Lillene

Enjoy!

That evening, dinner was somewhat strained as everyone tried not to talk about the events of the day. After dinner, Serenity pulled Rissa aside and talked her into a silly movie marathon. Tremors 11: Return to Sender featured a horribly silly plot that centered around returning a graboid to the dungeon it escaped from as an invading monster. It wasn’t particularly true to either the rest of the series or how dungeons actually worked, but it did manage to be both fun and action-packed. 

After that, they decided to watch the series from the beginning. Rissa fell asleep somewhere in the middle of Tremors 2 and Serenity wasn’t far behind her. Jenna was actually up later than her parents that night.

The next day was equally frustrating to Serenity. Nothing he tried worked and the crystals he’d set out as tests of their ability to passively attract a ley line didn’t seem to be having an effect either. It probably hadn’t been long enough yet, but that didn’t solve his problem. Serenity knew he shouldn’t feel bad about it; this was a task that ought to take years to figure out at a minimum and he’d had days. He still couldn’t help it; this was important and he didn’t know how much time he had. He had large advantages in figuring it out yet he still wasn’t getting anywhere.

Serenity’s feelings ignored the fact that anyone without at least some advantages like those he had wouldn’t even be able to tell there was a problem to solve. He knew that, but it didn’t help. Rissa tried to tell him that things take time and that she had faith in him, but each time they talked seemed to always end up with Serenity comforting Rissa instead. It helped but it was only a temporary relief.

He wasn’t even certain why it was so frustrating. He’d spent literal centuries on tasks in the past; why was a few days a problem?

Minu showed up that evening and loudly insisted that Serenity ride her around the dungeon. It was nice to get out and about, but it definitely made Serenity aware he needed riding gear suitable for a giant cat. A horse’s saddle was hopeless; it needed to be something specifically built for Minu. It wouldn’t be fast and he’d just have to keep riding her bareback until it arrived; Minu definitely wasn’t a cat who wanted to be told she had to wait. She’d accept it but she made her displeasure known loudly.

The more he saw of Minu, the more she reminded Serenity of a cat. He knew she wasn’t one; if nothing else, even cats that were large enough weren’t even remotely interested in being ridden. In almost every other way, however, Minu was a large, oddly colored cat.

Four days into Serenity’s string of failures, Serenity saw Ita waiting outside the entrance to the underground garage. “Ita? Why are you here?”

“I belong here.” Ita hopped closer. “I am your Shameless; I follow you. It is also my task to aid you and I have not been good at that. My duty is with you.”

“It’s really not necessary, Ita. I know you like to spend time with Blaze; don’t let me pull you away from him.” Serenity really wasn’t sure what to do with Ita most of the time, so he was definitely grateful that she seemed to prefer to follow Blaze around.

Ita shook her head. It wasn’t the Sterath gesture, but she’d picked it up. “This is where I should be, with you. This is where I choose to be.”

Serenity sighed at that. She’d just used one of the arguments he had a hard time refuting. It had taken her a very long time to figure out that he’d give in to it and she still didn’t use it often, but when she did it was hard to counter. “Fine. There’s room in the SUV, you can come.”

Ita hopped in place. If you knew how to read Sterath expressions, she was overjoyed. Serenity smiled at the sight; he hadn’t actually expected her to be so unabashedly joyous about accompanying him on a long day of testing minor spellform variants that would probably achieve nothing, but he was happy that she was happy.

Four hours later, Serenity still felt mixed feelings about Ita’s company but they were for different reasons. Ita wanted to know everything he was doing and it slowed his tests to an absolute crawl. At the same time, explaining every little step to her had forced him to reorganize what he was doing and he’d realized that he’d overlooked a major set of tests.

He hadn’t tested with any Affinity other than Arcane and he hadn’t tried essence at all. 

By the end of the day, Serenity had made progress. It wasn’t the progress he wanted to make, but it was something. He’d learned how to easily shatter World Core Crystal. All it took was a little essence applied incorrectly and the material would break, melt, evaporate, implode, explode, or simply turn into dust, sand, or gravel of various sizes. With a few tries, he could make it do the same thing repeatedly but he couldn’t manage to get the ley line to move into it.

It was still the most progress he’d made yet and he made certain to tell Ita that.

The next day, he didn’t get to spend the day testing things. Instead, the day started with Serenity trying to replan his tests for the addition of other Affinites and essence. He didn’t get very far before a call from Rosemont’s Specialty Pets and Tamed Monsters interrupted him.

“Hello?” Serenity had a guess what the call was about. It was possible it was to check up on Minu or to schedule the “additional monster training” he’d paid for, but he doubted it. Well, technically, it might be the additional monster training but that was because he’d paid it to get information, not to get monster training.

“Serenity? This is Allie from Rosemont’s Specialty Pets and Tamed Monsters.”

Serenity already knew that from the caller ID. Well, not her name. “Yes?”

“Mr. Rosemont told me to call you and remind you that the monster training you requested will be available later today; he’ll meet you out at the barn when you can get here.” Allie was clearly reading that off a note.

“Thanks,” Serenity offered. 

“See you soon!” Allie didn’t wait for Serenity to reply again before she ended the call.

That had to be about the inspection by Locust Farms. Rose never set a time for Serenity to come by for real monster training, since he’d actually paid the fee so that he could meet the inspector. A reminder didn’t make sense, but using that as a way to tell Serenity when to meet the person from Locust Farms did.

Serenity still didn’t understand why Rose was playing secret agent games about it; they weren’t doing something illegal, immoral, or in any way wrong. They weren’t even violating a contract, at least not as far as Serenity could tell. Serenity’s only guess so far was that Rose thought it was fun.

There was no reason to wait around here; “when you can get here” probably meant that the Locust Farms inspector was already there. 

When Serenity arrived at the shop, Allie sent him out to the barn. She didn’t ask where Minu was, which made Serenity even more convinced that this wasn’t actually about monster training. Rose wasn’t immediately visible, so Serenity went inside. There was a voice in the distance, but it was muffled. It didn’t seem like anyone had noticed his entrance.

The barn smelled like demons. It was enough to distract Serenity for a moment as he tried to process everything he was smelling along with what he could see and hear. He wasn’t used to smell being a major sense; it was barely even present if it was there at all for most undead. He was pretty certain he was still fairly nose-blind, but his sense of smell was definitely more acute than a human’s, at least when it came to demons.

There were only four demons actually in the barn, though Serenity could smell the traces of many others. One of the four was a talmis like Minu, while the other three were demons that Serenity didn’t know Rose’s name for. 

Two of them were Wrath demons; that was obvious. He could guess that no matter what Rose called it, everyone else called them hellhounds, even though they really looked more like badgers than dogs. The last demon looked something like a giant snake, but Serenity knew that looks were deceiving. He wasn’t certain which Passion it followed, but something like greed or jealousy seemed likely because they all shared a common magical trait: they could either copy or steal positive magical effects from opponents. They were seriously annoying to fight because the more prepared you were, the stronger they were. At this Tier, Serenity suspected that copying was more likely than stealing, but he’d seen both in the past.

In the future? 

Whenever it was, he could understand why a monster tamer would want one. In a group, the ability to remove positive effects from enemies was almost the same as enhancing all of your allies; it could be significant.

“...not horses; you need more space between them.” A voice Serenity didn’t recognize became louder and clearer, clear enough to easily make out.

“That’s why there aren’t many in here,” Rose seemed to agree. “I’ve spread them out so that there won’t be any issues. Are there any that won’t cause problems if they’re close together? I know the hellhounds have to be kept out of sight of everything until they’re properly tamed.”

Serenity had to push his feelings down about that. For all that he had an instinctive reaction that Wrath Demons were supposed to attack everything that moved when they were young, he knew that would only get them killed on Earth. They were simply too dangerous; they didn’t belong here. At the same time, they already were here, which presented an awful paradox. Which was better, locking them up, taming them, or killing them?

The best would be if there was a way to encourage them to grow up and be able to overcome their anger with their will and reason, but Serenity knew of no way to speed that up. He was fairly certain he’d zipped along because of his past experience; he wasn’t ever as consumed by Wrath as a young Wrath demon, completely unable to see past the fire of anger at everything. Unfortunately, simply increasing in Tier wasn’t enough. Vengeance had seen Wrath demons in dungeons that were far higher Tier that were still mindless, though, so there was clearly more than one way for them to advance.

Sending them all to dungeons wouldn’t work either, not with the numbers that seemed to be out there. Aki could take one or two of a type, but there were limits. Serenity wasn’t quite certain what those limits were yet; Aki wasn’t all that close yet. Still, he knew they existed.

As far as Serenity was concerned, it was an ugly situation. He was going to have to either figure out how to deal with it, even if that meant allowing tragedy to happen because the problem was simply too large. It worried Serenity; Apollyon clearly had a plan and Serenity was becoming more and more confident that it wasn’t a good one for humanity.

That was when Rose and the man who had to be the inspector turned the corner and stepped into Serenity’s view. Serenity decided to say something before they were surprised by him. “Hello, Rose. And …. Who are you?”

Lillene

Quite a problem, isn’t it?

What do you think Apollyon’s up to - and what can Serenity do to fix it? Should he even try?