I have not found the vault or the Great Treasure within it. I have, however, discovered that there are multiple groups searching for something; I assume it is the vault they seek. One has been removed, but we found records of seven additional groups of searchers. They were Imperials, if disgraced ones; at least, I cannot come up with any other reason for Imperials to be traveling under false names. The leader of this group, the Viper, received a letter addressed to “Lord Viper of the House of the Seventh Blossom”.

The first group, at least, did not do a good job of searching; they adopted a flashy approach that didn’t require many people but meant they did not search the area adequately. From the news I have heard about the rest of Asihanya, I believe other groups have adopted similarly counterproductive strategies.

We did find a token that is meant to open what they are searching for; it is octagonal, with the Destroyer’s symbol on one side and a crowned hand holding a knife on the other. I did not keep the token; I know better than to deal with things with ties to the Destroyer.

As best I can tell, there is no controller as the vault has not been located. However, the mana signature you provided is familiar to me. It belongs to a Hand of the Voice; I do not wish to interfere with him. He claims to be Tier Eight, but it is obvious he is concealing his true strength. He is undamaged by things that should kill a true Tier Eight and he made the mistake of revealing his actual aura to me once; it is far more powerful than any Tier Eight should have. I cannot identify his Tier.

I believe that I have a favorable relationship with him. I have attempted to plant the seed that I may be able to help should he find an artifact of the Destroyer, but he keeps his own counsel; I cannot be certain I have succeeded. He has his own assistants already, and they are surprisingly skilled, well past what I would expect for their Tiers.

He has been reticent about his origins and I have avoided pushing. As best I can tell, his followers come from several different planets; one is even from Asihanya. They provide no clue to his origins.

Long Live the Emperor!

Zanzital Aniza Zitanar

Should he be proud or annoyed at being Tirmanak’s new benchmark busybody?

Serenity felt like he probably should be annoyed; he was completely able to stay out of things he didn’t want to be involved in. He even did so regularly. Even so, he couldn’t help but be a little proud. He was good at solving other peoples’ problems. They were usually simpler than his own.

Of course, that was probably at least partly because he wasn’t going to be the one dealing with the fallout from his solutions. Ekari was the perfect example of that; he dealt with Lykandeon, then left her to figure out how to turn the mess into an actual functioning government.

“As for that one being a Voice-chosen Hand, yes, he is.” Tirmanak gestured at Serenity, as if to clear up any doubt about who he meant. “He’s positively irritating to train, since he’s fixed in his ways and busy with his own tasks as well as dealing with whatever the Voice asks him to.”

Tirmanak turned towards Serenity. “I think you’re here for personal reasons, aren’t you?”

Before Serenity could answer, Esma stepped in. “I wonder. Chantik always said she wondered why she wasn’t called a Voice’s Eye instead of a Hand, that it didn’t matter where she went, the Voice would find tasks for her. I haven’t found that to be true, but you found this, didn’t you?”

Esme gave a little wave and a screen appeared in front of Serenity. Come to think of it, Raz had said she was a Quest Giver, hadn’t he?

[Quest Available: Tokens of Terror]

[Ancient tokens of a member of Order’s Council have been discovered on Asihanya. Although the one who once held the tokens is long dead, the tokens can still unlock things better left locked. Recover the tokens and return them to the safekeeping of Order’s Guild]

[The only token found so far was in the hands of a group searching for lost secrets on Asihanya. It is likely that other tokens are in the hands of the remaining groups]

[Status:

Attackers: 4/8

Tokens: 1/6

Two attacking groups were driven off rather than destroyed. Their tokens are likely no longer on Asihanya]

[Completion Condition: Collect and securely store the Tokens]

[Reward: Variable depending on the number of tokens recovered. Minimum award: Light Path Assistance for next Tier increase]

[Accept Quest?]

Serenity accepted the quest. There was no reason not to; there were no Failure Conditions and he didn’t have to be the only person who worked on the Quest. He simply wouldn’t get a reward until it was complete. Light Path Assistance wasn’t likely to be particularly helpful, but there was still no reason not to take a Quest for something he was going to do anyway.

Serenity grinned at Esme. “Yes. I have the Token it’s talking about, if you’d like to see it. Although … do you know what the Claws of Doom are?”

Esme lost her smile at that. “I do. I also know there’s a lot more to them than what the legends say. They’re on the tokens?”

Serenity shrugged. “On one side. The other has a symbol that matches the one for Order’s Council. I can’t find any way that they’re dangerous in themselves, but they seem to be using them as keys to things they shouldn’t have access to.” Serenity was perfectly happy with the idea of restricting access to the Broken Mirror. He hadn’t pulled any particularly dangerous information out of it, but he knew it was there. It wasn’t even that it was dangerous if misused; no, some of the information was dangerous if used properly.

Admittedly, Serenity was confident it could all be replicated with time. In fact, most of it probably had been replicated at some point; the Broken Mirror was old and lost knowledge had a way of reappearing. He still didn’t want to spread it to people who were willing to act the way the Viper did.

“That does sound like something the Voice would hand out a Quest for,” Guildmaster Tirmanak agreed. “So it sounds like we should concentrate on the quest. Serenity recovered a token from the only group he fought; does that mean that you destroyed a group, Esme?”

Esme’s response was interrupted by a shout from across the room.

“Grandma Tillon! You are safe! It’s so good to see you!” Raz ran up to the old woman. “Why wouldn’t you answer my letters? I told you I brought help.”

Esme stared at the young draykin. Her eyes were wide but she didn’t let her shock stop her from speaking. “You’ve grown, Raz. It’s only been a year. How did you manage to Tier up and yet actually fill out your Path better so quickly?”

Raz ducked his head. “I just followed my Path. That makes it easy, especially when you’re doing all sorts of new things that fit the Path all the time. It’s not like I’d have ever heard the end of it if I didn’t fill out my attributes before leveling. Serenity is really firm about that and everyone else follows his lead.”

Serenity could only shrug at that. He didn’t think he’d ever pushed Raz; given some advice, yes, but at the end of the day, Raz’s Path was his own. Raz had made several Path choices that Serenity wouldn’t have, even if he were working on a dungeon management Path, but they did seem to be working out for the young man. He was happy with his choices, and that was the most important thing.

Raz kept looking at Esme hopefully. Eventually, she sighed and seemed to get a little smaller and older even though she didn’t move at all. “As for why I didn’t respond, I wanted you to stay safe. Asihanya’s not safe right now, and Stallet’s especially unsafe. I knew that if I told you where I was, you’d come to me and I haven’t been anywhere I’d want a nice child like you.”

“I’m not a child!” Raz objected. “I haven’t been a child since my Clan died. I can’t afford to be.”

Serenity knew that wasn’t entirely true, but he also knew it wasn’t something he wanted to argue about. He wanted to watch an argument about it even less than he wanted to argue himself. Fortunately, something in Esme’s statement caught his attention. “Why do you say Stallet is especially unsafe?”

Esme blinked. “Oh, that. Yeah, I did put it off until Raz got here, didn’t I? The invaders that hit Stallet Center, the ones that killed the Sunrise Clan … they’re in Stallet Academy. We haven’t been able to get them out. The Academy defenses are just too good. They were designed to deal with the threats of the Deep Desert if they wandered too close.”

“That hasn’t happened in centuries,” Raz objected. “Why would they be that good?”

“It last happened about twenty years after Stallet himself died,” Esme told Raz. “A Grand Worm emerged a mile from the city and headed straight for town. No one ever found out what attracted it, but it destroyed Stallet Center. It didn’t get into the Academy; in fact, that’s how Stallet survived. Most of the inhabitants sheltered inside the Academy’s walls until the teachers killed it. That was quite a while back, before my time, but the threat was real when the city was smaller.”

“Is it a threat again?” Serenity could guess why there hadn’t been any more monster attacks, and it wasn’t because none had headed for the city. The far more likely answer was that there was enough settled area around Stallet that the big threats were found in time to stop them before they got close. That could change if the area was devastated.

Esme nodded. “It is. Not that there’s much of Stallet Center left even without a monster attack; the attackers leveled it during their trips out of the Academy.”

“Is there anywhere at the Academy that you might be able to use a key to get in from the outside?” Raz stared at nothing, like he was staring at his Status.

Esme frowned. “Only if it can be recognized by the defenses. If they were down, it would be easy, but if they were down we wouldn’t need to get past them. That doesn’t help without an idea of where to find such a key, though, and none of the teachers who escaped have anything that will let them bypass the defenses. Even the Headmaster’s Key doesn’t work; the invaders have blocked it somehow.”

“Is there any way we can tell if a key is good?” Raz sounded even more hopeful than before.

“We send someone fast and defensive in range. If the defenses try to fry you, the key’s no good.” Esme’s response was blunt. “Are you saying you know where a key is that the invaders might not have blocked? How would you have one?”

Raz nodded. “You probably don’t know; I didn’t until I cleared out the last cache before I ran. The founders of the Sunrise Clan were named Sunrise and Stallet. Stallet left behind a key. I can’t read what it does, but I can’t think of anything more likely than a key to the Academy.”

A backdoor into wards or other defenses was a terrible idea. It was also a common idea. For that matter, if it was made for the original Headmaster, it might not even be a backdoor; it might be a deliberately built in override. It was still a bad idea, but a more legitimate one.

Serenity nodded at Raz. “Let’s hope no one has changed the locks since then.”

Lillene

Stallet Academy served as the central fortification - castle, basically - for Stallet Center for a long time. Odds are that that use is going to return for … quite a while.