A week later, I met with the rest of the team in a room in the Federation military HQ that was usually used for briefings of top-secret missions, and thus was equipped with multiple anti-monitoring enchantments and technological devices both. Serayne got a few funny looks accompanying me there, but no more than that.

I stood at the front of the room, while everyone else, even Mewi, was seated. "Well?" said Arvallei, "out with it! You've gotten me very curious what's so important that you called us all here."

I nodded. "A week ago, I returned to the Fire Sanctuary with the aim of checking out the hidden area only accessible to Guardians. When I did, I discovered something there that has profound implications for just what it means to be acknowledged as a Guardian by a Sanctuary—something that promises to have a major effect on the very core of the Federation."

I told them about the Control Center. Arvallei's beak dropped open and stayed there. Ri'legh and Bruzigan had thousand-yard looks in their eyes. Mewi and Anna gaped at me.

"This," Bruzigan rumbled after a long silence, "changes everything. The Federation never had the capability to alter the areas of the Safe Zones before they fell."

I nodded. "Handled correctly, if enough of the Sanctuaries gain true Guardians, it could shift the balance of power away from a great many unsavory institutions in Area 1, let alone challenger trafficking. The question is whether the Federation will even desire such a thing.

Frankly, given even what little I've seen of them, I have my doubts."

"Well, we can't possibly keep this new development from the president and Varstithon," said Bruzigan, "since surely you're not suggesting we all take personal responsibility for deciding the eventual shape of the Safe Zones ourselves?"

"Not being able to keep it from them was also my conclusion, yes," I said.

"However,” Bruzigan went on, “we can and should advise taking a course of expanding them. As the overall mission commander, that duty clearly falls to me. I'll determine how and when to inform them."

Lheticus, you certainly did the right thing bringing this to all of us and insisting on maximum reasonable privacy. Now, we might be able to cope with this additional complication."

We continued to discuss a few details for a while, until the scheduled time reserved for the meeting was up. Shortly after, I rode once again with Mewi and Serayne in her humanoid form back to the Dimensional Gate nearest the Pantheon.

"Mewi...I did do the right thing, didn't I? By actually revealing it, I mean, instead of trying to keep it secret."

"Dude, it wouldn't have done any good even if you did try to hide it. After you revealed just the rewards that were shown outside the back rooms, do you think anyone on the team wouldn't try to beat all the trials too? And I'm sure you're not the last Sanctuary Guardian to be crowned on the team. Bruzigan is going to do it for sure."

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"Yeah, that's what Serayne and I thought too. I dunno. I just have a bad feeling about it getting out that the Sanctuaries have that power. Almost like a premonition. I can't help but think that this is going to make a LOT more trouble for us."

Tellingly, Mewi didn't say anything more to that.

Liberation missions resumed. At the rate we were going, the Firebrand would reach the same Zone as the Golden Chain a few days after our next trip to the 7th Floor. By now at least, more stories were reaching me of Zones we’d previously staged in becoming the focus of greater efforts by the Federation military as a whole to beat back the Kinetice to the point of no longer attacking challenger planets.

When we finally rendezvoused, elements of the massive armada that was to join with both our fleets for the attack on Luuxis were beginning to arrive in the Zone, with more arriving every few days. By the time we left for the 7th Floor once again, quite a chunk of the entire Zone had been liberated.

Mewi and I had barely settled in for another year’s haul of resource extraction, going at it for hardly two weeks, when my emergency communicator, which had been totally inert ever since the decision was made to take them with us when we went to the 7th Floor, sounded its alert.

For a terrible moment, I thought maybe Anna had been attacked, but it was Bruzigan's voice that came through the device. "All team members proceed to the Federation government territory immediately. I'll explain once you arrive. Hurry!"

I replied to him, while Mewi looked up which way to go to get there. "Are you under attack? Has the Syn—have they made a move?"

"Not them. No challengers attacking—yet. If you all hurry, we may be able to deter them or avoid that altogether. It's too much to explain right now, just hurry!"

We traveled away from Grosstin’s territory, to a sort of “border checkpoint” which was basically a spot between Grosstin’s 7th Floor territory and another faction’s along a long-agreed route. Leeching leaving their own faction’s grounds and crossing to others wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but there were legitimate business reasons to do so, so anyone who did had to follow certain routes or they’d be assumed to be intruders and poachers, and dealt with accordingly.

Because of this, we weren’t able to proceed as fast as possible, so it took a good part of the day before we finally reached the Federation government/military’s territory. A small squad was waiting for us, to escort us much deeper inside. I was surprised to find that we kept going and going all the way to the edge of deep regions that Leeches did not colonize.

With Bruzigan, Arvallei had already arrived. The team had continued to communicate while we were on route, so we knew that Ri’legh as well was less than an hour away, and Anna wouldn’t be much longer than that.

He refused to explain until the both of them had also arrived. Even then, he was much more secretive than usual. All he would say was that our objective was to reach a certain place in the deepest, most dangerous part of the Federation’s territory while avoiding at least the large groups of monsters along the way.

I wasn’t the only one of us to question his vagueness, but he assured us he would say more once we arrived. “Time to earn my Pathfinder keep, then,” said Arvallei. Indeed, that profession was vital for finding and sticking to routes with strict conditions. The uncolonized jungle was thick with monsters, so it was a real test of his skills to help us avoid enough of them that large groups wouldn’t come after us.

Eventually, though, we reached an opening in a small formation of what looked like a kind of multicolor, translucent crystal, or even glass. Like the walls of a Sanctuary, it was hard to say just what the material actually was at all. “Team Justice,” said Bruzigan, “welcome to the Cave of the Herlisian Apple.”