It made Serenity feel somewhat satisfied that neither of the acolytes objected to anything after what was found in the basement; in fact, they were nearly completely silent. It still wasn’t anywhere near enough.

The good news, more or less, was that he’d spent less than a day dealing with the church in Abiding Six. The bad news was that nothing else had changed in that time. He’d expected to need to hurry, but he’d also expected to spend at least another day on travel time, possibly two more days.

It didn’t help that Rissa didn’t meet him at the portal; she couldn’t. She had to wait until he got back to the Visitors’ Palace. Overall, it all added up to one thing: Serenity was in a bad mood when he arrived back at the Visitors’ Palace.

There wasn’t much he could do about it other than rant at Rissa. She listened for a while, then grinned. “Do you actually want me to do something about it?”

Serenity paused, knocked back into thinking instead of reacting by the question. “Do you mean looking into the future?”

Rissa nodded. “I’ve been limiting myself to small stuff I fall across since we got out of the Tutorial. I don’t want to go into the Timestream without you. There are a lot of ways to see the future; that’s the most guided one I have. I don’t think it’ll set a future, not now, but it might help us find one we want.”

Serenity paused and thought about it. He didn’t think seeing the future was in any way necessary to their success. At the same time, he knew it was one of Rissa’s primary skills; she had to be feeling limited to not be able to really use it. He didn’t believe in fixed futures, but that didn’t mean he always thought of all possible contingencies. It was possible they’d learn something useful. “I can’t think of any way it would hurt and I can think of several ways it might help. Can we look at likely outcomes? What’s likely to happen if we choose certain broad paths?”

The big question in Serenity’s mind right now was if he should wait for Rourke to return Ekari’s contact attempt or attempt to get permission to travel to Aeon. Neither of them seemed especially more likely to find the kidnapped Earthlings and he had to keep that in mind as his top priority. Even if he wanted to tear down the Church and kill Lykandeon, that wasn’t the best method to meet his goals.

He remembered the option given to Sillon by the Mercenaries’ Guild, but unless they offered to somehow locate his missing people, he wasn’t inclined to follow that one. Destabilization for its own sake wasn’t something Serenity was fond of. It might be worth checking if he could, but that was all. It seemed even less useful than his other options; they at least had the Church connections to find people the Church had hidden.

Serenity waited in silence while Rissa thought about the question for several minutes. Eventually, she nodded. “It’s obviously not something I’ve done before, but I think it’s possible. It’ll definitely take a visit to the Timestream; I don’t know of any other ways to look ahead in an expansive way. I’ll need your help.”

Serenity wasn’t surprised she wanted his presence; she’d said that before. He wasn’t certain she’d asked for his help before. “Sure. What do I need to do?”

Rissa grinned mischievously. “Well, first, you need to cheer up. Then I recommend sleep. With me.” She stood up and tugged on his arm.

Serenity gave a token protest but followed her.

All the way into a large bathtub with bubblebath that she must have started filling even before she came over to listen to him; it was already ready.

And here he’d just been wondering how useful foresight really was!

The next morning, Ekari reported that Blaze was making progress but wasn’t done yet. She looked tired and in pain but somehow still cheerful. She also looked a bit more sharp-featured than she had before, but that was all Serenity could tell.

It was Kerr that noticed that Ekari was almost a full inch taller than she’d been before.

Those seemed to be the only physical changes; Ekari said she felt more free than she could remember, but she didn’t want to talk about it yet. The last thing she said was chilling: “At least I can, now.”

That alone made Serenity decide that the Church of Aeons wasn’t going to survive. He’d take his time taking it apart, but Lykandeon was not a god anyone needed. He’d been more than halfway there already between the kidnapped Earthlings and the implicit threats against Rissa if Serenity chose to leave, but this was the final straw.

It no longer mattered what Lykandeon knew or didn’t know about what his Church was doing; he was the one responsible for Ekari’s pain. Ekari wasn’t alone, which made it worse, but that was enough. Lykandeon had committed an act that meant Serenity wasn’t going to permit him to remain in power.

Not that Serenity was a god-maker or god-killer yet. That would take time. Time and planning, since Serenity didn’t want to wait until he was Tier Ten or higher.

Rissa pulled Serenity to the side after breakfast and made him put up with a back massage before they did anything. She kept distracting him with tales of the escapades of her friend Charlotte’s dog from when she was a teenager; he was pretty sure he’d heard some of them before, but the time the dog managed to chase a squirrel onto the roof was a new one.

When she was sure he was thinking more about the dog than Lykandeon, she let him put his shirt back on and led him over to a pair of reclining chairs she’d pulled together. Once they were both situated, she took his hand and rested both of them on her heart, then had him close his eyes.

Rissa took a deep breath. “Remember that things work differently in the Timestream. It’s not as … solid a place as the real world. What you think can affect it; control is important. Also know that we are linked because we’re holding hands in reality; I’ll be able to hear anything you think strongly. You should be able to do the same, but it may be more muted.”

“Because I’m not a true telepath and my Mind Affinity is only okay?” Serenity asked.

He felt, more than saw, Rissa’s nod. “Mother could sometimes hear me but I could always hear her.”

Serenity nodded. “I’ve been in places like that before. At least, the collective reality part. I can control my Intent.”

Rissa chuckled. “It can be very useful to change the world sometimes; sometimes one metaphor works and another doesn’t. You can get places that can’t otherwise be reached.” Rissa trailed off then shook her head. “That doesn’t matter now. Are you ready?”

Serenity gripped Rissa’s hand tightly then relaxed. “Yeah.”

She counted backwards from five. Serenity heard the “three”, then the next thing he knew he was standing in the fork of a gigantic tree with his arm around Rissa’s shoulders.

Serenity looked around. The tree he was in was easily the size of one of the trees in Serenity Settlement. He couldn’t see the ground, so he couldn’t tell if the other tree trunks he was seeing were actually other trunks or simply more of the same tree he was standing on.

“Well, this is a different metaphor.” Rissa sounded surprised as she looked around.

Serenity turned to her. “Metaphor?”

Rissa grinned. “Yeah. Usually it’s water; that’s why we call it the timestream. This time it’s trees for some reason.”

Serenity saw a woman fade into being a little ways farther down the branch they were standing on. She was tall and thin, holding a sword that looked more or less like a saber. Its tip was either damaged or it was deliberately cut at an odd angle; that didn’t overly affect its use, since it wasn’t a blade for thrusting. Serenity didn’t like the fact that the sword was unsheathed even while she was appearing.

“It doesn’t matter what it looks like. You aren’t going to be able to tell anyone because you aren’t going to leave here alive.” Her voice was clear and cold.

Serenity didn’t like her at all. He stepped in front of Rissa and pulled his ax off his belt; he might not have been wearing it in the Visitors’ Palace but it was immediately to hand in whatever world the Timestream was. Serenity didn’t say anything as he released his aura; he was more worried about additional attackers than he was of the woman in front of him.

Serenity’s aura told him that the only person nearby other than Rissa was the woman with the sword. She was definitely a higher Tier than he was, but she felt somehow fragile.

“I knew it,” Rissa muttered fiercely from behind Serenity. “I knew she’d be waiting if I came back.”

Serenity was going to have to ask her why she hadn’t warned him, then. Or perhaps not that; he did seem to vaguely remember that she’d talked about a woman in the Timestream before. He was going to have to ask why she didn’t remind him.

“Because I didn’t want to invite trouble.” Rissa had clearly heard his thoughts, as she’d warned.

Rissa’s chuckle following her words quickly rose in pitch. “Now go deal with her!” She patted him on the back and stepped back.

Serenity kept enough attention on Rissa to generally know where she was, but most of his attention was on the woman threatening them. He didn’t have a good way to get at her other than charging, so he took a couple of steps forward along the branch and gauged the footing. It was solid and not at all slippery; good footing for a fight.

She stepped towards him as well. She was light on her feet, like a dancer or a fencer. From the positioning of her feet and the way she moved, she expected to use the longer reach of her weapon to keep him from closing enough to get at her. The fact that her saber didn’t have a workable tip would impair her some, but it was still viable; the ax wasn’t a distance weapon.

Serenity grinned. The ax wasn’t a distance weapon unless it was thrown.

He’d still need to hit her with several things quickly enough that she couldn’t avoid or deflect them all; his duplicating knives were a good choice for that, so he quickly duplicated one and held it in his off hand.

“Why do you say we’re not getting out of here alive?” Talking her out of a fight seemed unlikely, so Serenity simply wanted to know if killing her would mean someone else would come after them. If she were truly set on killing Rissa, Serenity was going to kill her instead, but knowing the consequences would be useful for planning.

“She should already be dead,” the woman hissed. “You’ll die because you defend her, then I’ll deal with the girl who avoided her Fate. It will be terrible and wonderful.”

Unhinged and overly concerned about “Fate”. Serenity didn’t think he was going to get much that was useful out of her. “How did you find her?”

“I watch! And now I watch you DIE!” The woman screamed at him, then thrust her sword into the air. A lightning bolt formed on the damaged tip and shot into the sky.

The sky cracked and another lightning bolt shot down, aimed directly at Serenity. It moved too slowly to be real lightning, but there still wasn’t time to dodge. More importantly, the only directions he could dodge were into the woman’s sword reach or towards Rissa and he wasn’t going to do either.