Serenity could only see two real options: either it had lasted through her time in the Vault or she’s picked up the taint since then. The first option seemed more likely; who would she have met in A’Atla’s tunnels?
It made Serenity want to head back to the damaged area and inspect it. He would have if it would have told him anything; unfortunately, it almost certainly wouldn’t. Unlike the Lost Vault, the area outside it hadn’t been sheltered from time. Even outside a nexus, magical residue faded. It faded faster in a ley line and even faster in a nexus, where more magic moved over the area.
With what Serenity knew now, he’d guess that it probably faded the fastest in a nexus that hosted a dungeon, even if he’d never seen any data on that. It wasn’t like it wasn’t studied; it was simply that as far as he knew, no one had ever tried splitting nexuses by what was in them. It might well have been done somewhere he simply wasn’t aware of, too; when the cheapest way to send something took months and the next cheapest was the Messengers’ Guild, the level of information spread was nothing like modern Earth.
All of which meant that if he didn’t find anything, it wouldn’t mean Amani was any more suspicious than she was now. On the flip side, if he did find Night Fire traces, they would almost certainly be new and that wouldn’t tell him anything about Amani either. He was going to have to use the fastest method. The one he was terrible at: asking questions.
Amani didn’t seem to have noticed Serenity’s distraction or even his glowing eyes, but a glance at Rissa told Serenity that she had; she was watching him. :Can you tell if she’s telling the truth?:
:She has been,: Rissa answered quickly. :What have you noticed? You don’t usually ask.:
:A trace of Night Fire.: Serenity had already told her about the little Blaze knew. :I think it may be from the attack on A’Atla, but it’s enough to concern me.:
Rissa’s eyes flickered to Amani then back to Serenity. :Understandable. I’ll watch her.:
“Amani?”
“...sit too long in the solution or - what?” Amani turned to Serenity. “Oh, I’m rambling again, aren’t I?” She seemed to shrink back a little.
Serenity shook his head. “That’s not it, I just have a different sort of question for you. Have you ever heard of Night Fire?”
Amani frowned, then tapped her belt with her right hand. It seemed to be a nervous habit of hers when she was thinking. She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m not sure. It sounds familiar but I’m not sure why. Maybe there was something in the Vault? No, that doesn’t sound right.”
:She’s told the truth so far,: Rissa informed Serenity.
Amani slumped forward a little. “I’ll think of it. Eventually. Right now, all I can say is that it sounds familiar.”
There wasn’t much Serenity could say to that, especially when Rissa was confirming that Amani’s forgetfulness seemed real. For now, he’d assume that Amani was legitimate but keep an eye on things in case he was wrong. It was really all he could do; her idea was far too interesting to not follow up on unless he was certain it was a trap. “Well, if you were to create something like that for here, what would you need to start?”
“Access to A’Atla?” Amani said with a grin, like it was a joke. “She can build the … wait. You’re the Wizard of A’Atla, does that mean you can grant access?”
She was only now realizing that? Seriously, how could someone miss something so obvious?
Serenity carefully didn’t send that to Rissa. He knew what she’d say; she’d say he was the perfect example of someone like that.
----------------------------------------
The next few days were filled with construction, but Serenity made certain to spend time looking around as “Tom Cooper.” His eyes glowed a little normally, which meant that using his full-strength Magesight was less obvious.
The first day, he was only able to check over half a dozen people in the inner camp; finding opportunities to stare at someone for long enough to be certain was difficult, so he had to pretend to be lost in thought. Either it wasn’t as suspicious as he’d expected or people simply didn’t tell him he was acting weirdly; everyone seemed to take it in stride. By the fifth day, he’d managed to clear most of the people in the inner camp, including all of the scientists and most of the soldiers. He hadn’t yet made it through most of the staff, but it was a start.
During that time, Serenity heard about the questioning of the zombie several times, usually when he had to go up to tell him to obey a new person or do something that wasn’t within “answer questions.” The initial news was honestly pretty useless.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Serenity didn’t care where the man was from or who he really was; he only cared if it led him to the man who created the Night Fire. Unfortunately, none of the questions the interrogators had tried were met with understanding when they asked about it; it looked like they were going to have to rebuild his history over the past two years one piece at a time. Serenity occasionally gave them some tips on better questions, but as far as he was concerned, they were better at this than he was. They were definitely more patient.
The sixth day of Amani’s construction was the first test. The construction itself was weird, because it was literally a box of A’Atla’s stone grown by the ship, powered using Amani’s mana and designed to her specifications. The stone was extremely thin, barely enough to support its own weight; Amani wanted it that thin to save on mana and help figure out what they’d need.
The best test they could manage was a smaller model set up around a ritual; the point of the ritual was simply to act as the “drain” for the test, the thing that pulled raw mana in. Serenity would be inside the box monitoring the situation, while Amani would watch from outside. Technically, the ritual could have done anything, but the ritual that made the most sense was to measure the raw mana levels.
Serenity set up the ritual while Amani sealed him inside. She finished before he did, so he started the ritual immediately.
As it turned out, Serenity didn’t need the ritual to tell that the raw mana level decreased inside the box; he could feel it. It took a while to get there, but once he noticed it, it was obvious. Even before the amount of raw mana in the air reached the level of Earth’s atmosphere outside a ley line, the cube crumpled.
“We’re definitely going to need thicker walls.” Amani sounded calm; the failure didn’t seem to have surprised her any more than it surprised Serenity.
“Probably a sphere, too,” Serenity suggested. “I’ll still call it a success; it worked until the wall buckled.”
The results of trusting Amani seemed successful as well so far; she hadn’t done anything suspicious, and her plan seemed viable. That was at least one step better than the plans he’d made; he’s never gotten his past “potentially suicidal.” There was definitely no guarantee it would work, but they’d made better progress at dealing with the mana drain in the past week than he had in all the time he’d had before he found her.
Once they settled the details for the next test, Serenity left Amani to work on it while he headed up to the surface camp as “Tom Cooper” to have dinner and look over a few of the people he’d see there; there were always people at meals that were hard to catch at other times.
He had a problem to think about, anyway; he wanted better protection on the Lost Vault than simple obscurity and the locked door. As Amani had shown, A’Atla’s protections weren’t perfect. She’d had years to learn how to overcome them and the advantage of starting as a child, which seemed to mean that A’Atla was easier to break into, but Serenity knew that all an expert needed was one opening.
Of course, they’d probably try to physically break in before anyone tried cracking it. Serenity could defend against that, too; he knew where the blank in A’Atla’s map was that covered the Lost Vault and he now knew why it was blank: Amani. The hard part was figuring out how to set up alerts based on damage to the walls; for all that he could see them on the map now, the sensors were completely disabled.
Serenity struggled with the ancient system while he ate; it took his mind off of how utterly bland most food was to him now. According to his parents, the food was “actually kind of decent,” so it had to be the way his own tastes had changed. The fact that adding spices didn’t really seem to change much was depressing; he’d once liked burgers quite a lot. The burgers weren’t the best, but the fact that no one was complaining told Serenity that they weren’t tasteless to humans.
When he finished eating, Serenity leaned back and held his soda while he looked around the crowd. There were several people he hadn’t checked. He decided to start with one off to his right, one of the workers here.
He barely glanced at her when his attention was drawn by a massive smudge of cracking black at the table across from his own. Serenity could only blink for a moment; that wasn’t even remotely subtle. It took him a moment to recognize that the man who looked like he’d been dipped in black fire was Liam.
Serenity had checked Liam five days earlier; he was one of the first people Serenity checked, partly because he was one of the people directly involved in the investigation of A’Atla but mostly because “Tom Cooper” had frequent contact with him. The Night Fire was definitely not present then.
A couple of seats away from him was the man Serenity thought of as “Liam’s bodyguard.” That wasn’t his name or his exact job, of course, but Mark did usually go with him as protection when Liam left the relatively safe area of the inner camp. He also looked like he’d been dipped in black mana that wavered like flickering flames, but something about it was a little different. Serenity wasn’t certain how to describe the difference, but it seemed to flicker more.
Serenity walked over to Liam’s table. “How have you been?” It was a very generic opening, but Serenity couldn’t exactly ask him where he picked up dark residue, could he?
“Tom?” Liam sounded surprised. “I hadn’t noticed you were there.”
Serenity nodded. “I only just saw you, too.”
Liam pushed himself back from the table. “I should be heading back to our room anyway; why don’t you come with us?” He took a bite of his burger, then picked up the entire thing and scarfed it down in two more quick bites.
Mike grinned at Liam but didn’t stand up. “You enjoy, I’m going to take my time and rest. We’re back out early tomorrow.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Liam dumped the rest of his meal in the nearby trash bin. “I hate early mornings.”