The church where Serenity found Helen was almost unchanged from his previous visit.

It would have been completely unchanged if there were acolyte-guards stationed at the entrances and doors on the main entrance. Admittedly, glass in the nearby windows would have helped, too.

Serenity had to admit that unchanged really wasn’t the right word at all. Not for the physical structure, at least. The magical presence of the church, however, was extremely similar. It still extended exactly as far as it had before and had the same lack of reaction to their entrance to the church.

Inside the church, the public area - the area that would be a sanctuary in an Earth church - was trashed. It looked like some sort of giant animal had rampaged in the room; given the blood spatter and chunks of broken glass, Serenity had the feeling that that was exactly what had happened in the supposedly holy room.

Serenity was no longer willing to call it a sanctuary, because it was clear it hadn’t saved anyone. He still remembered the tales from his time as Vengeance, and on Earth there had been a number of cases where the sanctuary was just that: a place where the monsters couldn’t enter. He suspected that it depended on both tradition and faith, since it wasn’t always true.

It did tell him one thing: whatever the Eternal Church was, it didn’t have a tradition of sanctuary.

Of course, that made sense in some ways; it was a State Religion, where the priests were the rulers. Why should the church offer protection from civil authorities when they were the authority?

In other ways, it made no sense at all. Serenity had heard of places where the best place to go in an emergency was the church, temple, or other holy place, because that was what was defended in a society based around religion. Many of them had some sort of protection from outside forces even if they didn’t have the concept of a separation of Church and State.

Serenity shook his head as he looked around. This wouldn’t be easy to clean up, but the fact that no one had done anything other than remove bodies so far meant that it was a disaster waiting to happen in its own right - this time, in illness rather than direct destruction. Maybe they’d get away with it for now, but it wasn’t a good start. Not when the site was clearly well over a day old.

Serenity didn’t say anything as they passed through the destruction. The two acolytes fell back behind him, almost like they were unused to the carnage.

They probably were. Tinar in particular seemed young.

Once they passed into the plainer, less public hallways Serenity paused and looked around. There was no sign of damage here; there wasn’t even any sign that people had come in from the public areas since the destruction happened. “Do either of you know which way we should go?”

“Novice rooms should be ahead and to the left. The workrooms are to the right, then the priest’s rooms and the kitchen. Past that is the Church garden; novices spend a lot of time there too.” Tinar volunteered directions without thinking about it. “At least, if this is like the one I trained in.”

Serenity tilted his head and looked at Tinar. “What’s this door to the left then?”

Tinar shrugged. “Public consultation rooms. There should be two or three of them, so the priest can talk to people in different group sizes.” He paused for a moment and seemed to think. “I remember that there were rooms for the acolytes too but I don’t remember where they were. We weren’t allowed to go there, I think they were in the priest’s area?”

Deek chuckled. “I should have known you never went where you weren’t supposed to. Still, you must have gone through one of the small churches. Acolytes get put wherever there’s room; there are some rooms set aside but with as many novices as this church has, I expect there are some stationed either with them or in rooms next to theirs. The novices will be a large part of the acolytes’ duties.”

Tinar nodded. “There were four of us; Priest Ekti didn’t want more than that so he picked two each year.”

From the way Tinar spoke, he remembered Priest Ekti with fondness. It was probably good to know that there were people in the Church that could make that sort of impression, but Serenity thought it didn’t really matter. He was going to find out who decided to kidnap his people and deal with them.

Even if the person behind it turned out to be Lykandeon. It might take time, but he’d killed gods before. It might actually be a lot easier this time; even though he was a higher Tier in the past, he was alone. This time he had allies and could get more; after all, no country likes having its citizens kidnapped.

If this all wasn’t Lykandeon’s fault, the deity at least deserved a rebuke for allowing it to take place in his church. Serenity didn’t hold out much hope for it not having Lykandeon’s approval, unfortunately; it seemed rehearsed, which meant they’d probably done it before. If any of the survivors made it even remotely high in the church, Lykandeon must know about it and at least tacitly approve.

Serenity stalked down the corridor in the direction Tinar indicated. He wanted to find the novices and see how many wanted to go home. The truly broken ones, like the first two he’d talked to, might take some work before he could even figure out what they wanted. Surely there were more like Helen; if keeping your head down was enough, there should be a lot of people who decided not to stand out.

Serenity heard talking from the fourth door and stopped outside. The cadences sounded familiar; after a moment of listening, he knew why. Whoever was talking inside was talking in English.

Serenity didn’t waste any more time. The door opened smoothly.

The talking stopped immediately and multiple heads turned towards the now-open door. Serenity decided to take advantage of the sudden silence. “How many of you want to go home to Earth?”

He might as well lay out exactly what he was offering.

The silence stretched a little longer before, almost simultaneously, three voices spoke the same word at the same time. “Serenity?”

The volume in the room immediately tripled from what it was before he opened the door. Serenity couldn’t make out much in the mess of noise. He wished someone were here to organize this for him; this was exactly what he wasn’t good at. More than that, he despised having to do it. Herding people wasn’t any easier than herding cats. At least cats would move for food!

Serenity gave them a few minutes to self-organize and hopefully send someone to talk to him. When that didn’t happen, he clapped his hands to try and get their attention. It was lost in the general noise level.

Serenity sighed and put together a very simple spell, once he’d had a lot of practice with during the Tutorial. All it did was create a temporary vacuum to make air move, but in the process it also made a very loud noise. A noise that would be significantly louder in the enclosed space they were in.

A loud CRACK echoed through the room, rather like thunder. At least, it was like thunder if the lightning was only a few feet away from you.

In the momentary silence while people looked around, Serenity was finally able to talk again. “Now that I have your attention, if you want to return to Earth, go stand against the left wall. If you want to stay on Lyka, go stand against the right wall.” Serenity pointed at the walls as he spoke so that people would know which walls were “left” and “right”. “We’ll figure out where on Earth you’re going once I know who’s going. Speaking of that, are all of you here or are there more? I know there were a lot more kidnapped.”

Only one voice rang out immediately. It took Serenity a moment to register it as a small woman near the middle of the crowd. “There are lots more! Most of us aren’t here anymore but I think there are still about a hundred. Everyone else should be in the other rooms on this hallway, unless they’re in the kitchen or garden or …” She stopped and flushed.

Serenity nodded in approval. That was exactly what he needed to know; they’d have to search the whole church, but he should expect a lot more people. Sending them directly to Earth would be expensive, but he didn’t want to dump this many people on Guildmaster Tirmanak.

Speaking of that, he really ought to ask Rissa why she did that instead of sending Helen directly to Earth. Yes, it was more expensive, but they could afford it.

Serenity frowned at the room. Very few people had moved; most were simply standing in the middle of the room, looking confused. Serenity sighed and pointed at the wall to his left. “Go to that wall if you want to go back to Earth.” He swapped which wall he was pointing at and repeated himself. “Go to that wall if you want to stay on Lyka. Are there any writing supplies so we can make a sign of which one is which?”

This time, it was easy to tell; the entire herd moved to the “Earth” wall. That was more or less what Serenity expected, but he knew that this was basically grandstanding at this point. “Okay, then. Please make yourselves comfortable; I’m going to go search the rest of the building. I want everyone together so that we can handle this all at once.”

Opening one portal for multiple people was much cheaper than opening one portal per person, so Serenity was going to send them in groups based on destination. That meant he either needed everyone together or he needed to have some sort of tracking system. He didn’t have a staff and this was really only one question, so getting everyone together would work well enough.

It took hours to find everyone in the building, and it was a good thing that Serenity could see Vital Affinities; if he hadn’t been able to, he would have missed the two people hiding in the attic.

Serenity was disgusted by what he found in the basement. It made him wish he’d been able to bring Blaze, but even if he hadn’t been permitted only the two acolytes, Blaze wasn’t exactly available. The good news, such as it was, was that everyone in the basement was “healed” enough that they wouldn’t die from what was done to them.

The fact that many of the problems were clearly deliberately done by “healing” simply made Serenity’s anger burn higher. He half hoped he’d find the “healer” and half hoped he never would; he wanted to destroy the man like he’d destroyed Serenity’s people, but at the same time he knew there was a decent chance the man didn’t have a choice. On the other hand, Ekari had fought; surely this man could have as well.

There was a mix of people in the basement. Some were clearly punishments or examples, meant to make others toe the line. A number of the others, however, had clearly been deliberately altered to make them better fighters. There were several that Serenity wouldn’t have guessed were originally human if he hadn’t already known what he was looking at.

Serenity considered letting people stay on Lyka to wait for Blaze to wake up, but it seemed like a bad idea. First of all, he didn’t think he’d be able to portal them back to the Visitors’ Palace; even if he was able to, he’d have to fight to keep them with his group whenever they moved. Beyond that, they were all low Tier; they’d be liabilities if it actually came to a fight.

Instead, Serenity told them to contact his assistant Janice; she’d set things up for them if she could and collect their information for when Serenity was back. If she couldn’t help them, maybe he could when he was back on Earth.

Once he’d located everyone, separating them by where they wanted to go was relatively simple. He decided to start with continents and narrow it down from there. The first continent he picked was “Australia … or New Zealand … or anywhere in Oceania?”

It was only 107 people, but it was a start.