The next two weeks were difficult. The problem wasn’t Baron Celestials’ Rest; indeed, it wasn’t any single thing. It was a whole host of little, annoying issues instead. There was no one in charge until Ceney arrived, which meant no one was coordinating anything. Once she was in place, problems seemed to pop out of the woodwork.

Part of that was probably the fact that in the absence of a proper royalist component to the army, Serenity and the Earthlings, along with Legion, became Ceney’s eyes, ears, and often hands. It was a relief to not be in charge of an army, yet at the same time he still had most of the same headaches; the only duty he was actually able to fully offload was the effort to plan the assault on Zenith. Even then, he still had to be in the room and speak up for his forces.

Serenity was at least half-convinced that many of the problems were people trying to make things more difficult for Princess Ceney. Those didn’t seem to come from any single source; instead, it was like none of the separate forces really wanted to be under her command, but there was really no one else they were willing to even sort of accept. Serenity never saw Andarit bring forward a patently ridiculous issue for her to solve, but most of the others did at least once.

At first, Serenity tried to help, but after the first few issues he decided that this was Ceney’s problem to solve; he’d help if she asked (as she did, several times), but he quit putting himself forward. It didn’t help.

There was a lot of news out of Zenith over that time. Most of it was fairly dark; the Eternal Church wasn’t kind to infidels and didn’t seem to have much real interest in keeping the city intact. It was enough to make Serenity wonder what Lykandeon was thinking when he authorized the invasion.

Unfortunately, Serenity had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t really Lykandeon who arranged everything. This felt far too much like the way Alanaeon was carving out her own empire under the banner of Lykandeon’s Eternal Church.

Serenity was going to blame Lykandeon anyway. He deserved it for losing control of his own Church if nothing else.

The most amusing, if dark, news to come out of Zenith was that the acolytes that made up most of the Eternal Church’s forces kept waking up to find someone dead. It wasn’t huge numbers at any given time, even though more could have been killed; instead, it was clearly a campaign of terror. Someone was telling them that they could die in their sleep at any time.

It wasn’t very effective at anything other than reducing the number of acolytes. Serenity was sure it bothered the acolytes, but none of them tried to get away, even though they weren’t all that closely watched. With what he knew about Lykandeon, Serenity had a sinking suspicion about what was going on there. It made him wish that whoever was doing it, likely the assassins of the Night Court, had taken to killing more acolytes. Fewer enemies would make taking the city easier.

Serenity was relieved when the plan finally came together and they were able to do something.

The other forces were supposed to get the city’s attention; some would approach the walls, while others would try to stay unseen, get into the city through some small gates opened by Zenith’s citizens (or even over the wall using a rope lift in the case of one enterprising fellow). The infiltrators would then gather up and try to split the city in two, preventing reinforcements from the palace or barracks from reaching the wall.

Serenity’s forces, along with Ceney herself, would travel through a hidden passageway into the tunnels under the Palace. From there, the goal was to attack the Palace from the tunnels where they shouldn’t be expected, capture it, and take control of the City Node. Ceney planned to hand control over to Prince Ora, even though he wasn’t going to be able to join them on the assault.

Despite the distractions, the Palace was expected to be the most dangerous assignment. There shouldn’t be that many troops there, but the ones that stayed were likely to be the commanders. They’d be higher Tier and should have better training.

Serenity led the way with Princess Ceney right behind him. While there was a good bit of fighting throughout the Palace, none of it was even remotely dangerous to Serenity’s group. The closest Serenity came to an actual fight was with a Tier Six Priest who was clearly crippled by the lack of his god’s power. He tried to pull down the holy power of Lykandeon the same way the Priest Serenity encountered at Djen’s Hiring Hall did, but nothing happened.

Serenity killed him while the Priest was still trying to figure out what happened.

In fact, they took the City Node more than an hour before the most optimistic plan said they should. It was almost like they’d simply walked to the City Node.

Serenity headed out to help with the other battles, which were also wrapping up far easier than predicted. The same pattern held throughout the city: the powerful Priests that everyone expected to be the most dangerous were still well defended, but their offensive power was crippled. It seemed that killing their God also deprived the Priests of the ability to call on Him, and they were completely dependent on his power.

The lower-Tier acolytes were more of a problem. They were also more numerous. Unfortunately, like the Priests, none were willing to surrender or run. The only members of the Eternal Church’s forces that were taken alive that day were ones who were knocked unconscious during the fighting.

Serenity was sure that meant they’d been carefully selected by the priests and probably geased by Lykandeon. Unfortunately, there was little anyone could do about that; Serenity didn’t seem to be able to replicate the effect, even in the room with Aeon’s World Core, and Blaze had only a limited ability to deal with that sort of effect. More importantly, there were a large number of injuries that Blaze could heal quickly among the people of Zon and Earth, so Blaze set himself to healing those before he even started worrying about the invaders.

The handover to Prince Ora went well; he was recognized by the Zenith Palace Portal Node as the new King of Zenith, which ended the lockout. Of course, that was only the beginning, for both the Royal Family of Zenith and for Serenity.

The Royal Family had a damaged capital city to repair and at least one, probably more, of the Barons was plotting against the nation. That wasn’t new, but it was usually less overt than the events that happened during the war. As Princess Ceney told Serenity, she was simply glad that it didn’t spill over into the fighting itself; that could have done real damage to the city and its people.

Serenity had a more straightforward problem: thousands of people had to be moved from Zon to Earth. The primary redeeming factor was that he could go back to Celestials’ Rest and use the Portal Node there instead of trying to get them all back to Zenith. It was, fortunately, far more straightforward than the Royal Family’s problem, but it still took weeks.

Andarit was long gone, back in Lowpeak with her father, by the time Serenity finished. The two lawyers were still finding the last few stragglers; Serenity supplied them with some more Etherium so that they could send those they found home immediately.

Serenity wasn’t going to get to see the rebuilding of Zon. In many ways, he didn’t mind that; he hadn’t seen it at its worst, so it would continue to exist in his memory as the city he’d seen before the Lykans arrived. At the same time, Serenity was almost grateful; unlike Lyka and Aeon, not to mention Tzintkra, he had managed to completely avoid gaining any responsibility for the planet.

Well, other than Mornmot. Serenity still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with a city full of demons. He wasn’t even sure what he could do, really; he didn’t want to push them out of their city, but he also didn’t want to help them out so much they’d threaten the humans on Zon. He had no idea what he was going to do. Perhaps he should just do nothing. Whatever he did, something or nothing, it was going to have to be a long-term solution, which meant that for once he had time to think before he acted. A few decades sounded like a reasonable time period for thought.

Serenity had bigger concerns on his mind when he stepped up to the portal himself. He had a friend in trouble on Asihanya; Honoria’s latest missive told him she needed help, even if she wouldn’t say it outright. He couldn’t get there directly, unfortunately; unlike Earth and Tzintkra, or probably now Lyka and Aeon, Serenity didn’t have the authority to simply open a portal from anywhere to Asihanya. He had to detour.

The best detour available was through Ranar, because he wanted to make sure Helen was being treated well by Guildmaster Tirmanak. It was also a convenient meeting place, because Ranar was one of the planets he’d already authorized connections to from Earth. Raz would meet him at the Guild Hall for Order’s Guild; it wasn’t in the market city Raz could get to from any of the New York City portals, but Ranar had its own on-planet portal system.

Raz wasn’t about to let Serenity wander around Asihanya without him; Raz wanted to know what was happening on his planet. He had a bit of a grudge against whoever it was that was attacking the Library; he blamed them for the destruction of his Clan.

The first sight to meet Serenity’s eyes when he stepped through the portal onto Ranar wasn’t the soaring towers of the ancient city he’d reached, instead, it was words.

[Path Quest Stage 4: Path Quest Choice]

[Tutorial Trouble: There is a problem in the Tutorial. Students are being directed to incorrect locations at the end of the first Phase. Assist the Voice’s investigations, find the responsible parties, and arrange for appropriate punishment]

[Step 1: Find out how it’s happening in the Tutorial] [COMPLETE]

[Step 2: Investigate on Zon] [COMPLETE]

[Step 3]: Investigate the Eternal Church’s involvement] [COMPLETE]

[Optional Goal: Put measures in place that will prevent the same scheme from working in the future] [COMPLETE]

[Optional Goal: Recover the lost Earthlings and return them to Earth (if desired)] [COMPLETE]

[Reward: Additional World Core Feature Unlocked: World Citizenship]

[Reward: Additional World Core Feature Unlocked: World Coalition]

[Path Quest Stage 5: Path Quest Choice]

[This is a choice of your next goal; selecting any option does not remove others from the future list of possibilities unless it is mutually exclusive or a Path branch. A reward will not be granted for any Path Quest until the selected one is completed or failed]

Serenity laughed and waved the choice away without even reading the options. He’d do that when he was somewhere a bit safer than just outside a portal, even a portal into what should be a relatively safe city.

Now, which way was the Guild Hall? He had directions, but he’d never actually been there before.

END OF ARC 8