“So what do you think of his story?” Serenity leaned back in the seat and looked at Russ. Katya and Red were somewhere in Victoria’s Secret; Serenity and Russ had retreated to a waiting area nearby and Serenity was grateful for the chance to stop and talk to his future father-in-law.

“Josaiah’s? It hangs together. I was wondering about the pattern; it was too obvious. It’s clearly a trap, but if we don’t clean it up, this is only going to happen again.” Russ leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. “Now that we know that, we need to figure out how best to spring it.”

“I can-”

Russ was already shaking his head. “You’re not going to be involved in the first few. I want you to be our safety, available to handle things when they go wrong, and that means you can’t be the one to deal with any more.”

“When things go wrong? Don’t you mean if?”

Russ shook his head again. “No, when. We’re talking about reversing an ambush; there’s got to be something hidden behind it, and we can’t plan for what. Phoebe will do her best, but she has to be extremely careful to not lock in a bad future.” Russ paused and turned to face Serenity. “That’s one of the reasons you’re likely to be a good safety; the lock can’t hold you.”

Serenity frowned. Were they really talking about that again? “Predestination? You know I don’t believe in that. The future depends on the choices we make.”

“You can say that because it doesn’t apply to you. I’ve seen Phoebe be right too many times to dismiss it, even when we’ve tried to change things.” Russ had a faraway look. “To Phoebe, the future is as unyielding as the past. It makes things difficult.”

Serenity noticed movement at the front of Victoria’s Secret and looked up; it was Katya and Red. They’d somehow managed to leave the store without buying anything. Serenity doublecked to confirm it; he’d expected at least one bag. Rissa never managed to walk by the store without buying something.

Katya seemed annoyed for some reason, but wasn’t willing to say why.

They didn’t really have another chance to talk about what they’d learned once Josaiah left the Tutorial as they hurried through the mall. It was surprisingly busy.

Katya insisted on at least walking into each store other than the movie theater. She seemed to find the specialty ballcap store puzzling, while the candy store kept making her ask what the various candies did; Serenity had to explain that they were simply to taste good.

It turned out that Katya adored old-fashioned lemon drops when Red made her try some.

Katya took the shoe store in stride and adored the food court, but after the fifth clothing store she asked when they were going to see weapons and armor. Explaining that there wasn’t a store for that - at least, not yet - because it wasn’t commonly seen as necessary seemed to please her.

She was even more pleased when they made it through the entire store and only one store sold medical supplies - and none of them were magically enhanced.

The spa seemed to offend her senses for some reason; the moment they stepped inside the door, Katya started sneezing and didn’t stop until she was back in the main mall corridor. “What was that?”

Serenity shook his head. He hadn’t made it inside, so he wasn’t certain what she’d reacted to.

Red, on the other side of Katya, handed her a tissue. “I’m going to guess allergies, but I think it means no spa for you.”

“Why is this even here?” Katya sniffled and led them on to the next store - another clothing store - before giving up and returning to the food court.

“The spa or the mall?” Serenity thought for a moment. In a way, it was the same answer. “The mall was built forty or so years ago, back when people mostly went to a store to buy stuff. It had a lot of different shops then; a lot of what you see today wouldn’t have made it here. Then people changed to buying stuff online and the malls started to die. They got cheaper, so other businesses moved in; that’s why there are offices and a gym here. The spa was part of that.”

Katya thought it over. “What’s online?”

“Uh.” Serenity wasn’t sure where to begin with that.

The trip to the shopping mall took six hours. Most of the time was spent following Katya from store to store as she looked around. By the time they were done, Katya hadn’t bought anything but Red was carrying enough bags that Serenity felt bad for her. Every time he offered to help, she turned him down; she seemed to think it was her fault so she should carry the bags.

On the way home, Serenity wanted to plan what they were going to do about the decay-creatures, but Russ refused to make detailed plans until he had Phoebe’s input. The third time Serenity asked, Russ told him to talk to Rissa about it. “More than one Seer would be helpful, just have her be careful about what futures she locks.”

The single statement led to a series of questions from Katya. She knew about Time mages, but she knew about the normal uses - speeding up or slowing down the passage of time for individuals or objects, up to freezing something “out of Time” to preserve it.To her, it was a valuable, difficult Affinity - but she’d never heard of viewing the future.

Viewing the past, like what Serenity did in the Hall of Healing in the Shining Caverns on Tzintkra, was known to be possible but to require a very high Affinity. She’d never heard of seeing the future; it didn’t exist yet, so how could you see it?

Their attempt to explain it occupied the remainder of the trip back to the park.

Sterath - Tranquil Conviction (Challenge, not a Quest) Building the dungeon into a home - Raz, Aki; input only Tutorial Instruction (Quest, 44/180) Other invaders - need a plan. Two Quests; 15/512. Promote the Tutorial / popularity - is this still necessary? Ask Nightwitch Rissa’s pregnant - what the heck do I do about that? Is there stuff I should do for a kid? Decay creatures - Russ is handling, but needs my help? Hiring an assistant Finding the Lost Quest from Althyr - need to talk to Althyr Probably should talk to Althyr anyway. Done with the Void book? Dad has people mapping out the invasions they can find. Check with him about that? Rissa’s brother! What was his name? Remember to ask. Also how to get there? Echo. What the heck is that Serenity Settlement? She asked me to visit? Recruiting people. Probably need to talk to Katya again. Can I recruit anyone from the Tutorial? Blaze opened up a lot this past Tutorial, but then again we spent most of the Tutorial together. Not Margrethe Order’s Guild. Will they be a problem? Have time there Look into the instructor-mages. Helga was pretty cool (I wonder what her real name is?) but the others were idiots. They ignored Josaiah because of what his Affinities were? He was a terrible healer but a quite competent battle mage, one of the best the students had at the end. Creative. What’s up with that? Or is it just more people like Entherys who don’t know what they’re doing? Is there a way to fix that? Call my boss Spend time with Rissa Flying practice Put a new group together? Should I plan to do a lot more delving or not? Much as I like delving, maybe I should work on other stuff and leave that to others instead? But I still need a group to help with the invasions, don’t I?

Serenity stared at the list. He was confident he was missing something, and could only hope it wasn’t important. The list was in the order he’d thought of things; some of them were really parts of other things and they definitely weren’t in order of importance.

The list was longer than he’d thought. Which ones did he need to deal with as soon as possible? Not importance, but urgency.

Hiring an assistant made the top of that list. Everything would be easier with an assistant. It would take time, but that didn’t make it less urgent. Fortunately, he didn’t really have to be in a particular location for it.

Next were the decay creatures with Russ and Rissa’s brother. The decay creatures were urgent mostly because he didn’t want to leave the area without handling them; now that they’d started, Serenity didn’t think either Russ or Red would stop trying to deal with the problem, even if Serenity wasn’t there. Rissa’s brother was probably the reason Serenity would be leaving soon. Was it even possible to handle the decay creatures first?

That was definitely something to talk to Russ about.

Serenity was searching the list for anything else that had to be handled before he and Rissa left town when she walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around him. “I wasn’t expecting to find you at the kitchen table, and as a human, too.”

Serenity gripped Rissa’s arms gently. “I’m trying to figure out what I need to do next. It feels like I’m bouncing from thing to thing and not really finishing anything.”

“You took care of the Hegemon Worms.” Rissa set her head against his; he could feel her breath on his ear.

“Almost as much by accident as by plan. That’s not … look at this. It’s a huge list, and it keeps getting longer.” Serenity closed his eyes and leaned back against Rissa. “Nightwitch is right. I need at least an assistant. Which means we need to figure out the pay thing. I don’t think that even made the list.”

“I started looking already. We’ll need to go back to the house for a while soon; Aki hasn’t figured out how to get internet service yet. I’m still not sure she understands what I mean.”

:I do: Aki’s mental voice sounded amused. :I don’t know how you’re doing it, so I can’t replicate it. WHY don’t you just use normal crystal communication? It’s easy to grow crystal access points! Expensive; I can’t afford any yet. But still, once I’m big enough it will be easy!:

Serenity laughed at Aki’s complaint. “Give it a few years and I’m sure someone will. For now, we’ll just have to figure out how to hook up to one of your crystals.”

Rissa loosened her arms, stood up straight, and leaned over Serenity to stare at the paper. “You still haven’t called your boss? Serenity!”

“Karen will -”

Rissa flicked Serenity on the top of his head. “I don’t care if she’ll understand. Call her anyway.”

Serenity grumbled, then fished his phone out of his pocket. The moment he touched the button to wake it up, he suddenly felt everything the phone could feel/hear/experience. It was far stronger than the static he’d “heard” before, and was nothing like the experience he’d had with Nat’s camera. He was the phone and he was all of the apps it ran and the information it was sending and receiving.

The phone fell out of his hand. As it did, the connection broke and Serenity was solely in his own body again, no longer being overwhelmed with information he didn’t know how to process. He looked down at the phone. Could he pick it up safely?

“Serenity?” Rissa sounded worried.

It hadn’t happened until he touched a button. So maybe if he picked it up by the case?

Whether that was the key or not, Serenity didn’t feel anything as he picked up the phone and carefully set it on the table without touching the screen or any buttons.

“Add figuring out Tek’s neural interface thing to the list. I think it even belongs on the urgent list.” Serenity stared at the phone. He still needed to make the call, but did he dare touch the phone again?

“Oh, that again?” Rissa sounded relieved as she reached past him and added it to the end of the list.

On the other hand, he needed to figure out this thing of Tek’s.

On the gripping hand, maybe something other than a phone would be a better choice of item to learn from?