Bryce, three days prior

I stepped through the portal and took in the dimly lit room around me, or rather, what was left of it. Whoever took Sora and Samira had ransacked the place. The sheets were torn off the bed, and the only thing left of the art was the bust of Teolix that Thea had vandalized when we first moved in. To make matters worse, the doors to our closet had been torn off their hinges, and our clothing had been thrown about the place. Thankfully, Thea kept anything overly expensive in her ring, otherwise she probably would’ve been more upset.

“I’m going to kill the bastards who did this.” The devil in question started angrily picking clothing up off the floor as she muttered oaths and curses to herself.

“What happened here?” Suriel asked as he awkwardly stood near his twin sisters.

“Somebody broke in and stole our friends.” Thea threw the bundle of clothes she had gathered into a pile, before turning to me with tears forming. “Bryce, what are we going to do?”

“It’s exactly as you said. We’re going to kill the bastards who did this.” I nodded to myself to firm my resolve. “But first, we’ll have to find them, and it looks like the local feed is down. Which means we need to reactivate the ship's primary power. Come on, we can do that from the bridge.”

“Wait, Lei, stop her!” Aurora shouted as I turned to leave, and a shimmering barrier of golden flames sprang to life in front of me before I could reach the door.

“Uh, guys, what’s going on?” Thea asked as she took a step towards me and away from the twins.

“Hopefully, nothing serious,” Aurora answered as she approached and gently nudged me away from the door. “But I think your uninvited guests may have left a few gifts behind. Lei, drop the shield, and be ready to throw out another one if I fuck this up.”

“Alright, just please, be careful,” Leila said, as she ended the shield spell and outstretched a hand towards the door.

Aurora nodded before squatting down near a small device that I had completely missed. In my defense, it was hidden by some sort of magi-tech based camouflage system.

“Here, catch.” Aurora did something to disconnect the device and tossed it to me. I caught it and cast a quick mana detection spell to get a closer look. As best I could tell, the camouflage system was a mass-manufactured illusion spell attached to a mana converter, which was also powering a small relay device. The whole thing was ingenious.

“What is it?” Thea took a step closer to get a better look.

“It’s a bomb,” I answered as I handed it to her. The look on her face nearly made me laugh out loud.

Aurora smirked. “Not quite. It’s just a trigger sensor. The bomb part is probably attached to your fuel reserve, or your reactor, maybe even your engines. Hells, probably all three. At least, that’s what I'd do.”

Thea frowned back at her. “What do you mean, ‘that’s what I’d do’? How many times have you attached a bomb to a ship?”

“Just what do you think Aurora and I were doing in Feasjura?” Leila crossed her arms with a half-smile, which only caused Thea to furrow her brows.

“I didn’t know you were in Feasjura, and I definitely didn’t know you two were blowing shit up there. Why didn’t you invite me?”

“We were helping a group of mortals rebel against the nobility, and last I checked, you were a part of a demon noble’s household.” Aurora matched Leila’s pose before adding with a shrug. “Besides, I was the one blowing things up. Lei just handled the boring diplomatic shit.”

“Wait, didn’t you say she killed a noble for threatening to arrest you?” Suriel asked, which just caused Aurora’s smile to grow wider.

“Yeah, like I said, boring diplomatic shit.”

“We should probably focus on what we’re going to do about the bombs.” I tried to bring the conversation back to the task at hand. Which earned me a shrug from Aurora.

“Give me a couple of hours and I can probably get all the triggers, but I can’t promise that I won’t blow us up if I try to disarm the actual bombs.”

“And I’m assuming we can’t fly with a bomb strapped to our engines?” I asked, but already knew the answer even before Aurora confirmed it. “Alright, get started on the triggers and I’d appreciate it if you could at least locate the bombs, but don’t try to disarm them without talking to me first.”

“Aye aye, captain.” Aurora mock saluted before switching to a more serious expression. “But for real, even just disarming the triggers is going to be difficult, and if I fuck up, then we could all die. I’d recommend you three stay here behind a barrier, while Lei comes with me. That way, if something does go wrong, then we’d at least have a remote chance of surviving.”

“Are your barriers strong enough to stop an explosion like that?” I asked, and Leila seemed reluctant, but eventually answered.

“I don’t know. Probably not if I have to focus on multiple shields, but if something does go wrong, then it’s going to be better than nothing.”

“What about a pact?” Thea asked, which caused all three of her siblings to exchange looks, but she continued before they could object. “Look, I know what it sounds like, but Bryce has more mana than she knows what to do with, and you can trust her. Besides, you’ll need a way to fight mana decay until we can get you to Ash, anyway.”

I shrugged at Thea’s offer before adding my own thoughts. “For what it’s worth, any pact with me would be temporary, only in place until you have an alternative, and there would be no strings attached.” Then I remembered who I was talking to, and that all of them would be able to detect whether or not I was lying. “I swear that I have no ulterior motives beyond helping you three get acclimated, and whatever pact we decide on will be made in good faith.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Suriel said and the other two nodded, only somewhat reluctantly.

“Alright, we’ll agree to a pact, but I’d still feel more comfortable if you let Lei take some time to read through the specific wording.”

I agreed to Aurora’s terms and wrote up a basic contract, not entirely dissimilar from the one I had created with Thea. The primary difference was the amount of mana I was providing them, only a few percent for Suriel and Aurora, and just over twenty for Leila. After casting the spell, I pushed the illusory scroll over to the trio for them to read, and after a minor tweak in the wording, they all signed it.

“Gods below, Thea, you have this much mana all the time?” Leila asked, and Thea nodded with a laugh.

“More actually. In fact, when I fought Orrid, I was using three times that amount.”

“Wait, you seriously fought Orrid?” Aurora asked in disbelief. “Why in the hells did you do that? And how did you survive with that much mana flowing through you?”

“I, uh, didn’t,” Thea answered, before quickly adding. “We should probably get started on disarming the bombs, right? I mean, Sami and Softie are still waiting for us.”

“Sure, but don't think we won't talk about this later.” Leila frowned at Thea before turning towards me. “Aurora’s plan will probably work with this amount of mana, but it would be safer if I can focus all my attention into a single spell. Besides, unless she managed to find a map of your ship while I wasn’t looking, then neither of us know the layout.”

I nodded to Leila, but directed my response to Aurora. “I agree. It’s going to be safer if we stick together while we’re on board. Let me cast a few support spells to make this easier, and then we can get started.”

~~~~~

It only took us a few hours of scouring the ship before we were satisfied that we had found all the triggering devices. After a bit more searching, we found the explosives exactly where Aurora had suggested. The bulk of the charges had been placed on the reactor and the fuel reserves, but beyond just the absurd number of explosives, each of the ship’s six engines had been rigged to explode if they were powered up. Which made the whole thing a special type of engineering nightmare.

“I can’t fix this.” Aurora shook her head as she stepped back from the engines. She had spent the better part of an hour disarming the explosives, and was trying her best to undo the sabotage.

“Sami could probably do it,” Thea pointed out, which earned her a glare from the grease-covered ex-celestial.

“Well, I’m not Sami, and I’m telling you that I can’t.”

“Can you try messaging her again?” Thea looked towards me and I reluctantly nodded. Even if I was able to get a message to Samira, I doubted that she’d be able to walk us through fixing the engines using only a messaging spell. Still, it was worth trying, if only to know if she was okay.

Samira, can you hear me? Thea and I are back on the mortal plane. We’re coming for you as soon as we can, but the engines were sabotaged, and we don't know how to fix them.

Again, the message was sent, but not received. Which meant Samira was still unconscious, and I still had no way to contact her. Normally, I would at least try the scrying spell, but I didn’t know enough about the way the half-elf had counter-spelled me earlier to know if it could have been lethal. It was something I was planning on looking into if I ever got a free moment.

“Samira is still unconscious, which means we won’t be able to rely on her for help.”

“Okay, so we can't fix the engines. What’s the plan then?” Leila asked.

“If we can’t message Sami, what if we just message Ash, or maybe even Lysc? She’d probably be willing to help.” Thea’s idea wasn’t bad. In fact, we probably should have messaged Ash before we left the hells, but there were a few issues with relying on her for rescue.

“Unfortunately, it would take Lysc the better part of a month to get to us from Drassun, and while Ashaiya is probably closer, it would still likely take her a few weeks. Then there’s the issue of us being in Legion space.”

“Why would it matter if we’re in Legion space?” Aurora asked. “I mean, we haven’t necessarily been on the best terms with Garo, but it’s never been bad enough that he’d interfere with a rescue mission.”

“Ash fucked up a deal by trading a planet for a fake relic, and now it’s a whole big thing.” Thea waved off Aurora’s questioning look as she turned to me. “We can’t wait weeks to rescue Sami and Softie. Please tell me you have a different plan.”

“I wouldn’t call it a plan exactly.” I hesitated as the missing pieces came together in my mind. “But we still have the shuttle and we aren’t too far from where Sora said Paradise was hidden. If we’re lucky, then maybe we can find a lead to the kidnappers. In the worse case, we could use Paradise as a base of operations to stage an attack on Mother.”

Thea didn’t seem entirely convinced, and I definitely didn’t blame her. There wasn’t much to my plan. “When you say it’s ‘not too far’, what do you mean? Because, Bryce, that shuttle is pretty small for five people.”

“I’ll need to check the nav-computer on the shuttle to be sure, but if I had to guess, four or five days. Maybe more.”

“Alright, this is going to suck,” Thea announced as she pushed herself off the crate she had been leaning against. “I’ll go pack up some food from the kitchen. We’re also going to want to bring some pillows and blankets to make it more comfortable.”

“Wait, who said we were going to help?” Leila asked, which caused Aurora to chuckle.

“Oh, I’m definitely helping. There’s no world where I’m just going to sit around on a ship without power waiting for Ash to rescue me, and besides, this sounds like fun.”

“If Thea’s friends are in danger, then I’m helping, too,” Suriel added, much to Leila’s displeasure.

“Fine. I guess I’ll help,” she finally conceded.

“Thanks Lei, love you too,” Thea shouted back as she made her way to the kitchen.