[Asihanya range limit exceeded. No settlements found within forty miles of dungeon location]

[Asihanya Sovereign not found]

[Asihanya Manager not found]

[Alternatives required]

[Two Hands of the Order found]

[Comparing Qualifications]

Asihanya’s resident Hand of the Order froze and ducked out of the discussion with her fellows. They were rehashing the situation around the city and the Academy, but it really hadn’t changed. There weren’t any new ideas or new information; there was no way they’d reach a conclusion other than the small-scale resistance they’d managed so far. It was enough to keep the Imperials from wandering around but not enough to stop them. The meeting was just more posturing from people who should know better.

She was old; everyone accepted that sometimes she needed to deal with old person stuff they didn’t want to ask about. It wasn’t true, but she encouraged the misconception. It gave her time to herself when she needed it - or even for times when she just needed to not listen to nonsense.

The messages from the Voice weren’t nonsense. The first few messages weren’t that unusual. Yes, new dungeons were rare and they were usually close enough to a settlement, but she still had to stand in for the Planetary Sovereign that didn’t exist at least once a year. More often than not, that was because of a new dungeon.

Yet the Voice said there were two Hands on Asihanya. Asihanya didn’t rate two Hands; Hands were far too rare and valuable. The only reason the planet even had one resident Hand was that she was more than old enough to give up on gallivanting across the universe and Asihanya was her home. She’d been based on Asihanya during her more active days; now that she refused to leave the planet for anything short of a Voice-assigned Quest, Order’s Guild was happy to leave her in place and let her manage the planet.

There was no way they’d send another Hand. Not while she lived.

Had she hidden herself too well? Did they actually think she was dead? That was hard to believe. The Guildmaster on Ranar probably wouldn’t believe she was dead even if he saw it happen himself; she’d used that type of trick too many times. Disappearing was useful.

[Hand Selected: Serenity. Qualifications used: Hidden, physical proximity]

Serenity. The Name was interesting, as was the fact that the qualifications were hidden. She was pretty sure that there was something important there; she had seniority, after all, at least for the planet. That would normally have been enough to tilt the decision in her direction.

It was enough to make her think he was here in a specific task, rather than to replace her. She should probably check in at a City Node; the Guildmaster might have something for her. Perhaps there was something urgent; it had been a year since she checked, after all. That was long enough if there was somehow a task on Asihanya. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t related to the Imperials; she was fighting them because they invaded her home, not because it was her task as a Hand of the Order.

She clearly needed to push them back and get back to her job.

Maybe she should figure out a way to contact the other Hand? Knowing his Name might be enough; it was unique, after all, so the Voice would probably let her send a message. If nothing else, she could ask if he needed help. If there was something important enough to pull a second Hand to Asihanya, it was more important than an invasion.

The Hollow Remnant dungeon was a Field dungeon, which made Serenity relax when he saw it. A Field dungeon was far more likely to have the actual stuff that was left behind when it was created.

Now that he knew it was a Field Dungeon, Serenity wasn’t even certain it was his fault it was a dungeon after all. It met the criteria for a nexus to suddenly shift to a Field Dungeon: something important happened there. Something that was important to the world, not just to the people involved. A ritual that turned hundreds of people into walking disasters that could be effective against people near the peak of the area, at least when they were in sufficient numbers, fit that category.

It would keep the Hollow Ones contained; for whatever reason, Field Dungeons were far less likely to have a monster surge come out of them. Serenity had heard people talk about them like they were the world protecting itself back then he was Vengeance; at the time, he’d dismissed it as nonsense. Now that he knew more about dungeons and ley line networks, it was harder to dismiss the possibility.

When they entered, the dungeon was not identical to what it had been before. The layout was similar, and they entered through the aircraft hangar, but the hangar itself was a slightly different shape, significantly wider and much, much taller than the real hangar. More importantly, the three planes that were present were intact. That surprised Serenity; he’d expected the dungeon to tell only the story of the Hollow Ones, but it must be telling the story of the entire assault.

He was therefore less than surprised when the three biplanes lifted off the ground and flew towards the four challengers. As it turned out, Raz wasn’t able to manage much against them, but Zanzital, Blaze, and Serenity were all quite effective. The planes lasted exactly long enough to drop one set of bombs.

That was where Raz came into play. Serenity wasn’t sure how he managed it, but none of the bombs exploded until the four delvers were well away from them; they simply fell and landed on the stone floor. Raz claimed it had something to do with the bombs being “traps” instead of “attacks”, but Serenity wasn’t entirely certain why that applied to the bombs.

When they continued deeper into the base, Serenity concluded that it didn’t follow the old layout at all. It did, unfortunately, have a lot of Hollow Ones. They started appearing out of crossing corridors or even straight in front of the group only a few minutes after they left the aircraft hangar. At first, it was one at a time, but it quickly became two, then three.

There was no good way to tell which way was the “right” way, so they simply moved forward. The Hollow Ones were weak like the Hollow Ones in the forest after the ritual was destroyed, so they weren’t overly concerned about being mobbed; there wasn’t enough room in the tunnel for them to be fully surrounded. Even if they were blocked from both sides, the Hollow Ones could be controlled and slowly killed; it wasn’t hard to outpace their very limited regeneration.

As it turned out, despite their low Tiers, Blaze and Raz were both exceedingly useful. Raz could tell them when a Hollow One approached even before Serenity could see it, while Blaze turned out to have by far the most effective attacks. Both Serenity and Zanzital could kill the Hollow Ones, but Blaze’s fire ropes could easily restrain them and almost any of his fiery attacks would injure them in a way that simply didn’t heal.

After the seventeenth Hollow One, from the third group of three, they reached an actual door. It led to a surprisingly familiar “room”: the niche Serenity had been in when he killed Amily. There was a body already on the floor, missing its heart. Serenity did little more than glance at it; he knew Amily was an assassin, so he assumed there would be a knife in the dark, probably from behind them.

It was aimed at Blaze, but Serenity got there in time to knock Amily’s hand away. That brought the rest out of their surprise, which was good. Amily disappeared in a puff of shadows a moment after her failed strike.

She could strike from any shadow and was solid only for the moment of the strike, which made her a seriously annoying opponent to fight. Fortunately, she was still only Tier Three; her attacks couldn’t hurt either Serenity or Zanzital unless they hit a weak point, and that was simple to avoid. She did manage to hit Blaze the third time she attacked him.

Raz surprised Serenity when he raced around the room setting lights out. They were little more than fuzzy glowing balls, but they sent off a decently bright glow and stuck wherever he put them. They just appeared in Raz’s hand, so they were probably some sort of Skill. Whatever they were, the glowing lights progressively restricted the directions Amily could attack from until she was forced into the open. Once she could be hit, she didn’t last long.

It was becoming obvious that Raz’s forte wasn’t combat, at least not directly. He was very good at all the other things a group needed, especially in a dungeon, but his ability to directly fight was distinctly lacking. It was a good tradeoff; he’d be valuable to almost any group, as long as they were able to get past the idea that everyone had to specifically be good at hurting dungeon monsters.

Once Amily was dead, a crack at the other end of the crevice became visible. The group filed out slowly and found themselves almost immediately under attack from three Hollow Ones.

The Hollow Ones died quickly. Blaze seemed to be in a bit of a mood; he barely chanted at all and they simply went up in flames, one after another. Serenity was pretty sure he saw a single ribbon of fire wound around each Hollow One before jumping to the next.

It was an impressive display of power, even though Blaze was extremely well suited to killing Hollow Ones. It was made even more impressive by the fact that Blaze didn’t seem to have spent much mana on the attack. He even absorbed the fire ribbon after the last Hollow One died.

“You good there? Have enough mana to continue?” Serenity knew better than to proceed if Blaze had just burned out his mana in a fit of pique. They’d be better off stopping and waiting for him to recover.

Blaze shook his head. “I’m fine on mana, that didn’t take as much as it looked like. Fire feeds on its target and the Hollow Ones are ready to burn.” He frowned and glanced back at the small, irregular cave they’d just left. “I guess I was just annoyed at getting jumped again.”

Serenity could understand that. Blaze had been hit more times by Amily than the rest of the group combined. While he was able to keep himself healed, it couldn’t have been enjoyable.

This hallway held a mix of trios and foursomes. Once, when two hallways came together at almost the same place, they ended up fighting six. That time, they checked the two crossing corridors; they went about fifteen feet, then dead-ended in a wall. The dungeon clearly didn’t intend to let them turn off the main route.

They made their way down the tunnel. There were several larger rooms on the way; they seemed to be pieces of the base, assembled out of order. Strangely, none had doors; instead, like the barracks they’d gone through to reach the actual Hollow One ritual, they simply had openings. Everyone had to agree with Raz when he suggested that it probably meant that doors were reserved for the important fights, which definitely wasn’t the Hollow Ones.

Most of the rooms were empty, but some held Hollow Ones. The largest single group was a group of five Hollow Ones in a room that looked sort of like a kitchen. By now, they’d become skilled at handling even the larger groups and they dispatched them in only a few attacks.

The next notable feature they found was another door. This time, it was made of a silvery metal that looked suspiciously similar to metra.

Lillene

Who do you think the other Hand is? Have we met her or not?