On the way back to the Library from the Runeworkers’ Guild, Serenity pulled up his messages. There was nothing to watch out for, not this close to the Library. He’d hear the plane if it got close and nothing else was willing to brave the destroyed area.

Message from Russ Latimer to Serenity

Serenity,

It was good to hear from you yesterday. Things are busy here, but I’m making it work out.

Jacob’s doing great. In fact, he’s doing so well with his new passion that I’ve started training him a little on the side; we need more people who can deal with the weirdnesses of the world.

Did I mention that he and Denise are expecting? There was a huge fight about that last week; Jacob wants Denise to stay out of danger until their son’s born while Denise maintains she has at least another month before it slows her down any. I stayed out of it, of course; no one wants an old man like me sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.

I did the looking you asked for, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t the sort of mass disappearance of old airplanes that you asked about. As far as I can tell, no one’s missing any; certainly not in the numbers you’re talking about. I don’t think the planes are from Earth.

Good luck!

Russ

Serenity hadn’t really thought the planes were from Earth, either, but it was still worth asking.

At the same time, it didn’t escape his notice that Russ didn’t mention Phoebe. That probably meant that things weren’t good there, but there was nothing to be done about it until he and Rissa (and Jenna!) were back on Earth.

Serenity moved on to the next message.

Message from Ynsarac Hale to Serenity

Serenity,

I still hate the Necropolis.

With that said, you’re right; these dungeons are far too dangerous to leave alone; I don’t know how we never realized parts of the Necropolis were overrun. I suppose we simply assumed that the monsters were some of the inhabitants. They are certainly hostile enough.

Stojan Tasi has canceled the reclamation contracts we were working before you arrived; the existing allocations are still valid, but he’s not allowing new ones until these dungeons are handled. He’s carefully choosing who can enter them, too; we have one, but all of the others are being done by coalition groups. So thank you for the opportunity; the rewards are excellent, just as good as the dungeons we were finding on the surface and we haven’t even made it to the dungeon yet.

I think good rewards will come from any dungeon that hasn’t been delved regularly, so I expect the rewards to level off once we actually manage to clear the place, but we’re really not all that close. Right now, we’re trying to thin the monsters out by keeping an armed camp in “their territory”. It’s working, but I have the feeling there are a lot of things we haven’t seen yet.

So far, we’ve only fought animalistic zombies, both actual animals and things that look like they might once have been human. They’re disturbing but not unusual for Tzintkra. We have reports of sightings of “monsters as tall as a house” in the area, but we haven’t seen any yet. I’m not looking forward to them.

Katya is planning to come join me as soon as her family is settled on Earth. From what she says, they’re having a great time teaching newcomers the very simple basics of a crafting Path; that seems to be more valuable right now than actually making things, though I have the impression that they’re doing that as well. She says there’s some problem with a license or something, but that it doesn’t matter as long as they don’t sell what they make.

Stojan Tasi told me to remind you to write back the next time I sent you a letter; I think he means to him, not to me, but I told him I’d pass the message along. It can’t be that bad, can it?

Ynsarac Hale

Serenity chuckled at the last line of Hale’s message. He’d written a message to Tasi a few hours earlier, but it was getting difficult finding new ways to say “it’s your decision, you’re the one there.” He knew he shouldn’t put it off as much as he did, but he didn’t like being asked for decisions when he couldn’t have enough information to make a better decision than the one his City Manager intended.

At least the news from Katya was good, even if it was indirect. It made sense that she’d written to Hale instead of Serenity; Hale was her boyfriend, after all. Serenity was just her sponsor to Earth.

Serenity’s mood darkened at the thought. Katya wasn’t really the problem; no, the problem was the word family. He’d chosen to put Jenna’s safety above the chance to spend time with her and it weighed on him. He’d been late to her first smile; Rissa had needed to call him in from the other room. Now he was quite possibly going to be late to her first crawl, maybe even her first steps. What age did those happen at, anyway?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Hells. He was even beginning to miss the stinky diapers, since they meant his daughter was there. He hadn’t ever thought he’d miss those.

Message from Serenity to Tirmanak Oathbinder

Tirmanak,

How’s Jenna?

You mentioned that she was growing; how tall has she gotten now? Are there any new milestones?

Serenity

Serenity couldn’t think of anything better to ask. He was probably asking too often as it was; Tirmanak only responded about once a week, no matter how often Serenity wrote. It would probably be a few more days until the next reply, but that was all he could do.

Serenity needed a distraction, which meant either physical activity or magic. Normally, that would mean grabbing Kerr and practicing with her until she got tired, but that was pointless now. It had been pointless ever since he killed Lykandeon; he was simply too fast and agile now. She couldn’t push him at all, which meant that he could train her, but he had to be careful not to hurt her and to slow down, which meant he couldn’t focus on the pure exercise.

He needed another sparring partner, and that was going to be hard to find anywhere near Earth.

Even finding a place to exercise was difficult when lifting your own weight while climbing with only your claws was barely more difficult than walking on a smooth surface. He could have gear and equipment built for it when he got back to Earth; it would have to be custom-made but it was possible. Unfortunately, if he wanted it here, he’d have to find an enchanter who could make something for him, and that was difficult.

Actually, come to think of it, a good enough restriction enchantment could even get him into shouting range of Kerr so they could have a good spar again. He could do it with a runic array, but this wasn’t really the best place to use runes; they were limited in use, and anything he made would only last for the single session unless he was willing to leave it up afterwards, and he wasn’t. There were times for permanent equipment enchantments and this was one of them; he needed something he could put on and take off.

He’d have to ask Honoria for a recommendation or go back to Jemma, and Serenity was pretty sure Jemma didn’t like him. She’d handed over his journeyman runeworkers’ card and given him the addresses of several who might be willing to talk to him, but neither of the ones he’d checked so far were there when he looked. They weren’t far from the Library, so he didn’t even know if the addresses were still good.

He should go ask Honoria.

No, really, he should ask Blaze and Rissa what they’d found out while he was dealing with the Runeworkers’ Guild. Not to mention Legion. Asking Legion would probably be the fastest method; after all, she was traveling with Rissa as well as gathering whatever intel she could.

A semi-familiar form met Serenity immediately after he entered the Library. She was slight, almost small, and looked younger than her age. Serenity knew this body was in her twenties, but she could easily have passed as sixteen.

At least, he thought she could. Serenity wasn’t great at telling the ages of women.

He didn’t even have the chance to ask Legion anything before she grinned at him and passed her own message along. “Honoria wants to see you. She’s downstairs with Kerr in the staff room; Kerr is having difficulty with the cataloging process.” This particular body was soft-spoken, almost difficult to hear.

Honoria wanting Serenity’s attention when he had questions for her was remarkably convenient, but then again he wouldn’t know without Legion’s help. “I’ll head down there in a few minutes. Before I do, what have you found out in the city?”

Legion frowned. It was positively cute and made Serenity want to protect her from anything that might hurt her, even though he knew she didn’t need his protection. “More than I ever wanted to know and less than we need to know. No one seems to have any idea who the attackers are; there are rumors that they’ve been seen in other cities and are more or less humanoid, but apparently no one’s ever seen them because they’re always fully covered.”

“The same rumors we heard before we got to Asihanya, then.” Serenity was disappointed in that but not really surprised. The rumors offworld came from Asihanya, after all, so it made sense that they’d be the same ones.

“Yeah,” Legion agreed. “Really, all I know for sure is that they haven’t appeared in Takinat yet, only the planes have been seen. There were some attacks on the planes in the early days, but none went down near here. There’s a rumor that a couple were taken out near Stallet.”

“Raz must be happy about that.”

Legion shook her head. “Not at all. Stallet’s one of the places where the humanoid soldiers have been seen; there’s been no word from Stallet for several months. He’s worried that means worse things than what’s happened here.”

“Hmm.” The news was worse than Serenity had expected. “He’s probably right to worry, but there’s a good chance they’re just cut off. That’s what happened on Zon, after all.”

Legion shook her head. “What worries me is that it may happen here, especially if we start taking down planes. I’m not sure we’re ready for that sort of response.”

“That’s why we’re not going to start with destroying the planes. It’d be easy enough, but if we take them out, we can’t follow them back to their base.” Serenity wished he could take them out. It would be pretty easy to do; he had several different options that he was pretty sure would work, especially if he didn’t need the pilot alive. Unfortunately, he was completely serious about needing to leave the possibility of following them open; it wasn’t his preferred option, but if they didn’t figure out anything else soon, it would be the one they had to take.

That did bring up one more thought. He’d seen three while they traveled in towards the Library that first day, but he’d only seen a couple of planes since then. Of course, he’d been away from the Library almost the entire time since then. “How common are they? The planes, I mean.”

Legion shrugged. “Six so far today; only four yesterday, but Honoria said that was unusually light. They usually come in pairs, about fifteen to thirty minutes apart; Honoria thinks that’s to lull her into complaisance.”

Serenity chuckled. “Might work once, but if it’s a long-term pattern there’s more of a reason than that. I assume there’s a longer break between pairs?”

Legion nodded. “Close to two hours. It varies a bit, but I only have numbers for yesterday and today. No one thought to time it before that. Honoria thinks that’s about right.”