Serenity felt a smile rising, despite his irritation at Rourke. Perhaps coming as an investigation team was worth more than they’d expected, and they’d expected a lot. “Why can’t you leave Lyka?”

“The portals don’t open for us,” Denise interjected. “There’s only a small list of merchants they do open for; only two of them visit Steadfast Seventeen, and even then it’s not here, we have to go to the portal. One of them’s willing to smuggle people out but he can only manage a couple per trip and it’s not cheap.”

Serenity knew from Earth’s history that at its best, people-smuggling like that ended up with people being dumped at their destination with no place to go and no additional help. If they had money, it could work, but he somehow doubted they had that much left. At its worst, it could be far worse; the only cases that turned out better were when they were smuggled into sympathetic destinations. “Do you all have places to go?”

Denise and Aaron exchanged an uncomfortable glance. However annoyed she might be with him, it was clear that they’d spent a lot of time working together. Denise was the one to speak. “Probably not all. No, definitely not all. The people from Lyka don’t. The rest of us, though, we think we do. But that doesn’t help if we can’t leave Lyka.”

Serenity’s smile felt natural. This was a problem he could solve quickly, for once! “I think I can do something about that. So I think this is where I need to tell you to take me to your leader.”

Denise clearly caught the reference, because she chortled. Aaron simply looked confused, but Serenity hadn’t expected him to recognize a badly outdated B-movie reference anyway.

Denise and Aaron led Serenity out of the building he’d found them in, which apparently held most of the sleeping quarters, and over to a smaller building that Denise said held the priests. Serenity noticed Ekari looking around the building as he walked up to it, but he didn’t think that either Denise or Aaron saw her in the dark; her clothing wasn’t perfect for sneaking around in the dark, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Serenity was the last one in; he held the door open a little longer than necessary and felt its weight taken off his hand before he let it go. That was good; he’d have backup if he needed it. He doubted it would come to a fight, but he might well need help convincing whoever the leader was that he was serious and could do what he said.

“...looking around the farm area. Anise says he found the pig, but other than that she doesn’t think he found anything.” The voice, speaking Aeon, was the one they’d heard from outside the church. She sounded a bit more sure of herself, but that was all.

“Thank you, Jean. You’d better get back to - is someone in the hall?” Priest Evan sounded startled. “Go see who it is, please.”

A face peeked out of a doorway only a little ways down the hall, leaning to see out the doorway without actually stepping out of the room she was in. Jean was black-haired, pale-skinned, small, and young. If Serenity had to guess, he’d have guessed that she was probably about eighteen, but he was terrible at guessing ages; she could have been in her mid-twenties.

Jean ducked back into the room she was in. “Serenity’s here? Why didn’t you say that?”

“What?” It was obvious that Priest Evan had no idea what Jean was talking about.

Denise reached Priest Evan’s office first. “Serenity’s from Earth; he thinks he can get us all out of here.”

She might have too much faith in him for the one statement he’d made about it. Serenity wasn’t certain how he’d managed to get her trust so quickly; was celebrity status really that good at getting people to trust you?

On the other hand, the plan was to get them back to Earth, wasn’t it? If there were a few more people to send off Lyka, well, that could be managed.

Aaron’s shocked expression told Serenity that he wasn’t the only one who thought Denise might trust him too much.

Serenity stepped around the last corner and was finally able to see into Priest Evan’s office. It reminded him of Duke Lowpeak’s study in Zenith; there was a place to write and a number of bookshelves within easy reach. The biggest difference was that it was set up with the workspace facing the entrance, so that Evan could see who was coming and going and people could easily stop in to talk with him. It really was more like an office than a study.

“It’s a good illusion, but you might as well drop it.” Priest Evan’s voice was cold in a way that it hadn’t been previously, even when he greeted Priest-Investigator Ekari.

Serenity blinked and shifted his wings in surprise. That wasn’t at all the reaction he’d expected. “Illusion?”

The priest twitched, then reached over to one of the bookshelves, pulled out a flattened sphere that seemed to have been used as a bookend, and set it in front of himself. Serenity could see a spot at the top that was clearly where the monster core was inserted, but the shape didn’t give away what it did. A lot of different functions could be built into an item with that particular shape; it was especially good at projecting a field in a similar shape, but that wasn’t the only possibility. “Really good illusion. Drop it or I’ll force it down.”

The priest’s words made one thing clear, at least: the item was something that could either forcibly dispel illusions or allow people to see through them. The priest was probably trying to preserve the item by convincing Serenity to reveal himself without using it; items like that could be hard to replace once they failed, and they didn’t last forever.

Serenity grinned. Making the priest use the item would be a good proof of Serenity’s words. “I’m not using an illusion. I’m actually pretty terrible at illusion magic. Go ahead and try to take down something that isn’t there if you want to.”

He hoped Ekari wasn’t close enough to be revealed, but hopefully replying the way he did would help if she was too close.

The priest stared at him for a moment, then set his hand on the artifact and activated it. Serenity could see the magic pulse out of it. However much he wanted to watch the magic works and dive into the spellforms it made, he already knew some Arcane-based spells that could destroy illusions and watching the priest was more important. Serenity kept his eyes on the priest.

Priest Evan watched Serenity. At first, he had an expression that Serenity could only describe as anticipation, but after a moment it turned to something closest to horror. “Why didn’t it break the illusion?”

“I told you, I don’t have an illusion on me. What did you think was an illusion?” Serenity really wasn’t certain why the priest was so convinced that there had to be an illusion.

The priest lifted his hand from the magic item. It ceased sending out magic as he leaned back in his chair. He suddenly looked every moment of his age, haggard and tired. “Those wings and scales. Quetzal blood?”

Serenity shook his head. “Dragon.”

“Ah.” Priest Evan’s smile was tired but Serenity thought it was happy. “It’s been over a century since there was a flier on Lyka. Almost two. Longer than the planet’s been called Lyka; you can’t be an acolyte, much less an investigator. How did you get here?”

“Investigator?”

Serenity turned to stare at Aaron with disbelief; he noticed that both Denise and Jean were as well, though Evan kept his eyes on Serenity. It was clear that they’d put together the pieces of someone appearing the same day as the investigators meaning they were probably related, while Aaron hadn’t.

Serenity decided to ignore Aaron and turned back to Priest Evan. “To Lyka or to Steadfast Seventeen? Politics.”

Serenity tried to put all of his loathing for the subject into the single word. If he had his choice, he wouldn’t have to deal with it, but he’d lost that choice the minute he decided to make sure Earth survived. He couldn’t do it alone which meant he had to deal with other people.

He might have been able to avoid it if he only cared about Rissa and his parents, but that wasn’t even close to enough for Serenity now.

Priest Evan started to reply but was interrupted by a knock on the wall outside the room.

A moment later, Ekari stepped into view. “This seems like a good time to interrupt. Why don’t we have this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable?”

“Priest-Investigator!” Priest Evan pushed himself to his feet in a hurry. “I wasn’t expecting you at this hour.”

“Relax.” Ekari grinned at the shocked priest. “I know about Serenity, and while I’m very curious what’s going on here I’m not intending to hold it against you. At least, not from what I’ve seen so far. As Serenity said, politics are happening and that’s more my realm than his, though he really does need to get better at it.”

Serenity winced at the dig but rallied. “That’s what a cabinet is for.” He was careful to use the word that meant “a circle of trusted advisors” and not “a piece of furniture that holds things”; they weren’t the same in Aeon.

Priest Evan glanced between Ekari and Serenity. “Is that why you’re here? An advisor?”

Ekari shrugged. “Advisor, facilitator … I owe Serenity a great deal. More than that, our goals align well. With that said, yes, I’m here tonight for his reasons more than mine. Now, about that more comfortable place to talk?”

Message from Honoria Clearsight to Serenity

Serenity,

I know I promised I’d head your way when I could. I thought that would be weeks ago, but since then we’ve seen two more attacks by unknown forces.

I hate calling them that, but it’s true: we have no clue who they are. What we know is that they fly overhead and drop massive spells on us, spells that somehow bypass the city’s defenses. They are stopped by the Library’s defenses, but not completely. We take damage each time another attack happens.

I still haven’t found most of the other Librarians. They are either dead or hiding, not attending to their duties.

I need help. Specifically, I need more Librarians and I need some strong people to figure out who the attackers are and deal with them. Either would be enough to get the Library running again; more Librarians means we can manage a more active defense while taking care of the attackers means we don’t need it as much.

I know you’re a mercenary. I can’t offer pay, but I can offer you something I think you’ll value: access to the Library’s Vault. I know some of what’s in there but no one knows or understands it all.

I’m sure you can guess what’s needed in terms of people to fight. A Librarian must be a mage, preferably one with significant skill in either spellforms or Intent-based casting and the ability to channel large amounts of mana. Historical records show that some Dungeon Management Paths are also good at dealing with the Library, but they can offend the Library, so they are considered questionable. I am uncertain why they are called Dungeon Management Paths instead of Dungeon Binding Paths; I assume that the distinction is important.

For now I’m holding my own here, but the city isn’t. The Library will be in trouble if Takinat falls.

Librarian Honoria Clearsight

Great Library, Takinat, Asihanya