Serenity watched the rest of the interaction, but he didn’t get much out of it. He was too busy wondering about why it felt so different from the other visions he’d gotten from Aeon’s core. He was still wondering what was going on when the vision ended.

Serenity reached out for the same viewpoint, in case that would tell him anything, and found the man sleeping in a bed. He woke a moment after Serenity touched him, but it was clear that he couldn’t have been guarding a meeting moments earlier. He also felt vaguely different; there was no purpose to his lying there. It was almost like the man was waiting for direction.

Serenity found that he could move the man’s body as though it were another of his bodies. He sat up and looked around. He was in an open room filled with beds; each of the other beds held a sleeping form.

The vision must have been a memory, Aeon’s attempt to answer his question. It told Serenity that he was probably in the underground, but that wasn’t enough. Serenity needed to know where Arkandaeon was now.

“Find Arkandaeon confirmed.” The words came out of the mouth of the man sitting on the bed without Serenity trying to direct them. Serenity felt the body stand and head towards the door out of the room.

Wait!

“Stop confirmed,” the body said as he halted in place, setting his feet into a comfortable standing position.

It hadn’t used the same word Serenity did. Did that mean there was still someone in there? Someone who could think but not act? Serenity shivered at the horrible thought and felt the body follow his motions.

Are you still there? Can you understand me? If you can … what’s your name?

The body didn’t respond at all until Serenity asked for a name, when it shook, just a little. “Identifier Legion Soldier XA-13.”

What was your name before that?

“Before?” The body started its answer almost immediately, then stopped. Serenity waited, trying to be patient, and it eventually continued. “Identifier Cory Mike Littlewood.”

Were you from Earth originally?

“Yes.” This time, the answer was immediate and wasn’t prefaced with some version of a paraphrase of the question.

These were more people Serenity needed to get off Lyka, and these were badly affected. Serenity didn’t know if he’d ever be able to free them of what had been done to them, but that was something he could handle later. They ought to be easy to get out; he could just have them walk out on their own.

On the other hand, he could ask them to take care of a small problem he had in the Underground first. A small problem known as Alanaeon and Arkandaeon. It was possible that they would be able to get out without dealing with them, but Serenity fully expected that Alanaeon, at least, wouldn’t let it be as easy as he was imagining it might be. So … perhaps taking care of them was a good step no matter what?

Serenity knew he was just justifying it to himself. Cory, at least, didn’t seem to have much of a sense of self or any desire to make decisions, which meant it was difficult to ask him to decide; he simply wouldn’t.

Serenity paused. He’d better check that. It could be that Cory wasn’t making decisions because he didn’t know he could instead of because he didn’t want to or didn’t care.

Cory? Do you want to go back to Earth?

Cory didn’t say anything. Serenity waited, but even after several minutes there was no reply.

Cory, answer me. Do you want to go back to Earth?

This time, the answer was quick. “No travel method to Earth is known.”

That didn’t actually answer the question; Serenity couldn’t tell if it was a positive answer or if Cory had taken the question for an order. Maybe if he tried the other way around?

Cory, do you want to stay here?

“Stop confirmed.”

Cory definitely wasn’t answering the questions Serenity was asking. It was almost like he was one of the old voice-recognition packages from when Serenity was young, looking for a few key words and trying to make something of them. In some ways it made it easier to use them the way he was about to because there wasn’t anyone home and in others it made it harder because he didn’t like making decisions for others.

Serenity tried to reach out to all of the Legion Soldiers in the Underground. They were scattered in a number of rooms across the complex and while they burned brighter somehow than the beam-weapons he had to be careful to get only the soldiers. He hoped they’d be able to parse a somewhat complex command.

Legion Soldiers. Return to your ordinary duties until you locate Priestess Alanaeon or Priest Arkandaeon. Once you have located them, one of you must keep them in sight at all times. Others may continue their normal activities. Try not to get too much attention.

Dozens of pairs of eyes snapped open and the bodies rose to a seated position. “Return to duty and observation confirmed.”

Serenity heard the statement in a range of voices and a range of accents all at once. It was positively creepy. He took his hand off Aeon’s core. He’d need to check in periodically to see if they’d located either Priest, but he didn’t need to watch every moment. In fact, he’d rather not.

Aide, can you keep an eye on … that?

Of course. I will alert you when anything interesting happens.

Now all Serenity could do was wait.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He could exercise, though finding any exercise equipment that would stand up to a peak Tier Eight wasn’t going to be easy. Come to think of it, he could go over his Status in detail; he hadn’t done that in a while. Had he missed anything useful? There was always something he forgot.

Wait, what was this quest?

[Mentor Quest: Restore the Lost]

[Goal: Find a way for dragons to have lower-Tier eggs and hatchlings to allow their minds and bodies to grow together and prevent them from becoming Lost]

[Optional Goal: Find a way to restore those who have been Lost from their spirit form, physical form, or both]

[Optional Goal: Learn about other species with this issue. Generalize the solution]

[Reward: Unknown]

[Failure Consequences: None]

[Message begins: I don’t really expect you to be able to do anything about the Lost any time soon, but you have the best chance I’ve seen in millenia. If you can’t, maybe a descendant of yours will be able to. Message ends.]

Serenity felt a bolt of fear run through him. Jenna might be at risk!

He frantically tried to remember everything he knew about the quest. It didn’t take long before he remembered the important part for Jenna’s sake: the dragons had tried all sorts of things and children that weren’t true dragons didn’t have the problem; instead, they were less likely to become a true dragon. Serenity didn’t care about that; Jenna’s safety was more important.

Even so, he needed to not forget this quest. What if his next child was draconic enough to have an issue?

Serenity spent a couple of hours looking through his Status and thinking about what it meant and what he needed to work on before Aide got his attention. It seemed that only Priestess Alanaeon had been found, but Aide had still flagged the discussion she was having with one of her assistants as “interesting”. When he played it back for Serenity, Serenity had to agree.

“...suspicious?” A priest Serenity didn’t recognize turned to glare at the Legion Soldier whose senses Serenity was using. “They were unconscious for hours but now nothing’s wrong with them? All of them?”

Priestess Alanaeon barely glanced up from the table she was working at. Serenity couldn’t tell what she was doing, but whatever it was, it took a lot of greenstone. “They have a vulnerability. Better to know about it now, but it’s unlikely to happen again. No one’s been able to find anything in the records about a wave of magic like that, so they are rare. It would be far more suspicious if it were some of them. It’s clear that they simply required time to recover.”

She looked up from her work and grinned at the soldier providing Serenity’s viewpoint. “There’s a reason I pushed for living weaponry. It can heal itself. Overcome flaws. All we had to do was make sure it would follow orders and it’s better than the original. Truly under the control of its makers.”

Serenity had a feeling that Alanaeon hadn’t ever said that to the Legion’s leadership. It sounded like she was thinking of replacing actual soldiers with her custom-programmed troops. If she ever succeeded, it would be a good day for Lyka’s enemies, whoever they were. Centrally controlled armies tended to suffer against more flexible opponents unless they had other advantages, like more people.

He wondered if she’d ever mentioned it to Lykandeon; it seemed like the sort of thing a highly controlling god wouldn’t like unless they were completely loyal to him and how could you ever know that they were? On the other hand, perhaps he had enough control of Alanaeon that he wasn’t worried about her turning against him. In that case, maybe he’d be very happy about it, no matter how bad an idea it really was.

“They all finished healing at the same time?” The unknown priest clearly didn’t accept Alanaeon’s conclusion.

The priestess frowned at the priest. She seemed more annoyed than upset. “When you have something more than the idea that taking the same amount of time to recover from the same incident is weird, come see me. I have bigger concerns; this entire complex is powered by greenstone and the only functional greenstone right now is what we’ve got in those soldiers!” She pointed at Serenity’s viewpoint. “So unless you have an explanation for that, go do something useful instead of wasting my time when I could be working on a real problem!”

That was where Aide’s playback ended.

Serenity frowned. He remembered asking Aeon to disable weapons in the hands of the Church but not anything else. Was this the result of that request? Did Aeon simply disable everything in the hands of the Church? Did Aeon even know what a weapon was?

More importantly, did he mind? He’d requested the weapons be disabled because of a fight, but if everything was down and only his people could use it, that was a huge advantage. The more dependent they were on greenstone, the better it was for Serenity right now.

So no, he didn’t mind how Aeon had interpreted his request. It was useful. More than that, having it not work would discourage continued chipping at Lyka’s core. He was going to have to figure out how to protect Lyka’s core in the future, but for now that wasn’t something he could solve.

It was strange that Alanaeon had turned up but not Arkandaeon. By the Underground’s hours, it was a little past lunchtime. He shouldn’t be sleeping and Serenity knew that the meal halls were guarded by Legion soldiers. There was no reason for Arkandaeon to be hiding, but Serenity couldn’t think of another reason that he wouldn’t have been seen if he were still in the Underground.

Aide, do you have a map of the Underground yet? I’m wondering if there’s anywhere Arkandaeon might be hiding.

Only a partial one, Aide admitted. The map only covers the areas the soldiers have been, so there is a lot of repetition. I believe I have all of the routinely guarded areas mapped out and I have identified all of the unexplored doors, but there is an entire outer region and a number of smaller inner areas that are not covered in the routine. Aide presented the map for Serenity to examine.

A smile found its way to Serenity’s face as he looked over the map. This was going to take a while, but at least it should be interesting!