Lena

Lena kept a part of her awareness focused on Jason, Rob, and Aaron while she pumped Candy and her arassi acquaintances for more more information. She had to delay, anyway, and this at least distracted her from feeling useless. She didn't need light to see the guys, and Rob's sobs had calmed down. She thought he might have fallen asleep, passed out under his brother's watchful presence. Jason was going to chew her up one side and down the other. She could feel the reaming out building around him, and Lena knew she deserved it.

With the surprise of these arassi's presence, Lena realized that she needed to be ready for hostile creatures on the other side of her portals. She might be non-corporeal, but her friends, her cousin, they were very corporeal to her dungeon senses.

Lena needed to have mana reserves available, not just to seal off the next - and hopefully last - portal from her vulnerable friends. She needed it in case she had to drop some boulders or something on top of whomsoever might be holding on to Brad. To that end, she released the maintenance of the bottom two meters of her pond. Without knowing what would happen were she to stop maintaining the air, she wasn't willing to risk letting that go. Her zone's mana recovery increased. After roughly twenty minutes, she had about a quarter of her total mana capacity to play with.

She had opened three portals now, which gave her a better understanding of the process. The creative part of her wanted to puzzle out how to make a rotating portal. Could she make one with carvings that shifted based on the destination, maybe with a keying sequence to select from the choices?

The more mana built up in her zone's mana pool, the more the need to create, to immerse herself in the physical act of drawing forth art, buzzed through Lena.

"Hey!" Candy's voice interrupted Lena's growing fixation on building the next portal.

"Oh! Sorry! What were you saying?" Lena asked.

Candy peered intently at Lena's toon. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

"Art." Just saying the word sent a shiver of excitement through Lena. "I wasn't kidding when I said that this is nearly my ideal studio. I need more patterns." Tapping the floor, she added, "The menu just calls this stone, but it reminds me more of concrete than stone. And the ceilings? The layering inside is more organic, more like shale or slate. So, what determines the types of stone I can make? And -!" She broke off as the memory of making the cotton filled her with hopeful curiosity. "[Zone Management]. [Research]."

*** *** ***

Sufficient research options have been introduced to make use of organization features. Please select your priorities for grouping and ordering research topics:

• Status

• Category

• Chain

• Designation

Continue to introduce new research options to gain search features.

*** *** ***

Lena quickly made her selections and checked on her options.

*** *** ***

[Environment] • [Techniques] • [Materials] • [Plants] • [Creatures]

*** *** ***

Her basic building blocks for the zone were listed under [Environment] as Unlocked, along with an option to research Crystal. Oh. Hell. Yeah!

Selecting [Techniques], Lena saw that Twist now had a status of Unlocked, and with MPR (Mana Pool Recovery) still allocated. She dropped that down to 1 MPR just to see what would happen, and then allocated 20 MPR each to Weave and Felt. Under [Materials], she now had Cotton: Raw and Cotton: Thread unlocked, with options for Batting and Felt ready to research. And she had metals she could research. Iron, silver, copper, tin, and bronze, to be exact. [Plants] had the lone entry of Cotton, while [Creature] had a single entry: "???".

"Lena!" Candy's voice held a snap to it.

"What?!" Lena snapped back.

"Focus! Here and now! I'm talking to you!" The petulance in Candy's demand aggravated Lena.

"Art!" Lena growled, rising from her sitting position.

Jason spoke. "Lena, let me in before you lose yourself."

She nodded and pulled down the walls around this portal, letting the stone flow like water to recreate the walkways joining her landmass and platforms. Some of the urgency to create eased with that action, but not enough. She spread out lights, this time setting them in the walkways, sculpting them to look like phosphorescent chips embedded in the concrete. The focus that took eased some more of the creative drive.

Jason left Aaron guarding Rob and, cautiously, hands in plain sight, moved to meet the arassi.

For their part, the arassi's scales lifted and shivered at the environmental changes. However, they, too, were being careful not to stir up hostilities.

"Candy, would you please make the introductions?" Jason asked when he reached the edge of the platform.

"But, Lena -!"

"Candy. Introductions. Now." The authority in Jason's tone gave Lena something to focus on, other than the push to create.

Candy opened her mouth, the look on her face promising arguments, but before she spoke, she flicked her gaze to Jason and very obviously thought better of it. "Tall guy here is Kargerran. He's in charge of the rest of them. Kargerran, Jason."

Lena face palmed. "Oh, thank God Mamaw isn't here!"

"I'm a fucking engineer, not a diplomat!" Candy planted her fists on her hips.

"Enough," Jason said.

"I need to art," Lena said, tipping her head up to the ceiling and hugging herself. "It's as physical a need as I've ever had."

"Okay," Jason said. "Why don't you make a third platform and start on an archway to get Brad? Don't open that portal without us!"

Lena nodded and walked off the platform, moving as if the water were a solid surface. Jason could handle the social things. He was much better at it than she was, and it felt like every drop of mana filling up her zone's mana pool was a weight that needed to become something worthy, or even just something.

*~*~*

Jason

Jason kept up a stream of cussing in his mind while doing his best to keep his shit together on the outside. Rob was no where near ready for any kind of confrontation, even if turning out the lights seemed to have done him a bit of good. Aaron's breath had audibly sped up when Lena first plunged them into darkness, though it had calmed a bit with the wall cutting them off. Jason wasn't sure if the kid had seen just what had been coming out of the second portal Lena opened up.

It hadn't taken him long to realize that he didn't have any better weapons than his fists if it came to a fight with those things. That was why he was mentally cussing out the cosmos, even as he listened to Lena's voice whisper up from the stone. It bothered him that that voice grew more and more distracted. When she turned waspish, Jason decided that he had to be part of whatever was going on, if only to ride herd on the girls. It had been a long time since he had dealt with anyone as A.D.D. as those two.

Now that he was face to face with the arassi, Jason wasn't sure what to do. He eyed the one that Candy had introduced, and decided polite was far better than confrontational. "My apologies for the rudeness of the ladies. We've all been through a bit of a shock and it seems to have brought out the worst sides of our natures. My name is Jason Kline."

Candy's "tall guy" chuckled. "This is not your average day, but I suspect it's been harder on you than us. Sergeant Kargerran of the Third Squad of the First Patrol Talon of Lotrot. Looks like there are two others besides yourself. Do they need healing?"

Jason said, "Rob's dealing with some serious shock and Aaron's watching out for him."

"If that changes, it is our duty to render aid." Kargerran paused, obviously gauging his next words. "Would you tell us how you came to be here?"

"Honestly, I don't even know where here is," Jason said.

"We like to call this corner of the Primal Chaotic Soup Rhofhir. Dungeons are weird when it comes to location. The entrance we came through leads back to a cave on the edge of the Mana Wastes, about two days march from the Free City of Lotrot. That's near the southern tip of the continent of Malta. There may be entrances that return people to other continents." Kargerran tapped his chin before he asked, "Do you think the Arbiter will mind if my guys scout the dungeon while we talk?"

Lena's voice rose up from the stone. "Don't approach Rob or Aaron without Jason or Candy. And stay out of the water. I don't know how much I'll be adding or removing, and I don't know what would happen if I dropped the maintenance cost while one of your fellas was in it."

"That's freaky," Candy said.

Kargerran, on the other hand, said, "Vi, Stylard, you're with me. The rest of you, scout together." Four of the arassi rose and took off toward the big pile of dirt that served as the landmass.

Turning back to Jason, Kargerran said, "I've heard Candice Sterling's account. Would you please tell me, in your own words, the events that brought you to Rhofhir?"

Jason shrugged. "Not much to tell." He summed up his experiences, finishing with, "So, think you might be able to help us get home?"

Kargerran shook his head. "I'm not that personally powerful. However, my superiors could probably get a message to the Arcane Asylum. The magi that study there understand more about the Grand Tapestry than just about anyone else."

Candy asked, "An asylum? You want us to get help from people in a mental ward?"

This was one of the times that girl really managed to get on Jason's nerves. "Candice. You need to go read a dictionary."

"Excuse you?" she said, stiffening.

Jason ignored her puff up. "Is contacting these magi a simple thing? Will we be responsible for some kind of debt for that?"

Kargerran said, "I don't know. I do know that magi are interested in Travelers, and they may consider interviews with you to be worth any investments on their part."

"Mm-hmm." Jason thought a moment, glad that he had offended Candy into retreating into some inner dialog, judging by the expressions passing over her face. Hopefully, she would stay distracted with that long enough for the adults to have their conversation.

Lena, her light show of a body quivering, popped up next to them. "I'm ready to try reaching for Brad."

Jason looked in the direction she had walked off and saw a large stone cube, at least three meters in each dimension. "That's … different."

She nodded. "The archway for the portal is in its own sealed room. That way if there are hostiles on the other side, they have to get through half a meter of compacted concrete."

*When did she start using the metric system?* Jason gave his head a small shake to dislodge that thought. It wasn't relevant now.

"What happens if someone needs to go through to get him?" Jason asked.

Lena shrugged. "We wait until I have the iron material unlocked and try to make sure you've got at least a knife, or a nice, solid length of pipe. I might be able to make a B.B. gun, but I'm not sure how consistent I can be in hollowing out the bore."

One of the Arassi that stayed with Kargerran asked, "You're going to make another entrance? How?"

Lena blinked at him. "It's in my menu," she said.

"What menu?" he asked.

"The interface for the Tapestry thingie?" she said, her tone unsure. At their blank looks, she added, "Like when you think [Status]? When you have options to dive deeper into the interface, that's when you have a menu."

The trio of arassi exchanged glances and the one who had spoken said, "Ah."

Turning back to Jason, Lena said, "I have to do something soon. So, I'm turning on the portal now."

Her expression slackened and her quivering stopped.

"What? No, you need to wait!"

"Sugar sticks!" whispered up from the water this time.

"Lena, what happened?" Jason asked.

"I can't-. I can't open the portal."

Jason closed his eyes and tried to shut off the string of cuss words running through the back of his mind. "Walk me through it," he ordered.

"Oh-. Sugar!" she said. "Okay. I try to activate the portal and I'm getting error messages. The first one reads, 'Location information is insufficient to establish portal. Portal will open to random location matching location information.' Then the next line is, 'Zone has insufficient stability to support additional independent portals. Portal fails to activate.' I'm not as concerned by the last one. I can tear down the portal to where we found Aaron and reuse that like I did with the one I put up that found you. But the first? I'm doing the exact same thing I did when I got you and Candy!"

Jason opened his eyes and saw Lena huddling into herself. "We don't want to strand the patrol with us if this doesn't work, so, yeah, taking down the portal you used to find Aaron and Rob is the better choice. Not right now, though. No need to bash our heads against a problem without taking a moment to think it through. Right?"

Lena nodded. "Sugar, but I could use a hug right now," she said.

"Excuse me," Kargerran said.

Candy moved to wrap an arm around her cousin's shoulders, only for her arm to pass through. "Whoa. That's -."

"Don't say it!" Lena snapped. "I'm a freak! I get it!"

"Focus, ladies." Jason let some of his frustration bark in his voice. "Running in six different directions without a hint of coordination isn't going to get us anything but chaos. Personal break downs can happen one at a time and Rob's stolen that ticket for the moment."

"Oh, and what do you suggest we do, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Candy asked.

Jason folded his arms and raised one eyebrow at Candy.

Lena said, "She never stuck out her tongue as a kid, if that's what you're waiting for."

"Let's assess what we've got to work with," Jason said.

"Excuse me," Kargerran said again, louder this time. When he had Lena's attention, he asked, "What happened to the entrance we just came through?"

Lena looked at the archway, touched it, and in short order the view of a cave with a small fire and dearth of occupants filled the portal. "I stopped maintaining it when I thought you might try to take my cousin away."

One of the arassi that Jason still hadn't gotten a name for stepped next to the portal and began making a tactile examination of it, pulling out a few odd faceted, translucent gems. "I so need to scavenge your memories," the guy said with a side-ways look at Lena.

"If that's a two way street, we can work something out." Lena seemed calmer as she replied, but Jason wasn't sure how fragile that calm might be.

"Alright, what do we have to work with?" Jason asked again, taking care to include Kargerran this time.

Candy said, "I'm going with insanity or brain trauma, which really sucks because I handled the wiring. There is no way that the biofeedback could actually catapult us across dimensions or universes or whatever. Physics don't work that way."

"You are so not helpful," Lena said.

*~*~*

Lena

Lena left her toon on the platform with Jason and Candy and the arassi leader. She didn't need to be in the cross fire as Jason and Candy growled at each other. Reactivating the other portal had given Lena enough relief from the need to build to realize that the first error message, about not being able to locate Brad, might very well mean he hadn't been caught up in whatever brought them to Rhofhir.

Sure, maybe this was a freaky psychic mind trip, but what if it wasn't? Would it do her any harm to treat things like they were real while hoping to wake back up in her garage? And if it were real, but she didn't treat it that way, how much worse off would she be?

And the mana needed to get used! She started by maxing out all of the research options and trying to see if she could get something like an auto-allocation going. No luck.

*** *** ***

Design of Management Strategist unlocked.

*** *** ***

Or, maybe that was a longer term working? Regardless, that wasn't burning mana now.

She restored one meter of depth to her pond. That took a lot of the stress off, and Lena felt like she could think again.

Going back through her menus for Zone Management, the Guardians caught her attention.

«Howdo I contract a zone guardian?» She projected the thought to her menu.

*** *** ***

Zone Guardians may be designated by using the [Offer Contract] command on the selected individual. Monsters and Creatures created from Zone resources automatically accept standard Zone Guardian Contracts. Once a contract is accepted by both parties, it may only be canceled or voided by the terms of the contract.

*** *** ***

«What is the standard Zone Guardian Contract?»

The information that flooded Lena's consciousness stunned her for a moment before she began sorting through it. Essentially, contracted creatures received nourishment from the ambient mana of the Zone. In return, they performed whatever tasks the Zone Arbiter assigned them. The cancellation clause came down to "mutual consent to dissolve the contract". It was slavery.

She shuddered.

*** *** ***

Do you wish to edit your Zone's standard contract?

*** *** ***

Absolutely! Just, not right at the moment.

"So, Lena, that brings us to you and this dungeon-zone-thing," Jason said.

"Um. How so?" she asked.

"How does it work?" Jason asked.

"Oh. Do you want the overview or the nitty-gritty?"

"Details, please!" one of the greenies said. The four who had gone walkabout in her dungeon had returned, and the second of the green-sheen scaled guys nodded in eager agreement. Aaron, also, had joined the discussion during Lena's distraction, but he seemed more interested in studying the arassi than speaking.

"This is where I need Power Word: Blah," she commented before launching into a menu by menu description. She took some extra time with the Structure menu, demonstrating the various environmental materials she could create, when she found that Crystal was already unlocked as a material. Her zone was down to a net regen of 130 mana per hour by the time she moved on.

The arassi perked up with a great deal of interest when she started going through her Resources menus.

"You can selectively produce whatever you have a pattern for?" the larger of the greenies asked. It was a slight difference, maybe only a few centimeters in height and breadth of his shoulders.

*** *** ***

You have unlocked the [Perception] skill. +1 ACU, +1 WIS

*** *** ***

Lena shrugged and popped out a cotton boll. "These are exportables, and it seems like the difference is that there's no maintenance cost. I have the feeling-. Well, let me try something quick like."

She didn't wait for the, "By all means" reply before she tried applying the twist technique to the cotton boll while drawing the twist away from the fluffy bits. It vaguely worked, enough to prove the concept by producing a weak, nubby cotton yarn. "Cool! So, the techniques I unlock I can apply to the things I can export!"

With that thought in mind, Lena tried producing cotton thread. She got a length of loose thread as thick as three-ply embroidery floss and about two meters in length for the same cost as the cotton boll.

"Awesome! How do I make it purple?" As she thought about it, she decided to change the cotton's pigmentation. While adjusting the HSL values for her light had gotten her an avatar of sorts, cotton would be reflecting light, not emitting it. With a little concentration and the application of an oddly named skill, the cotton changed to match the shade of purple she envisioned, a mixture of prussian blue and alizarin crimson slightly favoring the crimson.

*** *** ***

Applied Color Theory +1.

Design of the Artist advanced 16%.

*** *** ***

"May I?" the smaller greenie asked, extending a claw tipped hand toward the thread on the ground.

"Sure," Lena said.

"[Purify]," he said. Lena couldn't see anything happen, but she thought she recognized the same kind of intent behind the word as when she said [Zone Management].

"This isn't dyed. You've somehow altered the raw fibers to be purple."

"Mm-hmm," Lena agreed.

"And you can pick where you have an entrance," the larger greenie said.

"And control when it's open and closed," Lena said.

"You wouldn't happen to be able to make an entrance at Lotrot, would you?" one of the guys with a copper hue over his black scales asked.

Lena shrugged. "The ones I opened before, I did by thinking hard about the people I wanted to meet up with. I'm willing to try from some kind of description, but I don't know if that'll give the system enough information to get the point right. And, to be honest, I'm not sure if I was one of the people in charge of a city if I'd be all that keen on someone just dropping a magic doorway somewhere in my town."

Candy asked, "What about Brad?"

Lena said, "If he's here with us, I can't reach him. I don't know if I just don't know him as well as I thought I did, or if he never made it, or if he landed in more trouble than he could survive. If you can wave your hand and magically learn what happened to him, that would be great, but I think that finding him is going to take allies. And none of us have any idea how to get back to my garage, so allies again."

Aaron gave Candy a sympathetic look and said, "We're not going to give up on finding your boyfriend."

Candy returned the sympathetic look with one of annoyance, but held back her habitual denial of inter-laboratory dating.