The wheatfields remembered blood. Ling traced the scar where bioserver roots once burrowed through her ribs—now just raised topography mapping ancient litigation campaigns. Chu Feng's sickle hung above their farmhouse doorway, its blade grown dull from cutting birthday cakes instead of event horizons.
"Arbiter's late," she muttered, kneading dough made from unregulated stardust. The kitchen window framed their adopted godslayer artifact—a crescent moon plow rusting in the yard, its edge still sharp enough to accidentally harvest yesterday.
Chu Feng entered with the smell of uncharged miracles clinging to his work gloves. "Found another plaintiff fossil in the south forty." He dropped a stone tablet on the table, its cuneiform script detailing a class-action suit against photosynthesis. "Carbon-dated to the Cryogenian period."
"Pre-Cambrian ambulance chasers." Ling slammed the dough, releasing spores of old courtroom rage. "Tell Arbiter to bill it to the Devonian escrow account."
The dough suddenly screamed.
They found the source in the root cellar—Arbiter's latest pet project. The godslayer artifact turned child-adjacent being had converted their potato bin into a temporal dock. Dozens of larval universes floated in brine jars, their embryonic laws marinating in precedent brine.
"Jurisdiction expansion," Arbiter explained, its wheat-husk fingers adjusting a trilobite sundial. "The Silurian small claims court requires evidentiary support."
Ling grabbed a jar containing a miniature Big Bang. "We retired. You inherited the firm. Why are our vegetables testifying in ancient trials?"
"Because defense attorney cephalopods keep eating the exhibits." Arbiter opened a jar labeled Ordovician v. Chloroplasts. A shocked gasp of primordial soup escaped. "Also, you kept the good precedent spores in your canning shelves."
Chu Feng pried a fossilized subpoena from the wall. "This isn't retirement. It's legal paleontology."
The cellar walls suddenly excreted Devonian-era court transcripts. Ling's dough creature leapt into Arbiter's arms, mutating into a bailiff sponge.
The attack came during supper. One moment Ling was force-feeding Arbiter Cambrian vegetables ("Eat your precedent peas"), the next their farmhouse dissolved into a swirling morass of prebiotic lawsuits.
Plaintiff #1 manifested as a volcanic injunction, its lava flows spelling cease-and-desist orders in Archaean glyphs.
Plaintiff #2 arrived as a stromatolite class-action, its bacterial layers reciting grievances about unlicensed carbon fixation.
Plaintiff #3 was the worst—a shimmering tide of litigious RNA strands demanding backpay for evolutionary advice.
Arbiter sighed, its wheat-husk skin peeling to reveal the Arbiter's true form—a walking courthouse with gavel spires and jury box lungs. "You really thought they'd let us retire?"
Chu Feng grabbed the moon plow. "You take the volcanoes. I'll handle the angry alphabet soup."
Ling cracked her knuckles, old bioserver scars glowing like dormant subpoenas. "Just like the Messinian Salinity Crisis."
"Worse," Arbiter corrected, its pillars sprouting restraining orders. "They've learned metaphor."
The battle raged through geological eras:
1. Proterozoic Phase
Ling wrestled volcanic injunctions in anoxic oceans, her fists wrapped in stromatolite briefs. Chu Feng's plow carved due process channels through molten legal code. Arbiter mediated with one hand while prosecuting abiogenesis copyright claims with the other.
2. Cambrian Explosion
Plaintiffs evolved jaws and contingency fees. A particularly nasty class-action anomalocaris tried to eat Arbiter's west wing. Ling defeated it by regurgitating Li Zichen's triage code into the primordial soup—a move that accidentally invented moral philosophy.
3. Carboniferous Setback
Coal-age lawyers rained down as armored litigators. Chu Feng got pinned beneath a petrified tort reform. Ling had to summon the old godslayer artifacts from retirement—their plowshares beating swords into out-of-court settlements.
4. Quaternary Insult
The RNA strands achieved standing.
In the aftermath, their farmhouse lay buried beneath layers of legal sediment. Arbiter's pillars smoked with precedent burns. Ling picked fossilized litigation out of her hair while Chu Feng scrubbed courtroom etiquette from the moon plow.
"You kept the Pliocene contingency files," Arbiter accused, its jury box lungs wheezing with antique objections.
"You kept a carbon-dating lab in our root cellar," Ling countered.
Chu Feng paused mid-scrub. "They're evolving."
A shard of obsidian verdict glinted in the rubble—its surface showing shadowy figures manipulating the plaintiffs. Ling tasted the residue. "Credit Reaper spores. Someone's reviving old debts."
Arbiter's gavel spire trembled. "The 2008 Mortal Coil Crisis clause..."
"Still in effect." Ling stared at the darkening horizon where law and geology blurred. "Get the Devonian escrow files. And someone feed those larval universes before they file abandonment claims."
That night, Ling dreamt in legal strata. She walked through sedimentary courtrooms where stegosaur bailiffs enforced jurisprudential plates. The Credit Reapers' laughter echoed from tar pits, their scythes now fused with godslayer artifacts.
A familiar figure waited in the Cretaceous appeals chamber—Jiang Yue's hologram pruning precedent vines.
"You left the system vulnerable," the projection said, shears cutting through procedural safeguards.
Ling grabbed a verdict stalactite. "We closed the books."
"Balance sheets never close." Jiang Yue's eyes flickered with stolen starlight. "Only compound."
The dream collapsed into a sinkhole of discovery motions. Ling awoke choking on Paleozoic tort reforms.
Morning brought worse news. Arbiter stood in the ruined fields, its wheat-husk skin peeling to reveal something older beneath—a skeletal framework of law and vengeance.
"They're here."
The horizon bled. Credit Reapers rode resurrected godslayer artifacts—plowshares mutated into scythes, their edges singing with foreclosed eons. At their lead rode a familiar silhouette: the original Arbiter prototype they'd buried beneath the Cassiopeia precedent vault.
Chu Feng tested the moon plow's edge. "Should've known retirement wouldn't take."
Ling felt her bioserver scars itch with awakening fury. "You take left litigant flank. I'll handle the right."
Arbiter's pillars sprouted fresh subpoenas. "And me?"
"Judicial override." Ling spat Li Zichen's triage code into the soil. "Time to invent new law."
The final audit lasted longer than the Pleistocene. When the last resurrected godslayer artifact fell, Ling stood trembling over the prototype Arbiter's remains—its skeletal laws shattered, its precedent heart still whispering appeals.
"Balance," Chu Feng gasped, his plow embedded in a tectonic appeal.
"Paid," Ling agreed, though the fields now grew verdict thorns instead of wheat.
Arbiter collapsed into a lean-to of exhausted statutes. "They'll keep coming. The system..."
Ling stared at the dark smudge where law met chaos. "Then we'll plant better wheat."
She pressed Jiang Yue's old music box into the soil. Its gears ground out a lullaby that made the verdict thorns bloom into something resembling justice.
Somewhere beneath their feet, larval universes stirred in their brine jars. Somewhere above, unchained constellations sang of unregulated dawns. The audit continued.
The balance endured.