Serenity opened his mouth and started to ask, but remembered that Tirmanak was the one asking the questions before anything came out of his mouth. He wanted to ask about the records; it was clear Djen had them. Tirmanak knew that; surely he’d ask?

“What church is it?” Tirmanak picked a completely different topic to ask about.

Djen coughed, then stared at Tirmanak. “What church? The church! The only one that matters on this lost planet, the one that was going to get me out of this hellhole!”

“You seem quite successful,” Tirmanak stated dryly. “What church was going to help you in exchange for slaves?”

Different religions had different views on slavery. Most accepted it, as long as adherents of the church weren’t the ones enslaved, but some would allow it for anyone. Some even adopted it, with all members of the church being (sometimes symbolically, sometimes literally) slaves of their God. There were a few who denounced it, but it didn’t surprise Serenity to find one of the others here. It did surprise him a little that they were behind it; even in slaveowning societies where the church supported the institution, the church was not usually the driving force.

At least, not as far as he knew. It wasn’t like Serenity really knew that much about most churches; more than half had a prohibition against Death magic, necromancy, or both. Many of the ones that didn’t were religions that even Vengeance didn’t want to get near. Religions focused on power, rather than ethics or morality. It wasn’t how he was raised and it wasn’t something he found at all comfortable or even worthwhile; he could be powerful without giving the credit to a deity that, as far as he could tell, never gave power without more strings than the power was worth.

“The only church that matters,” Djen’s tone was derisive. “The Eternal Church. The church that allows anyone to chase immortality. The Church of Aeons!”

Anyone could chase immortality, church or no church. It was a stupid chase anyway; Serenity had been immortal once, and he would happily have traded it in for other things. In fact, he had traded it in for a second chance, a chance to get things right. There was no reason, at all, to chase that above other things.

Despite that, he could understand the pull of knowing something would live on. For that matter, it was a tenet of the faith he saw as a child, when his mother took him to any of the services she infrequently attended. The soul was eternal and would live on in heaven after the body was dead, or something like that. It had never really seemed real to Thomas.

“The Church of Aeons?” Tirmanak’s voice was soft, but there was a note in it Serenity didn’t like. “Is the Church important in Zenith?”

Djen’s eyes lit up with fervor. “Of course! I see everyone here, and the Eternal Knot is common. The search for immortality drives many of the Courts, and I’ve even seen some nobles wearing it recently. The Church …” His eyes dimmed, seeming to recall his situation. “The Church has abandoned me, cast me out. I will die alone.”

Tirmanak shook his head, but for a moment Serenity thought he saw the ghost of a smile on his face. “And why did the Church want these slaves you did not have?”

Djen started to shrug, but stopped the motion halfway, wincing in pain. “The tithe was half of the population, with a preference for people who could be shaped by them and an absolute requirement that anyone who set off their detection stone be sent. So I sent the lower-level people and anyone who would be hard to sell along with ones it found; it didn’t find that many.”

“Detection stone?” Tirmanak seized on the same question Serenity had. He didn’t remember a detection stone; they’d used an item of identification on him, but as far as he knew it hadn’t looked for anything else. “What did it detect?”

Serenity was beginning to like this line of questioning. Tirmanak had led them to something that might be the reason behind the kidnappings, rather than simply the people.

“All I know is that every one of them was a mage and they had to be kept unconscious. They were the worst, kept trying to escape, the Sleep enchantments didn’t work well on them. One of them even managed to kill one of my workers with a spell; I don’t know how he did it. Got his hand on the man and then the man fell down dead. No sign of the damage a spell should have caused and no injury. Seemed to exhaust him. I’m betting the Church is building some sort of shock troop. Just think what that would do, killers who can destroy others with a touch without magic!” Djen sounded enthusiastic again.

Serenity knew exactly what had happened. “And then he fell down, dead” was almost exactly the symptoms when someone unprotected was killed using death magic. To do it by touch, the man who did it either had a Skill or was unusually adept with the skills Serenity tried to teach; a Skill seemed less likely, since it wouldn’t leave you exhausted afterwards, while an Intent-based spell certainly could.

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It didn’t answer what the detection stone was looking for, but it definitely sounded like they wanted mages, and probably for more than one reason.

Tirmanak nodded; he seemed undisturbed by Djen’s story. “Where is the detection stone now?”

“Eh.” The world seemed to crash in on Djen again and his grin flipped upside down once more. “With the papers on the slaves, if they left it. Up the stairs one floor, to the left, hidden door but I bet they left it open.”

“Is that where your sale records are as well? The real ones?” Tirmanak finally asked the question Serenity had been waiting for from the beginning.

“Yeah. Most of ‘em’ll be untouched, they only wanted the stuff from this week. Why wouldn’t they believe me?” Djen started another rant, but Serenity tuned him out and turned to Tirmanak, lifting his eyebrows.

Tirmanak winked at him, then reached down and roughly straightened the bone in Djen’s broken leg. Serenity wasn’t certain he’d gotten it right, but it was at least close. Close enough that a good healer wouldn’t have any trouble, but not close enough for a poor healer or the undirected healing of a potion.

The moment Djen stopped screaming, Tirmanak fed him a potion. Djen passed out; like many healing potions, it must include a sedative. It was a good potion, too. Serenity could see the healing happen, especially in the scarred and bloody hands. He knew that it would heal and strengthen what was there, but anything that wasn’t properly set might well be healed in the improper location. Djen’s injuries would almost certainly recover enough to be functional, but he’d need some excellent healing to completely recover. The potion would, if anything, make that harder, since it would already have healed once.

It was a reminder to Serenity of just how useful his healing was. Even before it had become actual shapeshifting away the injury, it had healed everything. If something needed to be moved to heal, it would either do it or not heal the area until it was moved; it wouldn’t simply heal around something.

An odd thought popped into his head; it would probably make getting tattoos or piercings impossible. Not that he planned to do either.

Serenity stood and looked at Tirmanak, finally able to say something without Djen hearing. “Why didn’t you want me to speak?”

“You’d met him before.” Tirmanak put the empty potion bottle away, then turned towards the stairs. “No point in letting him recognize you. Additionally, I can’t compel the truth for questions I don’t ask.”

Serenity inclined his head. “Good points. I should have let you lead to begin with.”

Tirmanak shrugged. “It probably wouldn’t have worked if the circumstances weren’t so dire. We’d have needed both of us, and even then we might have missed something important. Even so, we’d better hurry.”

“Mmh?” Serenity wasn’t sure what to ask, so he simply made a sound of inquiry.

“The fire will draw attention. I’m surprised we were the first here and haven’t seen anyone else.” Tirmanak sounded almost worried.

Serenity didn’t respond. He didn’t know either, and certainly he couldn’t help. They’d find out when they found out; that was why they were in disguise, after all. If they had to run, they could, but Serenity wanted to get what he’d come for. Knowing who the enemy was was a good start, but it wasn’t enough. Not when Serenity didn’t know who the “Eternal Church” was.

They hurried up the stairs and into the next door, turning left as Djen had said. Smoke came down the hallway from the other direction, which meant they needed to hurry. There was indeed an open hidden door; it appeared to be set into a wall that contained shelves full of tools. The entire wall, including the shelving, was sitting open.

Behind the door seemed to be a room that was a mix of an office and a workroom of some sort; Serenity didn’t recognize most of the tools, but he could see shackles in various states of assembly, so he assumed that was what happened in the room. The office area was far more interesting.

Paper was scattered from a stack on the floor in front of the shelves, which were full of something that looked like a set of uniformly-sized bound books. Serenity expected they were the records they needed. Those weren’t what caught his eye; instead, it was a brightly-glowing ball of mana sitting innocently on the shelf in front of the records. He could vaguely tell that it was just a lump of stone visually, but the mana signature made that hard to remember. “Do you think that’s the detection stone he was talking about?”

Serenity was confident it wasn’t something that Djen had used on him. It was far larger than the identification stone. He’d have noticed.

“It seems likely.” Tirmanak picked it up, then held it out to Serenity. “Here, I want to see what you think of it.”

Serenity reached out and took the stone. Almost immediately, there was a feeling from the stone like it was reaching out to him, trying to speak to him. For a moment, it almost sounded like it was imitating Gaia or Tzintkra, but it didn’t quite feel right. As Serenity started to push back, it started to glow, visible to his eyes as well as his mana sight. He could feel it moving and hear a buzzing noise, as well. Serenity threw it away from himself. It continued to glow and buzz as he pulled his ax out of his Rift and smacked the stone hard enough to shatter the stone as well as the enchantment on it.

“What was it looking for?”

Serenity ignored Tirmanak’s question as he dismissed the ax back through the Rift and examined the stone for any remaining signs of magic. Once he was certain it was dead, he straightened and turned towards Tirmanak. “Did you feel anything at all?”

Tirmanak shook his head.

Serenity looked back down at the stone, frowning. “It was trying to pretend to be Gaia. Why would it do that? And why did that set it off?”