Alejandra Albright sat with her son in her lap, beneath the boughs of a sentient tree, and held a conversation about broken magic with a sentient sword.

"I have been examining the workings of the system, such as I am able to in this form," Toraline said from where the sword rested point-down against the side of one of the logs around the fire pit. "And it is…" There came a sound like a whetstone gliding just slightly across steel, and it took Alejandra a second to realize she'd just heard the fairy-sword sigh.

"To say that it has been broken is akin to saying the ocean is slightly over-salted. Lady Alejandra, the System I have known and my ancestors have known all their lives has been shattered. Shattered and patched back together from bailing wire and bad dreams. Take for instance… Ah, Hoolio, if you please…"

"Hoo!" The little owl hopped from where he was perched on Olivia's shoulder and flitted over to land beside the sword, pulling a scroll from Somewhere as he went.

"This, Consul, is the simple 'Legionnaire' class. It was the basest soldier in Caesar's armies, a front-line warrior that had a few basic Arts that utilized nearness to others of its class to become greater in strength and prowess. It is supposed to read something like:

Class; Legionnaire

Rank: 1

Powers:

Hold The Line (3/day)

Bolster Thy Shieldmate (1/day)

Quick March (at will).

"But… Look at this shambles! Hoolio, show them please."

The owl obliged and took the scroll in its beak, turning it around to display the contents to the assembled Albrights. Dinah was sitting between Alejandra and Olivia, who in turn was pressed up against her father's side like she never wanted to leave. Isabel stood behind them, apparently not feeling like sitting. And Lucas, for all his burgeoning teenagerdom, was quite happy to sit in his mother's lap for the nonce as the fairy-turned-sword gave an impromptu lecture on this 'system' thing.

Alejandra leaned in with the rest of them to look at the scroll Hoolio the owl was showing them. It was similar to what Toraline had said, but she also spotted several key differences.

Class: Legionnaire

Rank: **Error**

Powers:

Hold The Line (ERROR, [Fields Of Kumquat] not connected. Interlocks disabled. Alternate [Kumquat] source required. [Margarine] infusions enabled.

The other powers in the scroll had similar wordings, as did others on the subsequent scrolls that the sword asked Hoolio to pull up.

"Hey, that whole 'margarine' thing is on my Profession scroll too," Lucas said, pulling his scroll from the Somewhere and flapping it out for the others to see.

"Yes. I believe that to be a mistranslation, a result of the breakdown of the System's natural translation guidelines. I see it written as '[margarine]', which if I had to guess is not what you all just heard when I said it. But the salient point here is not that the translations are misbehaving–though that is concerning on a different level–but the fact that it is acknowledging the existence of [margarine] on the macro level at all."

"Yeah," Bel said, tossing her hair. "You lost me."

"Those 'coins' you have been utilizing are not, in fact, coins. They are–"

"Motes of power," Olivia said, nodding. "You mentioned that. What does that mean?"

"I do not not know how the laws of physics work on the world you come from, Consul, but on Seroco it is impossible to create or destroy energy or matter. You may only convert."

"Newton's third law!" Lucas piped up. "Hey, we learned that in class a couple weeks ago!"

"Then you were on your way to a failing grade, brother," Olivia said, smirking, "because that's the 'law of conservation of matter'. Newton had nothing to do with that one."

"What? But Taylor's notes said…" Lucas's mouth snapped shut an instant too late.

Alejandra raised an eyebrow and looked down at her son. "And just why were you reading Taylor's notes and not your own, Mijo?"

"Hey look, a big monster that we can fight as a distraction!" Luc said, jabbing a finger.

And it was testament to their new circumstances that everyone flinched, just briefly, and turned to look in the direction he was pointing.

"There are no monsters here", the trees said, rustling in an almost indignant manner. "Haven't I sworn an oath that nothing shall approach you as long as my trunks stand and draw strength from the soil?"

"Um… It doesn't matter why I was reading Taylor's notes because we're in a new world that doesn't have physics class?" Luc tried again, pasting an unconvincing look of innocence on his face.

Alejandra turned the dial on her Mom Gaze up to about a Seven and aimed it square at her son.

Lucas squirmed. "Okay look, it was just the one time."

"Fifth time," Olivia said with the malicious honesty of a girl getting her little brother into hotter water.

"But it was for important stuff!" Lucas said, starting to sweat now. "I was-"

"Down at the beach with Lisa and Tommy," Isabel cut in, grinning in that wicked kind of way older sisters have. "Riding on the new jet skis their parents bought them."

"I only did that once!" Lucas shot back, glaring at his treacherous sibling.

"Oh? And then what were the other times?" Alejandra asked. In truth, it didn't really matter. But… But she saw her children bickering like siblings again, and she saw amusement on her husband's face, and she felt that same amusement in her own chest. It was… It was normal. And normal was something to be treasured right now.

"Pstn pics 'f kbng." The words were muttered so softly that everyone–including the tree–leaned in to try and catch what he was saying.

"Little louder, bud," Matty said with a grin. "I don't think we quite caught that."

Lucas heaved the deep sigh every child gives when they know they're not going to be allowed to let the matter drop gracefully and would instead have to fall back on the distasteful tactic of total honestly.

"I was printing out pictures of El Kabong on the school printers and posting them around the neighborhood," he said, his cheeks burning.

Everyone blinked.

"Who the heck is El Kabong?" Olivia asked, staring at her little brother.

"Wait, wasn't he that Rocky and Bullwinkle villain?" Dinah said, her face scrunching up. "The one with the accent and the moustache?"

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"No, that was Snively Whiplash," Isabel said, frowning. "Or wait… Which one? There were two of them on that show, weren't there?"

"Boris Badenov," Matty supplied in a spectacular display of unhelpfulness. "He was the one with the," and here her husband put on a ridiculously bad Russian accent, "fiendish plan."

"So who the heck is El Kabong?" Olivia asked again.

"He's a horse guy from the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons," Lucas said, cheeks still aflame.

"Wait," Alejandra blinked, getting drawn in despite herself. "I thought that was Quickdraw McGraw? The one who traveled around with… Was it Poncho? The little cow boy?"

"No no, Pancho was Don Quixote's sidekick, wasn't he?" Matty asked, frowning now as well. "Or wait, am I thinking of Pancho Villa?"

"I miss the internet," Bel said, rolling her eyes.

"El Kabong is Quickdraw McGraw's superhero alias!" Luc blurted out finally. "He wears a mask and a black hat and he hits people with a guitar!"

"Ohhhhhhhhh," said everyone else in the clearing all at once.

"So wait, who's the little cow boy then?" Alejandra asked.

"He's a donkey and his name is Baba Looey," Luc said through clenched teeth.

"Oh well now it makes sense," Dinah said, nodding.

"So why were you putting pictures of El McGraw up around the neighborhood?" Alejandra asked, turning her Mom Gaze back on her hapless son.

"B'cause… It was funny?" Luc squirmed under the gaze.

"Oh, I get it now," Olivia said, snapping her fingers. "A girl put you up to it, right? Who was it? Was it Tanya? Or Emily?"

"I… am confused," the tinny voice of Toraline said into the awkward flame-cheeked silence. "I had thought you wanted information on how the System functions… Or at least, how it once functioned. Was I incorrect in this assessment?"

"No," Alejandra said with a sigh. "This is just a coping mechanism, where we cling to something familiar in order to deal with the incredible amount of strangeness that has been thrown at us in a very short period of time."

"Ah. Caesar had similar tendencies. He would speak to himself in a mirror for hours on end. Looking back on it, I can see how he might have been using it to process various emotions. Shall I wait for you to finish before continuing?"

"No," Matty said. "No, I think we're done."

"Yes," Alejandra agreed. "Lucas, you are grounded for one week when we get back."

"What? But I didn't–"

"Would you like to make it two weeks, young man?"

All her kids stared at her with various expressions of disbelief.

"Mom… You do know we're probably stuck here forever, right?" Olivia said slowly.

"Si," she said too easily. "But tu papa and I will still be looking for ways to make that a lie. And if we do succeed in returning to earth, then there will be consequences for disobeying our rules. However, given our… Uh…" she stopped and groped for a word before turning to Matty for help.

"Unique set of circumstances," her husband supplied with a grin.

"Si. What he said. Given that, it would be foolish and unfair of me to ground you now. Especially since we will need all hands on deck to make sure we get through all this safely."

"Y'know what? Fine," Lucas threw up his hands. "Cool. I'm grounded if we get back. Can we please go back to talking to the sword now?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea." Olivia apparently decided to let her brother off the hook for now. "You were talking about conservation of matter, and how it applies to the coins?"

"So you are aware of the basic principles. Very good. In that case, I will state it as simply as I can. The 'coins' are physical manifestations of the energy by which the System, in its unbroken form, feeds itself and powers the effects of the various classes, professions, and callings attached to it.

"In… The past… The system would collect this energy automatically from the territories it was linked to. I do not know the exact ratios of time-to-energy, nor do I know how exactly it collected it. Caesar was more knowledgeable on that front than I. He had made a study of it. Suffice to say, there were some portions of New Rome that produced a greater crop of energy than others, and Caesar prized these locations above all others. In many of them, he established colonies and planted a Kel'Darshein sapling to protect them."

"But the system obviously isn't collecting them anymore," Olivia said, pulling one of her coins from the Somewhere. "Because they show up pretty much whenever any of us does stuff. Working on the Dilligaf, killing monsters, anything that involves effort, kinda thing."

"I… Am not completely certain, but I have a guess as to why. And it goes back to the conservation of matter. Without the System drawing on the energies to feed it, that energy still exists in potentia. And it must have built up over centuries or more, given the state of the world as I can see it currently. Which means that… yes, it will revert to its original… programming, for lack of a better term, and become harvestable through action. And because there is not a system to harvest it, it seeks for the next outlet. And Sojourners are known to it, have utilized it for centuries past."

"So it really does power everything," Dinah said, scratching her head. "Huh, how about that. But like, so what? I mean, this doesn't really seem all that earth-shattering, does it? It just means that instead of the system collecting power and then transferring it to us, we collect it ourselves, right?"

"That is the bare gist of it, yes," Toraline said, quivering slightly where the sword rested against the log. "But the 'earth-shattering' implications are… No, I see you lack the necessary background to truly grasp them. Allow me then.

"When Caesar first arrived on Seroco, the System was a living breathing being. Its avatar swore its service to Caesar, and through it was Caesar able to construct Rome Eternal and gift power to his legions to go forth and conquer."

"Okay yeah, I figured it had to be something like that," Olivia said, frowning. "I mean, I really didn't think that a random world in the universe was going to just spontaneously generate Latin words for stuff."

"Caesar's language, culture, beliefs, were all transferred to the subjects he ruled over through the System. He merely had to speak to the System, and the system itself would undertake to make his wishes reality as much as it was able. There were limitations, of course. Our System was of Conservation, of cultivating the energy of the world and gathering it as it grew to. And from that power flowed the Skills and Arts of the Empire. It was how the System had functioned since time immemorial.

"But clearly, something has happened to the old System. I do not know… I fear my lord may have enacted some grand failsafe plan when his enemies proved too powerful even for him to overcome. At the last, when the foemen were storming our shores… But that was a long time ago, it seems. At any rate. The system I have known my entire life is dead and rotting. I can ascertain that much simply from brushing against the remnants of its power."

"I dunno," Lucas said, looking down at his hands. "It's doing pretty good for a dead thing. I mean, it's giving us enough power to survive, isn't it?"

"I do not believe so, no."

Everyone blinked at that.

"Wait, what?" said Olivia, leaning forward. "What are you talking about?"

"I have spent the last several hours examining your bonds with the power of this world, and those you share with the system… Well, better to be said, the bonds you have forged with the remnants of the system that once lived in this world."

"The animal messengers," Matty said. "And our class abilities. Those kinds of things, you mean."

"And the Consul connections, yes. Among other things. These things are all… Pieces of what once was, but they are not the whole of the System's power. In truth, I do not believe it possible to connect to the System beyond what you have already accomplished."

"What!? Olivia shot to her feet and glared daggers at the sword. "But… But that's not right! I mean, look at us, we've been doing nothing but connecting to the System since we got here! Dad got his Calling, Luc got his Profession! The Consul abilities, Mom's calling, Bel's class… The System has to be connecting to us, otherwise how are we–" she stopped mid-sentence, and her eyes bugged out.

"Who?" said Hoolio, fluttering down out of the branches where he'd been perched to alight on Olivia's shoulder.

"Forgive me, I misspoke. I do not believe it is possible for you to connect to the System as you perceive. It is a dead thing, decaying and dormant. The pieces you have been interacting with are… Think of it as the last twitches of a dead corpse. Motion imitating true life but unable to actually live. In truth, to the senses I currently possess, many of the things you have done do require a connection to the system, but currently none exist between it and you."

"I gave you an achievement," Olivia said to Alejandra, her eyes as round as Hoolio's.

"A what?" Alejandra asked, looking back and forth between her daughter and the sword. "What exactly is going on here?"

"You are not connecting to the System, Consul Alejandra Albright. You, and your family, are slotting into spaces from which the system has been excised and are harvesting the motes necessary to power those spaces."

"I think what the sword is saying," Olivia said, still staring only now she was starting to smile as well. "Is we're not actually connecting to the system like I thought we were. I think she's saying we're becoming the System."

"It is not quite that simple."

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