However little hope Senkovar had, Serenity wasn’t yet ready to give up. He couldn’t fix everything, but even though Senkovar was generally more skilled at working with worlds, Serenity had more precision. The differences made a lot of sense; Senkovar had been working with (and probably on) planets for a very long time to get a Path like World Shaman, while Serenity was skilled with both spellforms and runes, both of which required a high degree of precision and sensitivity to mana.

There was still hope for Themrys. The whole point of this trip was information, after all, information Senkovar had never been able to find.

“We should start, shouldn’t we?” Serenity picked a seat, avoiding the one with the pull rope. He didn’t wait to see if Senkovar followed suit; this was really Serenity’s show, at least until he found something, and Serenity wasn’t about to admit to himself that he might now. Not yet.

He focused and slipped into the state where he watched the World’s mana and essence flows. Despite the low-level headache and general pain he felt from the world, it was immensely easier than it had been when he arrived on Berinath. He no longer had to reach out to the World Core first; he could if he wanted to, but he could also sink directly into the local area and that was what he chose here. Senkovar’s training routine was clearly good for that, even if Serenity had needed to find his own path to accomplishing it.

The ley lines carried a faint wailing noise from the World Spirit; while it was neither a scream or a whine, it carried elements of both. It sounded like pain, but it was clearly distant. Serenity also didn’t feel like anything hurt more than it had. Unfortunately, it wasn’t immediately obvious which way to go.

The nexus was only the crossing of two ley lines, which meant he had four possible directions. One line ran approximately east and west, while the other ran northeast to southwest, at least at this intersection. With no clues on which way to look, Serenity decided to search the same way he had on Eitchen and start to the east.

Two hours later, not only had he not found anything of note, he had an itch in the back of his head that said he was looking in the wrong direction. He didn’t ache any less, but it also hadn’t grown any worse at all and he’d been concentrating for hours. That wasn’t exactly the best way to make a headache go away, even if it did make it easier to ignore. He could keep going the way he had and he’d eventually find anything there was to find, but probably not quickly.

There was no guarantee that it was possible to find anything quickie or at all. Even so, Serenity decided he’d be better off if he tried another direction to see if it had the same results. If it did, he’d only have searched another area early; it wouldn’t even be a waste of time. If it didn’t, it might tell him something important.

When Serenity pulled back to his body, he found that he was stiffer than he was used to being after sitting still for a couple of hours. It reminded him of how he’d started to feel as Thomas aged. It was a feeling he didn’t miss at all.

Senkovar was still meditating, so Serenity wasn’t going to get any help there until later. Serenity spent a few minutes stretching out the aches, then sat down again. He couldn’t go searching yet; he needed to make certain everything was fine outside the room he and Senkovar were in. He remembered being concerned about that. It was probably fine since Rissa hadn’t called for him, but it was best to be sure.

:Rissa?: Serenity reached out to the love of his life. :Are you still with the Governor?:

:Yes,: Rissa replied immediately. :He’s doing his best to be charming and he’s terrible at it. I should say that he’s trying to charm me and Blaze. He’s ignoring Legion as guards, which is fair, and he’s trying to completely ignore Ita. I wonder if part of his irritation at you and Senkovar isn’t the fact that you both clearly show nonhuman features.:

Serenity shrugged, then remembered that Rissa couldn’t see him. :I don’t know. I know that sort of prejudice isn’t unusual in the Empire; that’s why I’m here in my human form instead of my chimera form.:

:Yeah, but you still don’t look fully human,: Rissa countered. :That may not be all of it; he’s doing an excellent job of needling Cymryn with little digs about family, nepotism, and unearned glory. Cymryn is controlling himself well enough that it’s nothing past the occasional glare, but his emotions say he’s pissed off. I’ll ask him about it later, when the Governor isn’t around; I think I can get him to talk if I approach it properly.:

:So you don’t need me to finish quickly?: Serenity was half saddened and half heartened by that. It was good that Rissa was managing on her own but at the same time he still didn’t like leaving her with only Legion, Blaze, and Ita to protect her. He knew they’d do as well as he could until he could get there but that didn’t really ease the concern.

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Serenity heard Rissa gently chuckle across the mental link. :No, we have it under control. The Governor is giving us a tour of Themrys City. I think he’s trying to impress me, but he seems to be unable to control himself when it comes to Cymryn. Oh, Blaze pulled me to one side earlier and explained why he said not to touch the Governor; he can smell a diehar someone in the Governor’s Palace. He says the scent faded as soon as we left the Palace so it’s not the Governor after all.:

:Reassuring,: Serenity commented sarcastically. :I think I’d prefer if it were the Governor; then we’d know who to be wary of. Does he have any idea why the diehar is there?:

:We didn’t have that long to talk in private. All he was able to say was that there’s a good chance that whoever it is also knows Blaze is here and chances are good they’ll lay low until we’re gone.: Rissa didn’t sound particularly reassured.

Serenity thought about that for a moment. :Actually, I think that’s good news. It’s unrelated to us and not our business. As long as the diehar doesn’t get us involved … well, look at Blaze. Be careful but for now I think that’s all.:

Rissa was silent for a long moment herself before she grudgingly replied, :You’re probably right. I can’t dismiss the chance that it’s someone like Blaze who doesn’t deserve the reputation. I just hate the idea of someone controlling someone else.:

:Me too,: Serenity admitted, :But what can we do? For all we know, it could easily be an assassin; Blaze clearly has the training for that. Or perhaps it’s a spy. Or even just a gardener. It’s not our task to run Themrys’s security.:

:Dang it, we’re at our next stop, I need to make nice with the Governor to keep this tour going. Love you!: Rissa sounded positively annoyed.

:Love you too,: Serenity replied with a grin on his face. He’d definitely want to have a talk with Blaze after they were back on the ship, but until then it seemed counterproductive. What he needed to do now was find Themrys’s problem so that they could do something about it. He didn’t really want to spend weeks on Themrys the way he spent weeks on Eitchen, but it might be necessary if he couldn’t find anything.

Maybe he should do a faster review of the ley lines and see if anything sprung out at him? Sometimes when everything hurt you could narrow down the source pretty quickly by rapidly running a hand over everywhere it might be and looking for the tension; you didn’t have to give it a very deep look. Maybe Themrys’s issue would be similar, sort of?

Serenity remembered the quick version of the search Senkovar conducted. He’d try that. If it didn’t work, it didn’t work and he could try the long way. He could always do the same thing Senkovar did and note down anything odd he saw for a later detailed examination, too.

He was definitely going to start in the other direction, given the complete lack of anything to the east. Maybe he’d try the other ley line as well? He could go southwest on it; that would be approximately the opposite direction and ought to bring in a different set of areas. Maybe it would matter, maybe it wouldn’t; as long as he kept track of where he searched, all he really had to do was not overlap the previous search area too much.

It only took about fifteen minutes for Serenity to conclude that southwest was a much better, or at least more painful, direction to look. He moved quickly along the ley line after that, the confirmation enough to let him know that a detailed analysis wasn’t needed as long as he could tell whether or not the pain was getting worse.

An hour and a half later, Serenity was fairly certain he’d overshot what he was looking for, because the pain not only wasn’t getting worse, it had actually started to subside. He moved back along the ley line and found that there was a fairly large region that seemed to be the painful area; perhaps he needed to follow one of the ley lines that led out of the nexuses in the area? That was certainly the easiest thing to do.

Serenity picked one of the two closest to the center of the area . It gave him a more or less even choice of north or south. He was headed southwest at the moment, but that didn’t really help him narrow down which direction was better. If the feeling was purely directional, it was probably nearby one way or the other. Serenity suspected it was following the ley lines; that was how Worlds communicated, after all, so it made sense that it would be how pain was transmitted. With that in mind, he simply didn’t have the information to choose.

So he picked north. This time, his first choice was correct. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last choice he had to make.

Serenity lost track of time as he explored the ley line network. He was right slightly less than half the time, because sometimes he managed to pick the wrong ley line as well as the wrong direction. Eventually, he managed to narrow it down to an area between five ley line nexuses about a quarter of the way around the planet from Themrys City. Whatever was wrong wasn’t directly on any of the ley lines, which left him with an area that was somewhere between five hundred and a thousand square miles, but that was still an immensely smaller area than an entire planet.

At that point, he pulled himself back to his body and found that he felt like crap.

No, saying he felt like crap was a massive understatement. He felt hot, cold, nauseous, thirsty, starving, on fire, and had a head that somehow managed to simultaneously feel three sizes too large and two sizes too small.

He definitely needed some time before they looked into the situation any farther.