:Are you OK, Serenity? I was expecting you here by now.: Rissa’s voice surprised Serenity; Verit was already in the middle of her attack and he didn’t quite manage the parry properly, so he stepped back to give himself a little more space.

Verit pushed forward, taking advantage of the fact that Serenity was limiting himself to her speed, and continued the attack.

This time, Serenity wasn’t startled and turned the parry into a disarm that Verit wasn’t expecting, sending her shortsword flying across the room. It was one of the few times he’d managed to get the advantage over her with a sword. He immediately stepped back; that was the end of that sequence. It also gave him a moment to reply to Rissa. :I’m fine. A little busy, but I think I might have a lead on Andarit. I’ll tell you more when I know more.:

:Glad you’re OK, I was getting worried.: That was clearly a heavy hint that he should have said something earlier. :Love you!:

:Love you too.: Serenity tried to keep a silly smile off his face but from Verit’s expression he didn’t think he’d succeeded.

“Is that your technique?” Verit didn’t sound very happy.

Serenity shook his head. “I was distracted, but I think it was a decent recovery.”

Verit sighed. “You have to avoid distractions even in a spar, but I think you know that. You certainly fight like someone with experience. More experience than it looks like you should have, but you are a pretty high Tier. Up there with the King’s Champion. She’d trounce you, of course, if she’s still alive.”

Serenity shrugged. “In a fight without Skills or spells? Wouldn’t surprise me. I haven’t met her; do you think she was killed in the takeover?”

Verit nodded. Serenity couldn’t quite parse her expression; sadness or resignation, maybe? “Killed or captured. We’d know if she was still free. The occupation of Zenith would already be over.”

Serenity nodded. A Tier Eight or so that managed to evade a group of people without anyone close could do a lot of damage. Freeing an entire city seemed like a bit much, but he couldn’t entirely discount the idea. He’d done dumb things once upon a time too. Fairly recently, even. Taking on Lykandeon was equally ridiculous. “Probably dead with the King, but we’ll have to keep an eye out for her, then. What does she look like?”

“Tall, blond, high Tier. You won’t mistake her for anyone else. You’re going to help retake Zenith, then?” Verit walked over to the rack they’d pulled the practice weapons from and put hers back in its place.

Serenity put his back as well. “Yeah. The block on portals off Zon needs to end and ending the occupation’s better than the other option. I plan to make sure Andarit’s safe first, though. Are you finally going to tell me what you know?”

Verit nodded slowly. “Follow me.”

Verit led the way out of the complex that held the practice arena. It was outside, situated between several other practice arenas that were all separated by short wooden fences, but it was still obviously all designed to be one facility. More than anything else, it reminded Serenity of a school, if the school taught combat instead of other sports.

He’d attended schools like that as Vengeance. The difference here was that it was far smaller, clearly intended to teach people who were at most Tier Two and not using magic. It seemed likely that this was on the grounds of the Iron Mountain Sect. Serenity could only wonder just how much of the Mountain’s Crest Estate was actually the Iron Mountain Sect.

It seemed like either Margrave Iron Mountain wasn’t part of the sect or he was the ruler, given how he’d felt it appropriate to send for “Elder Verit”. Serenity took a good look at Verit’s clothing. It was relatively plain robes but there was a pattern embroidered on one arm in four different grays; it looked sort of like a herringbone pattern. Serenity assumed that the repeating pattern was probably supposed to be a series of mountain peaks made of iron.

Serenity pulled up the images of the margrave’s clothing for comparison. There was no obvious “iron mountain” pattern; instead, there was a symbol that looked like a single large peak flanked by two others. The margrave certainly wasn’t advertising membership in the Iron Mountain Sect, which meant he had some measure of authority over them without belonging to them. Serenity suspected it wasn’t as simple as that; with humans, nothing was ever simple.

Elder Verit led Serenity into a building about a half-mile from the training arena, clearly well away from the school region. This area looked residential; they passed quite a few small, probably single-room, barely-separated buildings before they reached the one Verit turned off at. This building was the size of a small single-story modern house. It was relatively simply built, even if the walls were stone and the roof made of slate.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

In fact, when they stepped inside, a house seemed to be exactly what it was. There was a clear reception area off to the left, while the area in front of them was a formal dining area. The kitchen was hidden by a set of doors that they didn’t go through; instead, they headed to the right, through a different sliding wooden door into a hallway that had several doors leading off of it.

Verit led Serenity through the second door on the left, into a room that was almost more like a large walk-in closet or maybe a manager’s office than a real room, only about eight by ten. The only furniture was a small table and three chairs; there were no windows. A look at the door told Serenity it wasn’t designed to lock; there wasn’t even a latch. It wasn’t designed as a prison.

Once they were inside, Verit slid the door shut. The moment the door fully closed, Serenity felt the ward on the room engage, separating them from the outside. Definitely not a prison; it was a protected space, instead. The difference in setup was as small as the lack of a way to unlock a lock from the inside. For this ward, the key was simple: the door simply had to be opened from either side and it had no way to prevent that.

“A room for secrets? Or is it simply for privacy?”

Verit laughed. It sounded more disbelieving than amused, somehow. "Here I thought I had no way to test your magical skill and all I had to do was take you home. Do you know how many expert magicians I've had in here without any of them knowing that something happened when I closed that door?"

Expert magicians? Serenity wasn't familiar with the term. "They can't have been that good, then; a ward closing isn't that hard to sense when you're inside it. That's even before you realize that there are no sounds from outside, even if it was pretty quiet, and then there's the spatial separation. That last one's Affinity-based, so I can see where some wouldn't sense it if they don't happen to have the right Affinities."

This time, Verit’s chuckle sounded more real. “An instructor indeed. You sound just like some masters I’ve worked with. No wonder Entherys was so upset with you; he couldn’t figure out which box to put you in. He was spoiled as a child and I’m afraid it’s rather spoiled him as an adult. I told his mother he needed to learn the value of others, but she was so certain of her son that she didn’t listen until it was too late.”

Serenity tilted his head. "What does that have to do with Andarit? Why the secret room?"

Verit sighed. "One of the secrets of the Iron Mountain Sect is that we have a dungeon on Iron Mountain. It's not the one the margrave controls, which means it's illegal. That's not really a surprise to anyone; most sects have a secret dungeon somewhere. You need one if you're going to be able to do anything, so even though it's illegal it's not exactly enforced except to make a point. The thing is, we don't just have one extra dungeon on Iron Mountain. We have six."

Serenity considered the mountain for a moment. No matter how he thought about it, that wasn't a normal arrangement of dungeons. They ought to be seriously limited, pulling from each other. Dungeons didn't form that close together for a reason. "How?"

Verit shrugged. "That's known only to the Grand Elder and his successor. It was something the sect founder did. They're all weaker than a normal dungeon, but it still lets our trainees experience real combat more often. It can't be shared with outsiders, but I don't have a choice here. You need to understand what Entherys did."

Serenity waited without saying anything. Verit seemed to have trouble getting to the point, but at the same time, she'd just told him something important and it seemed like she was working up to something even more important. He could wait while she figured out how to say it.

"I should say that we had six additional dungeons. Now we have five. Maybe only four." Verit stared at the ground as she spoke. "And it's my fault, I suppose. I'm the one who invited Entherys here. So I need to deal with him."

The last thing Zon needed was fewer properly managed dungeons. These were almost certainly not the most important dungeons, since they had to be sharing a ley line, but that didn't mean their destruction was a good thing at all. "What happened?"

"I'm not entirely certain. What I know is that Entherys was enraged when he found out that Andarit had been visiting the Estate without coming to see him. He seemed to think that she should be visiting her betrothed husband; he wouldn't believe me when I told him his mother broke that off a year ago. I thought it was childish tantrums so I scolded him and mostly ignored it. I thought he was starting to make progress, but this seemed to send him right back into his old habits. I told him to forget about her, that he had far bigger concerns." There was a rueful expression on Verit's face as she looked up at Serenity.

Serenity shook his head. "I'm guessing that worked about as well as telling a boy to forget a girl ever does?"

Verit snorted. "Yeah. It just made him hide it better. The first time I knew something was wrong was when I heard that the Ant Dungeon had collapsed. I had no idea it was connected to Entherys then, but a day later a group tried to go into the Cliff Dungeon and couldn't get in. The dungeon said that there was a team that shouldn't be in there. It only had two people, but it still wouldn't let anyone else enter. The Cliff Dungeon will let people join a group that is too small; I don't know what he did, but he stopped it somehow. I can only assume it's connected to the collapsed dungeon somehow."

Serenity knew how that might be done; it wasn't something he'd ever done as Vengeance because it was horribly wasteful, but he'd spent a lot of time talking to Aki and Raz about dungeons. The fact that a dungeon was killed shortly before it happened made the method obvious: someone used the core of the dead dungeon to partially control another dungeon temporarily. It used up the dead dungeon's core, and the core had to be from a dungeon of similar power, so it was very rarely done; there were better ways to control dungeons.

"We called everyone together and the only missing person was Entherys. Even if he's not one of the people in the Cliff Dungeon, he's in deep trouble. I may be as well, as his sponsor," Verit admitted. "At this point, I don't see any way I can redeem my nephew, so getting out of this with as little other damage as possible is all I can try for."