Blaze insisted on checking everyone before he’d confirm whether it was actually greendust or just something with similar effects. His verdict for everyone other than Ita and Serenity was similar: effects similar to an eighth to three-quarters of a dose of greendust. Their bodies wouldn’t easily filter it out, but Blaze could (and did) force the matter. He also did an “initial” heal and would be checking on them that evening to heal any remaining damage.

Kerr was particularly unhappy about the required coughing, but Blaze pointed out that he was going to have to go through the same thing once they were done.

Blaze’s verdict on Ita was that while her initial dose seemed to be higher than most, the greendust was being consumed by a spell she was using, so he’d give her a few hours before doing a more thorough cleansing. Serenity shivered at the thought; he knew what a healer meant when they talked about a “more thorough” cleansing and it wasn’t pleasant.

Blaze spent at least twice as long checking Serenity as anyone else, because of his weird biology. When he finished, Blaze shook his head and looked slightly incredulous. “You’re fine and would probably have been fine at a far higher dose. Not only did it not cause damage, unlike everyone else, your body seems to be using it as an equivalent to one of the odd materials in your bloodstream. It’s not quite the same, but it seems like it does the same thing. I’m going to want to check you in a few hours, like everyone else. I bet you didn’t even get the moment of extreme euphoria, did you?”

Euphoria?

Serenity shook his head. “Ita and I talked to Lyka, that’s all.”

“Huh. Must have pulled you into the spell she’s using to communicate.” Blaze shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything else with this stuff. It’s weird; you, Rissa, and the man Ekari rescued from the Infirmary all have something really similar in your bloodstreams. Yours seems the closest to greendust, but whatever it is, it’s probably why Jeff survived. So I’m not surprised you’re handling it well.”

Serenity had already guessed that there would be something common between them in regards to greendust; they were all from Earth. Knowing that it was something physical in their bloodstream was interesting but didn’t really change anything. “It’s because we’re all from Earth, it has to be. I bet there’s something similar in either the air or the food there, probably immensely weaker but still enough.”

Blaze nodded. “I’ll look for it when we get back, but chances are that whatever it is won’t matter in the short term and may not matter even in the long run. The problem with greendust isn’t really the greendust, it’s how much you get at once. The body can clear it out eventually and a little isn’t particularly harmful, but it’s very slow to clear.”

Blaze shook his head with a rueful smile on his face. “Hah. At the arena, people took it for the temporary improvement to reflexes, strength, and sturdiness. It’d be nice if people wouldn’t deliberately poison themselves for an advantage, but what do I know? I’m just the guy who has to heal the damage afterwards.” Blaze knelt and crawled under the table to get to the fake Head Priest.

Serenity had almost forgotten the man had also been in the wave of greendust, but Blaze clearly hadn’t.

Blaze took even longer with the “priest” than he had with Serenity. He seemed tired when he opened his eyes. “I’ve got him stable and sleeping. He’s not in good shape at all; this isn’t even close to his first exposure to greendust and it hasn’t been well managed. It’s not like the greendust toxicity I saw on Aeon, either; he doesn’t have as much in his system, but his lungs are all torn up. He probably sleeps any time he can get the chance; he’d have to with this sort of lung damage. I’m going to be healing him for a while. I can keep him unconscious if you want to take that time to search the church.”

Serenity knew that was more of a suggestion than an option, but it was what he wanted to do anyway. He’d planned to have the Head Priest lead them to the missing Earthlings, but that wasn’t going to be possible until he was conscious. There was no reason to wait that long; it wasn’t like the church was all that big anyway.

Not only was the church smaller than any of the ones he’d seen before, with room for only about fifty novices in barracks-style lodging, it was even emptier than he’d realized. The few people he’d seen in the “public” areas on the way in were the only people present in the church. There were only seven bedrooms in use; the Head Priest’s, the Sub-Priest’s, and five acolytes. Three of the acolytes were still in the church, while two were clearly the people with Sub-Priest Vinal.

None of the three still in the church knew anything about novices, though one did say that people occasionally stayed in the barracks overnight. Ekari was convinced they were lying; Serenity couldn’t tell, so he left her to question them while he went back to look for whatever he’d missed while he gave the church a quick look.

It wasn’t unlikely that he’d missed something. He’d been looking for people, after all, and didn’t expect them to be hiding. There had to be something; secretly replacing a Head Priest wasn’t something that anyone would bother with unless there was a reason. Serenity just had to find out what it was.

The first place Serenity headed was the Head Priest’s study. As he’d more than half expected, the gun wasn’t the only thing under the table; there were two enchanted items and a wicked-looking non-magical knife.

The knife was clearly made of some sort of higher Tier bone; Serenity could feel it resonate with his Death Affinity. Whatever it was, it seemed to hold a sharp edge. It also seemed like the knife held a bit of the grudge its source felt about being killed; while not really magical, that was the sort of thing that would make it a good implement for a wide range of ritual magic. Serenity dropped it through his Rift. He doubted he’d ever feel the need to return it.

The first of the two enchanted items was a rock. A fancy rock, definitely, but still a rock. It had symbols carved into it that were then inlaid with a metal of some sort; Serenity couldn’t tell what since he didn’t know enchanting, but it was definitely metal. There was a clear socket for monster cores that was obviously sized for anything from Tier One to Tier Five. Unlike the wardstones he’d seen on Zon, the patterns on the rock didn’t take after any of the runesets he knew so he had to judge the enchantment’s effects based on the magic alone.

It used an Illusion Affinity of some sort. Serenity couldn’t figure out what it actually did; it was fairly complex and he’d always been terrible at illusions. What he could tell was that it seemed to be surprisingly flexible and always active. It probably ate Tier One monster cores several times a day, but more than likely it was usually fed Tier Three cores so that it would have a decent use time.

The last item took Serenity a while to figure out; there was nowhere to put a monster core for power but there also didn’t seem to be a mana input anywhere. He eventually realized he was looking at only half of an item and the power source must be on the other half. It used some variant of Space magic that Serenity thought was probably closer to his own Liminality than proper Spacetime to maintain that ‘that which is separate is still whole’ and thereby connect the two broken pieces of an item into one item.

Once he knew that much, figuring out the item’s functionality was easy. It was both a phone and a tiny portal system. It was far more expensive to run than the illusion, but the portal didn’t have to be open all the time. Serenity suspected that it probably wasn’t kept open for very long when it was opened. With the way it was configured, it could only be triggered from the other side; that probably meant they had some sort of prearranged time to talk.

“Serenity?” Ekari’s voice broke through Serenity’s preoccupation with the two enchanted items. “Is that you? I know there wasn’t another Priest in here, we’d have noticed.”

Serenity stood up and turned towards Ekari. “Yeah, it’s me.”

His voice sounded odd. Higher pitched, perhaps even female. Serenity glanced down at the illusion item in his left hand. Maybe?

Serenity set the item on the table, then looked at Ekari. “Better?”

His voice sounded normal again.

Ekari seemed to relax. “Yeah. I guess that explains some of the mystery here. Vinal is convinced that Priest Kiilitha is here and she didn’t recognize the impostor at all.”

Serenity nodded. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that sub-Priest Vinal was already back; she’d only gone to the market, after all, and it wasn’t like seven people should need all that much for a single day. “We can find out. Would you like to play the part of Priest Kiilitha?”

She’d probably be better at it than he would. Serenity sucked at acting.

Ekari chuckled. “No, it’d be better if you do it. She’s expecting me, after all. On top of that, I can’t think she knows the actual Kiilitha all that well or she wouldn’t have been fooled by the impostor.”

Serenity had to admit that Ekari had a point, however little he liked it. Acting skill wasn’t really needed to see if the illusion itself was good.

Serenity followed Ekari to the room she’d stashed sub-Priest Vinal in. It was one of the disused bedrooms, probably one of the ones they were going to use since it’d been cleaned at some time between when Serenity first looked at it and now.

“Priest Kiilitha!” Vinal had a huge grin as she greeted Serenity. “I was so worried when they said they couldn’t find you!”

Serenity turned his head to look at Ekari. They had their answer; what was he supposed to do now?

Ekari chuckled at Serenity’s discomfort. “You can put it down.”

Serenity nodded and set the illusion rock down on a chair. When he looked back up, Vinal was staring at him in horror. Serenity decided to break the bad news to her in his usual blunt fashion. “I’m afraid that the Priest Kiilitha you knew was probably an illusion.”

“But, but …” Vinal was not exactly coherent.

Ekari gave Serenity a glare. It was obvious she’d planned a different way to break it to Vinal, but he’d ruined it.

Serenity shrugged helplessly. Ekari should know better than that by now; if she wanted him to specifically do or not do something, she needed to tell him. He was bad at guessing games, especially guessing games with people. He’d thought that was what she wanted!

It took Ekari almost half an hour to calm down Vinal and get her talking again. The key piece of information as far as Serenity was concerned is that while what the acolyte said was true, people did occasionally stay in the barracks for a day or two, what he’d said was incomplete.

Vinal had noticed that many of them wore damaged novice uniforms; the ones that didn’t usually had injuries and wore everyday clothing. “Priest Kiilitha” had told her that they were there to rest for a bit before they went back to their normal duties, but it had never made much sense to Vinal. They didn’t even have an infirmary.