Serenity stepped out of the bedroom he shared with Rissa and found an empty room. A little searching took him to one of the rooms set up as a gathering area; he could faintly hear voices leaking out around the door.
“...first?” Blaze sounded annoyed.
"...wasn't..." Most of the words were blocked by the door.
Serenity shrugged to himself and opened the door. There was really no reason to listen from outside.
The room was yet another set of plush chairs arranged in a loose circle. There were a number of rooms with that basic setup in the suite. Rissa, Blaze, Ita, Sillon, and Kerr were all there; Ekari wasn’t, but Serenity knew she often had to play attention to her mother.
One detail stood out: Curio was sprawled happily on Ita’s chest, purring up a storm while Ita absently rubbed his ears. He seemed bigger; was he finally growing up? Serenity knew that actual kittens didn’t stay that small for long, but the shadowkitten hadn’t really changed size since he tagged along in the first place.
“Hey guys. What happened to bring everyone together?” Serenity glanced around the room. The fact that everyone except Ita and Rissa looked at Ita when he asked the question didn’t escape him, but he didn’t actually know what it meant. “For that matter, where’s Helen? She did get here, didn’t she?”
Rissa answered the last question first. “While you were sleeping, I got Acolyte Deek to take me to the portal. Apparently we’re not allowed to leave, but we can send others away as long as they haven’t taken a Voice-backed oath or contract with anyone on Lyka or Aeon.”
The half-smile that was forming on Serenity’s face at the sight of his friends and cat disappeared. “We’re not allowed to leave? Why?”
Serenity knew they’d been restricting which of them were allowed to travel to the portal location, effectively not allowing them to leave if they weren’t willing to leave some people behind, but that was manageable. They could sneak out or maybe fight their way out. If the portal itself was restricted, however, leaving would be much more difficult.
It wasn’t that he wanted to leave yet. He wanted to rescue his people; dealing with whoever was behind the kidnapping would be a plus. Specifically not being allowed to leave, however, was a problem. They didn’t fall into any of the standard categories, which meant they had been specifically added. “Is it just us or all of us?”
Rissa shook her head. “I didn’t ask. It could be just me - I didn’t ask that either - but I’m betting it’s at least the two of us and might be all of us. Deek didn’t seem to expect me to be upset so I suspect he doesn’t know about it.” Rissa paused, but her lip, and glanced over at Ita. “I don’t think anyone knows what Ita did, so I suspect we’ve been blocked since soon after you arrived.”
That was unexpected but it made some sort of sense; it seemed like there were different factions in the Eternal Church trying to achieve different things. High Priestess Karin was helping them but seemed to know nothing about the kidnapped people; instead, she seemed to be trying to convince Serenity to ally with Lyka.
Or possibly to submit to the Church? Serenity wasn’t certain. She hadn’t actually given him an offer yet.
At the same time, someone had kidnapped people from Earth’s Tutorial and seemed to be trying to initiate them as novices in the Church of Aeons. Serenity still didn’t know who or why.
Either of those factions could easily have wanted to block them from returning to Earth. Whether it was to give a better chance of gaining an alliance or preventing him from coming back with an army (which was impossible but they probably didn’t know that), it made some sort of sense.
Whether or not each faction could do it was an open question; it depended entirely on how things were set up. In the setup Serenity picked for Earth, there were varying levels of control; anything Serenity decided was set in stone, but individual cities could add additional restrictions if they wanted, up to a point. It was possible that they were blocked for all of Lyka but it was also possible that they were blocked at only the closest portal node.
The closest portal node didn’t have a great route to Earth, as far as Serenity knew. “Did you send Helen off with someone? She doesn’t speak Bridge.”
Rissa shook her head. “I paid the extra for a direct jump to Ranar; it was cheaper than any of the other options that looked safe. The portal’s in the same city as Order’s Guildhouse on Ranar and there were directions from the portal to the Guildhouse; from what you said of the Guildmaster, I think he’ll help her from there.”
Serenity nodded. “I expect he will.” Tirmanak seemed like he cared; Serenity hoped that was true. At the minimum, it was one less thing he had to deal with here on Lyka. The two - no, he reminded himself, three - factions he’d already encountered were enough. Rourke was almost certainly a different faction from High Priestess Karin and whoever was kidnapping people. He seemed far less likely to have tried to trap them on Lyka, both in willingness and ability, but Serenity couldn’t count him out.
For the moment, it didn’t really matter that they were trapped; it wasn’t like they were going to leave any time soon anyway. Serenity’s mouth quirked as he thought of an old quote. “I’m not locked in here with you; you’re locked in here with me!”
Rissa chuckled. None of the others recognized the reference, of course.
Serenity picked out one of the three empty reclining chairs and put his feet up. Even though he’d only recently gotten out of bed, he was still as tired as he’d been in months. It wasn’t physical tiredness; instead, it was more of a mental exhaustion. He’d get over it but all of these tours were really taking the energy out of him.
The fight the previous day was a nice change of pace, other than the part where the rhino attacked non-fighters and Serenity had to use his Adept Aspect Form to deal with it.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t really that good. It was still better than more tours. Speaking of which, “What’s the plan for today?”
He hoped it was a day off after the previous day’s issues; while he was recovered, they couldn’t have known how long he would sleep.
“We’re stuck here, of course. Have been ever since Rissa got back. They’re not even letting us out in the courtyard to practice.” Kerr frowned and shook her head. “We’re lucky Rissa didn’t wait long after you got back to get that girl to the portal or she wouldn’t have been allowed to go. Everything’s shut down now.” She snorted. “Too afraid of what’s outside to do anything. They’ve made their planet so safe that they don’t know how to deal with a few dungeon breaks. Nonsense.”
“It’s not a few dungeon breaks,” Blaze objected. “It’s every dungeon on the planet.”
Kerr shook her head. “We don’t know that. We only know about two, Glass Sculptures and some frog-themed dungeon. I admit Glass Sculptures sounds pretty bad, but frogs? They’re only bad in their own environment.”
“We know about those two because they’re the closest and Serenity ran into one of them.” Blaze signed but still seemed aggravated. “Both of the nearby dungeons had massive breaches within hours of when Ita predicted it. We can’t just assume she’s wrong about the rest of the planet.”
Kerr seemed to be gearing up for another retort, but Serenity interrupted her. “Wait. Ita predicted dungeon breaks?”
If Rissa had predicted them, it would make sense. Ita didn’t have Rissa’s oracular talent.
Blaze sighed and relaxed back into his chair. “After you left, Ita and I went into the city. You know we were gathering whatever information we could, mostly from other healers, right?”
Serenity nodded. He remembered that; they’d told him about it when he arrived on Lyka.
“Well, Ita was doing more than that but didn’t mention it to anyone.” Blaze shot Ita a dark look. “She told me to get back here because people we didn’t want to see us would be showing up at the aid stations. We we back a couple hours before the actual dungeon breaks.”
Serenity nodded. “I felt when it happened. It felt more like a ley line shift or a dungeon collapse than a dungeon break.”
Blaze blinked. He seemed a bit startled by that. “You can tell the difference?”
Ita grinned. “Of course he can! Serenity is good with dungeons. That is why they broke, after all. Lyka was not happy, so he asked the dungeons to punish the people who hurt him.”
“What?” Serenity felt like Ita had skipped a step, or maybe a dozen steps, in that explanation.
“I did what you would do! I should have told you but it was already too late. I didn’t think Lyka was going to do anything. But he says your arrival let him verify what I said, that you’re a friend to two worlds. He got really excited then. I didn’t know it was going to be dungeon breaks.” Ita seemed proud of herself.
Serenity was glad she was becoming more assertive, but he wasn’t sure this was the direction he’d wanted that to go. “The next time you decide to do something big like talk to a planet, please tell someone. You could have told Rissa?”
He was pretty sure that talking to the planet was what Ita had done. That was the only reason she’d be talking about Lyka and dungeon breaks, after all. World Cores didn’t exactly control dungeons but they definitely could communicate. “I didn’t know a world could trigger dungeon breaks.”
Ita nodded. She seemed less manic after the slight scolding but was still obviously pleased with herself. “I will. I didn’t know it would be dungeon breaks either. Lyka said he had stress fractures that he was holding closed and he was going to let go.” Ita looked down. “I was expecting earthquakes.”
“I might have, too,” Serenity admitted. “In fact, I think that might be what triggered the dungeon breaks, a magical earthquake. It felt like a ley line shift; what if that’s what really happened and that caused a sequence of dungeon breaks? The ley lines may or may not have ended up in roughly the same locations after everything settled.”
“You mean like a river?” Rissa piped up. “They can flow funny after an earthquake, even backwards, I saw a great documentary on that once. But that clears up in time and doesn’t generally affect where the river goes unless it takes out a hillside or something.” She frowned. “An earthquake in the wrong spot can mean a river floods all sorts of places it shouldn’t.”
Serenity nodded. “It’s not perfect, but probably close enough. If this was a ley line quake, maybe a lot of raw mana ran funny and triggered a bunch of dungeon breaks. In that case, it should clear up once they have time to deal with the monsters that got out.”
“It may not be that easy.” Blaze shook his head and kept talking. “I managed to get out for a couple hours yesterday and hear some rumors. They don’t sound like a one-time event; apparently the area near the frog dungeon, whatever its name is, has started to turn swampy and is completely overrun with frogs. More than that, they’re leaving the area in groups several times a day.”
Serenity frowned. “You’re telling me the dungeon has come to the surface?”
Blaze nodded. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
Serenity knew of surface dungeons, of course - Aki was one - but he’d never heard of a normal dungeon turning into a surface dungeon. “Neither have I.”
That wasn’t a small admission from the man who used to be the Final Reaper. He knew dungeons.
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