The Tinker

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## 0: Another Planet

If you, as an average Ludusian gridmask, wished to brainstorm a fantastical world not unlike your own home, you might first begin designing it by filling in some obvious blanks with familiar details. The dominant species on the planet would be upright, bipedal, and clothed, with the only major deviation from gridoid physiology being a strange, rounded head, as though one took the cubic shape and molded it, shoddily, like wet soap in a youngster’s hands. You’d also diversify the skin tones a bit, moving away from a primarily grey spectrum and applying warm, earthy colors.

But perhaps creating a whole planet may be too daunting a task. After all, you’ve barely traveled beyond your hometown enough to get a feel of the landscape, and the far reach of the Okto-Gredile continent still demands exploration before one could fathom a voyage to the unknown. Your village was built by bricks and favors, and everyone gets by the way they always have: good will on the best of days, trade during tougher times. Yet in the horizon, you can see a world that seems alien enough, with towers piercing into the sky, dancing lights, and a flourishing system where metal bits and bark slabs are worth more than you could ever understand. Is this the future, you ask yourself, afraid of any answer? Is it even the work of your own people? Or have they consulted with the lesser beings, those underground connivers, the norfae, the dragonkin, the outliers?

Outliers *how*, though, and this solves your problem immediately. While you have never considered yourself very religious, you, like everyone else, understand that when Kao of Soul and Ukron of Mind contributed to the blessings of life, they were not all for gridmask consumption alone. Giajya of Heart created the Monsters. Small Monsters, large Monsters, Monsters that crawl, Monsters that take flight, Monsters that squeak and buzz in the homes of those who need to atone for a past wrongdoing. Monsters that can be contemplated, gazed at from afar in all their majesty.

Monsters that kill.

And Monsters that should never be killed—not for contest or food or any other vile purpose the norfae and the dragonkin and their ilk may partake in.

And you, eyes on the horizon, wonder how far your kind has come, and how far they dare to go. And you think of your fictional, fantastical world, and know all at once how they come to dominate the whole of their planet. They are heartless, godless conquerors. They take what is not theirs. If not the Monsters of Giajya, they take the land, and the homes of others, and the others themselves. There is no good word but the metal bit and the bark slab. There is no salvation until all is exhausted, all starve under the judicious wrath of Kao, and the world blooms anew, Monsters claiming the throne once soiled by a thousand grabbing hands.

That’s what you would think, of course, if you were very religious.

The times are changing, though, whether you choose to move along with them or not. Word travels by courier and pedalcart of the infamous Baxter Ethos Quint with his latest scheme, proudly joining hands with a dragonkin-nobody to put an end to “the Monster problem” for good, as was requested by no one. You’d like to give him a piece of your mind, shove some of his metal and bark up a more painful pocket, and warn him of what may come if he continues his ways.

But you have nothing to base this off of other than your fantastical world. Hungry, you stretch, get up from your desk, and head past the washroom, where your young sibling has brutalized a soap bar into a round shape. You dream of the fresh produce set to arrive that evening from the neighboring city, then grumble as you remember the metal bits that the farmer now demands in exchange for them.

None of these thoughts are worth anyone’s time.

**Isles** **&** **Quint****:** **The Tinker**