Jason became aware of the voices first.

They were distorted and deep, as if he was listening to them from underwater. Which was strange, because he was busy having a pleasant dream about lying on the beach with the sun high overhead, beating down on him.

With his awareness of dreaming came the slow return to consciousness. First came the slow realization that the heat he felt was actually there, followed by the recognition that real people were arguing nearby. Memory and lucidity returned, and he awoke with a slight start that sent a spike of agony through him.

That woke him up the rest of the way.

Someone was arguing nearby, and a heavy, golden light was pressing down on Jason from all sides.

“Look, we dragged you out of there, you owe us.”

Jason cracked an eye open, and then shut it when a bright light assaulted his senses.

“I understand. But I am sorry. I cannot cast without using my hands, and as I said, if you free me I will be forced to attempt to flee again.”

Forcing himself to open both eyes, Jason looked about. Lumi and Kera stood nearby, both exuding an aura of golden light, the source of the warmth he felt. No doubt Kera was somehow applying her [Mimicry] skill to copy Lumi.

Next to the two girls stood Vittorio’s pocket healer woman, bound both hand and foot to a post that had been driven into the ground. Nearby, the kitsune woman lay unconscious and similarly bound. Jason had no idea how they’d managed to survive; his hastly-made barrier shouldn’t have stood up to what they’d gone through.

Jason realized the argument was still going on. It sounded to him like Lumi was trying to convince the woman to help, and the woman kept replying that she would be forced to try and escape.

Something clicked, and Jason coughed to get their attention from where he lay on the ground.

“Jason!” Kera exclaimed, running his side. She knelt down next to him.

He wheezed a bit as became aware of the incredible amount of pain he was in. Better than earlier for some reason, but still quite extreme.

“She literally can’t not,” he managed.

“What?” Kera asked, confused.

Jason tried to clear his throat, but just coughed again, causing another spike of pain.

“Sit me up, please,” he requested. Easier to explain when he could see people. Plus he was tired of the ground.

Kera lifted him up while Lumi ceased her [Warmth] spell in order to form a cushion of earth behind Jason so he had something to lean against.

It took him a moment to catch his breath. “It’s simple,” he said. “They’re criminals, with life-sentences right? You wouldn’t just bond them and send them on their merry old way. You’ve got to apply some kind of safeguards, so they don’t just off whoever their… guard is and make a run for it. I’m also willing to bet there’s some contingencies in there too, about what happens if their guard is killed.”

He nodded towards the unconscious Kitsune. “That one has an outright Control rune on her face. I’m guessing she didn’t take well to the whole bonding thing, and earned herself some extra-strength enforcement, but would I be correct in guessing you are forced to return in the most expedient manner the soonest you can?”

“That is accurate,” the woman said with a weary note to her voice. “I am currently too weak to free myself physically, and thus am spared need to struggle. But should you free me, I will be forced to try and run as that is within my capabilities.”

“The solution is simple then,” Jason explained. “Flight will result in recapture, injury, or death, which will greatly delay your return. It sounds to me like this has been proven already.”

He shifted his weight with a wince and then continued.

“I propose the following: Lumi here will release your hands and feet so they you may freely move. You will begin healing us. Once we are all healed, then we will assist you in getting back even faster by giving you a horse. No healing, no horse. Oh, and if you do try to escape again, we’ll break your legs and tie your hands again, so it will take even longer.”

“Jason, you can’t just-” Lumi began to protest, but he cut her off.

“I know, I know, Lumi. Just trust me. There’s a plan here.”

The woman closed her eyes, and seemed to struggle a bit internally. Then she opened her eyes and nodded.

“This is agreeable, I believe. But take care to hold up your end.”

“Jason….” Kera murmured, looking down at him in concern.

He gave Kera a reassuring pat on the leg. He couldn't blame either girl; He’d just blackmailed the woman into using her spells with the threat of breaking her legs. While he had no intention of actually doing that, nor of sending her back to her captors, he couldn’t voice that just yet.

“Just do it,” Jason ordered.

Muttering darkly under her breath, Lumi did as he asked. She cut the woman’s bonds, and seeing that she didn’t try and escape, called off into the distance for Aria to fetch one of the horses. Apparently, the two hunters were off trying to round them up from wherever they’d run off to.

The woman, for her part, stepped towards Jason. She made several complex gestures, and then leaned down to place her hands on his chest.

“Greater Lay On Hands,” she commanded.

Jason felt the most indescribable itch wash through him as he was enveloped in a sheathe of silvery light. He felt a rib he hadn't even realized he’d broken shift back into place. He felt his injured hand spasm with pain as sensation suddenly returned to it, then his skin pulling as his burns began to heal and close over.

The glow ceased, and Jason fell back, suddenly overcome with incredible weariness. He realized he was starving.

“That is the best I can do for him,” the woman said to Lumi. “He was near death. More healing now would eat away at him in ways that could not be cured.”

“What of later?” Jason asked her directly. “How long should I wait for more healing, and will it help?”

“You should avoid it for a full day. Afterwards, it should work as normal should you avoid further injury.”

Jason nodded and gestured for the woman to see to Kera. He then hauled himself wearily to his feet. Doing so was still painful, but it was the ‘mere’ pain of strained muscles, stiff joints, and severe bruising rather than the agony of broken bones and third degree burns.

He flexed his fingers and gave a sigh of relief; his hand still worked. He’d honestly been worried he might have lost it entirely. It hurt and was very stiff, but it was functional.

Holding it out in front of him, Jason could see a pattern of angry, red, branched-lightning welts and blisters running all the way up his arm. He’d heard that could happen to victims of lightning strikes. Lichten-something burns; he couldn’t remember the name. They’d heal in time.

Jason stepped up to Lumi while the woman was distracted with healing Kera. The girl was still glaring at him.

“Chill,” he murmured quietly to her. “I know what I’m doing. Just trust me, ok? It’ll turn out fine. Keep her distracted for a bit, I need to go grab my pack.”

“Have Pelk help get Serif out here so she can see to him, too.”

“He survived?” Jason asked, surprised.

“I think so. Pelk wanted one of my potions so I gave him one, but he didn’t seem hurt, so I just assumed. I haven't had a chance to check.”

Jason nodded once, and made his way to the stables. Sure enough, Pelk was there, assisting a now-conscious Serif with downing one of the lesser healing potions Jason had given to the girls out of the first batch.

“Good to see you made it, Serif. In all the chaos I never saw what happened after Salazar nailed you good. How are you holding up?”

The man growled under his breath. “Well enough. My Endurance saved me from the worst. I should have seen it coming. You did put an end to his filth, right?”

“Uh, I’m assuming so,” Jason replied. “I haven’t looked, but we’ve got at least two of his friends in custody. The healer, I didn’t catch her name, is doing the rounds for us now.”

“Make sure she doesn’t run. If Salazar’s dead, she’ll-”

“We know, I already told Lumi.”

“Good.”

“Pelk, can you help Serif outside while I retrieve my bag? There’s something I need to make, and right away.”

“Aye,” the dwarf replied, standing.

Jason scanned around, locating the spot he’d left his haversack earlier. He picked it up and followed behind Serif and Pelk.

Jason stepped out from the stable.

“I’m pleased to announce to everyone, we will not be going back to town sans-Serif,” he declared loudly with a grin.

Kera snorted, and Lumi just rolled her eyes at him. The others just looked a little confused, because they’d already known he was alive.

“Nobody appreciates good puns anymore,” he grumbled.

“It was kind of crap,” commented Lumi. “Would've worked better if he was a scribe or something.”

“Hmph,” Jason said as he carried his pack to one of the remaining cabins. He wanted some privacy if he was going to make some potions.

Jason set his pack down on the table, dug through his supplies, and got to work. This time, it wasn’t so much alchemy he needed, but a combination of [Herbalism], and he hoped, [Synthesis]. Some of the plants he’d gotten from Flora had actual medicinal properties, and were used for things like the numbing of pain. With a little bit of luck and experimentation, he hoped he could make some kind of anesthetic.

It took him a few tries, but he worked it out: A mixture of Strengthen Fortitude and Calm Blood infused into a paste made from charcoal and the restorative insect-shell powder Flora had sold him. Why it worked with those specific ingredients, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he ended up with what amounted to a swift-acting, temporary numbing agent you could apply to the skin.

Jason made a second dose, scooped both of them into a conjured bowl. He almost tried his hand at making a pair of [Greater Healing] potions using two ‘Restore’ and two ‘Health’, but he was very low on mana, and didn’t want to raise eyebrows. It was bad enough he’d triggered his skill in front of Pelk, but at least the dwarf hadn’t seen him make any actual potions. Nor did Jason want to risk trying to take another mana potion after his healing, so he put away his supplies.

Stepping outside, he saw that the healer woman was nearly finished with her task; she was finally seeing to Lumi herself, and Aria was standing near holding the reigns of one of the horses, looking a little confused.

He sidled up to Kera unobtrusively and lowered his pack to ground. He kept the bowl of paste.

“Can you cast a Vine Trap?” Jason murmured to her in a bare whisper. He pointed over near the horse. “Right there, please. Quietly, if you can.”

Kera did so, doing her best to keep her voice down.

The woman heard, and tensed as if she was about to run, but when nothing overt happened to her, she completed her spell and light enveloped Lumi.

Jason handed his bowl to Kera and motioned for her to follow him as the light faded. He gave a slight bow to the healer.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said. “As per our agreement, you are free to take a horse to go wherever you need.”

Jason carefully led her over to the horse, and then with a lunge, hooked one leg around her foot and shoulder-checked her right into the thorn trap. She fell, and the vines sprang into existence, pinning her in place.

She struggled wildly for a moment, then suddenly relaxed completely as she realized she was fully trapped, her arms pinned to her sides and her legs firmly tied to the ground.

“You’re pretty good at this whole geas manipulation thing,” she said to him seriously. “Now what?”

“Sorry,” Jason replied as he beckoned Kera closer. “I probably shouldn’t really tell you in case there’s a contingency I don’t know about. I don’t suppose you could tell me how to cancel the bond?”

“No.”

“Well then, we’ll have to do it the hard way. Sorry. Close your eyes, please.”

She did as requested.

Jason knelt down next to the woman, and turned her face towards him so he get a good look at her tattoo. A quick analysis showed him that yes, most of it was inactive, but there were still some functional elements.

He prodded at it with one finger, and watched how the mana flowed over the active runes. His [Engrave] skill told him that yes, the runes were physically part of the tattoo. Remove it, and the runes would no longer function. He heard the girls suck in horrified breaths behind him as they realized where all this was headed.

“Lumi,” he asked. “Do you have any of our better heal potions left? Or are we out? I’m dry.”

“I-I’ve got one,” Kera said hesitantly. “I’d have given it to you but I remembered what you said from before and didn’t want to choke you trying.”

She pulled it from her belt with one hand and held it up.

“Good. Pass me the bowl.”

She did so. Jason conjured a thin, flat spatula and dipped it into the black paste, which he then spread all over the woman’s face and forehead, giving it a moment to do its work.

“Thaff fls wrd,” the woman mumbled sleepily. “Wuf-?”

“Sounds like it’s working,” Jason said. “Anyone have a really sharp knife?”

“I cannot believe I just watched you do that,” Lumi said, still looking rather ill.

Jason shrugged uncomfortably. To tell the truth, he was feeling rather queasy himself.

“I can’t believe I watched while you did that to me, and it didn’t hurt” the Kitsune woman interjected, rubbing her now-healed cheek. “I have so many questions.”

The three of them were sitting outdoors, in actual chairs, thanks to Pelk deciding he’d rather not watch Jason’s gruesome task. Instead, the sturdy dwarf had elected to drag some useable furniture out from the remaining two cabins so that a returning Aria and Belman could have somewhere to sit when they returned with the horses.

As a consequence, they now had two separate clusters of table and chairs. Serif, Jason, Lumi, and the Kitsune woman, whose name Jason had finally learned was Reis, sat at one table. Kera had taken a seat at the other table some distance away, along with Pelk, the two hunters, and the human healer Jason now knew as Daldra.

“I’ve got questions too,” Lumi said somewhat severely with a glare at Jason. “What were you thinking?”

Jason sighed. “Look, I know it was a bit disturbing, but I knew what I was doing. The compulsion was tied to the bond, which was tied to the runes, which were part of the tattoo. Remove that, no more compulsion.”

“That’s not what I was referring to. You almost got us all killed!”

“I’d like to point out that we were already busy getting killed,” Jason stated flatly. “In case you hadn’t noticed at the time, Serif was dead or out cold, Kera was about to collapse, I’d practically lost an arm, and Ceri and Echo had been banished. Kera still doesn't have enough mana back to resummon them. Of our actual combatants, we were down to you, and excluding our technically-civilian hunters, you were on your own in a one-versus-six”

“That’s not the point!” Lumi exclaimed.

“It is the point,” Jason said. “Yes, I over-did it, but we can chalk that up as a learning experience. I used what I had available and took a risk, because we had already lost. Instead of us dead and you carried off, I ended the fight, I did it in a way such that none of us received further injury, and I’ve learned to pull my punches in the future because those volatiles are just nuts. That sounds like a win in my book.”

“Just…promise me you’ll work on the whole recklessness thing,” Lumi said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“You do realize you’ve thrown your lot in with an [Alchemist], right?” Jason asked, giving her a wry smile. “You’ve seen my discovery list. Half the stuff in there explodes and the rest is a bio-hazard waiting to happen.”

“If you blow me up, I will convince a Necromancer to help me haunt you forever,” she replied, smiling back a little.

“Speaking of blowing people up…” Jason turned to Reis, “how did you two even survive? Also, um... sorry about your companions…”

He trailed off. He didn’t know how she felt about that. Neither she nor Daldra seemed to be bothered, but it certainly bothered him.

Reis laughed, her voice high and musical. “Ha! Companions? Please. I barely knew any of them. Other than Daldra over there, what with her clerical vows as a Knight of Teravia, not a single one of that lot was worth sparing. Those two Ursar? They weren't even bonded. They liked their job, just like the rest of that scum. Salazar didn’t even tell us about half the jobs he took; it wasn’t like he gave us a share. But they all enjoyed themselves anyway. Save your remorse, you made the right call.”

“I suppose you’d like us to think you’re completely innocent, of course,” Jason said, amused

Reis grinned cheekily at him. “Completely innocent? You’ve never met a Kitsune before have you?” She winked at him, and then blew him a kiss while her tails twirled about behind her. “Never that,” she said with a smile.

“But no,” she continued more seriously, “the truth is far more mundane. I’m a Guild-Licensed [Spell-Thief]. My job is to, how shall we say it, liberate things. I’d picked up a contract with the Archive, who’d gotten wind of some dusty old relic rotting away in Feron, and they wanted it. The owner wouldn’t sell, claiming it had been in the family for generations and was worth a fortune, and that the Archive was trying to cheat him or something. So they sent me in.”

“So…?” Jason prompted.

“Not much to say beyond that, really,” Reis continued with a shrug. “Ol’ Sal caught me red-handed crossing the border into his country, which I needed to pass through for the delivery. I knew it was a risk not to take a gate, but I didn’t want to pay the fee. Instead I ended up paying a different price.”

Lumi looked sick.

“Not that price.” Reis informed her firmly. “Even scum like Vittorio Salazar would think twice before stooping that low. His country’s laws forbid that just like everyone else’s, slave-bond or not, thank the heavens.”

Jason cleared his throat, changing the subject. “So how did you survive when Salazar didn’t anyway?”

“Oh that? That’s thanks to you, actually.”

“What? How?” he asked. “There’s now way my improv barrier could have survived an assault like that.”

“No,” she grinned at him, “but mine could. Your little stunt cut me off from being able to shield Ol’ Sal just like you planned, because my barriers start as projectiles. That meant that when I saw your firestorm coming down, I wasn’t required to save him, because I knew I couldn’t.”

Realization dawned on Jason.

“So you shielded yourself while still inside my barrier,” he said, “and then when the outer shell failed, you couldn’t drop your own shield in order to shield Vittorio, because it would mean you and Daldra would die and thus it wouldn’t actually save him. So you were free to keep your barrier up and put everything you had into it.”

“Exactly.” Reis said. She gave Jason a brilliant smile that made his heart race a little.

The kitsune's demeanor changed and she suddenly bowed her head. “Thank you for saving me,” Reis said in a quiet, serious tone of voice. “Daldra and I really do owe you our lives, and now our freedom as well.”

Jason felt his face heat. What did you even say in response to someone thanking you for saving their lives? Especially gorgeous, triple-tailed fox-women with ears he just wanted to reach out and…

No! Bad Jason! Stop it.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, flushing a bit. “Uh…Y-You’re welcome? Anytime.”

Lumi seemed to sense he was at a loss. She looked slightly amused, along with hint of something else he couldn’t identify. She came to his rescue.

“So…I gotta ask,” Lumi said, “It seems kind strange to me that you’d sit here and just admit in front of a guardsman,” she nodded at Serif, “that you’re a thief… why?”

Serif scowled with a sigh. Reis smiled winsomely at him, leaving him to explain.

“It’s a legalese thing among the freeholds,” he said with resignation, “and apparently she knows it. I, or any other guard among the freeholds, am only allowed to arrest her for crimes she is known to have carried out, for which no punishment has been levied or has one currently outstanding. The… slave-bond, as it’s generally referred to in these parts, basically supersedes whatever the original punishment was. Since that’s over and done with, and I’m not aware of any other specific crimes committed by her, she’s off the shit-list, even in Feron where she stole whatever-it-was.”

Serif glared at Reis. “Don’t think that means I won’t have my eye on you.”

She winked at him. “You can keep both on me, if you want.” She wiggled her tails in her seat again.

Serif just heaved another aggrieved sigh and stood up. “Enough goofing around," he said gruffly, Reis making a moue at him as he ignored her flirting. "We need to get a move on if we want to make the forest edge tonight.”

He glanced skeptically at the two remaining cabins. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not real thrilled about the chances those stay up much longer, so we should keep moving.”

“Eh-heh,” Jason laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. “Oops.”

“Yeah, oops.” Lumi said.

Jason surged to his feet. “Well then! Time to go loot the bodies, amirite?”

“After all that, I don’t know if there’s anything to loot,” Lumi replied.

Ignoring her, Jason quick-stepped in the direction of the cabins. The blast had thrown most of the bodies around, away from the stables, thanks the heavy winds caused by the elemental storm. It took him a few moments of searching to find them.

While he was searching around, he decided to check up on his notifications, which he’d ignored until now.

Hmm, looks like I’ve leveled in both. Artificer gets those extra skill points and a speciality after all, too!

He paused a moment to check his Alchemist notification, but Lumi called out to him before he had a chance to look.

“Jason! Come here a moment would you?”

He pushed his notifications out of the way. They could always wait.

Jason jogged over to Lumi, whom he found crouching over the corpse of Salazar himself. She had turned, standing so she had her back towards everyone else.

“Stand over there, please,” she pointed with one hand. Her other was concealed under her armor.

Jason shifted so he was blocking the view of the others. She withdrew her hand, and opened her fist, revealing what she’d taken from Salazar’s body.

It was an inactive dungeon core.

Jason quickly called a side conference with Lumi and Kera in one of the cabins, stability of the building intact or not. He wanted to have a hasty discussion out of sight, and hopefully out of earshot.

“Lumi.” Jason nodded to the girl as Kera joined them.

Lumi craned her neck, first checking to make sure no one was nearby. Then she showed the core to the other girl.

Kera sucked her breath in through her teeth.

“Well that’s bad,” she commented. “Or is it good? Does this mean he was the one making them?”

“It’s really bad,” Jason said. “Like, ‘we’re in really deep shit’ kind of bad.”

“How do you figure?” Kera asked.

“Salazar,” Lumi said. “He said he got an offer to hunt down me, specifically. An offer he might have received before we’d even reached Arnvale. Before we actually could have met anyone to who might want to.”

“Then there was Seraptis,” Jason continued for her, “who seemed to be after you. Plus we were at that riverbank for hours, until I stepped up to the water. Only then did the dungeon make itself known.”

Kera’s eyes grew wide and she gasped.

“One for each of us? The summoner?!”

Jason nodded. “I think…maybe something went wrong. Maybe the summoner messed up somehow, and we didn’t end up where we were supposed to be. Maybe he hired some people, bribed them with cores, and sent them after us. We know they're valuable to the right people. We know they’re made by evil wizards.”

“Sort of,” interjected Lumi.

“Sort of,” he conceded. “And… we also know that someone was chasing at least two of us, one of which we know was a bounty request with some fantastic payment involved. Why not dungeon cores?”

“He even wanted me alive,” Lumi said quietly.

“I think we have to assume something or someone capable of interfering with the Voice of the World is actively after us,” Jason said with all seriousness. “The Archive needs to be brought in on this, and probably will be with or without our consent if it gets out, which it probably will thanks to Therissa. Once they get involved, it’s entirely possible they’ll be after us, too.”

“So what do we do?” Lumi asked.

“We use what our opponents have helpfully given us," Jason said. "A convenient supply of cores, a powerful rival guild that happens to collect them, and a skill to turn them into something of indescribable value to anyone in the world.”

Jason looked back and forth between both girls. Kera was trembling slightly, Lumi looked vaguely defiant.

He took a deep breath.

“It’s time we gave the Black Thorns a call.”