Serenity turned back to Jacob and examined the curse. If it was learning, each attempt they made to crack it would only get worse.

The curse was even more crazed than before; after some searching, Serenity could see where the thread he’d pulled then cut once ran. He’d weakened a large area over Jacob’s chest, but it seemed to have loosely adjusted to the missing pieces.

If only he understood curses. What they really needed was someone who understood curses and also could explain it to Serenity or who could handle essence. Serenity needed to attack its control structure; this felt like he was attacking its limbs. It made it less powerful and might eventually do it, but it wasn’t fast. For something that was learning, he needed fast.

The only person Serenity knew who worked with essence was Russ. It was time to ask for help.

“Remember, find the center and work outwards. Everything should dissolve once you get rid of the anchor. Got it?”

“I think so. Enough to give it a go, at least. Thanks.” Serenity was amazed at the similarities and differences between mana-based magic and essence-based magic. Mana-based magic used a spellform that contained and guided the spell; according to Russ, essence-based magic had a core that emanated the spell. Russ called them “runic marbles,” but to Serenity they sounded a lot like the cores many monsters had.

Was that the reason monsters had cores? Were they enhancing themselves with essence magic? He knew the cores held both essence and mana.

“Just be careful. And thank you.” Russ hung up.

Denise was staring at Serenity in fascination, while Rissa was clearly listening.

Jacob seemed to have decided to take a nap. The poor guy must be exhausted to sleep in a car with a phone conversation happening next to him.

This time, Serenity didn’t want to start with the outside of the spell; he wanted to get at the inside. They couldn’t afford to trigger the freeze to make it easier to get at. Instead, he needed to somehow get in there and pull the spell itself out of Jacob.

Serenity felt like he was fumbling in the dark. What if he messed it up?

Voice? If I mess this up … can I bring him to the Tutorial so Blaze can fix him? Is that a problem?

[All Earth humans will be offered at Tutorial before the Tutorial is decommissioned, including infants born while the Tutorial is in progress. The order is set to maximize the chance of survival and progress]

It wasn’t a clear yes, but it also wasn’t a clear no. At the minimum, it sounded like the Voice wasn’t mad at him about Jeremiah. He’d take that as permission to bring Jacob in if he needed to.

“Should I try now or wait?” Serenity turned to Rissa. She was Jacob’s sister, so she was the best person to make the call if Jacob couldn’t.

“Let him sleep. He's tired and so are you. Can you shield him again? I’m amazed he can sleep with how noisy it is here.” Rissa started the SUV.

Serenity recast the mind-shielding spell. “It’s up, but it won’t last that long, especially not with the bat trace running. I really need to stop at a ley line, but I don’t know where any are.”

There was someone in the car who knew the area and had been through the Tutorial. Maybe she knew? “Denise? Do you know where a local dungeon is?”

“We’d have to register ahead of time. All the local ones have webpages where you can sign up for a time slot. They’re all closed for the night by now anyway. Well, except for the Nightmare Cottage; it doesn’t open til sunset. It’s usually booked days in advance, though.” Denise’s face scrunched while she looked at Serenity. “Shouldn’t you get that curse taken care of first, though? Unless you think being in a dungeon will help?”

That was more convenient than the New York City dungeons, which were all first-come first-serve. Serenity suspected the signup model would be better once there were enough dungeons, but until then it probably meant that people who were more tech-savvy had an advantage.

Wait, Denise made a point of saying the Nightmare Cottage was booked days in advance. Did that mean the others weren’t? “It’s not for the dungeon, I need to visit a ley line and dungeons are almost always on ley lines. It’s a good way to find one without a map. How many dungeons are in the area? Are they not all full?”

“The popular ones are, especially any with afternoon or evening resets. And weekends are pretty much always full. During the week you can get daytime slots the same day if you’re willing to go to a less popular dungeon. I don’t know how much longer that’ll last. Item prices are already falling, pretty soon it won’t be worth running them unless the entry fees come down.” Denise huffed. “If you just want to go near one, there’s one at the Round Rock. I’ll give you directions.”

Serenity couldn’t really remember what dungeons had been like at first. What he did know was that he needed to somehow keep at least a good number of people running them; most people could live their normal lives and slowly progress on their Paths through daily activities or hobbies, but some people needed to move faster. They’d be the main defenders against the first wave of invasions and probably the second wave in ten years.

Enough of the world was destroyed the first time around that no one had needed to work to get people to run dungeons; they were a necessity to have enough food, shelter, and items. One of Serenity’s goals was to save more of humanity this time, and that meant an entire different set of issues.

Maybe the way to handle it was something like the military? In fact, that might well be a good place to start looking for people; they were already trained to fight, after all.

His father was probably already planning that, but Serenity knew he should check with him and suggest it if he wasn’t.

At the ley line, Serenity changed the spell he cast on Jacob. The previous one required Serenity to be relatively close to maintain the spell, but the new one took all the mana at once and would last as long as the mana fed into it would last. The original spell was more efficient if Serenity was close, but the new one took advantage of Serenity’s full mana pool from being in the ley line; it would last all night.

Jacob slept through everything until they had to wake him to get into his apartment.

“How important do you think the bat is?” Rissa yawned as she spoke. It was almost midnight back home, and she was always asleep well before then.

“Pretty important. I think it’s the first sign of something. We’ve got time, or we should, but I don’t know how much. Bats should not be able to shrug off properly-constructed tracking spells.” Serenity yawned himself. “If it were a person, sure, but even then they’d probably need training. This bat didn’t resist, so it’s more like what I’d expect. Thing is, they all had residue. I wasn’t able to tell what sort of spell it was from, but it was there.”

“So there’s something intelligent and able to cast spells, and you think it may be some of the bats.” Rissa looked at Serenity. “You know how crazy that sounds, right?”

Serenity raised his eyebrows. He’d always wanted to be able to raise just one but somehow it never worked. “Less crazy than suddenly becoming a dragon.”

Rissa looked away. “Fair.” She rubbed her eyes. “Can we wait til morning?”

“The spell will last that long, unless something removes it. The bat might be back at the bridge by then. Don’t they head back before dawn?” Serenity hoped the bat had headed somewhere important, but there was no way to know. There was always a good chance it was just out hunting insects, like a normal bat.

“I think so. But I’m not sure I’m up for much more. We can try to follow one tomorrow night in that case? Maybe they’ll head out earlier?”

Serenity nodded. “Sleep sounds good. We can try to get up early; maybe we can head out before dawn.”

They didn’t manage to get up early.

The time zone change helped, but they were both so exhausted they forgot to check what time dawn was, and by the time they woke up, it was already past dawn.

“Did the bat go back to the bridge?” Rissa’s words pulled Serenity’s attention away from watching her dress.

He had to concentrate on the spell to tell that it was still active and he could tell which direction the bat was in. A quick shapeshift and check against Google Maps told him that that direction was roughly southwest, rather than the almost exactly south that led to the bridge. “No. It’s west of there. I can feel that it’s a ways off, but I don’t have the exact distance. It doesn’t seem to be moving, but at this distance I’m not sure I’d be able to tell if it was.”

Rissa nodded. “Probably means there’s another roost somewhere. Not what I thought bats did, but-” Rissa shrugged. “We should have time. Breakfast, then the curse while you’re fresh. Then I can take some time to try to teach Jacob some basics. It’ll be weeks before he’s good enough to leave alone. It’s not easy to build a shield, much less keep it up all the time.”

Serenity nodded. His first shield was a Path skill and even managing that took time to get used to, and he’d had years of practice at maintaining spells like the tracing spell by then. It would be even worse to learn without the Voice’s assistance. “I don’t think I can afford to wait that long. There’s a lot I could do with that time, but I really need to be figuring out how to get those portals closed and how we’re going to deal with what’s coming. This early, I can probably close some portals on my own, but in ten years-”

“In ten years we’ll have a way to detect them as they open. You’re the example, the person people can look to and say we can do this. That may be here or it may not, but one way or another we’ll work it out. If I have to stay with Jacob while you go do stuff that needs to be done, that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. One thing at a time, don’t get ahead of yourself.” Rissa was always a lot more spur-of-the-moment than Serenity. It seemed odd, since she was a ForeSeer, but at the same time it made sense in a way; she didn’t want her ability to rule her life.

Serenity had always been big on planning, even though his plans often fell through. Rissa’s spontaneity and adaptability actually made more of them work than he’d managed on his own. “Fair enough. That means our next step is taking care of the curse, I should concentrate on that.”

“Breakfast first. It won’t take long.”