Serenity hated it when people built large ritual spells based on geometric sequences. Or maybe he simply hated having to figure them out; they were annoyingly complex. More importantly, they were almost always overcomplicated, with material present more to preserve the symmetry than because there was any real reason to have them.

There were 341 pools in the Water Garden. The central pool was fairly large, but very simple; it was simply the axis that the rest of the spell ran on. Four of them were even larger and set at the cardinal points surrounding the central pool; they mostly held more power management, acting sort of as the spokes to the wheel that the ritual was.

The next circle had sixteen and the one beyond that had sixty-four. Those were annoying, but it was the outer circle that was the worst. It was where all of the detail lived, at the rim of the wheel, and there were two hundred and fifty-six of them. Serenity might have been able to get away with skipping some of the inner pools, but he couldn’t skip any of the outer ones. At that point, there was no real reason not to review all of them.

Serenity had read the pattern and knew that it was based on powers of two, but the odd powers - two, eight, thirty-two, and one hundred twenty-eight - were all missing. This too was part of the ritual; if he represented it in words it would be something like all of many flows to one, keeping the desired (even) and shedding the harm (odd).

There was definitely something about harm in the ritual; it felt like a sacrificial ritual of some sort. A filter made sense, in that case. The question was what was being sacrificed and what was being gained. Serenity had most of the pieces but there were still seventeen outer pools left to investigate (along with three from the secondary portion). He couldn’t finish that tomorrow, but there was a good chance he’d be able to finish it the following day.

Serenity sank deep into the model he’d built with Aide of the ritual. He had a half-dozen different places noted as not making sense; some of them would probably prove to be errors transcribing the ritual but others might be important. The reason for a ritual was always embedded in it, or it wouldn’t work; the fact that Serenity didn’t yet understand it simply meant he didn’t understand the ritual.

Serenity dismissed two of the questionable points and found four more, along with one of the pieces he was missing: one of the Affinities the ritual drew on was adjacent to Life. It wasn’t the Life affinity; there was something odd about it. He thought it was closer to Blood, but he couldn’t tell if that was right or not. Perhaps Blaze would know; he’d have to ask when he got back from the mission he was running with Ekari, Ita, Sillon, and Kerr.

That was when the door to the common room slammed open. Serenity looked up, startled, only to see Ekari supporting the weight of an exhausted-looking man that had to weigh at least a hundred pounds more than she did. He was still on his feet, but it was clear that it was a close thing.

That was entirely doable at her Tier, but it was still startling to see.

Sillon and Kerr were right behind Ekari; it was clear they’d also been watching to make certain the man wouldn’t fall.

The four of them headed towards one of the unoccupied rooms in the suite; it was probably the one they’d been allotted for Rissa, but there had never been any question of Rissa sleeping separately. Neither of them wanted that.

Two steps into the room, the man impacted Serenity’s aura. He wasn’t holding it tight, but he also wasn’t letting it spread as far as it could; instead, he was practicing holding his aura at a “normal” radius for a Tier Four. That meant that he only covered most of the common room.

The man, on the other hand, didn’t have much of an aura. It probably spread no more than a foot away from his body in any direction. What he did have was a very strange feel to his aura, a feel that Serenity recognized even though it was far weaker here.

“D’Nehr?” Serenity muttered to himself. “No, that’s not right. Similar.” D’Nehr was the name of the First Guardian, and Serenity knew he was something more than that; he had a link to Gaia. It was a different link than Serenity had, more primal. This man felt similar, if far weaker.

Serenity watched them disappear into the empty room. He could wait for the man to get some sleep and a checkup from Blaze. Once Blaze returned, at least; Serenity had expected him back before Ekari, not after. A check of the time told Serenity that Ekari was back early, rather than Blaze and Ita being unexpectedly late.

Serenity waited near the door for Ekari. “What happened? Everything go well?”

Ekari shook her head. “Not entirely. I got caught freeing him; we didn’t know how long it would take for someone to catch us, so we took the first chance to get out of there instead of waiting for nightfall as planned. I think we got lucky on the way back; we ran into some of the rioters and they seemed to think we were allies taking someone injured home. So we got through the group of them with no issues, while anyone following us, well.”

Ekari grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin; she looked a bit manic and more than a bit bloodthirsty. “I might have told a story that was only a little ways from the truth. Jeff,” She inclined her head towards the room where the mystery man rested, “was abducted; we think it was by some priests. We don’t know why or what they did to him, but the rioters found the marks on his wrists and ankles quite interesting. We got him out of there and are taking him to get help that doesn’t answer to the priests.”

“Did you find any clues on what they were doing to him? I know it’s something to do with either Lyka’s or Aeon’s World Core, but that’s all I can tell.” Serenity couldn’t tell the difference between the two; since they’d once been the same, that wasn’t surprising. Serenity was convinced that they weren’t one now, though; after all, Tzintkra wasn’t able to take back the stolen shard of its core after he recovered it.

Ekari shook her head. “No, I’ve never found anything other than those green crystals.”

Serenity frowned. At the time, he’d guessed they were part of Lyka’s World Core; that still seemed likely, but he didn’t know why they smelled so delicious. He didn’t know where they were immediately; he’d asked Rissa to put them somewhere and not tell him.

Ekari froze for a moment. “Oh, wait, I did find something.” She tugged a bag tied to her belt free; it was a little on the large side for a belt pouch but he’d seen bigger in the past. It simply meant it wasn’t intended for money.

When Ekari opened the bag, Serenity’s nostrils flared. He could already smell the crystals inside.

Serenity took two steps backward, away from the bag. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that sort of involuntary reaction.

Ekair tilted her head, then opened the mouth of the bag wider. Her serious look turned into a grin, then she plunged her left hand into the bag and pulled out a short scroll case and waved it at Serenity. “I knew there was something odd about the bag!”

Serenity was sure the smile on his face was strained. He was happy about the scroll that was probably in the case, sure, but it didn’t have his full attention. “Can you close the bag, please?”

‘Hm? Oh, sure.” Ekari tied the bag shut, then dropped it on one of the couches on her way to the table in the common room.

Serenity walked the long way around to get to the table.

The scroll was full of gibberish. Serenity understood the vast majority of the words, but when he tried to put them together, they didn’t make any sense. What did “left-handed resonance of the Moon’s daughter” even mean? It was as bad as a book on alchemy, written in code so that only someone in the know would have any idea what was going on!

Serenity paused at the thought. That was entirely possible, now that he thought about it. This wasn’t alchemy, but there was no reason it couldn’t be a code. The problem was finding a way to translate it.

Rourke arrived before Blaze and Ita did. He found Ekari and Serenity still working on the scroll, trying to figure out if “the darkness not of night but of the sky” meant an eclipse. Serenity thought it did, and if that was true it had some interesting implications for what he was looking into at the Water Garden, while Ekari thought he was reading too much meaning into a code.

Rourke stopped a couple of feet past the doorway. “Where did you hear that?”

Serenity started at the interruption. He’d known Rourke was there; it just hadn’t really registered. It wasn’t like he needed to keep any secrets from the man; he’d have removed the listening device under the table if he cared about that. It was simply the surprise that startled Serenity. “Heard what?”

“That phrase. The darkness not of night.” Rourke walked up to the table and looked down at the scroll. “Wait, you have it in written form?”

Serenity nodded. “Ekari found it on her expedition today.”

Rourke turned to the page and read a few lines. “What? No, that’s not how it goes. Is it?” He reached into a pocket that definitely wasn’t big enough and pulled out a nearly identical scroll case and opened it to show a similar-looking scroll. A moment’s comparison made Rourke relax. “No, it’s definitely not. It has some of the phrases, but they’re all mixed up.”

“So what’s that?” Serenity indicated the new scroll.

Rourke looked up at Serenity. “It’s supposed to be something for relatively senior priests only, instructions on Eternity. It never made sense to me, but people just don’t talk about it casually. That, however. That’s clearly not what that is; it just uses some of the phrases. Where did you get it?”

Serenity shrugged. “Ekari found it today. Can I borrow your copy? I think this one is coded and having the original should help.”

Rourke turned to Ekari. He didn’t say anything, but Serenity saw his eyebrows move.

Ekari shook her head. A slight smile crossed her face. “Hidden communication of some sort. I think it has to do with the man in the infirmary.”

Rourke let go of his scroll and stood up, no longer looming over the table. “Hidden even if someone saw it; they’d just think it was the Eternal script if they didn’t have it memorized.”

Serenity frowned at that. “That must really not make much sense.”

“Read it for yourself.” Rourke shrugged.

So Serenity did. Rourke was right; the copy he had didn’t make any sense either. There was a missing key somewhere.

While Serenity tried to figure out if the new text meant anything, Aide used it to decipher the original. That task went much smoother than Serenity’s.