There were two weeks left of Tutorials, more or less. The Voice hadn’t given an exact time; Rissa expected that it didn’t want to. Then another week or two of waiting for people to show up at Serenity Settlement before Rissa could follow Serenity. It was better than the time after the Tutorial, when all she knew was that he was still alive because surely she’d know if he wasn’t, but she was still not looking forward to a month or so where she not only didn’t see him, she couldn’t call him.

It made her understand his reluctance to enter the Tutorial a little more. She knew the first week wouldn’t be bad, but she also knew she was going to miss Serenity. It wasn’t like she had a lot to do, either; she’d made a positive killing on the stock market lately, and that was going to continue to eat several hours each weekday, but it really wasn’t all that hard now that she could freely use her oracular talent again without worrying about being attacked as long as she stayed out of the Timestream.

Perhaps she should pick up a hobby? The amount of information on Earth about enchanting was very limited, but she’d been to a number of the classes in the Tutorial even though she didn’t have the Path, and she did have a copy of Serenity’s training material on runes. Serenity had taught her a little and more than that, he’d told her about the odd Path Choice he’d gotten. He hadn’t seemed to want to recognize that it was saying there was a connection between enchanting and runecrafting, but that was what Rissa had read into it.

Yes, studying the runes seemed like a good starting point. From what Serenity had said, she knew it was finicky, but that was a good thing when she needed a distraction.

Rissa had only been studying the first rune for an hour, trying to trace it using tracing paper and having what she considered limited success, when Aki interrupted her. :Rissa?:

Rissa gratefully put the pencil down. Realistically, she had the basic shape down; that had come easily. It was getting all the little curves and odd details correct that was bothering her. The book said the rune would work without them; they were there to do everything from regulating the output to preventing outside spell interactions. It made Rissa wonder exactly how outside spells could interact and what she could do with that knowledge, but that was something to learn another day.

“Yes, Aki? What is it?” It was unusual for Aki to interrupt her for anything other than mealtimes, and it wasn’t dinner time yet.

:I have been monitoring the mana flows across the …: Aki paused, clearly searching for the correct term. :What did you call it? The Greater New York City Metropolitan Area?:

Rissa smiled. Aki really didn’t like the term, and she always made her distaste clear. “Close enough.”

:Good enough then.: Aki’s discomfort showed. :There is an area that is poorly drained by the ley line network. Worse, there are no dungeons nearby. At Tier One, this should not be a problem.:

Rissa smiled. She recognized when someone was leading up to bad news. “And yet you’re telling me about it.”

:Mana is being pulled away from what ley lines are nearby at an alarming rate. If the world were higher than Tier One, I would be warning you of a likely monster wave.: Aki sent a mental feeling that was remarkably similar to someone clearing their throat. :At Tier One, I don’t know what you’re looking at. A rogue mage is unlikely; other than Serenity, I doubt there is anyone on a Tier One planet who can pull that much mana. Even though this planet is weird, it’s still unlikely.:

Rissa vaguely remembered Serenity mentioning monster waves in passing once or twice; he hadn’t seemed to think much of them, but Rissa had the sinking suspicion that if Aki was warning her, they were notably worse than the Boreal Moose found in Aki’s “high mana area”. “Where is it? And what can you tell me about monster waves?”

The detour took long enough that the rest of the shopping was a whirlwind afternoon, enough that Serenity didn’t have time to become anxious before they went back to the Lowpeak house for Andarit to get ready. There definitely wasn’t time to stop and talk to a craftsman, so Serenity’s half-formed plan of asking about something better than the ax-cover they found at a weapons store or even a better way to carry his crystal hilt was delayed until another day.

Strangely enough, Serenity still wasn’t nervous even as they approached the Palace for the Dance. He knew there wasn’t really anything to be nervous about; he knew what his role was and all of the various goals for the night. He also knew that no one knew him at all. Neither of those had ever helped in the past, but he supposed they must be helping now.

All four of them were in the flyer, so Serenity and Andarit followed her father and brother into the building. Serenity found a moment to be grateful that this didn’t seem to be one of the events that announced everyone’s arrival. He’d already decided he’d go by “Serenity of Earth”; it was both accurate and uninformative, since Earth was not even done with the Tutorial yet.

Serenity wasn’t more than a step into the building when he felt the mana flows break jaggedly around him. It wasn’t like spellcasting, unless the spell had gone very wrong. The mana density was higher, but the mana was almost painfully distorted.

No one else seemed to react at all.

It felt almost like waves of magic, pushing against him, but the waves had sharp edges. Serenity glanced around, trying to find the source of the distortions. There wasn’t anything obvious, so he leaned over and whispered to Andarit. “What’s wrong with the magic here?”

Andarit turned towards him. For a moment, her face scrunched disbelievingly before it smoothed out into a polite nonexpression and she hissed, “What are you talking about? The Palace is enchanted to raise the magic level, there’s nothing wrong with it!”

Enchanted to raise the magic level? It was higher, but it was far from pleasant. Serenity knew what a higher magic level was supposed to feel like, and this wasn’t it. He followed the others in, watching for threats like a good bodyguard but also examining any part of the actual building structure he could see for the enchantment causing the broken magic. It had to be here somewhere.

The walls in the entrance were covered in wall-hangings, so it wasn’t until the entered the sparsely-populated dance hall that Serenity was able to get a good look at the actual walls.

They were covered in runes.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t immediately spare the time to examine them, because a young man dressed in Court fighting robes with flames embroidered in various shades of blue on his sleeves was approaching Andarit, and he was supposed to be both her escort and her bodyguard. Serenity moved up beside her; he didn’t block the young man or try to loom, but he was close enough to act if something went wrong.

“Irval. I was not expecting to see you here.” Andarit greeted the man. She sounded neutral.

Serenity could see his teeth clench before he bowed and replied. “Daughter-Heir of Lowpeak, this one was not expecting your presence at this event.”

The words were respectful, but the tone of voice definitely wasn’t.

Andarit inclined her head towards the man. “Has something happened at your sect, Adept Irval? You were not so formal when last we met.”

“Your actions-”

“Andarit, Irval!” A woman dressed in an absolute confection that made her look more like a lace and jewelry wrapped mummy than a person waddled towards them. “It’s so good to see you’re getting along well! When are you going to visit your mother, young man? She says you haven’t been by in months! Don’t tell me Court life is keeping you that busy, I did my time in a Court as well…”

Andarit took the interruption as an excuse to abandon the situation and Serenity followed her.

Over the next hour, the hall slowly filled. About half the population was in obviously nonfunctional clothing, indicating that they either did not fight or were trying to pretend they did not fight; Serenity noticed a few that were suspiciously athletic for noncombatants. Most of the remainder were in Court or Court-aligned noble gear. They seemed fairly evenly split between people who avoided Andarit and people who seemed to be trying to show off their relationship with her, though Serenity never got the impression any were actual friends.

The few people dressed as combat-aligned nobles, a bit over a tenth of the crowd, completely avoided Andarit. Instead, they approached Serenity to warn him of Andarit’s “known tendency to push harder than is wise”. None seemed interested in Serenity himself, simply in splitting him away from her; it would have been amusing if he were watching it happen to someone else. As it was, it meant interacting with people he was immediately disposed to dislike.

It also completely prevented him from inspecting the walls. The jagged mana of the room irritated his nerves and made him want to snap at the strangers bothering him, but he suppressed it.

A hush fell over the crowd. Serenity turned and followed the eyes of the rest of the crowd to a young man dressed in a continually changing opalescent outfit. It was obviously shimmer, and it was one of the most wasteful displays Serenity had seen in a long time, because it wasn’t simply a bit of shimmer that could be replaced when it failed; the entire outfit was made of shimmer.

“The dancing will start soon. You won’t be able to guard her while it’s happening; make sure to look like you belong.” That whisper was from Kalo, and Serenity saw the Duke walk past them as he headed towards the man in shimmer. He was alone, and when Serenity glanced to the side he saw that Andarit’s brother stood by her side instead of their father’s.

Duke Lowpeak knelt in front of the man in shimmer. Andarit and her brother followed him to one knee. It seemed to set off a reaction as Serenity saw the other nobles kneel. He noticed that the Court-aligned nobles didn’t kneel; it was an interesting facet of the local politics. Serenity didn’t move; he didn’t want to promise something he didn’t understand, and he wasn’t about to subjugate himself to a foreign ruler. If the Court people didn’t kneel, he probably didn’t need to either.

The man gestured for everyone who had knelt to rise and the music started. Almost immediately, both Andarit and her brother were cornered by Court-aligned nobles asking for a dance.

Serenity took advantage of the freedom to head towards a wall where the mana felt particularly high to inspect it. As he’d expected, it was completely covered in runes.

The close look told him what the earlier glances hadn’t: the runes were energized, but they were also very old and in poor repair. That was probably the reason for the higher mana level and also likely the reason it felt so jagged to Serenity; the runes were leaking, and they weren’t leaking evenly or smoothly.

All he was certain of was that the runes covering the walls were likely an attempted masterwork when a voice he hadn’t heard before spoke behind him. “Is there something interesting about the wall?”

“It’s not the wall itself,” Serenity answered absently, “but the fact that the runes are still carrying mana even in their condition.” He looked towards the voice only to see that it was the man dressed in shimmer whose arrival had signaled the beginning of the dancing.

“You see runes on the walls?” The royal stepped forward and looked at the spot Serenity had been examining, then turned to Serenity. “Are you sure?”