Rourke watched the odd group through one of the Scrying Eyes he’d planted in their common area. This one had a Listening Ear, as well, so he could hear the conversation, but he wasn’t listening right now.
They were oddly trusting. A little standoffish at first, but surprisingly cooperative and easy to get along with. It was something he’d tried to avoid, but he thought he actually liked them.
Rourke couldn’t decide if he wanted them as one of his action teams or if he wanted nothing to do with them. They were extremely skilled; none of them were specialized in espionage, but they still managed to find every single one of his Scrying Eyes. The fact that they hadn’t removed any of them was interesting and seemed to directly conflict with the fact that Serenity, at least, didn’t even try to hide the fact that he knew they were there when he found them.
Not that Rourke had any idea how he was finding them. Sillon at least had to search; Serenity seemed to just walk up to the enchanted item, examine it, then walk away. It was frustrating.
Even more frustrating was the fact that Serenity had set up a tent along one wall of the common room later that day. It wasn’t very large, yet there were several times that the entire group, even the pet, gathered in the tent. It seemed to have some sort of privacy enchantment, because no sound ever leaked out of it.
He’d even tried to enter it to plant a Scrying Eye while no one was present to see him. The tent seemed completely normal; way too small for six people and a large pet. Strangely, the Scrying Eye had failed within hours of when he planted it; it should have been good for weeks as long as he didn’t overuse it, so Rourke hadn’t tried again. There was clearly a protection there he’d missed and trying again was too likely to alert someone.
The test mission he’d assigned them had worked out well; they’d gotten more detail out of Varandaeon than Rourke expected. On top of that, they seemed to have information sources he couldn’t explain. They were in that sense an amazingly useful group.
The two months since then had only emphasized that impression. Rourke didn’t have many teams that could maintain the level of effort they did; when they weren’t sending a group of Serenity’s people home, they were still all doing something. Rourke wasn’t certain of the reason for much of it; he wanted to assume that Serenity and Rissa were relaxing when they went to the Water Gardens, but they didn’t act like it.
On the other hand, they also seemed to spread chaos wherever they went. It hadn’t escaped Rourke’s notice that the mass dungeon breaks that only attacked people obviously affiliated with the Church started soon after Serenity arrived on Lyka. He wasn’t certain which of them had done that; his guess was Kerr or Rissa. Neither of them seemed to have a real role in the group other than the fact that Rissa was Serenity’s wife, which meant their roles were being hidden.
The stories the group told each other only backed up Rourke’s impression of them as chaos-bringers.
This was clearly a group built to accomplish things. Blaze was a far better healer than any average group would have; Rourke didn’t think even Lykandeon had a healer as capable as Blaze. Rourke had barely known he was under any compulsions; he’d thought the reason he didn’t talk was because he didn’t want to spill secrets, but he now knew that wasn’t the case.
It was strange Blaze was still here at this hour. Over the past two months, he’d found places he could go around Aeon where he could help people; Rourke had followed Blaze and had others follow him as well. He seemed to spend a great deal of his time healing people when he wasn’t helping Serenity move people; it didn’t make much sense to Rourke. Surely he was already burning most of his mana on the people they were sending away?
For that matter, it was a little odd the entire group was here; Rourke thought they’d planned to clear out another abandoned church today.
Well, changes of plan happened. Rourke shrugged to himself and decided to catalog the remainder of the group, since he’d already gone through Blaze, Kerr, and Rissa.
Serenity could fight well above his tier and seemed to have some odd capabilities as well. Rourke didn’t know why the Book of Karit had caught his eye, but it would be good to have something done about it.
Ekari was their ticket to Aeon. Rourke didn’t yet know what they wanted on Aeon, but it was clear they wanted something and it wasn’t just “getting Serenity’s people back,” no matter what they said. He had to give them credit for that, too; they did an excellent job of keeping their supposed mission in mind while working on their actual mission in their “down time”.
Sillon was harder to place, but Rourke thought he was the voice of experience. The others were all relatively young; it was good to have someone who’d been there before on a team even if that was all they brought, and Sillon clearly brought more than that. Rourke had only seen him spar, but Sillon was skilled. On top of that, he was the only one that regularly searched their rooms for traps or scrying devices.
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The pet was an odd choice. Ita was distinctive; perhaps that was the point? She seemed smart for an animal, capable of understanding basic orders, so it was likely she also had a role that Rourke didn’t know yet.
The only people they were really missing were a classical mage-expert and possibly an artificer. If they had those two holes covered, Rourke would be happy to throw them at almost any reasonable problem and expect them to solve it. It might not be the solution he expected and it would probably come with side effects but they’d come up with something.
Movement in the image projected by the Scrying Eye caught Rourke’s attention. The heavily pregnant Rissa hurried awkwardly out of her room towards Blaze’s and knocked on his door. After a moment, Blaze exited and started asking questions.
When Blaze escorted Rissa back to the common area and had her start pacing around one of the couches while he ran back to his room for supplies, Rourke decided it was time to start listening again.
It wasn’t long before he figured out what was going on: Rissa was in labor. She seemed to think it was too early, but Blaze reassured her that while the child might be a little premature, she would be fine.
Serenity wasn’t there for the first half hour; after that, he seemed to want to hover over Rissa. Blaze put up with it for a while, but after the first hour he sent Serenity on a number of errands. They were clearly make-work but Serenity seemed happy to do them.
This wasn’t the first time Rourke had seen a woman give birth; he still remembered when Ekari was born. That was before the huge fake argument with Karin, fortunately, so he wasn’t required to watch through a Scrying Eye the way he was here. Unfortunately, the “argument” meant he missed most of Ekari’s childhood.
Rourke still wished he knew who Ekari’s father was. He’d always assumed the father was a priest, but he’d never been able to figure out which one. Karin had always refused to say, but there couldn’t be very many options; Ekari was in the Book of Karit as Karin’s heir. That meant that even if her father didn’t claim her, he had to hold some measure of power. Karin had never performed the Inheritance Ceremony, after all. That would have been far too dangerous on Aeon.
Rourke watched and waited. Childbirth took a long time, especially for the first child. Everyone was gathered in the common room long before the child’s head was visible.
Rourke wasn’t certain if he watched out of the hope that they’d say something interesting while they were distracted or simply because it was always a happy time when a child was born to loving parents. There was probably some of each in the full explanation.
Either way, he was still watching when the child was born. His first reaction was confusion; was the baby hurt somehow? It didn’t look right, yet Blaze didn’t seem at all concerned.
It wasn’t until the child was cleaned off and handed to her mother that Rourke got a good enough look to realize what he was looking at. The baby appeared significantly less human than either of her parents, with scales on her lower body, a small pair of wings on her back, and tiny nubs on her head that would probably grow to be horns like her father’s.
Just what was going on here? That was far more visible inhumanity than was normal of even an active bloodline, and bloodlines were rarely active at birth. More than that, it was very unusual to have a child that looked less human than either parent. Was Serenity not actually the father?
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Serenity was utterly delighted at the little half-dragon (three-quarters dragon?) that he and Rissa had produced, but he forced himself to curb his enthusiasm until the child was clean, fed, and swaddled in some blankets Rissa had brought just in case.
Rissa really had thought of everything, hadn’t she?
He didn’t know how long the wonder would last, but he’d remember this moment for a very long time.
When Rissa handed Serenity his daughter, Serenity handled her like a piece of fragile glass. He cuddled her against his chest and cradled her in his arms, rocking her a little.
She seemed to like it.
“Do you have a name for her yet?” Kerr couldn’t keep her eyes off the little bundle of joy either.
Serenity looked up at Rissa. They’d settled on names but he wanted to make sure she was still happy with the one they’d picked for a daughter. “Jenna. Jenna Adrienne Rothmer.”
Rissa’s nod and smile told Serenity she was still happy with the name.
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The one thing Rissa had completely forgotten to bring was an actual cradle. Serenity wasn’t about to trust his Call on the Origin Skill for something that would support his daughter; it tended to fade away with time and that was too dangerous.
Fortunately, it turned out that a cradle wasn’t that hard to get on Aeon. All they had to do was ask.
The first few weeks of Jenna’s life passed mostly uneventfully, but it did help Serenity start to learn to separate his selves. It was very convenient to leave one body sleeping and get up to take care of the baby with another. The rest he got wasn’t as good as sleeping through the night, but Sillon seemed positively jealous. Apparently his time with a young baby was far worse than Serenity’s.
By the time Jenna was a month old, they’d been on Aeon for a bit over three months and rescued 3,756 people from various churches scattered around Lyka. They knew of three more with kidnapped Earthlings, but those three hadn’t been abandoned by the priesthood so they were last on the list.
Serenity hadn’t finished mapping the Water Garden; he was only about half done. It was his lower priority since he wasn’t expecting to do anything about it until the eclipse, but that was getting close. He had finished learning everything he needed to about the Tower of Broken Swords and the Book of Karit; he’d even managed to open the “stuck” section.
Serenity had seen Lykandeon several more times. Each time, Lykandeon had tried to convince Serenity to “pay him back” for his hospitality. Serenity was considering agreeing simply to keep Lykandeon’s guard down.