Royal Road
SomethingOtherThanRain
Re: Dragonize (LitRPG) by Kuiper
Chapter 58: The Map Room
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As we stepped through the earthen archway leading to Anne's map room, my eyes struggled to adjust. The walls were lined with glowstone that cast an ethereal light, illuminating not just the ground and walls, but dozens of objects that hung suspended from the ceiling, clods of dirt that each seemed to be covered with small ants. Upon closer inspection, I realized that some of them had segments that seemed to hang by some kind of thread.
Anne led the way to a dirt pillar in the corner of the room, and with a grand sweep of her front leg, willed the ants to disperse, revealing that what I had initially perceived as nothing more than a pillar of soil was covered in what appeared to be a network of threads interwoven with earth and stone.
"What's this?" I asked.
Octavia spoke before Anne could respond. "It's a loom of landscapes," she said. Octavia's tone sounded almost reverent. "One of many, I assume."
"Yes," said Anne, her antennae pointing at Octavia. "I'm delighted that you understand so quickly."
Octavia took a tentative step toward the pillar. "May I?"
"Of course," said Anne.
Octavia raised one of her eight legs, pointing at a rock cluster near the middle. "We're…here. Right?"
"Yes, yes!" said Anne.
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"This big part here at the bottom is the Shimmergrove, right?" said Octavia. She pointed at the base, and a cavity that, through the translucent spread of thread covering, appeared to be decorated with twigs. "Those are trees. Notice the way they bend toward the walls, just like the trees in the Shimmergrove. And this…" Her spidery claw traced a path along the surface. "This is the path we took to get here. This is a recent addition to the map. So that would make this part at the end the place where we first met Anne, and this connected chamber where we are right now."
I looked at the map, trying to comprehend it. "That does look like the tunnel we followed, now that you mention it. I guess you have a better sense of the physical space than I do."
"I've spent a lot of time down here," said Octavia.
"As have I," said Anne. Her antennae canted forward, pointing at me. "You seem to be a neophyte, Drew."
"I–"
"Drew's young, but also a fast learner," said Octavia, interrupting me. "What I'm curious about is these threads you have running through the three-dimensional map. You don't…spin them, do you?"
Anne deep, throaty laugh filled the chamber as her antennae shook. "No, my dear. I simply use what I find in my environment. There are certain plants that are useful for this sort of thing. The hard part isn't the thread itself, but the resin coating that I use to prevent it from decaying, which is a tad harder to extract from trees than the fibers themselves."
Octavia's unblinking eyes seemed to light up at that. "Oh, I'd be curious to hear what you used. I find that underground, things can decay slower. I think it's mostly due to the lack of direct sunlight."
As my spider companion and the ant queen discussed the finer points of material selection and subterranean building, I allowed my attention (and eyes) to wander. Anne's map room seemed to be filled with 3D maps like the one she'd shown us, judging from the various sculpture-like shapes that filled the space, but every one of them seemed to be covered with unmoving ants, obscuring what lay underneath.
Was this how her map room usually looked – with everything covered up? Or was this what Anne had meant by 'preparing the map room for our arrival,' hiding what she was working on from prying eyes? I scanned several of the resting ants, hunting for some clue that might indicate whether or not this was their 'default' position. If their legs left indentations in the soil…
"What do you think, Drew?" said Octavia, suddenly snapping me out of introspection.
"Sorry," I said. "I got lost in my own thoughts for a moment there. What were you saying?"
Anne pointed to a specific point on her map. "This is the place I'm sending you to look for materials. Specifically, this area should contain embercores. On that note, I believe this will be helpful."
Quest: 'Locate an embercore'
Description: Touch an embercore
Reward: 1 exp
Accept / Reject?
I accepted.
"Wonderful. Now, I said, the embercores are in...this general area." Anne pointed to the same part of the map. "It should be safe, as long as you keep your eyes open."
"Any hostiles?" said Octavia.
"No hostiles," said Anne. "Merely some challenging terrain that poses some difficulty for my ants. I find it relatively straightforward to issue commands which they are able to execute as long as they remain within the confines of my tunnels. However, here..." She traced a line to a section of the map, a void in the shape of a bowl with a question mark etched onto its surface. "It leads into a vast cavern, and for reasons unknown, my ants seem to lose their way here. I lose communication with them, and the majority fail to return. I'm uncertain if it's due to some form of barrier, or perhaps a chasm that they are unable to traverse."
"Not to question your understanding of things," I said, "but you just confidently told us that there weren't any enemies down there. Yet this seems to be a place where your ants are getting lost and never returning. How can you be so sure that the thing that causes you to keep losing ants is an issue of terrain?"
"I instructed them to dispatch a signal should they come across any other creatures," said Anne.
"What if your ants were ambushed?" I asked skeptically. "Just because they didn't see a creature doesn't mean it wasn't there. In fact, I'd be even more paranoid about going down to a place where we don't know what the danger is."
"They don't all die simultaneously" said Anne. "If a single ant is killed in an ambush, presumably the others would see if a creature killed them and send a signal back."
"And," I asked, "how do you know the creature didn't devour all the ants before they could report back?"
"Because some of them did report back," said Anne, "and didn't report seeing any creatures. And some of them are capable of instantaneous communication."
"How's that?" I asked.
"Why don't I show you?" said Anne. "In fact – here, this will be useful. I think you two will want a way to alert me if you run into any trouble, yes?"
Quest: 'Cry for help'
Description: Say 'help'
Reward: 1 exp
Accept / Reject?
I accepted the quest.
"Wonderful," said Anne. "Now I can send you out to gather embercores for me. If either of you runs into any problems, you can say the magic word, and I'll know that something is wrong."
"That is a handy trick," I said to Octavia, recalling the time she'd tasked me with saying 'hello.' "Why haven't we been using something like this for instantaneous communication?"
"I'm not the best quest-giver," said Octavia. "My range doesn't extend very far."
"Fortunately, mine does," said Anne. "As I've told you before, quest-giving occupies nearly all of my time. And given that most of my day is taken up with giving quests to my little ant servants, I've invested quite a bit of effort into making myself the best quest-giver I can be, at least when it comes to using it as a communication method. Among other things, I can be alerted to the completion of quests even when they're a great distance away. I'm not omniscient, but my range certainly extends…at least this far," she said, tracing the distance on the map from her chamber to the point she had designated as the embercore excavation zone.
"I'm still not too sure about this," I said. "I do count myself smarter than an ant, but whatever it was that happened to them could happen to us."
"If that's your worry, then you need only observe," said Anne. She pointed to a precise point in the area she'd marked with a question mark. "My ants always get as far as here before getting lost. Up to that point, they seem to have no trouble making their way back safely. In fact, why don't I have a small group of my ants lead you there? You can observe their behavior and report back to let me know how exactly they are getting stuck."
"You don't mind?" I asked.
Anne gestured to the walls and the hundreds of ants that surrounded us. "Losing a tiny number of ants matters very little to me, especially if it gets me new information. So yes, my ants will lead you there."
"Thanks," I said. "That'll be a big help."
Quest complete: "A call for help." Reward: 1 exp.
I blinked before realizing. "Oh. I said the magic word, didn't I? Sorry about that."
"No need to apologize," said Anne. "That was poor quest design on my part. Here, let's try this instead."
Quest: 'A plea for help'
Description: Say 'help me, Anne'
Reward: 1 exp
Accept / Reject?
Before accepting the quest, I said the words aloud, rehearsing the line. After accepting the quest, I repeated the phrase in my head several times, trying to train it into me like a reflex.. Help me, Anne.
Anne turned to Octavia. "Perhaps we should do the same for you, my dear Octavia. Who knows what circumstance might cause you to say the word help without meaning to?"
"What's wrong with saying help?" Octavia said. A moment later, an expression of understanding blossomed on her face. "Okay, got it," Octavia said.. "I can call you by name if we have any problems. One other question. Can your ants carry messages back with them? It might be useful if we could make it out to the place where all of the ants got lost, and send one of them back with a message so that they could communicate the situation to you."
"Sadly, no," said Anne. "It's impossible for them to communicate much that isn't a binary yes-or-no that I instructed them about beforehand."
"That's unfortunate," said Octavia. Her words expressed disappointment, but there was something about the look in her eyes that I recognized as something closer to satisfaction, or perhaps anticipation. "I'll be sure to take detailed mental notes so we can expand your map when we get back."
"Wonderful, wonderful," said Anne. "This is precisely what I'd hoped for. Now, as I mentioned,: the area I'd expect you to find embercores is at this point." Anne tapped a more distant part of the map, a short distance beyond the question mark that she'd marked as the place where the ants got lost; this part of the map was just a solid clod of dirt. "Obviously, the map past that point lacks accuracy. However, now that you're both enlisted as my quest-bearers, I shall be notified should you succeed in making contact with an embercore. Once I receive that alert, I will begin making preparations for your return.
"Preparations?" I said.
"Indeed," said Anne. "I've already informed you, have I not? Embercore and glowstone can be very reactive if they come into contact. It is of the utmost importance that I establish safety measures for your return. The path will be illuminated, but…it will be dimmer on the way back. I presume that won't be a problem for you two."
"It won't," said Octavia, before I could respond.
I studied the map. "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to remember all that."
"That's okay," said Octavia. "I can remember it."
"Really?" I said. "Because if you're not confident, we could always –"
"I'll remember," said Octavia. "Trust me. I have a very good memory for things like this."
My mind went back to Octavia's complex network of tunnels – back before the elder dragon had smashed them – and the amount of mental capacity that must have been required to keep track of where she'd laid web traps.
"Alright," I said. "I'll trust your spatial memory."
"Excellent!" said Anne. "Let me prepare your escort, and you can be on your way."
"Hold on," I said. "Can I bring up one thing I've been meaning to mention?"
"Of course," said Anne. "What's on your mind, little dragon?"
"It's actually about that title, 'little dragon,'" I said. "I'm kind of on the precipice of ascension. I kind of have been for awhile, but then there was the incident with the storm and the tunnels collapsing after the –"
Octavia cut me off. "Yes, no need to bore Anne with the details, I think she was aware of the tunnel collapse, which led to fire ants breaching the barrier into the Shimmergrove."
"Right," I said. "Anyway, I'm going to ascend soon."
"And congratulations!" said Anne. "I wonder what new directions your ascension will take you in."
"Yes," I said. "Well, about that. See, I imagine that being a 'little dragon' is a temporary condition. And if I am to, er, 'grow up,' it might compromise my ability to navigate these tunnels of yours."
"Ah, I see," said Anne. "Well, then. Good that you are still small then, yes?"
"I suppose so," I said. "But what happens if I ascend while I'm down there?"
Anne considered that for a moment. "The only situation I could foresee you doing an unplanned ascension is if you ended up getting into fights down there, and as I said, there are no hostiles. Thus, no risk of you unexpectedly growing up." Anne rubbed her chin, as if a new idea were occurring to her. "How close are you to ascending? You said you were on the precipice?".
"I guess I may have overstated it a bit," I said. "But I might end up gaining enough experience for ascension if I fought a group of animals the size of hyenas."
As the word 'hyenas' left my mouth, Octavia shot me a panicked glance, then seemed to settle a bit. Yes, Octavia, I haven't forgotten that 'hyena' was one of our code words. That's why I referred to them specifically as animals.
"Well, I doubt very much you'll find creatures of that size so deep down. It's not as if there would be an ecosystem capable of sustaining them, no?"
"...I…I don't know," I said. "I've seen the Shimmergrove. You never know when an entire subterranean ecosystem might be sitting under your nose, waiting to be discovered."
"Well, if you do find an ecosystem of that size, then you can turn back and let me know, yes?" said Anne. "There's no problem."
"But what if…"
"You're not going to get stuck down there, my dear," said Anne. "If you do, I can always find a way for my ants to dig you out."
"Oh," I said. "That's a possibility?"
"If it will make you feel better," said Anne, "let me offer you this assurance."
Quest: 'Emergency excavation request'
Description: Say 'Dig me out, Anne"'
Reward: 1 exp
Accept / Reject?
"Okay," I said. "But how long would that digging take? Are we talking hours or days?"
"It would be a contingency," said Anne. "Not very fast. It would be a day or two. But presumably, you'd have all of your skills as a newly-ascended dragon to defend yourself in the meantime while I worked on constructing larger tunnels for you."
"And presumably," said Octavia, "I'd still be able to relay messages back-and-forth. I don't plan on changing size any time soon."
"Yes, yes," said Anne. "Very good. Have your concerns been sufficiently addressed?"
"I guess so," I said. "You are right; my ascension isn't that likely." I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about that.
"Wonderful," said Anne. "And since you do seem to be one to benefit from a marginal bit of experience, let me make you the following offer: if you can bring me back an embercore, I will ensure your ascension once you're safely returned, at a location of your choosing. I presume you'll want somewhere more spacious."
"Oh, right," I said. "You can give exp through quests."
"Well, yes," said the ant queen. "But I had something else in mind. Experience transfers as quest rewards are…lossy. It costs me more to give the quest than you get from completing it. And I don't wish to enfeeble myself too much. However, I have other ways of giving you experience."
"Such as?"
Several of the ants around me made a clicking sound in response.
"I have my ants, don't I?" said Anne. "Killing them is worth experience to you, isn't it? I can spare a hundred of them, or however many are needed. Choose a spot, and my ants will follow you there, ready to be slain. Devoured too, if you feel the inclination."
"I…uh…thanks," I said. "A hundred ants would definitely do the trick. That's a generous offer."
"Think nothing of it," said Anne. "Now, if your concerns have been sufficiently addressed…Octavia, you understand how to get where you're going, yes?"
"Yes," said Octavia.
"Good," said Anne, leading us to the map room's exit. "Now, bring me an embercore."
---
Active quests: 'Locate an embercore', 'A plea for help', 'Emergency excavation request'
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Royal Road
SomethingOtherThanRain
Re: Dragonize (LitRPG) by Kuiper
Chapter 59: Where Ants Die
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As promised, Anne's armored ant minions led the way down the twisting passages to the zone that she had designated as being rich in embercores.
To my surprise, this tunnel was slightly more spacious than the tunnel that had led us into Anne's ant lair. It wasn't exactly huge, but I didn't have to worry about hitting my head.
"Careful," said Octavia, tapping the ground ahead of me with two of her eight legs as I followed behind. "More loose ground here."
"This?" I swept the ground with my tail and sending a bit of sand flying. "This is nothing."
"Alright," she said. "I'm just saying, the last time we were in an ant-made tunnel like this, you kept tripping –"
"Hold on. 'Kept' tripping? I tripped once, and had zero tripping incidents after that."
"Well, she said, "I'd like to keep it that way."
"Just tell me when we get to the dangerous part," I said.
"What part do you consider to be the dangerous part?" she asked.
"I mean the part where the ants kept dying."
"Okay," said Octavia. "Are you worried?"
"I'm not sure if 'worried' is the word I'd use, but I obviously want to be prepared for whatever is waiting for us down there."
"Hopefully," said Octavia, "there will be an embercore waiting for us."
"By the way," I said, "how do we know that this place Anne is sending us to is going to contain an embercore?"
"We don't know for certain," said Octavia. "She estimated the odds at 80 percent."
"Really?" I said. "I must have missed that part of the conversation. I got kind of distracted by all of the other stuff in the room. Did she mention how she came to that assessment?"
"Something about the depth, and the type of rock there," said Octavia. "The ants carry rocks back, and she analyzes them and tries to extrapolate the surrounding geology. I'm surprised you weren't paying attention when she told us that."
"I guess I was more interested in what she wasn't telling us," I said. "It seemed like she wasn't showing us everything. Lots of her maps were covered up. It seemed deliberate. I wonder what she thought was worth hiding."
Octavia raised a spidery claw to her mouth in the universal sign for 'not so loud.'
"In case you forgot," she whispered, "her ants are escorting us."
"They're not intelligent," I whispered back. "They have limited communication capabilities."
"Maybe that's just what she wants us to think."
"Fair enough," I said. Octavia's hush order did seem a bit paranoid to me, but we did seem to be in agreement that Anne was withholding some potentially important info, and it wouldn't be out of the question for her to lie. If Octavia wanted to play it safe, that was fine with me.
We followed the ants in silence. For the next several minutes, the only sound that filled the tunnel was the sound of claws tapping on the rock floor of the tunnel, until the sound of something else filled the air.
"Is that wind?" I said.
"I'm not sure," she said. "I don't feel a draft, though."
As we continued forward, the sound echoing off the walls of the tunnel grew louder and more recognizable.
"Running water," said Octavia.
"Yes," I said. "White water, from the sound of it. It has to do with flow rate. Turbulent flow conditions –"
"I know what white water rapids are," said Octavia. "Though I've never encountered it here, not during this lifetime. The river that runs through the Shimmergrove is quiet, barely more than a babbling brook compared to this."
By the time we reached the end of the tunnel, the roar of the river had reached an intense din.
I could barely hear Octavia's voice over the sound of the river. "Careful! There's a bit of a drop. Several feet."
I stuck my head out of the tunnel to judge the distance, and felt a fine mist coat the scales of my face. I glanced down, seeing first the rock floor of the chamber, and beyond that, the river that ran through it, several feet wide and frothing white. The spray covered the rock floor of the chamber.
"Don't slip," Octavia called up, as I lowered myself down from the tunnel, hind legs first.
I watched as Anne's ant minions surveyed the area, entering what appeared to be some kind of sentry or 'patrol' mode, scouring the ground. One of the ants wandered up to the edge of the slippery rocks near the river, and appeared to slide for a moment before it got lost in the current.
"Mystery solved," I said. "This is why the ants always get stuck here."
"Seems so," said Octavia. "Do you think there's a way for us to send these ones back home?" She scooped up one of the ants, holding it in her two front claws as it attempted to wriggle free.
Octavia carried the armored ant back to the tunnel, facing it back toward where it had come from, but the ant immediately turned around, scurrying as if being chased by something, until it barreled head-on over the slippery rocks before getting sucked into the river's turbulent flow.
"I think there's a lesson in that," I said.
"Yes," said Octavia. "Don't get too close to the river."
"Well, yes," I said. "But also, the ants only take instructions from Anne. Whatever it was she told them to do, they'll do to the best of their abilities until they get killed. I guess 'avoiding slippery ground' and 'staying away from water' wasn't part of the instructions she gave them."
"She did say they had a survival instinct," said Octavia.
"Apparently, their natural-born survival instincts didn't prepare them for white-water rivers," I said. "Not surprising, considering that they were made to live in a desert."
We watched as two more ants attempted to climb the wall closer to the head of the river. They both kept falling back down to the ground, only making it to a certain height before sliding back down to the bottom. Eventually, one of them strayed close enough to the river that it was hit by a stray splash of water and swept away, swallowed up by the river. The one remaining ant – the last ant of the bunch – continued its attempts to climb the slippery wall, caught in a constant cycle of climbing up and slipping or falling down.
"This is all very interesting," said Octavia. "But it doesn't change what we have to do. As long as we're cultivating an alliance with Anne, our job is to find her an embercore."
"Right," I said. "Got a plan?"
She pointed across the river. "This hollow area extends further in that direction, just like Anne predicted. Assuming the rest of her map was accurate, that's where we'd find the embercore."
"Okay," I said. "How do we cross the river?"
"That," said Octavia, "is a very good question."
I cautiously edged my way up to the river, staying away from the wet and slippery rock around it where the ants had slipped in.
"Looks more than ten feet across," I said.
"I think you're underestimating it by a significant amount," she said. "At least fifteen feet for the river itself. And if you're trying to get a running start to jump across, you're probably not going to want to jump before you get to the slippery part, so add another five or ten feet to that."
I laughed. "I don't think I'm going to try and jump across this river."
"Good," she said. "Let me try something."
Octavia walked up the river toward its source, where the rushing water emerged from a massive hole that didn't reach quite as far as the ceiling. "Here," she said, pointing. "If we can cling to the wall overhanging the river and edge our way across, we'll be golden."
"Do you think that's practical?" I said. "Even if we hang from that part of the wall, we'll be hit by the spray of the river."
"I'm not worried about getting wet," she said.
"It's less the fact that we'd be getting splashed, and more the fact that the wall is getting splashed," I said. "Look. Even the ceiling is wet."
"We won't know until we try," said Octavia.
"Trying could very well result in falling into the river and drowning. I know we're trying to play nice with Anne, but I'm not willing to risk my life for her embercore quest."
"I'll stay safe," she said. "Watch."
Octavia attached a bit of web to the dry portion of the wall further from the river, then fashioned herself a silk harness, almost like a mountain climber getting ready to belay. Then, she began climbing up the dry part of the wall, slowly moving horizontally along the wall until she got to the damp part. At this point, her movements became more slow and deliberate, hunting for claw-holds in the rock, but she ran into the same problem as the ants, sliding down the slippery wall. Fortunately, the taut thread she'd fashioned caused her to swing in an arc away from the river as she slid down, and she landed directly below where she'd affixed her thread to the dry portion of the wall.
"You're right," she said. "It's not just the slickness of the wet rock. The rock close to the river doesn't have enough places to grip. There's not enough rough edges."
"Erosion will do that," I said. "It's the same reason that the stones you find in riverbeds are always smooth."
"And the water makes it hard for me to attach any kind of secure webbing," she said. "It won't stick to the rock. I can't make a bridge for us."
I nodded.
"So, what do we do?" she asked. "If we can't climb across, and it's too wide to jump, then how do we get to the other side?"
"Well," I said. It is too far to jump, but…that does give me another idea."
"What," said Octavia. "You're going to try to grow wings and fly across?"
"Not that," I said. "Though the thought had entered my mind. But no, if I'm going to grow wings and learn how to use them, I'd prefer for my test flight not to be in a location where falling means getting swept away by the current, either to drown or get dashed upon the rocks. I was thinking more about the idea of inertia. A running start might not be enough, but maybe a machine of some sort…"
"You mean like a catapult?" said Octavia.
"Not exactly like a catapult," I said. "The ceiling is probably too low for an arc. But there are probably mechanical solutions that could generate enough horizontal momentum to fling an object across the river."
Octavia shook her head. "If we're going to talk about building some device for crossing the river, my first thought would be to build a bridge, rather than trying to slingshot you across."
"Either way," I said, "I don't think we're going to be getting to the other side without Anne's help."
"What are her ants going to do for us?" asked Octavia.
"I don't think her minions can help," I said. "At least not directly. But getting to the other side of the river is going to require an engineering solution of some sort, and that seems like Anne's wheelhouse. You saw her map room. She's a builder. Not only that, but she has access to building materials. She can figure out a way to get us to the other side."
Octavia looked back toward the tunnel we'd come from. "You're saying it's time for us to head back? Anne sent us to get an embercore. I'm not sure about how she's going to feel if we return to her empty-handed."
"But we're not coming back empty-handed," I said. "We're researchers, and we've gathered lots of new information. We solved the mystery of why her ants keep getting lost. And giving her more data that she can use to draw a more accurate map would be very useful to her, I imagine."
"Oh," said Octavia. "We're doing that?"
I looked at her, slightly confused. "Why wouldn't we?"
"I thought we'd just deliver the embercore," said Octavia. "I didn't realize that we were helping her build her next map."
"One of those seems significantly easier than the other," I said. I tapped my head. "We already know everything we need to make a field report right now."
"Yes," said Octavia. "But what do you suppose she's going to do with those improved maps that she assembles with our help? Remember how she was talking about 'expanding her domain?' If we're still worried about her becoming some kind of villainous conqueror, maybe giving her new maps about all of the new lands she can explore isn't the best idea."
"Oh," I said. "You're still worried about that? I didn't realize that this was going to be a non-starter for you."
"No, it's not like that," said Octavia. "If giving her an accurate picture of the river we found is what's needed to defeat the fire ants, then I'm willing to do it. Just…let's not forget that's what we're doing, okay? We're going to a wannabe-conqueror, and giving her a more accurate map of all the lands that there are for her to conquer. Maybe it's still worth it in the long run, but remember what we're giving her."
I nodded "I see your point. I guess I wasn't fully thinking through what we might want to strategically withhold when reporting on our expedition."
"I'm surprised you wouldn't think about that," said Octavia. "You were the one who seemed to notice that Anne was withholding information from us in her map room. If she's going to hide facts from us, I see no reason we shouldn't do the same to her."
"True," I said. "I guess I'm under-practiced in the art of strategically concealing information. Subterfuge was never one of my strong suits."
"In that case," said Octavia, "let me do the talking when we report back to Anne. For one thing, I'll be better at it. I can already envision Anne's map in my mind's eye. If our goal is just to communicate the river's location, I know exactly what details we need to give her. And…"
"And what?" I asked.
Octavia's eyes narrowed. "I know which details to withhold."
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