It was half a day’s travel from the rally point back to Celestials’ Rest, but Serenity wasn’t about to let that stop him. They’d arrive in time for a late supper; that was plenty early enough. He left the other “generals” to their planning and headed out to handle the most important part: getting the information to actually use for the plans.

Or, at least, to find the person that was already gathering it. Serenity didn’t understand what had happened, but he could fix it, so he would. He made sure to take Legion with him to act as a messenger; when he asked the others, only Kerr wanted to stay behind to watch the planning, though she’d also keep Legion nearby.

That wasn’t actually what Kerr said, once they were behind closed doors. What Kerr said was that she wanted to watch the generals and make sure they didn’t make any more dumbass decisions that would get troops killed. Serenity wasn’t sure he could really blame the generals for this one; he had the feeling this was deliberate.

When Serenity arrived at Xarx’s aunt’s inn, he expected to have to ask about Ceney and Xarx. Instead, he barely made it in the door before he saw Xarx sitting at one of the tables, flirting with a waitress. It didn’t sound serious, but Serenity knew he was bad at that sort of thing.

He did know that Xarx wouldn’t be so relaxed if Ceney were in danger. That wasn’t a question.

Serenity headed over to the table. There wasn’t enough room for everyone, so they spilled over onto the nearby tables. “Hey, Xarx. Everything going well?”

Xarx was not keeping a good eye on the room; he was entirely too relaxed, even for being in his aunt’s inn. He clearly considered this safe territory, which was dangerous behavior in a bodyguard. On the other hand, Ceney wasn’t present; relaxing wasn’t entirely safe, but it had to happen. Relaxing in what should be a safe space when your protectee wasn’t present made sense.

Xarx tensed and turned towards Serenity quickly. A moment later, he relaxed and smiled. “Serenity. Are these the friends you mentioned you wanted to have come meet you?”

Serenity smiled back. “Yeah. This is Rissa, I know I mentioned her. The others are Blaze, Ita, and Legion. You already know Andarit. How’s Ceney?” He hadn’t forgotten the reason he was back in Celestials’ Rest. “Oh, and before I forget, I still have some of the stuff from her workshop; it looks like I missed it when I handed over the rest.”

Xarx nodded slowly. “I’m in the same room as last time. Why don’t you come join me after you eat? You can hand over whatever you forgot then. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about.” He stood and walked away without looking back or even finishing his drink.

Serenity had no idea what that was about. Xarx hadn’t answered the question about Ceney. Or had he? If he were in the same room as last time, there was a good chance Ceney was there too; that would also explain why he was willing to take Ceney’s stuff. Why wasn’t he willing to just say that?

Serenity shrugged to himself. The best way to find out was to do exactly as Xarx suggested and have dinner then go up and talk.

There was very little space available in the inn; Xarx’s aunt Arrimet actually said that they were getting the last two rooms she had. They weren’t next to each other, but one was next to Xarx’s room. Serenity got the feeling that that wasn’t accidental.

The price was higher, too. Serenity couldn’t tell if that was because prices were simply higher or if he simply wasn’t getting the friends-and-family discount this time, but he suspected he wasn’t paying full price. He hadn’t tried to get a room when he was dealing with the earthlings; Innat had handled that. He had, however, heard more than enough complaining about increased prices to know that a slight increase was probably nothing more than Arrimet trying to cover her increased costs.

While Serenity headed towards Xarx’s room, Ita and Blaze went to check out the far bedroom. They’d be available if they were needed, but after seeing Xarx, no one thought they would be.

Serenity knocked on Xarx’s door. Xarx ushered the three of them in, then closed it behind them before Ceney revealed herself. She was dressed completely unlike herself, in a loose dress rather than the practical leather she preferred. It did a surprisingly good job of making her look older and less fit than she was, though it didn’t quite manage to make her look dowdy.

“Ceney, what’s going on? Are you hiding or something?” Serenity was sure there was a better way to phrase things, but he couldn’t immediately think of it and at least that question should finally get some answers.

Ceney shrugged. “I’m hiding. We don’t want my presence to get back to the people in Zenith.”

Serenity raised his eyebrows. “Is that why no one seems to know what happened to you after you got done acting as a messenger?”

Ceney nodded. “It’s safer that way, especially when I have to send Xarx back to Zenity to check in with my nephew. Come on in, have a seat, be comfortable.”

Serenity didn’t remember five chairs in the room the last time he’d been in here; Xarx must have brought the others in while they ate. He sat down then asked the question that was bothering him. “I can understand wanting to keep your presence quiet, but shouldn’t the people planning how to retake Zenith know about you and your nephew? I thought the plan was for him to raise a simultaneous insurrection and open the gates for us.”

Ceney frowned. “It is, but we’ve had a hard time recruiting people. None of the outlying nobles have sent more than a token force, other than Baron Celestials’ Rest. I expected better of them; they promised more.” She nodded at Andarit. “Did you come with yours? Your father hasn’t sent anyone yet.”

Andarit visibly frowned. “We’ve had two hundred people at the rally point for two months; another three hundred came with us, and that’s not counting Serenity’s forces. I admit the others didn’t send as many, other than Baron Heavenfall, but even the smallest levy is well over a hundred fighters. That doesn’t sound like a token force to me; it’s seriously weakened our defense against the Dead Swamp.”

Ceney’s hand clenched by her side. “Damn. That doesn’t sound like a mistake. Tell me what you’ve seen and I’ll tell you what I know; it’s going to take some real work to fix this.”

---------

Hours later, Serenity bid Ceney and Xarx a good night and turned to leave before he realized that he’d almost forgotten again. He turned back. “Ceney, I don’t know if Xarx mentioned it, but I still have some of the stuff from your workshop.”

“You do?” Ceney paused, then looked around the room. They were still in Xarx’s room; there wasn’t much extra space. “Come on into my room, you can drop it off there.”

Serenity followed her into a room that was a near duplicate of Xarx’s, except for being mirrored and lacking the table and chairs. Instead, there was a much smaller table with some tools and a half-completed set of leather armor. It was not nearly as nice a setup as Ceney’s workshop in Zenith, but it was probably the best she could do here. Unfortunately, while there was more space available than in Xarx’s room, there still wasn’t really much space available. “I’m not sure it’ll all fit.”

Ceney shrugged. She had an odd expression that looked almost like she was smiling and frowning at the same time; the edges of her mouth drew back into her face without tilting up or down. “I don’t have anywhere else to put it. The big stuff is in a room in the Baron’s Spire, but I’m not going to put anything else there until the situation in Zenith is resolved. We need a King, or-” Ceney cut herself off and shook her head. “Anyway, that’s not an option so just put it here and I’ll figure out how to deal with it tomorrow.”

Serenity nodded and started emptying her things out of his Rift, starting with the biggest items. It took some time, but at least he’d made sure to reorganize everything so he could find it. He didn’t want to have to go through this again.

He was nearly finished when Ceney gasped. “Serenity, what the heck did you do to my tools?”

Serenity looked over towards Ceney. She was sitting at her temporary workbench and seemed to have started working on the armor while she waited. “Nothing? I mean, I stored them, that’s all.”

“This isn’t nothing.” Ceney’s voice sounded odd, almost excited.

Serenity made his way around the piles of partially-sorted stuff until he could look at what Ceney was looking at. As far as he could tell, it was a tool. An awl, maybe? It certainly looked pointy enough, and he thought leatherworkers used awls, but he wasn’t anything approaching an expert on leatherworking.

Ceney grinned up at him, then pressed the probably-an-awl to the leather she was working on. It easily punched a hole in the leather.

Wasn’t that what it was supposed to do?

“What’s wrong with it?” Serenity glanced between the ordinary-looking tool and Ceney’s grin. “Or is nothing wrong with it?”

“It’s too easy, too sharp. It’s like it’s a magical tool. I haven’t been able to have magical tools since I got back to Zon; they’re just too expensive to be worth using. They’re all like this, everything I’ve tried. They all work like you had them enchanted. It’s a really, really good enchantment, too; how long will it last?” Ceney spoke so quickly she sounded almost breathless. “You really didn’t have to have them enchanted; I hadn’t even noticed most of this was missing.”

Serenity took a good look at the tools with his Magesight. They were inert. “They’re not magical. I didn’t have them enchanted. I didn’t even have them looked at by anyone. All I did was…” Serenity trailed off. All he’d done was leave them in his Rift. Which meant he’d left them in the Origin, soaking in Potential. He’d been thinking of his Rift Skill as mostly just a storage Skill, but it was actually a rift to another place, not really storage. The rules of “place” were different in the Origin.

He was lucky nothing bad had happened to anything he’d put in his Rift. He’d have to stop using it for storage; there was no excuse for using it as storage if it could change whatever he stored into something else, and he had no idea what Potential could do. Anything, probably.

Wait. That didn’t line up with what Ceney was saying. “You say they’re all working a lot better for what they’re supposed to be? Not extra features or things that don’t work right, but what they’re supposed to do?”

Ceney nodded, grinning.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t even noticed: the Potential must be influencing things to be what they already were, only more so. Did matter have a sort of static intent?

No, that wouldn’t make sense. Well, it might make sense for manufactured goods, but not for… actually, Serenity couldn’t think of anything he’d put in his Rift that hadn’t been created in some way. Even something as simple as flour was specifically made from wheat; for that matter, if he put firewood in the Rift, it would have been cut up with the intent of being firewood.

A lot of the stuff from Earth was probably done by machine, but that didn’t change the fact that it was deliberately altered. Someone designed the machine to do something specific. It might be -no, was! - impressive that Potential seemed to recognize that Intent and follow it, but that was the only thing that could explain it.

Well, that or some sort of unconscious hive mind or something. It certainly couldn’t be pulling solely from Serenity’s knowledge; he didn’t even know what some of Ceney’s tools were.

“I think you’ll find that they are exceptionally good mundane tools, possibly made out of unusual materials,” Serenity stated carefully. That was probably true and it might save him from having to explain something he didn’t understand. “I hope they serve you well.”