she was holding by its throats. Bright orange scales covered the three-headed, dog sized monster. Sydni didn’t seem to be having any difficulty holding it up high enough that its scrabbling grasping talons found only air, though Inji could have sworn that there was a faint smell of cooking flesh. One of the heads managed to twist free of Sydni’s grasp and turned to spit a ball of fire at her face.
The planeswalker merely closed her eyes against the attack. The ball of flame washed over her, then bounced off the protective bubble sheltering the books behind her. It exploded in a ball of sparks that scattered across the floor before winking out.
“I thought the Commodore banned you from bringing live research subjects into the Library after what happened to his copy of History of the Blarnth Pirates,” Inji remarked. “Also, hair.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sydni sighed as she pulled a crystal from her belt with her free hand and tapped it against one of the heads she still had a grip on. There was a flash of red light and then the hatchling was gone. “The fire protection charm that Onamanga found for me apparently has some limitations she neglected to mention. Like the fact that it only extends far enough from my skin to protect my clothes.”
“Well, aren’t you going to put your hair out?” Inji asked as she sat down on the other side of his table.
Sydni looked up as she thought about it, then shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. I was going to cut it soon anyway, so I might as well just wait till it’s done.”
“I could it for you.” Inji held out his left hand, turned face up. A sphere of water the size of an orange manifested above his palm and began to spin in place.
“There are easier ways to get me wet,” Sydni chuckled. It turned into full blown laughter as Inji blushed. “Anyway, the Commodore told me I wasn’t allowed to, and I quote, ‘Bring in anymore overgrown engines of appetite and destruction just to compare them to badly drawn pictures scrawled by incompetent louts too busy peeing their pants to notice how bad their hands were shaking.’ So it is perfectly ok for me to bring Pebbles in to the Library since he’s not overgrown.”
Inji frowned. “While that’s within the letter of what he said-“
“RIBBIT!”
Inji sat there open-mouthed, unsure of whether he should finish his sentence.
“We should probably go and see what he wants,” Sydni suggested.
“Probably a good idea,” Inji sighed as he pushed his chair back to stand up.
The Commodore’s study was a good ten minute walk from where the pair had started, so they used the opportunity to catch each other up on their lives. Sydni reported on the latest attempts by the local warlords to conquer the valley she had turned into a hydra preserve, while Inji briefed her on an expedition he planned on leading to the lost plane of Ell in the near future. Unfortunately, it became more difficult to maintain the conversation once they began to near their destination, as their words were quickly drowned by the Commodore’s fury.
“Wait,” Sydni ordered as they reached the study. The heavy oak door that stood between them and the Commodore was shaking in its frame as a result of the violence occurring in the room beyond.
“He’s not going to hurt us,” Inji said impatiently.
“Maybe not intentionally.” Sydni’s hand dropped to her summoning crystals as she slipped between the golemancer and the door. “Still, maybe it would be better if the person who knows how to regrow her own limbs went first, just in case?”
Inji frowned, but gave her the nod to go ahead.
Sydni eased the door open, ducking down as a metal plated model of the Predator went sailing past her nose to impale the wall to her left. It drove a good six inches in before coming to a quivering stop in the middle of a mural. Then gravity asserted itself and the serrated keel began to rip through a pair of kithkin dancing on their wedding night as the model headed for the floor.
“Sydni!” A small silver frog bounced up in front of her, dropped out of sight, then bounced back up. Sydni caught it on the second bounce, only to lose her grip on the tiny artifact as it squirmed loose and hopped over to the desk that dominated the center of the room.
“Commodore?”
“Just the woman I need!” The frog squeaked angrily. “Is Inji with you?”
“Right here,” Inji said as he stepped up behind Sydni.
“Good!” The frog reared back on its hind legs and crossed its forelegs behind its back, as if it were a tiny amphibian general. “I have been slighted! Insulted! Wronged, if I may be so bold! Worse, than that, I have been ignored!”
“By what?” Sydni asked as she moved to make more room for Inji in the study.
“By this!” The Commodore kicked a small book off his desk. It skidded to a stop in front of Inji, who bent down to pick it up.
“The Planeswalker’s Guide to Notable Figures and Events, 19th Edition, as compiled by Har Loreseeker.” Inji cocked his head sideways as he held it up for Sydni’s inspection. They began to flip through it together. Each page was filled with detailed information on various planeswalkers, wars, and other significant moments to the multiverse. Accompanying each entry was a lavish hand-drawn illustration.
“Hey, Fisco’s in this!” Sydni’s finger stabbed towards a biography towards the middle of the book. “Do you think he knows?”
“I don’t think so,” Inji answered. “I mean, it even lists common places to find him. I can’t see someone like Fisco wanting every schmuck with a spark to have a road map to his favorite hole in the wall.”
“Enough!” The Commodore let out a hiss that could easily have been mistaken for a boiling tea kettle. “I do not care about who is in it! I only care that I was left out of it!”
Sydni and Inji shared a look. While the Spark that allowed them to freely walk between different worlds was relatively rare, the Multiverse itself was baffingly enormous. Planeswalkers had a tendency to run into each other, but it was almost always the same people over and over, like occasionally bumping into a neighbor who lived a few miles down the road. Putting together a book like Lorekeeper’s would have taken decades, possibly centuries of individual research and travel.
“Should you be?” Sydni asked. “I mean, I’ve never heard of this Lorekeeper before-“
“He runs another wing of the Library,” the Commodore spat. “Yanked it right out from under me when I wasn’t paying attention. Got my favorite copy of-“ The Commodore cut off midsentence and glared at the pair of humans.
The silence continued to drag on until Inji finally broke it. “Your copy of…?”
“That’s not important! What’s important is that he stole a wing of the Library from me. So he damned well knows who I am, which means leaving me out of his book is a deliberate snub!”
“Wait, the Library? As in, this Library?” Sydni looked confused. “How is that even possible? I thought this was its own plane.”
“Have you ever read Pretchatt’s A Treatise on Knowledgeable Mass and its Deterministic Effects?”
“Er, no?”
The Commodore croaked in disgust. “Children these days. No real education. I blame the merfolk, of course. Never trust a merfolk, they’ve got gills. Pretchatt was a bibliomancer who lived on Alara before it fell apart. He developed a theory that said that all information was connected in the same way the Multiverse is all connected by the Blind Eternities, and that therefore knowledge should have a physical presence. The Library is the manifestation of that theory brought to life. Knowledge, however, is infinite. It grows with each experience lost or made, and as it does so does the Library. Except the Library can’t grow larger than its planar boundaries, so when it gets too big it duplicates itself. Normally I can anchor the new plane to this one, but a few decades back Lorekeeper managed to siphon off the section I intended to bridge.”
“You couldn’t get it back?”
Frogs weren’t designed to shrug, but the Commodore tried anyway. “What was the point? He’s going to die eventually, but I'm already dead, so I always just assumed that I would reclaim it after he was gone. But now, oooh, now there will be blood and vengeance! I will flay his skin for shoes! I will use his ribcage as a wind chime! I will use his brain as a sponge for my chamber pots! By the time I get done cutting him up, even the Phyrexians will think I have taken things just a bit too far! But first, we need to get me a new body…”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?” Sydni moaned.
*
“See, I knew I wasn’t going to like this!” Sydni glared at the Commodore, who sat perched on her shoulder. The trio had planeswalked to Theros, and the Commodore had insisted that they dress the part. That meant Sydni was once again dressed in a revealing chiton, cut low in the front and high on the sides. More than a few heads had turned to stare at her, though it was a bit of a toss-up whether it was because of her under dressed Amazonian stature or because she was talking to a silver frog sitting on her shoulder. Inji was standing next to her with his arms folded over his chest, doing his best to imitate an imposing body guard. It might have been easier if it didn’t look like he was about to start laughing.
“You made me get rid of all of my pockets!” Sydni hissed as she grabbed the frog by the throat and began to shake it violently. “Do you know what I’ve had to leave behind in order to put on this ridiculous costume? Everything, that’s what! And now you want me to cause a distraction?”
“I think you’re doing a wonderful job of that already,” the Commodore replied evenly.
“And why do you want me to cause a distraction?” Sydni demanded.
“So that I can steal the Akrosian Colossus, of course,” the Commodore said. He wiggled a toe in the direction of an enormous, bare-chested opal statue straddling the polis’s central boulevard. The houses around it looked like children’s toys by comparison, and it dwarfed the mountains and plateaus on the horizon. It was wearing several tons of bronze armor, and held a broad-bladed xiphos in its left hand and a javelin tall enough to reach its shoulder in its right. A crested helm added to is already impossible height, hiding its face in darkness. Two glowing red lights shone out of the darkness as the colossus searched the area for threats, its head moving silently as it slowly turned from side to side.
“Sure, why not?” Sydni said throwing up her hands in dismay. “Because it isn’t like something as powerful and important as that clearly wasn’t a gift to these people from their gods. I’m sure whichever of deities responsible for running around throwing lightning bolts at people who piss them off will be perfectly happy to stand by as we walk off with the statue. No, I can’t see any flaws with this plan at all!”
The Commodore bristled at her scorn. “Now, listen here young lady! I know you and Inji have been all over the multiverse facing down traps and ugly monsters one after another, but we’re not talking about looting some long abandoned fortress or capturing some zoological curiosity. Our target is a planeswalker, just like us, and should be treated with appropriate caution. Lorekeeper may not have access to as much information as we do, but he will surely have his own defenses and minions in place. Trying to out think or out gambit him will not be possible; therefore we must rely on brute force to accomplish the job for us. Yes, the colossus is a divine gift; and that same divinity gives it special qualities that will allow it to overpower anything that Lorekeeper might deploy in an attempt to thwart its attack.”
Sydni ground her teeth, knowing it was pointless to argue. “Fine. Then what do you want me to do distract the guards?”
“Well, summon one your pet monsters, of course,” the Commodore replied.
“Which would I would, if I had any pockets!”
“I think it might be better if I took care of this then,” Inji interrupted. He carefully reached over and extracted the Commodore from Sydni’s fist and placed him on the ground. “Head for the colossus. I’ll provide the distraction.”
“Right then.” The Commodore tossed off a lazy salute, then went hopping in the direction of his target.
“I hope he gets run over by a cart and buried in a pile of horse ****,” Sydni snarled as she watched him go. Then she looked up the colossus and frowned.
“Won’t it attack us if we start making a mess of things?”
“Hence why I offered to provide the distraction,” Inji answered. “No offense, but you’re friends tend to be a bit on the destructive side. I, on the other hand, have a few tricks that are just more annoying than anything else. As long as there isn’t an actual threat to the city, the colossus won’t get involved.”
Inji ushered her over to the side of the road, then knelt down and placed his hands against the paving stones. He closed his eyes and focused on the energies swirling around him. Inji had never formed any real attachments to the lands of Theros, but Akros had been built in the heart of the mountains, making it easy to tap into the chaotic energy of those lands. The dirt under his hands began to swell and bubble as he worked his summoning spell, slowly taking on the shape of a thin-limbed automaton with an oversize, beak shaped face. Its carapace was a reflective black, and a pair of gold motes swirled around its body.
Inji tapped the myr on the head, then pointed it in the direction of a vendor selling fruit several feet away. “Go on, have some fun.”
The beaked face tilted sideways, as if the myr wasn’t sure that it had heard right. Then it crouched down, spread its three-toed feet wide, and leapt in the direction Inji had pointed. It landed on all fours and began to rotate its head like an owl’s as the vendor and his customers screamed at the sudden interruption to their haggling. The myr sat in the middle of them, turning its head back and forth as the vendor began to beat it on the top of the head with a horsehair brush. Ignoring the man’s attack, it reached out snatched an apple from the bottom of the pile, causing the rest of the fruit to come tumbling down after. It lashed out with its beak and caught half a dozen of the golden-skinned fruits and ignored the ones that bounced off the rest of its armor.
“Help! Purphoros has sent a demon to punish us all!” the vendor screamed as he took off running. The myr started to follow him, noticed a particularly shiny horseshoe hanging from a farrier’s stall across the road, and turned around to investigate the attractive little trinket. It began to smack the horseshoes back and forth, bouncing its head in time with the delightful ringing sounds.
“It’s not going to harm anyone, will it?” Sydni asked as she and Inji watched as half a dozen hoplites converged on their mobile catastrophe.
“No, this particular model doesn’t have any fighting ability,” Inji said. “They’re just very curious pests-“
The guards began swearing as the myr ignored their shouted commands to halt its investigations. One of the more courageous soldiers leapt forward and stabbed at it with his spear, only to watch in dismay as the bronze head crumpled like cheap paper. Another of the guards tried to tackle Inji’s pet, only to find that the automaton had more than enough strength to carry the both of them. Two more started to join in the dog pile, but the myr managed to squirm free and started running down the street with a loping gait.
“-and damned near indestructible.” Inji finished with a grin. “I’ve seen one swim through a river of lava just to poke a lizard that was lounging on the other side. They also make great lightning rods in a pinch. Just don’t try to use them as load bearing supports. Learned that one the hard way.”
A philosopher let out a decidedly high pitched scream as the myr interrupted his lecture by thrusting its head under his robes. Having not found anything of interest, it hopped over to where a sculptor was sketching his model. It mimicked the woman’s poses as the sculptor hurriedly tried to catch its likeness in charcoal, only to dash off mid-hip thrust as the guards, now reinforced by the philosopher and his students, caught up to it. That was when the scream started on the other side of the city. The ground began to tremble as a vast shadow obliterated the sky. The pair of planeswalkers turned around to find the colossus kneeling several blocks away so that its head was directly above them.
“I do believe we can leave now,” the Commodore said in a voice far too quiet for his size.
*
“He has a garden?” Sydni asked in astonishment as the trio finally found their quarry’s home dimension. They had landed in an immaculately tended sanctuary, where colorful flowers grew along elaborate geometric powers and happy little bluebirds sang joyfully as they fluttered by overhead. A basalt sphere hovered in the center of the arrangements, rotating several feet above the ground as it launched and caught half a dozen streams of water simultaneously. Off in the distance an ivory tower rose towards the clouds. Sydni whirled on the Commodore, who was very carefully crushing a bed of petunias as flat as he could manage. “Why don’t we have a garden?”
“We do have a garden,” the Commodore muttered angrily. “I’m just not entirely sure where it is, at the moment.”
Inji frowned at the admission. “But, I thought-“
“Enough!” the Commodore thundered, stamping his foot hard enough to throw his human companions half a dozen feet skyward. “We did not come here to discuss landscaping! We came here for VENGEANCE!”
“But it is a vengeance you shall be denied!” a broguish voice chortled. A young man stepped out from behind the plants, a purple skinned homunculus trailing in his wake. He was dressed in a white blouse and black skirt, with a pair of solid leather work boots rounding out the outfit. His hair was a little long, but not unkempt, and there was a fierceness in his eyes that Inji normally associated with students who had forgotten to sleep for several days or mad goblins, not that there was really much of a difference between the two. The young man thrust his finger in the Commodore’s direction and opened his mouth for another boast, then froze as a momentary look of confusion took hold. “Ah. What exactly am I denying you vengeance for, exactly?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me, Har Loreseek!” The Commodore’s bellow was loud enough to strip leaves from the nearby trees. “You know exactly who I am and what I’ve come to make right!”
“But I’m not running any summer Intro to Kyperian art classes!” Har protested. “You need to speak to Professor Exopil about making up any grades from last semester.”
“What?!”
“What?”
“WHAT?!”
“WHAT?” Then a look of dawning spread across Har’s face. “Wait! You’re not with the Society Against Thalosian Dances at the Spring Harvest, are you?”
“Wh-?”
“Friends for a Monochrome Existence?”
“The who?”
“Allies for an Intellectual Worldview?”
“The what?”
“Necromancers Against the Early Deceasement of Authors?”
“No!”
“And this isn’t a pony thing?”
“How did you know-?” The Commodore surprised by the accusation, but quickly managed to get a hold of himself. “No, this isn’t about the ponies!”
Har scratched his forehead as he thought about it a moment longer, then shrugged. “Sorry, I have no idea who you are.”
“And that is why I am going to take my vengeance on you!” the Commodore declared victoriously. He lifted one hand high, then brought it slamming down, palm open, on the very spot where Har had been standing. Or would have, had the move been not so telegraphed in advance, nor easily dodged. Har rolled to the side, then let out a shriek when he saw the damage the Commodore had done.
“My marigolds! You monster, you’ve absolutely ruined my marigolds! They had just gotten to the fortieth digit of pi!” Har let out an inhuman snarl as he clapped his hands together, and let out a massive burst of magical energy. The ground shook once more as enormous black golem rose from beneath the quickly crumbling garden. Half a dozen golden lights circled it, just like the ones that had orbited the myr Inji had summoned. Har stood on the top of its can shaped head, hands braced defiantly on his hips. “You’ll pay for that, whoever you are!”
“It’s a darksteel titan!” Inji whispered in awe. “I thought they were all lost when the Phyrexians conquered Mirrodin!”
The colossus charged, and the titan caught it hand to hand. Both were champions of their respective worlds, indestructible guardians capable of withstanding any onslaught. One was the most perfect example of natural artifice, the other a true incarnation of divine will. Stone ground against metal as their feet dug deeper into the earth for purchase. It was the epic battle between an unstoppable force and an immoveable object, led by two men whose knowledge of combat was entirely based on paper.
It was…really **** boring to watch.
“So, is either of them actually going to do anything?” Inji asked after several minutes of inaction. Neither golem had budged during that time, both unable to gain an advantage over the other, though the Commodore and Har were digging quite deep into their vocabularies to come up with new and interesting insults for one another.
“I don’t think they can,” Sydni said as she cocked her head to the sideways. “Should we…?”
“No.” Inji shook his head. “The old man wanted to pick this battle, I say we let him figure it out.”
“Erm, excuse me?”
The two humans both turned and looked down at Asm’s homunculus, which had approached them from behind.
“Oh, hi there,” Sydni said. She glanced at the ruined garden and blanched. “Sorry about the mess…?”
“You can call me Tumbles!” the homunculus said excitedly. Then it drew itself up into a more formal stance. “But if I can ask, why are you here?”
“Our semi-nominal boss is a bit upset about being left out of this,” Inji answered, pulling out a copy of the Planeswalker’s Guide.
The homonculus’s face scrunched in confusion. “But he never asked us.”
“Wait, you just have to ask to be in this?” Sydni gaped at the revelation. “We thought you went out and collected all this yourself!”
“That would be silly,” Tumbles explained. “Far too much work. We just let people bring us their own stories, and then when we have enough we publish a new volume. Technically there’s a bit of a voting process for it, but most get taken in. Why, we even accepted Flirg Pebblesnout’s Ode to the Blind Eternities in Twenty-Seven Feces, though I do understand that they made him dry out his samples before they would accept the submission. Even then the original is kept next to half a dozen vents and air freshening charms.”
“But Fisco Vayne is in here!” Sydni protested.
“Yes, Mr. Vayne believes it to be good for business.”
“I can’t believe I missed out on perfectly good pockets for this!” Sydni said as she threw her hands up in exasperation.
Inji’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the collar as she started rolling up her sleeves and turning in the Commodore’s direction. She still nearly yanked him off his feet, and it took Tumbles grabbing hold of Inji's legs and digging in his heels for the two of them to keep the pissed off the hydra tamer from turning the duel into a grand melee. Considering its progress, or lack thereof, it likely would have turned into a bloodbath.
“Is there any way we can resolve this peacefully?” Inji grunted as he struggled to keep Sydni contained. He knew the only reason he was sort of winning was because Sydni wasn't actively resisting, but was just trying to drag him along with her.
“Yes, if you just provide us with a story I can see about getting it into the next anthology,” Tumbles replied.
“Thank you,” Inji said, nodding. “All right, Sydni, why don't you go let him know the good news...”
The homonculus and golemancer tumbled into the dirt as they let go of their captive, and decided to stay there as they watched her begin the the long climb up the colossus body. It was apparent when she reached the stone construct's shoulders, as it visibly flinched when she began yelling in its ear. The colossus began to open its mouth to speak, only for Sydni to slap it back into silence. After another lengthy diatribe, the pair vanished.
“I hope they went back to Theros,” Inji grumbled as he got back to his feet and began to dust himself off. He bent over and offered a hand up to Tumbles. “So we just need to bring a story back? Any story?”
“Well, we would prefer it to be a fairly tame one,” Tumbles answered. “There are children who read these things.”
“Yeah, I'll see if I can keep that in mind,” Inji said. He gave the tiny servant one last nod. “All right then, give me a few weeks and I'll drop something off. I'll see you then.”
With that farewell he vanished into the aether.
Tumbles waved goodbye to the empty air, then turned around just in time to catch the last of the titan once again disappearing beneath the garden. Har was frowning as he approached his servant. “Do you have any idea who those people were?”
“I am afraid not,” Tumbles said. He shook his head sadly. “I'm afraid they failed to give me their names.”
“Damn it!”
*
Inji stepped out of the stomach churning, mind emptying chaos of the Blind Eternities and straight into an entirely different sort of confusion. Armed hoplites were running up and down the wide streets of Akros, yelling back and forth as they searched for...something. A quick glance told him that Sydni and the Commodore had already been back, though they'd apparently missed their target by a good bit, as the colossus as standing in the middle of a temple which, until a few moments ago, had not been designed with sun roof.
Inji decided that discretion was the better part of not ending up gutted by a spear, and quietly stepped back into an alley...only to freeze as he bounced of something metal. He turned around carefully, and found himself face to face with three identical golems. Each had skin black as night, with stars gleaming across their torso's. Their arms were protected by golden bracers wrought with immaculate detail, and the two in back wielded enormous golden hammers that must have easily weighed hundreds of pounds. Gold was normally too soft to make for a good weapon, but Inji had no doubt that those particular skull crackers would have any problem making short work of him. He risked a quick peek behind him, which only confirmed that two more of the golems had silently appeared to cut him from escaping the alley.
The first golem did not have any weapons in its hands. Its right hand was closed around a small scroll, while its left clutched a thrashing myr by its scrawny neck. It stared at Inji with unblinking eyes for several long seconds, then thrust the scroll towards him.
Inji carefully removed the parchment from the golem's fist and slowly unrolled it. Once it was fully open flames blazed across it, scorching words into existence. Inji's eyes watered as they filled with smoke, but he didn't dare delay in reading the golem's message.
“I do not know why you chose to steal my colossus, but know that it was a dangerous mistake. Only two things keep you from being struck down at this point. First, that you have chosen to return it, and in such a way that make a fool of that egomonger Heliod. Second, this strange creature you left behind intrigues me. The strange metal from which you crafted managed to resist even my best efforts to acquire a sample, a feat not easily accomplished. If you bring me more then you will be forgiven, and perhaps rewarded. If not, then I will find ways of punishing you that would make your darkest nightmares seem like a lover's fancy. Do not think you will escape my wrath, for I know what you are...planeswalker.
-Purphoros”
Inji looked read the scroll a second time, looked up at the golems, then read the scroll a third time. His shoulders sagged in defeat. “Well. Damn.”