Ekari led the way back into the building; despite her earlier delay, she now seemed eager to talk to either her mother or Blaze, Serenity wasn’t certain which. Either way, she hurried and left Serenity behind when he chose to walk more slowly.
Serenity knew he wanted to get his people out, but as far as he could tell the only ones who were left were the ones that had been converted into Legion Soldiers. There was no sign of anything like a novices’ hall or even anything like the Infirmary’s secret area in the Underground. The soldiers couldn’t answer difficult questions, but they’d led him to the place where they first remembered the Underground; it was the same place for everyone he’d asked and was empty.
Serenity suspected the emptiness was because the delivery of Earthlings to the Underground stopped when the dungeons broke free. The experiment appeared to have been mostly abandoned since then; Serenity was glad of that much.
It left Serenity with a few questions. The first was to solve what to do with the soldiers; almost all of them were from Earth originally, though a few were from Lyka. Three, to be precise. They couldn’t express their preferences, so Serenity thought he’d probably keep them with the others until and unless they recovered enough to be able to say what they actually wanted.
The second question was what to do with Alanaeon and Arkandaeon. Turning them over to the local authorities was Serenity’s preference but he didn’t think it would work in this case. By Lyka’s laws, they hadn’t done anything wrong; they were Priests and that meant they could do what they wanted to non-Priests, though from what Rourke said there were some limits. Unfortunately, none of those limits applied to people from places that weren’t ruled by Lykandeon.
Theoretically, High Priestess Karin might be able to do something, but realistically the only recourse would have been Lykandeon. He could order whatever he wanted. Of course, he was dead now.
Serenity had arguably taken his place, which was an uncomfortable fit. It meant he was going to need to do something about the Eternal Church; they were effectively the only government of Lyka or Aeon, but their god was dead. It also meant that, once again, it was his choice what to do with Alanaeon and Arkandaeon.
He could let them go, try to capture them and turn them over to Earth authorities if he could figure out who to hand them to, or he could just make a decision himself. He knew what decision he wanted to make; he wanted to kill them. He’d wanted to kill Arkandaeon ever since he knew that he was the one abducting people.
How messed up was it that he was trying to find someone else to make the decision because he was pissed at Arkandaeon?
Serenity sighed and opened the door to the suite. The light from Aeon’s core turned the room a comforting green shade but didn’t do much to ease Serenity’s concerns. He knew what was really bothering him: he didn’t want to be the Final Reaper. Killing everyone who crossed him was what the Final Reaper did.
Arkandaeon abducted people while Alanaeon experimented on them. In fact, Arkandaeon probably helped Alanaeon. There was no question of guilt; they were both guilty. The fact that it wasn’t technically illegal could easily be superceded by Serenity’s new authority. Indeed, it had to be if he were to “consolidate his power” as the Voice’s Quest put it.
No, they’d sealed their own fates with their actions. Lykandeon might not have minded, but Serenity had really already made the decision when he agreed to Aeon’s request to kill Lykandeon. The Church was in for a bad time and the place to start was the people who Serenity already knew were problems.
Which meant he needed to get back to the task of finding Arkandaeon or determining that he wasn’t in the Underground. It was probably a good idea to map the entire Underground anyway, in case there was anything there he needed to be wary of.
He’d started with the outer area; from his vision, he knew that it was unlikely to gain notice if some soldiers walked through those areas, which made it safe to explore. On top of that, it had seemed possible that Arkandeon would be there, since he wasn’t exactly a dedicated researcher. Despite the area, he had a lot of soldiers, so that was essentially done and he hadn’t found the Priest yet.
It was time to explore the remaining hidden areas. Oddly enough, Lyka’s core was not one of them; it was actually included in several of the regular patrol routes.
Serenity decided to follow the same policy as before, starting with the ones least likely to draw attention when unauthorized people entered. The first three were easy; it seemed like their authentication system was based on greenstone, so Serenity could - with Lyka’s help - simply override it. The first and third were empty while the second held a group of researchers that had apparently been trying to get out but were unable to open the door.
That was poor design as far as Serenity was concerned, but he guessed they’d never expected their items to fail in the way they did. It wasn’t like a power grid; magical items were locally powered, so all you had to do was have a monster core available and the item could be powered. More than that, this wasn’t a power failure; the greenstone was simply refusing to recognize the researchers as valid.
Serenity didn’t think anyone had noticed that the soldier was able to activate it other than the researchers who seemed too grateful to be out to ask why it worked.
Naturally, the fourth location he checked was neither deserted nor full of unobservant researchers. Instead, it turned out to be the armory. It was guarded by Legion Soldiers, but they weren’t Serenity’s and they were suspicious of the “new ones” from the moment the unnamed soldier opened the door. When he couldn’t answer their questions about what was going on, they attacked.
There were four of them to Serenity’s one, but the initial attack was with a small greenstone beam weapon. It failed, of course, but that gave Serenity (and more importantly the soldier he was following) the time to react. He was far faster than his opponents and that, combined with having a functional beam weapon, meant that none of the others reached him before they were dead.
It put Serenity’s concerns about killing into perspective. He had no problem killing in a fight, yet planning ahead to kill in cold blood bothered him. Was it simply because the decision was immediate when it was your life or theirs?
The three after that were empty workplaces, with greenstone scattered throughout half-finished projects. Two of them were even propped open as if they hadn’t been properly closed when the greenstone was disabled. It was enough to make Serenity think that despite the clear paranoia of the people running the place, the actual workers didn’t pay nearly as much attention to security or secrecy; instead, convenience (and maybe ventilation) were more important to them.
The eighth dead spot was also linked to the main area by a propped-open door, but unlike the others it wasn’t an individual room. Instead, it led to a hallway with a number of doors leading off of it. The soldier Serenity was following at that point picked a direction and set off down the corridor.
He didn’t make it far before he was stopped by a guard Serenity didn’t control who seemed to patrol the corridor he’d chosen. “Who are you and why are you here?”
Even though Serenity didn’t direct him to stop, the Legion Soldier halted in place. That was probably for the best, but it also made Serenity hope that perhaps there was more in them than he’d thought. They did seem to be good at following commands that were insufficiently specified, but that was all he’d seen so far. “Identifier Legion Soldier XA-126. Orders.”
“Oh, you’re one of the new ones.” The guard didn’t seem pleased by that; his face twisted as if he’d bitten something sour. “I didn’t know you were moving again.” He stared at the soldier for a moment, then turned. “Follow me.”
That would have been a perfect time to disable or kill the guard if Serenity had any intention to do so. Since he didn’t, he simply watched as the Legion Soldier followed the guard down the corridor, past a number of doors (most of which were propped open and at least two of which seemed to have been broken). There was a turn and another corridor, then a ramp leading down to yet another corridor … it was enough to make Serenity glad Aide was mapping.
This particular dead spot seemed to be a lot larger than the others he’d investigated so far. It was large enough that Serenity directed a few of the other nearby Legion Soldiers to stay near the entrance. He wasn’t quite ready to flood it with people but he also wasn’t willing to assume that they’d been kept out for no reason. What was in here?
While they walked, other soldiers reached their assigned areas to investigate. Most were like the first seven, a mix of empty rooms and people desperately wanting out. A few rooms held people panicked or suspicious enough to fight, but most were glad to be out. None held Arkandaeon.
Serenity knew he was operating on borrowed time now; someone would notice that the soldiers were deviating from their normal tasks to let people out at some point, so when he saw more corridors from a few of the unknown doors, he decided not to change his orders. If it really was the same area that XA-126 found, he’d probably need more people in there anyway. He’d have to play it by ear.
Two of the other soldiers that entered the unknown area were collected the way XA-126 was; while one of the guards was generally friendlier, the other was cold and formal, but both seemed intent on taking the intruder somewhere. Aide’s mapping showed that they were headed closer to each other, so Serenity focused on the other soldiers until XA-126 reached his destination.
When he did, there was no way Serenity was looking anywhere else. There, right in front of XA-126, was Arkandaeon. He was here, just as Aeon suggested, though Serenity wasn’t certain why Aeon couldn’t have given more detail. Perhaps Aeon had trouble telling people apart unless they actually said their names?
It certainly wasn’t because there was no greenstone nearby. There was a green haze in the air and Arkandaeon was seated in front of a table covered with chunks of greenstone. There were a number of partially disassembled enchanted items as well, including something Serenity was fairly certain was the authentication device from one of the broken doors. He wasn’t certain what else would explain the fact that it was embedded in a broken wooden panel.
Serenity didn’t understand why Arkandaeon was here instead of Alanaeon. Shouldn’t she be the one investigating the dead greenstone?
Serenity took a moment and checked through the eyes of the soldier keeping an eye on Alanaeon. She was investigating the greenstone, though she seemed to be concentrating on devices instead of the actual rock while Arkandaeon was clearly focused on the greenstone itself.
XA-126 took a deep breath as he stepped into the green haze. Serenity could feel it as his body relaxed a little; he hadn’t even realized he was feeling the soldier’s tension until that moment.
The guard walked up to Arkandaeon and stopped. He seemed to wait to be noticed. That wasn’t like any protocol Serenity remembered, but apparently it was normal here.
Arkandaeon noticed after about a minute. “Guardsman? What, no, who is that?”
“One of the new soldiers, Priest. You said to bring you any functional greenstone device, even one of those damn soldiers if they get up and move again.” It was clearly a quote.
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