The office buildings that she visited previously on the Isle of Eyes were missing. Keylynn dared to hope that their assessment would go smoothly after their rough start. The missing office buildings told her how foolish her hope was. Did she really think that Ody wouldn’t have interfered with their assessment? She read printouts of the emails that he sent demanding her termination. She should have known better.

  “Well, shit,” Barnibus said, breaking their muted silence. “Any of you spoiled brats have any connections with this quest?” He turned to her collection of trainees.

  “That’s not a fair question to ask them,” Keylynn hissed at him. “Are you privy to your parents’ work? I know I wasn’t.”

  “Let them speak for themselves,” he retorted, eyeing them and crossing his arms.

  Demetra crossed her arms and glowered at him. “We all know I don’t, so stop staring at me.”

  Zukyov shrugged. “Haven’t spoken to my father directly for years. The last I heard from my mother was three months ago. She sent me a letter of pleasantries with a dash of guilt.”

  “Dad’s in finance, and Mom does something with policies. Don’t think they care about quests, and can’t honestly see this one being theirs if they did,” Tsunami said, flashing a look to Inferno, who nodded in agreement.

  Everyone turned to Ragna, who shrugged it off. “What? Just because my father is the Chief Quest Execution Officer doesn’t mean he has his toes and fingers in every quest. Besides, I really don’t think you want his involvement.”

  Tsunami and Inferno both rolled their eyes at his response.

  “Worth a shot, wasn’t it?” Barnibus shrugged.

  Dauven let out an irritated exhale through his flared nostrils. “Does anyone have any productive ideas?”

  “I can send an email to Nessa, because she was the float HR representative that helped me last,” Keylynn volunteered, pulling out her matrix tablet.

  Dauven nodded. “While you do that, I’ll try calling the storymancer and primary HR representative.”

  She was pleased that Barnibus seemed to have thought of everything with her matrix tablet. She could see everything on the screen perfectly clear. She navigated to her email and found her forwarded authorization form from Nessa.

  To: Nessa

  From: Keylynn

  Subject: Return Visit

  Hello Nessa, This is Keylynn, the HR consultant who concluded case file HR-600-1I-N2B-C.

  I hope this message finds you in excellent spirits.

  I thank you again for your help with my previous work that brought me to the Isle of Eyes.

  I find myself back on the Isle of Eyes conducting the requested assessment, with an exceptionally large assessment team. I have suspicions that our storymancer is interfering with our assessment. Dauven, the team lead for this assessment, has reached out several times and received no replies. I am not surprised, as cowardice is expected from those who cannot call you crude names to your face. We are currently on one of the illusionary copies, the Isle of Eyes, which, as you can imagine, is not conducive to our assessment. If you are able to, can you intervene by sending us to the main Isle of Eyes or grant access to the digital files? I understand if you are unable to intervene on this matter.

  I bid you a fortuitous day.

  She received an unexpectedly rapid response. She doubted that Nessa had the luxury of sitting at her desk waiting to respond to emails. It was an automated message that said that Nessa was no longer an associated HR representative of Ody’s Journey. Keylynn's email has been forwarded to the next appropriate representative.

  That wasn’t as productive as she hoped. Dauven was still on his comm while he paced slowly. It seems he was having the same amount of luck that she was.

  “No luck?” Gwen asked as she handed her a cookie. Keylynn took it happily and bit into it. The tastes of a soft oatmeal raisin and blueberry cookie filled her mouth.

  She shook her head in response. “Nessa no longer works here. I’ve been forwarded on to someone who does, but who that may be and if they will help has yet to be seen,” she explained in between bites. “Do you have any more?”

  Gwen smirked. “I never go anywhere without an endless supply of cookies.” She gave Keylynn a small bag of perfectly moist oatmeal cookies.

  “So how are you finding the trainees?” She asked her, taking a bite of another cookie. Ragna may have been right to deem this a cursed assessment.

  “Demetra is a lot,” Gwen stated before pulling out one of her icing-covered sugar cookies. “Inferno is young. Ragna, I think, is the most self-aware of them.” She chewed on her cookie between each statement speculatively. “Overall I think you have a team; it’s curious that Inferno and Tsunami overlap in specialty though. And Zukyov is miserable.”

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Keylynn frowned as she took another cookie out of the bag. She really should be saving them for later, but they were addictive in this moment. “What are you meaning by him being unhappy?” She cast a look over at Zukyov. He didn’t look dour at all. He looked like himself: stoic and reserved.

  Gwen scowled at Keylynn. “Really? Don’t you see that he's miserable? Look at him. He’s making himself seem small, he doesn’t engage in conversation, and he’s always alone. The only time he looked alive was when he made that stew. It wasn’t even that good, and we all know it, but he seemed so proud and happy to have made it. Demetra went out of her way to appear as if she liked it. We all know she didn’t.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “For you? Help him cope, be someone he can trust, and listen to him. For him? Career change—that boy should be a chef.”

  Keylynn nodded and finished her last cookie before putting the bag away. Her bag of cookies will help her more later. “Thank you for your words and your cookies. I think it’s time I see how they all work together.”

  She approached her team, finding them all looking bored. Tsunami and Inferno were kicking a rock back and forth. Demetra was scowling at her comms device while Ragna watched her amused. True to Gwen’s observation, Zukyov stood a little separate from the rest of the group. “While we are waiting for Dauven to reach someone who can help, I would like you to assess the cave and the quest.”

  Demetra looked up from her comms device. “Is this some sort of test? I don’t see the rest of your old team starting to assess anything.”

  “Consider this a test, one you will learn from, unless you’d prefer to stay behind while the others conduct this assessment,” Keylynn offered. She hoped that the appearance of choice would help Demetra be less combative.

  “Fine,” she said, sliding her comms into her pocket. “Ragna, you handle HR and the paperwork. Tsunami and Inferno, you two will be fact-checking and combat quest testing, if there is any. And Zukyov, I need you tackling structural analysis of the cave and safety assessment,” she ordered, taking immediate leadership, exactly as Keylynn was hoping she would.

  Keylynn walked behind her team, watching as they prepared for their assessment. Tsunami chose to focus on narrating what they should see of the cave for Ragna to make note of while Inferno walked ahead scouting, ready to fight anything that greeted them. Zukyov had a clipboard in hand as he walked behind Ragna. Ragna had his clipboard out and chose to walk behind Demetra.

  Everything about the cave was the same, except for the cyclops in the cage; that was definitely different. She heard the creature roaring and rattling against the bars before she saw him. Slowly details of his face emerged from the sea of white, revealing a very irate Silas who looked as if he wanted nothing more than to grind everyone's bones.

  White foam oozed out of the corners of his mouth as Demetra approached him. “I understand that you are very cross and angry.” She paused, looking him over again nervously. “But if you answer our questions, we can leave you to eating the next unsuspecting adventurer.”

  Ragna shot Keylynn a questioning gaze. She kept her face blank, hoping to give nothing away. They won’t learn if she simply tells them what’s happening.

  The illusionary Silas didn’t stop his roars or rattling the bars while Demetra spoke. It was as if he couldn’t hear her.

  “You didn’t identify us yet. He might think that we are adventurers,” Zukyov murmured as he jotted down notes about the cave on his clipboard. Keylynn couldn’t get Gwen’s words out of her mind. Zukyov looked miserable. Out of everyone on the team, he was the only one who didn’t seem to care about the raging cyclops. He didn’t even stop to look at the cute sheep.

  “Right,” Demetra nodded and sucked in a deep calming breath. “Silas, I am Demetra of the Royal…uhh…assessment,” she paused, exhaling sharply. “Department and Adventurer Welfare Council,” she rushed out all in one breath with a triumphant smirk before she continued. “And I am here with my team,” she gestured towards them all, “to conduct an annual assessment of your quest.”

  The cyclops either didn’t hear her or didn’t care.

  “Yeah, I’m not dealing with that. I’m going to lead these cute sheep out of the cave,” Inferno announced.

  “I’ll observe that I have all I need here,” Zukyov said, joining him. He can’t be that miserable; he offered to go with Inferno.

  “Talk about a letdown, the book promises an epic battle between an irate cyclops and a group of heroes needing to survive, and all we get is a one-eyed rabid dog in a cage,” Tsunami said, reading from the book.

  “It says here that he’s essential to the quest, but I fail to see how,” Ragna chimed in.

  “Maybe we just need to get him out of the cage,” Demetra mused. Tsunami and Ragna both looked at her, mouths agape. That wasn’t what Keylynn expected her to say.

  “Only if you want to fight that thing on your own,” Ragna retorted. “I figured out the test. Everything is an illusion, including the cyclops. He doesn’t have the brain to respond to us.”

  Demetra turned to Keylynn, her eyes pleading that Ragna was right.

  “Ragna is correct. You were able to practice and learn firsthand the limitations of assessing an illusionary quest,” Keylynn explained.

  “Tsunami, go join your brother and have fun with the sheep. We are done here,” Demetra announced.

  Tsunami dashed out of the cave. Demetra and Ragna followed at a much more relaxed saunter than a dash.

  “You could have just told us why illusionary copies of quests were pointless to assess,” Demetra stated.

  “They aren’t entirely pointless. You can gain a grasp of the quest itself from the adventurer's viewpoint. Besides, learning by doing is better than learning by being told. And you needed the practice,” Keylynn explained. Demetra yearned to be the leader but lacked the confidence. Ragna was the natural leader of the group yet lacked the ambition.

  Outside of the cave, Tsunami and Inferno were in the middle of combat with the sheep-taurs. It was clear to her that the real challenge of the herd of sheep-taurs was the overall number of them, not the size and power of each one.

  “Were you able to get in touch with anyone?” She asked, standing beside Dauven.

  He snorted, “The head of sanitation.”

  “Slimes or cubes?” She asked curiously. She was fascinated by quests and office sanitation as it was handled by clusters of slimes or squares of gelatinous cubes. They are released nightly to travel across every surface, sanitizing it.

  “Slimes, blue ones, if you were curious.” Dauven answered.

  “I’ve heard that slimes can be harder to train and handle than the cubes. I think it’s something about their bodies lacking the same structure and life spans,” she mused.

  “I assume you contacted the ferry driver.” She changed the topic.

  “I did. He is having one of the adventurer vessels brought and will take a team to the original Isle of Eyes,” he answered simply. Most of the sheep-taurs were lying on the ground, not moving.

  “I would like to take my team with me on the vessel. I think they need to work more as a team. Demetra wishes to be a team lead, and she needs the experience. As for the others, they may not have learned that a team agrees on when to release the bees. Safer to learn that now while I am around than later when I am not,” she stated. Normally she just does what she thinks is best and deals with Dauven afterwards. She needs to be a better version of herself.

  “Are you sure? I thought splitting up the teams would be easier for you to adapt to your new role,” he said.

  “It’s what they need that matters, not what I need. Is that not how an appropriate leader should be thinking?” She asked, arching an eyebrow. She has been slowly catching up on her leadership training. She was pleased that a large section of it overlaps with what her father told her about being a leader.

  “I suppose it is,” he agreed. “That being said, should you find yourself face-to-face with Ody, I will support you in your use of the bees.” He stated shocking her. Not once has he ever given her permission to release her bees on a storymancer.

  “I will be delighted to discover if he has an allergy or not.”

  ?─????????─?

  Life isn’t some kind of grand destiny.

  It’s just a collection of decisions shaped by the moments that happen around us.

  Of Moon and Magic follows a silver-haired girl. Her mana was weak, but that never dulled her hunger for magic.

  We follow her steps. We weigh her choices. We sit with her loneliness. In a world where magic is everything, war is constant, and morality is little more than a neglected guideline.

  Will she become just another cog in the machine?

  Or will she be the one to end it all?

  Only one way to find out.

  Point of Interest:

  Update Schedule

  ?─????????─?