Serenity spent some time comforting Rissa, then worked with Aki to make another Unbound Fate Essence Seed. He didn’t know if it would work for Phoebe, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

Serenity was grateful that the Essence Seeds could be removed from the dungeon. The tool used to make them couldn’t be without paying a very high price. Being able to use the Essence Seed elsewhere and not being bound to the dungeon made using his Essence and Mana completely worthwhile.

Even if it did work, there was no way he could make them for everyone who needed one. Even if he could, there was no way he’d be able to get one to everyone who needed one. Perhaps they’d set up a challenge or something that would provide them, or maybe some way to pay in to get one? That might be worthwhile.

If it worked at all. That wasn’t shown, yet. If all it did was suppress the blessing or even make the blessing suppress the curse, it wouldn’t help. The blessing wasn’t there anymore.

Serenity hated working based on guesses, but that was really what experimentation was. You guessed, then you tried it, then it worked or it didn’t and you (usually) tried something else. Most of the time, even if something worked it was only partially successful on the first trial. Whether you called it the scientific method, programming, or designing spells, any form of progress required trial and error and a way of knowing which was which.

Serenity’s thoughts were interrupted by Russ opening the door to their house.

“Serenity? Oh, there you are.” Russ looked exhausted and sounded about as good as he looked. “Are you about ready? Phoebe wanted to walk in without my help.”

“Yeah, I just finished.” It went a lot faster the second time. For some reason, he was able to push both mana and essence in faster; that could be anything from his higher attributes to the fact that he’d done it before, but the most likely reason was Mold Magic. It was a good thing he had significantly larger essence and mana reserves than before, because he couldn’t depend on his regeneration to keep them filled with the faster drain. “Wait, I thought we were supposed to meet you at Rissa’s house?”

Russ shrugged. “Phoebe overheard me talking to Rissa. She didn’t want to wait at home, so she talked me into coming here.”

Serenity reached into the device and pulled out the crystalline Essence Seed. Was it his imagination or did everything seem to be crystalline around him? Monster cores, dungeon cores, now this essence seed.

Unbound Fate (Child of Time) Essence Seed

When consumed or absorbed, grants the Unbound Fate modifier. Usable modifier, Dungeon Reward (extreme rarity).

Fate does not rule a Unbound Child of Time. An Unbound can slip between the lines others have laid out and even break them.

May only be used by those with an existing Fate.

It was probably the fact that essence liked to crystallize. That would explain it.

Serenity handed the seed to his future father-in-law. “You should talk to Rissa about it, she should know more about what happened than I do. I’m exhausted; I need to go sleep.” He was low on both essence and mana, and he felt absolutely exhausted. No matter what he did, he wasn’t going to be awake much longer.

Serenity walked into the back, leaving Russ staring at the small object in his hand.

Serenity didn’t wake up until hours later when his mana and essence finished recovering naturally. If someone had come in to wake him, he could have gotten up, but they’d let him sleep. It was just as well; he’d been running on an empty tank to begin with. The fight with Helios followed soon after by building the Essence Seed had clearly taken everything he had to give and then some.

He walked out into the front room and found Rissa and her father quietly talking on one of the couches while Phoebe lay sleeping on the other. The table was covered in umbrellas; Serenity thought he saw five, along with what had to be a trench coat.

The trench coat looked familiar; Serenity thought it was one he’d seen Rissa wear. He might be wrong; they all looked sort of similar.

He turned to The two on the couch, who didn’t seem to have noticed him yet. “Ah, why all the umbrellas?”

Both Rissa and Russ immediately glanced at the umbrella-covered table before turning towards Serenity. Russ opened his mouth, then looked over at Phoebe. After a moment, he started, “Phoebe brought them. She didn’t want to be in the sunlight.”

“Ah. Makes sense, I guess.” It brought back memories. They weren’t good memories; Vengeance had had times where there were things he wouldn’t do, and it was generally an overreaction to something that happened. Sunlight, however, had a very specific memory associated with it. “At least she won’t burn in the light. That’s unpleasant. Very unpleasant.”

Rissa shivered.

“How do you - oh, right.” Russ looked a little green at the thought. “I forgot you had memories of being undead. Um. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

Serenity shrugged. “That wasn’t actually the problem; most undead don’t have that much of a sense of pain. No, the problem was after the first time I returned myself to life.” Serenity stopped. Did he really want to talk about it?

No, he didn’t, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t. It was a valuable lesson in the things that could go wrong even when you thought you did everything right.

He took a deep breath, then let it out before he continued. “The most famous type of undead with a sunlight problem is vampires, but they’re not the only ones. There’s a general assumption that undead have a problem with sunlight specifically; it’s a crude form of Concept, associating the Sun with Life and thinking that’s the antithesis of Death. It isn’t, really, but that’s an entirely different-”

Serenity stopped himself. He didn’t need to give that rant again. “So I found a method to turn myself to life. There are several of them. None until tier ten or so, fifteen is safer, but they’re out there. The one I used the first time was very limited. All it did was change my animating Affinity from Death to Life. There was so much I didn’t understand, then.” He shook his head and smiled slightly, thinking about everything he’d learned about it since then. There was so much.

“I was a Sage Draugr at that point, a sort of a smart zombie as much as anything. Withered rather than rotting, but otherwise quite similar. Draugr have a sun sensitivity; it’s nothing like damage a vampire can take, but it’s best to avoid direct sunlight. Naturally, I went out to enjoy the sunlight the moment I was technically human again. Only I had only fixed the Affinity, not anything else. A human would have been weakened by my physical condition, but I wasn’t; at the same time, I was still vulnerable to the Sun. It was memorable. Severe sunburn in minutes.” Serenity found a seat next to Rissa. “It was a while before I was able to fix that, and longer before I was willing to risk the sunlight.”

Rissa put an arm around Serenity.

Serenity hugged her for a moment, then turned his attention to Phoebe. He wished he’d paid more attention to Rissa’s use of the Essence Seed now; the process hadn’t seemed important at the time but he would have liked to know how it compared to Phoebe. He focused on her with both mana and essence sight. “I can still see the curse. I think it’s a bit smaller than it was in Red, but it’s hard to be sure. I should have checked her before I went to bed.”

Russ shook his head. “You needed the sleep, and this isn’t all on you anyway. It’s definitely smaller. I’ve been able to feel it since … well, it has to be since you broke the blessing that was hiding it.” Russ’s voice had an edge when he said the word blessing. “It’s enough of an effect that I’d like you to make one for Red.”

“Is there anyone else specific I should make them for? There’s no way I can make them for everyone, and I don’t think anyone else can make them.” Thousands of people, and he had no way to help them. It hurt, but it wasn’t a new pain for Serenity. He’d been through worse.

At least he could be hopeful that they wouldn’t pass the curse on any farther. That seemed to have been done by the “blessing”. It was tarnished, but it was still a silver lining.

Russ shook his head. “While you were sleeping, we checked. I can’t provide the energy to make them, but Rissa can. Which means that Phoebe will probably be able to as well, and Red once she has hers. It’s a lot slower, but she can. She said something about it feeling different, too.”

“I don’t know what it means, but yours feels like opening a door. The one I started gives off a feeling of breaking out. I can’t describe it better than that.”

Rissa sounded puzzled, but it made perfect sense to Serenity. “It’s probably because of how we feel about Fate. You’ve hated being constrained by it, while I’ve never believed it held me. I wonder if that will matter to the Essence Seed. It’ll probably make a difference, but it may well not be important. There are a lot of different ways to get to the same place.”

“Whether or not it does, I think it’s our answer.” Russ leaned back on the couch and stretched. “We can give a few options - pay a lot, pay a little and make one seed for someone else, or pay nothing and make two.”

“I’ll leave the business plan to you, Rissa, and Janice. Not my thing.” Serenity shook his head, amused. “I take it Rissa told you I’m planning to go offplanet when the Tutorial ends in a few weeks?”

Russ nodded. “I was expecting it. You don’t fit here; you need to find where you do fit or decide you’re going to make a place, and that isn’t going to happen without travel. I traveled when I was younger, too. Not to another world, but it might as well have been.”

Phoebe stirred and Russ sprang up from the couch and hurried over to his wife. “How are you?”

“Tired.” Phoebe struggled to sit up and was helped by her husband. “Not much different otherwise. Did I really …?”

“You didn’t have a choice.” Serenity could attest to that. There was a reason he had a high Mind resistance; he hadn’t always had it. “Mind control of any sort is nasty, and it looks like the one you were under was particularly bad. Especially since you were born with it; it started in on you when you had no resistance at all.”

When he thought about it, that made how much Rissa had resisted it even more impressive.

“You have to decide who you’re going to be from here on out. Are you the same person or was that the result of the curse? You have the choice now.” Serenity thought she’d make good choices; he’d liked the woman he’d started to get to know before they stumbled deep into the world the curse cared about. That didn’t mean he knew how to help her get there, other than telling her it was her choice now.

Well, there was one thing he could think of. Serenity looked at Russ, though he was really speaking to both of them. “If there’s anyone you know who can help with therapy after mind control, it would be good to talk to them. I know there are people with that as a specialty on other worlds, but I don’t know about here on Earth.” Mind Healers were necessary sometimes. They couldn’t fix prejudice, that wasn’t what they did, but they could deal with a lot of other things.

While they were thinking, Serenity took another look at Phoebe. The curse wasn’t gone, but it was even smaller than before. Even if the Essence Seed didn’t fix things, it seemed to at least help.