The pat on his back knocked Maiz out of the shock, but the questions still swirled around his head. How had they gotten here? Why? What were they doing in a Dungeon somewhere in the middle of the Waste? In a moment these questions became secondary to another--had they seen what he’d done to the monsters in this place?

Maiz acted almost without thinking, a sick pit forming in his stomach and bile rising a little in his throat. He cast a spell three times, one after the other, directing his mana as perfectly as possible through the forms. He cast on Ziya first, trying to catch her when she was still in shock at seeing him. He saw her stiffen out of the corner of his eye, just a slight motion, but from the feel of his mana he knew that the cast had succeeded. Lila and Hugan came next, and each of them succumbed easily. Even as he spoke, he wove a different mana pattern through his body, subtly letting magic flow over the giant corpse behind him and covering any evidence of abilities he wasn’t supposed to have.

“Don’t worry about any of the corpses here, everyone.”

His voice held a hint of the mana keyed to his first spell, and each of them nodded dreamily. Maiz still felt sick, but his heartbeat slowed a little. That should be enough to wipe any memories of his more exotic abilities from their minds, and the illusion, though somewhat weak, would be enough to fool them for a while.

He extricated himself from his hug with Hugan, and moved to Lila. He looked at her for a long moment. She hadn’t changed much, though as she looked at Maiz her eyes… sparkled? Were those tears? Even though she wasn’t nearly as strong as Hugan, her hug felt tighter.

“I’m so--”

She cut off, taking in a shuddering breath. Huh. What was she so worked up about? Oh, right.

“It’s okay Lila. Everything worked out.” His voice didn’t hold a trace of bitterness. How could he be angry at her, considering what he’d just done?

“But I let you fight that monster even though I was…”

“Yeah I sort of figured that out. But hey, everyone’s fine right? I got so much experience from killing that thing, I should be thanking you!” Maiz wasn’t exactly the cheeriest person, especially in comparison to someone like Hugan, but he gave her his best smile.

They disengaged, her arms still on his shoulders. She lifted one, and swung it at his face. He ducked, letting out a sharp gasp of air. Wow. I must be getting faster than I thought if I could dodge her. Her foot smacked into his ribs as he was congratulating himself, and he winced. Not from the pain, though, and certainly not surprise. He’d been sure that she would hit him whenever they next met, if only for nostalgia’s sake. But he’d barely felt that kick at all, even accounting for his increase in Constitution. How bad of a shape were they in?

“Ow.”

The dull exclamation cemented it for him. He gave Ziya a quick hug, then stepped back, looking at all of them together. They looked very, very tired. Lila appeared to have been using Enlightenment for a long time, considering the stiff way she was moving, conserving as much stamina as possible. Hugan was also standing as straight and immobile as a flagpost, though Maiz wasn’t sure why, and Ziya seemed close to passing out.

“I… I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you all right now. I didn’t know, or I would have brought food and water with me.”

Maiz kicked himself mentally. He’d been thinking about taking a canteen with him, just so it didn’t seem suspicious that he could train for so many hours without rest, but had decided that nobody was really paying attention in any case. One of his other spells was making sure of that.

Hugan, still smiling, let out a little laugh. “Heh, how could you know? Anyways, how did you get here in the first place?”

Maiz frowned. “The Temple.” He shot a glance at Lila, who seemed oddly… unfocused. “Lila, didn’t you tell them about the Path?”

“Hm?” She looked at him for a moment, nodded vaguely, then went back to staring at nothing.

“She can’t--”

“--I understand.” The memory enchantment. Maiz had wondered if Lila was affected by that. But then… “So why did you all come out here?”

Hugan looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, Lila was saying that she wouldn’t stop trying to get to her family and, uh, we weren’t going to leave her so…”

Maiz stared at him for a moment. “So you went out to the Waste even though you knew that she had no idea where she was going and couldn’t even think about it?”

Hugan coughed gently. “She had a map.”

Maiz raised his eyebrows. He glanced at Ziya, who he would have expected to keep Hugan in check a little better, but she seemed far too exhausted to explain what had driven her to go along with this idiocy. Finally, he just sighed.

“Let me see the map, then?”

Lila seemed to understand that, and slowly she pulled it out of her bag, hand shaking a little as she did so. “After the attack, what happened to you? We didn’t see you anywhere near where we were teleported.”

“Instru-Master Hakim,” Maiz corrected himself, “didn’t get me out at the same time as you two. I think the other mage stopped him?” He still wasn’t quite clear on how she’d done that, but a few weeks in the Temple hadn’t made him qualified to understand Master-level magical theory, so he didn’t worry about it much. “He managed to teleport me away eventually, but I think he couldn’t control the spell as well. I ended up in the Waste.”

Privately, Maiz had a suspicion that Hakim intentionally sent him into the desert. After all, he’d been somewhat close to a Dungeon associated with the Path--one popular with the Jin, if he hadn’t missed his guess.

Finally Ziya spoke, her voice a quiet rasp just above a whisper. Maiz winced again at the sound. It was worse than he’d thought.

“Hakim. Is he alive?”

Maiz’s stomach sank a little as he answered with a shake of his head. Ziya cast her eyes downwards again, though he couldn’t discern any other reaction from her. She likely didn’t have the energy for one in any case. He needed to get them all, but her especially, to the Temple as soon as possible.

Lila handed him the map. It was a simple yellowed piece of paper, and on it was a somewhat familiar picture. It looked like someone had tried to draw the map in the Apprentice-level Dungeon room, but the proportions were a little off. Lila must have done this herself from memory--the Jin certainly wouldn’t allow anyone copying the Dungeon maps within the Path, so that made sense, but as a result the map was very inaccurate. A few of the Dungeon locations had been circled, and on the backs were descriptions. It seems like the map is more accurate for the Dungeons than the Temple itself. Was that intentional? It would probably circumvent the Temple’s enchantments slightly better than trying to locate the actual building so… probably?

This map still wouldn’t get them to the Temple in time by itself, and the inscription would only send Maiz himself back. Which raised a very important issue. Maiz could certainly leave with supplies and lead them back to the Temple himself. He’d learned a few divination abilities, and though they were all weak at the Novice ranks, considering that his friends wanted to be found and he knew them well, he could locate them. Moreover, he wouldn’t be hampered by the Temple’s enchantments because of the second rank of his Mask ability. But there was no way he could conceal the fact that he’d circumvented the enchantment. Even if no one currently in the Temple noticed it, Lila certainly would.

Of course, there was a way around that problem.The spell he’d cast on his friends earlier was one he’d had the opportunity to learn before. Minor Suggestion, and the Controller title it came from, were extremely versatile tools, and terrifying ones. He was glad he hadn’t chosen the spell when it had first been offered to him--he would have been killed if he displayed the Controller title, without a doubt. Now, he could use it without ever being suspected of having mind-altering powers, making it that much more useful.

But in the two weeks since he'd first entered the Temple library, he'd found that Minor Suggestion still had limiting factors--beyond the initial difficulties of a successful cast, which was based in Charisma and Luck as well as the target’s Intelligence, using the spell consecutively on the same person made it less likely to work. Moreover, using it too many times on a target could be… dangerous. He still shuddered a little when he thought about how he'd found that fact out. There was no way he would risk that for his friends. He felt another dose of guilt as he considered what that really meant--he needed to save using a Controller spell on them again for when it counted more.

There was only one thing he could do, then.

“Lila, what would happen if I told the people at the Temple where you were?”

Lila had been wiping her eyes surreptitiously as Maiz looked up at her, but though she looked at him attentively his question didn’t appear to register. Godsdammit.

“How would your family react to seeing you again?”

That got a reaction. Lila’s eyes look downwards for a moment as she considered. “I… think they’ll be happy? Angry, maybe, but happy.”

That had to be enough.

“All right, I need to go. Stay in this room, please.” He thought about it for a second. “Actually, give me a minute.”

He ran quickly past them, already forming his mana to cast an illusion spell like he had in the other room. But it appeared that the Dungeon had already begun to reclaim its monsters--no incriminating corpses remained. Excellent.

As he walked back into the final room, the others were looking at him with varying looks of curiosity.

“I, uh, thought I dropped something,” he said lamely. Luckily his friends were more than used to his awkwardness, and too tired to care much. He felt like a true bastard for worrying so much about being discovered when they were suffering like this, but the consequences of a slip were just too high.

“All right, don’t leave here.” He looked meaningfully at each of them, especially Hugan. “Don’t. I’m going to send help. Stay in this room, and someone will come to get you. If you go back, there may be monsters, but I don’t think the big snake will come back if you stay here.”

He was almost sure that was correct, but he’d never actually tested that. Still, from Lila’s impatient nod, he guessed that he was right. It was strange how she dipped in and out of the conversation because of the mental enchantment. Focus.

“Stay safe.”

He patted Hugan’s shoulder, and stepped over the corpse of the giant snake. It now only looked charred and gutted, not charred, gutted, tenderized, frozen, and paralyzed. The illusion should hold long enough for the corpse to be absorbed. As long as no one focused hard on it, it would be fine, and Maiz’s Minor Suggestion would make certain that was the case. With a last look at his tired friends, he touched the inscription.

He appeared in a room covered in inscriptions, with no doors in or out. There was a hole in the ceiling wide enough for an average person to get through, and a space in the wall that was bare of enchantment. The moment Maiz entered, the walls began to close in. The hole in the ceiling got closer with every moment, but it also became smaller. The bare space in the wall also got closer, and Maiz knew from experience that it was getting thicker and thicker as the room contracted. Normally he would either use a Jump combined with an air spell to get through the hole, or Flaming Strike to blast through the wall, but this time he simply touched a portion of the inscription.

He found himself in front of the stone door leading to the Path. Immediately, he began sprinting at the full speed his attributes allowed him through the Temple’s corridors. He almost engaged Fast Feet to boost his Agility, but stopped himself. That would be too much. Four turns later, he was outside of the curtained doorway to the quarters of the Jin’Sa. There was a boy, perhaps thirteen years old, looking at him dispassionately, clearly unimpressed.

“Yes, sir?”

Maiz tried his best to look calm. “I need to speak to the Jin’Sa, please. It’s extremely urgent.”

Maiz could tell from the look in his eyes that the little idiot didn’t believe him. “The Jin’Sa is currently away on exercise. Once she returns, you may submit a traveller's petition to speak with her.”

Maiz felt a growl building in the back of his throat, but he banished it. “When will she be back?”

The boy had already gone back to staring blankly at nothing--at Maiz’s question he looked back in annoyance. “She only left a half hour ago. It will be three more at least.”

Maiz didn’t bother saying goodbye to the child, just turned his heel and ran back to the entrance to the Path. Even though the Jin didn’t appear to sleep, almost everyone else in the Temple was in their rooms. Which meant he didn’t have to worry much about running into anyone in the Path.

He kicked the door open, activating Fast Feet for the Agility boost, holding back on anything else to conserve his stamina. He flew through the first section, barely pausing for any challenge. Occasionally he would use a spell to speed his progress--he had decided to learn a few Aeromancer spells as a tribute to Hakim, and they were quite useful here. Blasts of air pushed away projectiles, and the wind bent around his body, fast enough to make him untouchable in this area.

He defeated the first set of clumsy golems in a single attempt, though the effort came close to draining him momentarily. His Windblade cut clean through most of the opponents, and Unseen Assault let him power through the others without issue. He sprinted up the steps to the next floor, taking them two at a time. Only then did he slow down.

He’d gone through the entire section in perhaps ten minutes, much less time than he usually took. Now he could tell the Jin’Tira that his friends were inside the snake Dungeon. Except, of course, that he wasn’t sure the old bastard wouldn’t just kill him for the insolence. The Jin’Teslin, at the end of the Apprentice floor, was a much better bet. Should he take the risk here, or try to power through to the safer option?

If he kills me or refuses to listen, they might never get help. He thought that Hugan, Lila and Ziya could survive for perhaps a day more, though considering the price Lila was paying to stay on her feet, Enlightenment might kill her when she disengaged it. Maiz wanted to get them help as soon as possible, though. As he stepped into the room, he saw that the Jin’ Tira was sitting in the middle of the room, folded tightly upon himself, eyes closed and surrounded by a haze of incense smoke. Everything about his posture screamed that he did not wish to be bothered, and he didn’t even look at Maiz.

Maiz couldn’t risk the man killing him, leaving his friends stuck in the Dungeon. He directed a bow in the Master’s direction, and moved past quietly. He had already been through a Novice Dungeon that night, so he simply ran to the end of the room and touched the inscription there. He was transported immediately to the stone room with the two diagrams, and he sprayed his mana onto the inscription in the next moment.

The Apprentice section of the Path was more difficult, but even though most of Maiz’s new abilities were in the Novice ranks, he had versatility and the attributes of an Apprentice on his side. And already some of them were approaching Apprentice level. Shadows began pooling around his feet as he ran, boosting his Dexterity and letting him control the way his feet gripped the floor. Nightwalker was becoming stamina intensive, and he was forced to pause several times, but the time he saved in slipping through challenges was worth it. Just in case, he wove an illusion around his feet to prevent anyone from seeing the skill active.

In less time than usual, he found himself facing a dark-wood golem. He surged forward, twisting around its attack, and drove his staff into its head. Wood shattered and then burned as Flaming Strike triggered. A single shard struck him in the bicep, but failed to pierce his toughened skin.

He continued on, destroying each opponent as efficiently as possible. His abilities let him avoid being hit somewhat easily, and these golems were still fooled momentarily by his illusions, but he had to work hard to get through them all nonetheless. No single ability of his was actually more powerful than the ones he’d had the first time he’d been through this area, and so he was still in danger of failure.

He slipped around his last fast, armored opponent as it attacked a shadow illusion. With his last dregs of stamina, he let loose a flurry of blows that blurred together, each unerringly finding the same target and destroying the automaton’s armor. The attacks momentarily paralyzed his foe, and with a yell, Maiz shot a focused blast of wind at the bare spot surrounded by rended armor.

The golem finally fell, and though Maiz wanted to drop to the floor, panting, he ran through the door as quickly as possible, flying up the stairs.

“Jin’Teslin.”

“Hm?” The relatively young Master looked up from the writing she was poring over, seeming slightly annoyed. “You’ve already been through a Dungeon tonight, young man.”

“Yes, Jin’Teslin,” Maiz panted. “There is a group of three travellers in the Dungeon I was in. They need help.”

The Master looked at him, expression barely changing. “And? You should tell the Jin’Sa about things of that nature, not me.”

“Ma’am, I apologize but the Jin’Sa was away and they needed help.”

She sighed. “I am sure they will be fine. The Dungeon monsters will not respawn while they are within it.”

It’s taking too long. “JinTeslin, these travellers were my friends in Corunti. Since I have come here, I realized that one of them is a Warrior Monk, like you.”

The atmosphere changed instantly. Maiz felt the weight of the Master’s attention like a physical force pressing down on him. “What was their name?”

Maiz swallowed involuntarily. Was this a mistake? “Lila.”

There was a resounding crack in the air. Maiz winced, and when he looked back up, the room was empty. Hells.