Raz hadn’t expected to feel empty when they finally finished clearing Stallet Academy of enemies. He’d expected joy and satisfaction and he felt those. Really, he did!

Only they were overshadowed by the emptiness of never seeing his mother again.

Sure, he talked about his clan, but when you got right down to it, he meant his mother. There hadn’t been many of them left, not with the clan’s fortunes in decline and his mother’s economies. He knew the rest of the clan, but they weren’t close.

It still hurt to know that he was probably the reason they were dead, even if they were less important to him. They wouldn’t have been at the Clanhouse if it weren’t for him; they usually weren’t. But he’d reached Tier Two and that was enough reason for a Clan celebration. It hadn’t occurred to him at the time, but that had to be why only he and his mother were alive at the end. The others must have been there to celebrate his Tier. His mother had probably sent him away so it could be a surprise.

And it led to all of them dead. All but him.

Raz turned to Serenity. He might want a friend for this, and he’d rather it was the man who’d only ever helped him. “Serenity? Would you come with me? I’m done here and I want to look over the Clanhouse. See if there’s anything left there at all.”

He was proud of himself. His emotions didn’t show except perhaps in the way he didn’t allow himself to move significantly.

Raz felt his tail droop when Serenity didn’t immediately accept the invitation. He’d been so certain Serenity would be happy to come.

“Is there another way out of this basement? I’d rather not go by the power whatever-it-is again. If we can stay out of the ley line entirely, that would be even better.”

Raz’s tail lifted again. Serenity’s hesitation didn’t have anything to do with him; he just didn’t want to get so sick again! Raz couldn’t blame him for that. It looked really unpleasant; he didn’t remember ever being as sick as Serenity looked for those few minutes. Admittedly, humans showed their illnesses more obviously and Serenity appeared mostly human, but that seemed really unpleasant. He didn’t think Serenity had fully recovered for hours, even though he said he was functional again in a lot less than that.

Ra had to use his key on the “defense” book to get an answer to Serenity’s question. As it happened, the answer was a qualified yes: there was another way out that didn’t go directly past the oddly shaped enchanted item the book called a “power extraction ley line anchor”, but they couldn’t avoid the ley lines.

Raz ignored Grandma Tillon’s requests for the key and her insistence that he wait until she could send someone to guard them. Serenity was plenty; Grandma Tillon hadn’t seen more than a fraction of what the man was capable of. The two of them would have been perfectly capable of clearing out Stallet Academy even without her help; they’d have taken longer and probably done it differently but it would still have been done.

Raz had to admit to himself that Serenity’s illness in the ley line probably hadn’t helped Grandma Tillon’s opinion of Serenity, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Instead, he politely requested the loan of a flyer. When that didn’t work, he demanded one; Raz knew there were plenty available from the way she’d brought her people to the Academy, so there was no reason he couldn’t borrow one. He’d return it.

That worked, but only when he threatened to walk the entire way if she didn’t loan him a flyer. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the route.

The alternate route up through the basements was significantly longer and ended up with them spending quite a bit more time in the ley line. Serenity seemed fine at first, but by the time Raz led him up to the other end of the first basement, he was glowing and floating again. Raz didn’t know why that was happening, but it was something he’d have wanted to look into if he were going to stay on Asihanya. Anything that could mess with Serenity’s head was probably dangerous to other people, too.

Raz wasn’t going to stay on Asihanya and he wasn’t going to attend the Academy after all. Not after everything that had happened. He’d probably send the key back eventually but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hand it over to Grandma Tillon at all. She wasn’t the person he’d always thought she was, a nice lady who helped kids and handed out quests. She was a Hand of Order’s Guild, and Raz knew what that meant.

He probably knew what it meant better than Serenity did, even though Serenity was also a Hand. He’d asked the Guildmaster and Guildmaster Tirmanak Oathbinder hadn’t held back in his explanation. Hands did whatever they needed to in order to support the Voice.

Raz would consider sending it to the next Headmaster, but he didn’t know her. Perhaps it would be better to hang on to the key for a while. Raz wasn’t even certain others could use the key; Stallet had probably bound it to his bloodline.

No, he’d keep the key. If he ever had a child that headed to Asihanya or Stallet Academy, he’d think about handing it over then. Otherwise he’d just keep it somewhere it was safe, probably in Aki. Aki could safeguard it, the way she had when Stallet hid it.

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His musings kept Raz from paying attention to the scrublands that filled the distance between Stallet Center and the Sunrise Clan’s lands. He usually didn’t spend much time thinking about them when he traveled and this time was no exception; they were pretty boring and there was essentially no chance of any danger. It wasn’t that far and there weren’t any dungeons nearby; all of the actual dangerous monsters stayed farther out, in the real desert.

The Clan’s lands were damaged. They hadn’t been in the best of shape even before Raz left; a year without maintenance hadn’t helped even where nothing was destroyed. It hurt, but Raz had to admit to being glad he wasn’t returning. This was too much. Too many memories and too much work to recover.

Why couldn’t he have gotten his mother to restart somewhere else? Why hadn’t he ever tried? Why hadn’t it occurred to him that there were things they could do that didn’t involve being tied down to the past?

The entrance to the Clanhouse was worse. It was still intact, if scorched, but Raz could see that the once-impressive pair of doors had been ripped off their hinges. There was ash everywhere, but strangely, despite the wind, the ash still held footprints.

Bootprints, really. The invaders had come here in person!

Raz hurried inside and noticed something he’d never realized before: the Clanhouse was warded. It was blatantly obvious now that he knew what being inside a ward felt like; he’d just never noticed it before. That was unexpected. What was even more unexpected was the fact that the Sunrise Clan torc he wore around his neck started to warm. It wasn’t an enchanted item! What was going on?

Just how much had his mother concealed from him? He’d never known that they were descended from the man who founded Stallet Academy, at least not before the end; he’d also not known the Clanhouse and torc were enchanted.

He probably should have expected it of the Clanhouse, now that he thought about it. It required a lot less cleaning than the other buildings, like the sand from the nearby desert was kept out. He’d known that but not really thought about it; it just meant the building was built better than the outbuildings that were constructed later. That seemed to be true, but the difference wasn’t skill at building; it was enchantment.

Raz looked down again to see his feet standing almost over one of the boot prints in the strange ash. He growled low in his throat and hurried forward, unwilling to stop any longer. He needed to see this through, needed to see what happened.

Serenity’s soft footsteps behind Raz were noticeable but not distracting. Raz was glad the man was there; he was also glad that he didn’t ask any questions.

Raz hurried. The prints weren’t going anywhere, at least not until Raz stepped on them, but he didn’t need to see the evidence that no one had been to the Clanhouse since his mother died. Not even to put out the fires that must have produced the ash.

For that matter, if there was fire, why wasn’t the building gone?

Enchantments. Right. That was so strange. He’d gotten used to strange things during his tie with Serenity, but he’d never have thought his mother was keeping secrets like this from him.

Raz’s hurried steps took him to the old banquet hall. No one used it anymore; it was just an old storage area. There weren’t enough Clan members for a full gathering to require the entire Hall.

Raz froze in the entryway. The room was blackened, with far more than the light dusting of char that covered most of the route that led to the banquet hall. THe old furnishings had burned; so had the furniture. Raz could even see cut marks in the walls, probably from Skills released as people fought.

He could see lumps that were probably bodies. There were far too many, three times as many as the meager dozen people that should have been at the Clan Hall. Enemies had to be swelling the numbers. His Clan hadn’t gone quietly. At least there was that.

“Turn around and leave, Raz. There’s nothing here for you anymore. Find another home; the Clan is dead except for you. Join another clan or rebuild it, don’t make the mistake I did of trying to save it.”

Raz’s vision blurred at his mother’s words. He had to be imagining things, but he absolutely could imagine her saying those words.

A warm, reassuring hand fell on Raz’z shoulder. Serenity. There was a reason Raz had asked him to come and this was it. He knew he wasn’t alone. Serenity would help him through whatever happened here. However much he claimed to be (and was) generally bad with people, the man cared and that was worth a lot.

“And who are you to say that?” Unlike the hand on Raz’s shoulder, Serenity’s words were cold and harsh.

Wait, did that mean his mother’s words weren’t just in his head? Could his mother have survived this carnage? Raz looked up and blinked through the blurriness of his vision.

There, ahead of him, was an image of his mother as he remembered her. She even seemed to be wearing the same clothes he remembered; nicer than normal, like she was preparing for a celebration. He knew he hadn’t paid attention before he left but now it was obvious.

There was only one major difference. He could vaguely make out the wall behind his mother. She wasn’t supposed to be translucent. “A ghost?”

“An Ancestor,” his mother corrected Raz. “Full of advice but no help. Father was an active hindrance before he faded. I’ll fade too; you may as well leave me here where I can regret my failings without miring you in them.”

Raz shook his head. That wasn’t going to happen, not if he could take his mother’s echo with him. The way she asked him to leave implied it was possible but also told Raz he’d have to be careful how he asked. She might choose not to tell him, just to get her own way. “But how? How are you even here? I thought you were dead.”

“I am.” A soft smile crossed Raz’s mother’s face. “But how? Well, that’s easy. Sunrise is a Dungeon Clan. That means more than I ever told you.”