If you didn’t know Evan was nonhuman, it would take careful examination to tell from the front; he had additional muscles that ran from his chest to his back, but they were weak from long disuse and difficult to see. The more prominent sternum was easy to miss, especially with muscles connected to it. Serenity could tell they were there, since he had the same muscles in his chimera form and knew what to look for, but even if they were better developed, most people would simply assume that the person was fat rather than that they had an entire additional group of muscles.

Of course, if Evan still had his wings, that wouldn’t be a question, would it? Serenity tried not to think too hard about what losing his own wings that way would be like. The thought was maddening; he found himself reaching for the same breathing exercise he’d used to calm himself as a Greater Demon of Righteous Retribution. He couldn’t even blame the form, this time; Serenity very well knew that anger was one of his weaknesses.

“They didn’t just cut off your wings; there’s another spell here. I suspect it’s the binding. Serenity? Can you sense it?” Blaze lifted his hand from Evan’s back.

Serenity moved around Evan to view his back. Two long, jagged scars ran from Evan’s shoulders to the small of his back. His wings weren’t just clipped; they were dug out, well past where the wings actually were. Serenity was surprised that Evan was able to hold himself upright; the level of damage to his back muscles was extreme.

“They said they didn’t want to leave me any little reminders of the dangerous growths they had to remove.” Evan sounded bitter but resigned. “It took a long time before I was able to walk without a cane. That was true for all of us. Well, all of us who survived.”

Serenity closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He needed to calm down before he accidentally hurt Evan. Evan was the victim; he didn’t deserve Serenity’s anger. The people who did weren’t here; the one who was ultimately responsible would get what was coming to him.

Hopefully soon. The eclipse wasn’t that far off, and what he’d found out about the ritual spell embedded in the Water Gardens was hopeful.

After another deep breath, Serenity opened his eyes again and triggered his Magesight. He needed to look at whatever Blaze had found on Evan’s old injury.

It was blindingly obvious. There was a dense enchantment that covered both scars.

Serenity looked through the enchantment for a while, tracing the places that were usually the easiest place to disable a simple enchantment: the power flows. They were all wrong. A maintained enchantment on a person was powered by their own mana pool; that was how complete non-mages who never picked up a Shield-type Skill could get a Shield enchantment. They weren’t as good as a well-trained Skill or personal spell, but they were better than nothing.

The power flows for the enchantment on Evan’s back weren’t tied to his mana pool. In fact, Serenity thought they were tied to something else, something that wasn’t even part of his body. The traces grew faint as they left Evan’s body, since they weren’t currently carrying much mana, but they were there. “They did something with your wings after they cut them off, didn’t they?”

Evan shrugged. “I don’t know. It was weeks before I knew anything but pain, and no one would talk about it. Most of the people who weren’t obviously Quetzal-blooded were gone, and the newcomers didn’t know what happened before.”

“And anyone who was Quetzal-blooded was probably in the same situation you were.” Serenity filled in the blank, then nodded to himself. He could probably solve this himself by getting Evan to trigger the spell by trying to leave; the extra power flowing through the spell would make it far easier to see, but there was an easier way.

:Ita? Please come join us. I need you to follow a connection.: Serenity felt proud of himself for remembering to use one of his friends’ abilities; he was still trying not to do everything himself. It was hard when he had the memories of someone who didn’t have anyone else to depend on.

:Should I leave the tent unguarded?: Ita reminded Serenity of what her original task was.

Serenity was annoyed at himself; he shouldn’t have forgotten. Even if he was sympathetic to Evan’s story, that didn’t mean everyone here was trustworthy. :Kerr is done at the armory, right? Get her to replace you, or Sillon, if he’s done.:

It took Ita nearly twenty minutes to get to where Serenity waited with Blaze, Ekari, and Evan. Denise and Aaron had been sent to bed even before Blaze arrived, so it was only the four of them. Evan put his robe back on while he waited; it was cool in the building and he was clearly more comfortable with his shoulders covered.

Or perhaps it was his injury that he didn’t want to show? That seemed at least as likely to Serenity. It wasn’t Evan’s fault, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with showing it off.

When Ita hopped into the room, Evan looked shocked, then laughed. “I should have known; it was staring me in the face when you arrived. I didn’t pay any attention to the fact that your pet was wearing the coat of an Investigator. I assume you’re a person?”

Ita grinned. Evan probably couldn’t tell; it was obvious to Serenity only because he knew Ita. “Yes, I am. It is convenient to be underestimated, so we decided that was my role. I’m good at it. Lord Serenity said you have a connection I need to follow?”

Evan’s face scrunched as he turned to Serenity; Serenity thought he was probably puzzled. It definitely wasn’t a frown.

Serenity tried to pass off the title as if it were normal. “Yes; his back has a rather dense enchantment tied to it. I suspect it’s tied to somewhere nearby. Somewhere that is pulling energy from something or it wouldn’t still be active.”

Ita hopped behind Evan and took a good look. “I need to touch the actual enchantment.”

Evan slowly pulled his robe off one shoulder and bared part of his scar. “Is this enough?”

“Yes. A small connection is still a connection. Now hold still while I hook into it.” Ita set her forepaw on Evan’s scar and seemed to concentrate.

Serenity watched her magic. He didn’t seem to have any ability with her particular Affinity and it wasn’t one he really felt the need to work towards, at least not yet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested in her magic. He was generally better than she was, but Ita used her magic cleverly and differently than what he was used to. It was often techniques he knew but didn’t think about, but even those were useful.

There were no new and interesting surprises this time. This was an extremely straightforward application of Ita’s Connection Affinity; she simply connected to the existing spell, which was itself a connection. “I have it. Please follow me.”

Ita hopped slowly out of the room, following a line only she could see. Serenity strained and was able to see a hint of it near Ita’s paws, but it was weak. She clearly wasn’t enhancing the connection to be visible to anyone else.

They moved from the admin area to the courtyard, then to the open field in front of the armory. Ita stopped in a spot that was approximately in the middle of the dusty area with damaged grass. “It’s below here. Probably only a few feet down.”

“There isn’t a building there,” Priest Evan objected. “There never has been one there.”

Serenity nodded. “Then that’s probably why it’s here. I bet they buried …” Serenity stopped himself before he finished the sentence. Evan didn’t need to know that the remains of his wings were probably under his feet.

Serenity knelt down and examined the ground. There was no particular aura of death, so a large number of people probably hadn’t died here, but when he twisted the magic towards necromancy he could feel partial skeletons underground. Bones from multiple people were piled on each other, buried far enough that it would take them a long time to weather out of the ground. Most were wings, but he felt hands and feet (or rather, paws and hooves), horns, and even entire limbs.

Most belonged to the dead; that changed the remains and made them easier to rise, but there were some bones that were separated and degrading rather than truly dead. Those were probably Evan’s wing bones.

Serenity wondered if he should still use the title Priest for Evan. It was clear he wasn’t an ardent follower of Lykandeon, but he did seem to still have some faith, even if Serenity didn’t know what faith “fliers” belonged to. Serenity shook off the distraction with the decision to avoid the title unless Evan said otherwise.

Serenity shifted his attention to magic itself, using his Arcane Affinity. His awareness of the bones dimmed but didn’t disappear; he was too close to them for that once he knew there was something dead nearby.

There was a complex circle of magic in the ground above where the bones were. It seemed to be slightly angled, as though it had a solid basis that wasn’t quite buried level, but Serenity didn’t have the right Affinities to easily investigate the materials.

His affinities were far better at investigating the magic, and they told him that this was a ritual with a relatively short life. It would depend on how much stress was put on it, but even with no stress at all, it would disintegrate in a few months; it wasn’t in good shape now.

Serenity blinked at that and looked up at Evan. “You do a prayer of some sort out here regularly, don’t you?”

Evan nodded. “A blessing for acolytes training to be warriors. It’s the one I was taught; we have to follow all of the standard practices or things get worse for us here.”

Serenity nodded. That made sense; he’d have to see the “prayer” to be certain, but he was fairly confident that either it wasn’t a blessing or it wasn’t primarily a blessing. Instead, it was the affected people reinforcing the spell that bound themselves to the compound. There was a lot of power in willingly accepting bindings and Serenity suspected that that, along with the power of their lost parts, was what actually held them here. “Do you have any shovels?”

“Shovels?” Evan stared at Serenity. “What do you need a shovel for?”

Serenity shrugged. “There’s more than one way to break a spell. I can do it magically, but that’s a pain and takes a lot of power. This one has a physical component that’s required for it to work, so breaking that is probably going to be easier and faster, even if we have to dig it up first.”

From there, breaking the spell was easy enough. While Evan led Ekari off to get shovels, Serenity mapped out the spell so he’d know where to dig. Once the shovels arrived, Serenity and Ekari dug out the areas Serenity had selected.

They could have dug up the entire anchoring object, but there was really no reason to. They wanted to break it, not duplicate it.

What they uncovered was a piece of welded wrought iron. There was obvious rust, but the material itself didn’t seem damaged past the surface.

Serenity hadn’t expected the ritual’s support to be metal, though he had to admit that wrought iron would probably survive underground better than the nailed-together wood he’d expected. What it meant was a little worrying; nailing a few pieces of wood together was easier than creating a specifically designed piece of metal, which implied that the conquerors had planned what they were going to do in advance.

Either way, the iron wasn’t thick enough to prevent him from cutting it where it needed to be broken; Evan was even able to find appropriate tools so that Serenity didn’t have to risk damage to his ax. It would have been fine, but he still preferred not to use a weapon of war on something that might unexpectedly dull or chip it.

Evan noticed each cut. The first one made him tense in pain; the second one actually tore a scream from his throat as he felt the pain of torn-off wings again. Serenity quickly cut the third spot, which severed the spell and finally broke its connection to Evan.