It had been a long, taxing day for Milo and his siblings, helping Cazact with his memory. He was a unique entity in their experience, and they had many conjectures about the thought processes of other denizens of Genesis. It was all too easy to forget that this world had been created and the life forms had not organically evolved independent from outside influences. There was the possibility of learning as much from Cazact as he could learn from them. They pondered this as they encouraged Cazact to concentrate on a small set of ideas, organizing and storing those memories in a new way. The task was complex, helping him to understand and negotiate the mental training that would lead to an ability to slowly restructure his mind, and give him some relief from his constant stress. And stress was something that Cazact had endless amounts of. Recognizing this, they worked with him in rotating teams of two, keeping their comments centered on the mental exercises and not discussing anything else. After a grueling three hours of work, all of them were tired, but Cazact seemed better, or perhaps simply exhausted. But still, he began asking questions again, driven by his inner demons to always know more.

Nina forced him to slow down. "One question. You may ask one question, and we will try to answer it, and you will then store the memories in the new way."

"Just one question? But....I have so many!"

"No buts, and I could have simply said yes and made you go make to the brain burner exercises."

Cazact mulled this over. Then looked at where Milo was talking to Two-Screws and Pillbug, the latter having just walked up and dumped a bag of spare mechanical parts on a table in front of them. "The sage: what is his real name. Is he Milo or is he Tallsqueak? And if both, how common is this combination in your opinion?"

"Oh, yes. He is called by different names. The Engineers will refer to him as Milo, or formally as Senior Engineer Brother Milo. Most ratkin call him Tallsqueak, or Master Scout Tallsqueak. And...probably not a common combination."

Cazact nodded happily. "Yes, yes, that helps so much with some recent memories. I will store that now, adjacent to several other data stores of the same person. Treating him as two different people was causing problems. And, it clears up who they hated the most. It was difficult to understand until considering that Tallsqueak and Milo might be one and the same and that they were referring to Senior Scout-Master-Engineer Brother Milo-Tallsqueak. They argued constantly about which of them hated those two people the most, not helped that they hated each other as well. They were such interesting specimens, quite dangerous, and I barely contained them when they came tumbling from above and landed in front of my caravan. I wouldn't have thought a cheese fiend and a sentient slime could talk so much, but these two ranted continuously at each other, and about their hated enemy. They were very passionate in their ravings. It was an entertaining journey, and they relieved some of my boredom, but I was left with some confusion that was never cleared up until now. Thank you."

Cazact began humming to himself again, staring into space as he connected memory storage tesseracts and put the appropriate memories in each, with links to other tesseracts. When he was done, and signaled he was ready to begin with the next part, Algernon said, "Time for a cookie break. You have a story to tell us."

"I do? Certainly, storing knowledge was only part of my kinds function. Imparting information to those who need it is just as important. I despair at times though, because so few people want to listen."

Nina and Algernon grinned at each other, "Oh, don't worry, we're avid listeners. We'd like to hear this story about two people who hold a grudge against Milo-Tallsqueak. It will give us a reason to get the rest of the story out of him."

"Very well. It all started one day as I was returning to Blothmazdan. The road is quite treacherous in that spot, with a maze of interconnected tunnel and caverns far above the road. Landslides and sometimes large monsters would come tumbling down and block the roads. On this occasion, what looked at first to be a small ratkin was running down the slope, then tripped and fell the rest of the way, going splat in the middle of the road. It turned out to be a semi-intelligent slime that could mimic the form of a small ratkin. I had it placed in a reinforced jar and it reformed the next day. The other specimen came tumbling down, chasing it, and we assumed died in the fall. A large female cheese fiend. To my guards horrible, it was still breathing. Knowing their propensity for violence, I used an expensive set of enchanted dwarven steel chains to immobilize it and then placed it in a cage that I had used to transport a Tier Four Gneiss-Lurker I was quite certain at the time that this would hold them both."

"At the time?"

"Ah, yes. At the time. I was proven wrong, later, when we got closer to the city. Just as well, I suppose, they probably would have been difficult to deal with inside the city. No papers, no pedigrees. The fines would have been huge, and I wasn't sure what I could have done with them. Neither was the type to sign a labor contract."

The conversation continued, with Algernon making sure to get everything Cazact could remember that the creatures had said. Milo, unknowing of this, was staring at the pile of machinery and magi-tech on the table, all covered in snail slime and green blood. Peenhammer had wasted no time getting to him and telling of their explorations.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Two-Screws joked as he saw the pile, "Oh, did my mother send a care package from home? She always did use a liberal amount of grease on spare parts." Then he bent to look at the odd bits of technology but recoiled, "Oh crap, what the hell is that dreadful pong? It's like old smelly socks. The pair I wore in my armor for eight hundred years!"

Peenhammer giggled. "You don't like the smell of 'Mr. Stinky Snail' as my lovely assistants called him? Their little scarabs found all of this inside of him after we invited him to a beat-down after his army cornered us on a cliff. Buttercup and Rosie nailed him good, then the little metal scavengers dug all of this out of him. Which I find amazingly interesting, especially since the old monster was shouting commands to all the other snails, and they obeyed it."

"You found a talking snail?"

Peenhammer shook his head, "No, I don't think so. I don't think it was so much talking as playing recorded commands. The wording was weird and often repeated. Like the old turbo-phono we imported from station #47 that played those old drinking songs. Remember that thing?"

"Oh hell, I should. I had to fix it every time it broke, and it broke every time it got used. And darned if that metal cylinder doesn't look familiar....argh, the smell. Let's get this all cleaned up first, I've burned out my sinuses already."

Peenhammer nodded in agreement, and turned to Milo, who was reeling from the smell, eyes unfocused. "Oh shit, someone put some points into Keen Sense of Smell, always did think that was a risky one. The whiskey smells better, but the people you're drinking with smell worse. Rosie and Buttercup were talking all the way home about having a 'bubbly bath' as soon as we got back to camp. They didn't like the smell of that thing at all. Can't say that I blame them."

Two-Screws threw Milo over his shoulder and went in search of a strong, stinky cheese to overcome the smell of the stinky snail. A few minutes of nibbling a crumbly bleu cheese had Milo back to himself. Peenhammer mixed up a diluted bucket of universal solvent and washed off most of the stink. The parts went into a second bucket and then each of the three engineers took a part, and carefully cleaned it, removing old residue, rust, and unknown gunk that had adhered to the metal from decades of living in the snail. Then they gathered a power cell, wiring, and tools and began to see what they could make the bits do. Soon, the gnarled voice of Mr. Stinky Snail boomed out of the speaker as Milo made the connection.

"Kill them all and let the System sort things out."

Everyone turned to look in their direction. Two-Screws turned a screw slightly, "I think the volume control was stuck on high. I bet people heard that a quarter mile away." As it turned out, he was correct.

Two growls echoed across the cavern as two apex-predators charged at break-neck speed toward Milo. The two dwarves turned nervously at the sound and grabbed their weapons. Milo had heard those growls before, and also the shouting voice coming from behind the two racing cheese fiends. Rosie and Buttercup were in full battle mode as they arrived at the middle of the camp, stopping abruptly and turning slowly, their backs to each other and looking for their foe.

"We heard Mr. Stinky Snail!"

"Where is he, Tallsqueak? We need to kill him again!"

Milo wasn't sure how to calm them down but knew what the wrong move would be, and disconnected the power source of the speaker. Then he saw Gendifur running up, far slower than her daughters, a stern look on her face that made Two-Screws and Peenhammer even more nervous. Milo walked slowly up to the girls, hands in the 'I surrender, you win' position, that he had taught them when he played tag with them. They began to relax, but were confused. He pointed at the table.

"We found out how the snail was talking."

They immediately ran to the table. "Mr. Stinky Snail used this to talk?" "Make him talk again!"

Milo carefully hooked up the playback device.

"Faster, Faster. And add some furious to it. You're a lean, mean fighting machine."

The girls giggled and made him do it again. And again. Laughing as the dwarves adjusted the volume and the pitch, making the voice higher and lower.

Gendifur arrived, and caught her breath. Milo saw that she was packing her medical bag, practical as ever, and happy she didn't need to use it. The girls had been ready to fight, but they had calmed down immediately as they understood what was going on, something he'd been told cheese fiends normally couldn't do. Once they were in the middle of a battle, they only stopped when exhausted and badly injured, or when subdued by their handlers. The girls didn't have that rage in them, and he hoped they never would. That only left one angry person to deal with.

"We had just finished their baths and were having quiet time before I tucked them into bed. And someone riled them up again."

Milo knew what that meant. "How about I handle story time? I haven't read the Adventures of Hamster Huey in a long time." He walked back with the girls and their mother, hoping he could still do the high-pitched voices.

Two-Screws gathered up all the parts. "Let's back off a mile before we start working on this project again."

Peenhammer nodded, "Make it two miles, just to be sure. And might as well head to the elevator and tell them to send down more ammunition, those cannon are still firing at a steady pace."