Eighth lesson? I swiped over to Nia’s inheritance and opened the ‘lessons’ section, then immediately pressed on the eighth one. The strange video-room spread out before us, and this time, it took the other three in with me. Without me needing to touch them.

“Wow! What is this?” Mortician asked in wonder, trying to take a step forward and smacking their head on the invisible barrier. “Is this one of those ‘lessons’ you’ve told us about?”

“It is.” I confirmed with a nod. “Archivist, I might need your help here. Okeria said there’s important information here if we’re going to kill Keratily, but that wasn’t part of the plan. Keep a lookout for anything that looks out of place.”

Archivist bowed slightly. “Of course. This specific in-between has another twenty minutes before you will be ejected, so be aware of the time constraints.”

“And that’s a little shorter for Mortician and me.” Jun added. She stepped a little closer to me, and surveyed the completely black room around us. “Do you really think Okeria wants to kill Keratily? Or do you think he just said something to get us to watch this lesson?”

I shrugged and pressed ‘play’. “Only one way to find out.”

The scenery instantly shifted to the inside of a simple building, with a few tables and chairs set up and absolutely no personalization on the walls. It felt like the house of someone who traveled a lot, or someone who couldn’t bring themself to care about where they lived. Which meant this probably wasn’t Nia’s house. She’d had some decorations back in Walkalong, and her office hadn’t been as surgically clean as this room.

We waited fifteen seconds to the sound of a busy street behind us, then Jun cleared her throat.

“Fast-forward, Seb. The whole thing’s eight hours long.” She gently reminded me.

“Right, yeah. It’s been a little while.” I chuckled and slid my finger along the runtime. Dozens of minutes went by completely uneventfully, the muffled sounds of quickened people joining in with Mortician’s noises of awe and curiosity. Then someone was there. They didn’t come in, they just… appeared sitting at the table.

“That’s… that’s what…” Jun muttered and raised her hand into the air. The gun strapped to her wrist was a perfect match for the mystery figure’s armor. “Is that Okeria?”

“Considering he was aware of the contents of this ‘eighth lesson’, that seems to be a likely assumption.” Archivist agreed. “He informed you that he was stronger than he appeared, and knowing this now, I would assume it was in preparation for you viewing this.”

Probably. I waited another while for anything else to happen, but Okeria just sat there in his chair fiddling with his interface for another hour and a half. Nia really hadn’t had the time to edit any of these down.

“There!” Jun lunged forward and jabbed her finger at the door on the other side of the room. “Go back to normal speed!”

I turned off fast-forward just in time to see an armored Keratily enter the room, pink crystals coating her entire armor as a makeshift extra layer of protection. She casually glanced around the room, made a ‘come here’ gesture at one of the walls. A crystal needle erupted from it and speared something through that sparked with electricity.

She shook her head and sighed, then plucked the drone from her crystal. “Okeria, when will you learn that you can’t hide anything from me?”

“When I eventually learn that I can hide something from ya.” Okeria chuckled, his voice slightly staticky as it left his helmet. He leaned over the table and tented his fingers. “So what’s the reason ya kept me waiting here for more than an hour? I thought it was ‘urgent’.”

“It is urgent. My time is simply more valuable than yours.” Keratily stated matter-of-factly. “It’s about Persephonia. She’s decided that she’s going to be a leader for the next generation of all-world recruits.”

Okeria tilted his head to the side. “Good for her?”

“NO! Not good for her!” Keratily hissed and slammed her fist down on the table. Pink crystals absorbed her blow. “If she finds one of my descendants, she could… she could… bring them to their own doom. Just like all the others.”

“Drown me, she was lying to Okeria way back then?” Jun muttered angrily.

“I bet she never really told him the truth. Until it came out.” I said bitterly. “But wouldn’t she want Nia to bring her more of her descendants? Wouldn’t she–”

“If we continue watching, we will surely find out.” Archivist politely interrupted me with a reminder.

“Right. Sorry.” I apologized, then shut my mouth and let the ‘lesson’ play out.

“I… uh… don’t ya want that?” Okeria asked with audible confusion, immediately proving Archivist right. “She can point ‘em out ta ya, and then ya can save them before your descendants get at ‘em.”

Keratily sighed and shook her head. “Okeria, Okeria, Okeria.” She tutted. “My descendants are aware of my involvement with Persephonia. They will not assign a single Keratily to one of Persephonia’s groups.”

“Okay, so that’s one less group ya gotta check.” Okeria argued. “Ain’t that a good thing?”

“No. It. Is. Not.” Keratily punctuated with insistence. “You might not remember what Sotrien was like thanks to your clouded mind, but I do. Nothing good will come from Persephonia returning to our home world. You must stop her.”

Okeria reeled in disbelief. “Ya want me ta stop her? Keratily, I’m her research partner and friend. You’re pretty much her parental figure. Skies above, ya should ask Inopsy before ya ask me! And he’s a few buckets short of a bathtub, if ya get what I’m sayin’.”

“I… you…” Keratily ground out, then took a deep breath. “No. You obviously don’t understand. As a favor to me, please talk to Persephonia. Tell her she’s making a grave mistake, and that she will cause irreparable harm to many people if she continues down the path she’s walking. I know she will make the responsible choice.”

“Right, right.” Okeria muttered. He stared at Keratily for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. “Fine, I’ll talk ta Persephonia. But I need ya ta hold up your end of the bargain.”

Keratily waved Okeria off. “It is done. Your children will never be selected to come to the all-world. Now goodbye. I will eagerly await the news that Persephonia has been talked down.”

Keratily turned, never having sat down at the table, and opened her door once again. I caught a glimpse of something brilliantly pink and thrumming, as if it were alive, but the door never opened enough to show me that it was anything more than another crystal.

“Haah, that drowned woman’s gonna be the death of us.” Okeria chuckled. He exaggeratedly lifted his arm and pressed his fingers down on his forearm, exactly where he’d placed his liquid communicator on me. “These words are contained within my helmet now, so Keratily can’t hear ‘em. She’s got a lattice of crystals set up on the four corners of Rainbow Basin at houses just like this, and she’s been siphoning experience away from people for decades. She don’t know that I know this, and she won’t ever know that I know.”

He stood and stretched nonchalantly, then waved his hand through the air. Where we were watching from zipped through the air to land on Okeria’s finger, giving me the closest-up of someone’s armor I’d ever seen.

“Eep!” Mortician squeaked in surprise, then stood straight and cleared their throat. “I mean, well golly! That sure was quite surprising.”

Okeria slowly turned to face what I’d thought was the street from the noise, yet found myself staring at a blank wall. No door, no windows, nothing. He gestured broadly at it, then began speaking once again.

“I’ve found three of ‘em so far, but she’s only ever summoned me ta these three. She’s keeping the fourth a secret, even though she thinks she’s erasing my memories of this place when I teleport out of her core’s field. It ain’t, obviously. Something’s screwy with that woman, but I can’t place what it is.” He shook his head. “No, no musing. This is information only. Keratily’s core don’t work the same as I initially thought; it don’t permanently steal anything from anyone, but it can make it seem like it did. As long as she keeps her four-point formation up, she can keep the stats and experience she siphons away from anyone. That’s how she got so powerful without making any obvious moves into high level hazards.”

He turned once again, facing the door Keratily had just gone through. “If it turns out Keratily ain’t just a strange old woman who’s been skimming a little off the top because of what she does for the people, all we gotta do is destroy one of these crystals. She’ll lose so much experience and so many stat points that she’ll be crippled ta near uselessness. I really hope it don’t come ta that, but in the off chance that it might, I’m sending this ta ya, Persephonia. Put it somewhere safe so ya don’t lose it.”

A map of Rainbow Basin flashed in front of me, with one single location marked with a pink crystal. “Unfortunately, this is where she manages ta make my memories fuzzy. I know I’ve seen three crystals, but the second I leave the house, I can’t pinpoint where they were. And my recordings don’t carry the location data over either. Maybe sending this ta ya right now’ll save the data somehow. Oh, and don’t go back ta Sotrien. Keratily don’t want ya to.”

Okeria saluted sarcastically. “Good luck on Sotrien!”

The recording instantly shifted to Persephonia halfway through explaining some concept that we hadn’t heard the beginning of. I paused the lesson and stood there for a few seconds just taking everything in.

Keratily hadn’t earned her strength. She’d been lying to Okeria and Persephonia for a long time, which meant she’d been working on her own plans for even longer. And she had some kind of memory altering function baked into her core function, which could pinpoint specific memories and leave them intact, as was made obvious by the fact that she expected Okeria to deliver a message but not remember where he’d talked to her.

“Well, I do not think I have much to add for this particular lesson.” Archivist was the first to speak. “Keratily was herself long before Juniper and Sebastian came along, Okeria knew something was strange about her, and he was prepared to act on it. Yet for some reason, he seems to still be unaware of Keratily’s crystal locations, as he has not moved to destroy one and grant Inopsy the upper hand for the potential battle he is locked in.”

“He must not’ve asked Nia to give him the crystal’s location.” Jun reluctantly theorized. “But that doesn’t make any sense. He knew she stitched it onto her eighth lesson, so why wouldn’t he have asked her for a copy of the video?”

It didn’t make sense. Okeria struck me as the type to hoard absolutely everything in the off chance he needed it, not leave something out until it was blatantly necessary.

There had to be something else going on.