After giving Brackenhorst enough time to get his office in order, Sophia teleported herself, me, and Ferrisdae back to New Frausta. The spell was fast and flawless, but my Elven junior had to put her hand up to her mouth as we arrived at our destination. She dry heaved, but didn’t throw up this time.

“It looks like you might finally be getting the hang of this, Ferrisdae,” I said.

“Wish I’d get the hang of it faster,” she complained, coughing.

Teleportation sickness was something that people could acclimate to once they had gone through it enough times. I had seen Ferrisdae go through it three times. Once on the way to Crystal Snows, once when Director Ortaephaen sent us back to New Frausta, and now. Assuming she had experience teleporting before that, she should be steady at it soon enough.

“It’s surprising to see that you actually have this place cleaned up for once,” Sophia remarked.

I glanced around Brackenhorst’s office. He was seated behind his desk, but it was no longer covered with so much paperwork that it started encroaching on the other furniture. There was a neat stack in front of him, but it wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. For the first time in forever, it wasn’t cramped. The room looked respectable.

“Yeah, well, we’ve all been working overtime to get things where they need to be considering how wrong everything’s been going,” he replied, not taking offense to Sophia’s words. “If we were missing documents simply because we hadn’t reached the pile yet, then that’s on us.”

“And how much work have we been missing because of these piles, Chief?” I asked.

He waved his hand dismissively. “You know all the urgent stuff gets taken care of first, Badger,” he said. “But to actually answer, more than I’d like to admit, but still less than I feared.”

“That’s not the catastrophe I was expecting, then.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed before leaning forward and rapping his knuckles on the desk. “All right, let’s get down to it. You call me on the one night I actually get to be home relaxing and demand that I come back to the office to meet you. What’s got you so rattled?”

“He’s admitted that it might not be anything,” Sophia interjected before I had the chance to open my mouth.

“I said that I hope I’m just overreacting,” I corrected before turning to Ferrisdae. “I need the maps.”

“Right away,” she said, reaching into her Dimensional Pocket and pulling out several rolled scrolls.

Reaching under the desk, I pulled out a built-in step and stood atop it. It wasn’t very dignified, but it made working with furniture sized for Humans much easier to deal with. I started unfurling each of the scrolls.

“These are the maps that the clerks and I have been making the past few days,” I explained as I worked. “Some of them are of active dungeons, either on or off the current Consortium rotation, others are of subjugated or otherwise destroyed dungeons, and the last is where some of the clerks agreed that it would be good to have some built.”

“Is that really relevant?” Sophia asked, crossing her arms.

“If we think there’s someone inside the Consortium who’s working with the Cult, then I think so,” I answered before frowning. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m not taking any chances. Right now I’d rather have more information and not need some of it than have less and need more.”

Brackenhorst looked at the maps on his desk and gestured to the wall behind him. “If you’re here with maps, then I’m assuming you want to use mine? You’re going to need one hell of a magnifying glass if that’s the case.”

Behind Brackenhorst’s desk was a parchment map of the continent. It was absolutely stunning with near perfect details. Even more impressive was that it took up the entire wall. Several glowing dots were scattered across it seemingly at random. These were indicative of every active dungeon on the landmass.

It didn’t matter if it was a hundred years old or a hundred minutes, the magical map showed their location. What made the whole thing useful was that new dungeons glowed blue instead of red. Unless they were completely obstructed by an older dot, we had a rough estimate of where to search.

While it was still a mystery where it came from or who made it, we had guesses. Magic this powerful and precise could only have come from a time before the Thousand Year Blizzard, back when most of the relics of legend were made. Despite having made several leaps and bounds in the art of item creation, craft workers of all types had never returned to such glory.

Though that was likely to change now that the Dungeon Master had destroyed the storm. The Cult of CC was already trying to take advantage of it, such as when the Dungeonborn herself appeared here in the body of Carimella Rose. And that had just been moments after the magic had settled over the area again.

It had also, apparently, changed some things that I had been given.

“I’m not going to need a magnifying glass,” I said as I stepped down.

Ferrisdae seemed excited as she figured out what I was going to do, but the other two watched me curiously as I grabbed a chair and dragged it around the Chief’s desk. I set it up in front of the map so I could climb on top of it and reach what I needed to.

Athir and New Frausta took up a good chunk of the middle of the continent, the first to the west and the second to the east. Both had cities that were ringed with red dots, and the one we were in had a few inside. The sheer number made it hard to tell how many they were and where their exact locations were.

Reaching up with both hands, I put my index fingers on either side of Athir and pulled them away from each other. The map shuddered, held down by its pins, but the magic did as I knew it would: zoom in on the country. I had to take my hands as far away from each other as I could in order to show what I wanted it to.

“What did you do to my map?” Brackenhorst yelled, scrambling out of his chair.

“The Dungeon Master gave me a few meta abilities, remember?” I responded. “Still not sure what he meant by that, but messing with maps like this was one of them.”

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“Hold on, wait,” Sophia said. “You told the Mage’s Guild that you can only use those powers inside a dungeon. Are we in a dungeon right now?”

I looked at Brackenhorst. “Are we?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “You know that CC tried to turn this place into a dungeon, but you stopped her. We went through every trick in the book to make sure that there wasn’t anything leftover from that attempt. You’re making me think we missed something, though.”

“No, you didn’t miss anything,” I replied. “I noticed it back at the Red Thicket. My map power worked even though we weren’t in the dungeon yet. Later on, at the Dark Elf Quarry, I also noticed that I could feel the waves the Dungeon Doorknocker sends through to announce our presence.”

“You didn’t tell me about that one,” Ferrisdae said. “I noticed the map one, by the way, but I just thought it worked everywhere.”

I shrugged. “Getting your report was more important than telling you about something strange that happened.”

“I’m going to need to update the records,” Sophia said. “We’re going to have to do more tests.”

“No. I’m done being quarantined,” I scoffed.

The Kitsune ignored me and turned to Ferrisdae. “What about you? Anything new that we should know about?”

Ferrisdae shook her head. “I’m a little more powerful since the blizzard stopped, but I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement as anyone else.”

A clap rang out as Sophia opened her mouth again, and we all looked at Brackenhorst. “The Mage’s Guild and the Adventurer’s Consortium is already attempting to figure out what all’s changed since the Thousand Year Blizzard was cut off early,” he said before gesturing towards the map. “Is my map going to be okay?”

“Yes, Chief,” I said. “Even if I don’t fix it before I leave, it’ll go back to normal once I’m far enough away from it. It should, at least.”

He looked concerned, but still gave me a small nod. “Alright, if you’re sure.”

“Please hand me the map with all the active dungeons right now,” I requested as I looked at the one on the wall. Athir had been zoomed in so much that it was much larger than me and that made this very easy.

Ferrisdae appeared at my side and handed me the map. I retrieved a pen from my Pocket and started marking them off. At a glance, it all looked like it matched up, but no one could say that I wasn’t thorough.

I was not surprised in the slightest to find that, while I was marking off the dungeons that the Consortium knew existed, there were a fair few active that weren’t supposed to be. These ones I circled and put an X in before moving on to the next one.

When I reached it, I hovered over where the Red Thicket was supposed to be. It wasn’t on the map I was holding since it had been marked as destroyed in the Consortium records room. I decided to put the rune for Stability in that circle.

Nobody spoke while I worked. There were no questions or comments. I imagined they were trying to figure out what was going on just as much as I was even though they hadn’t had the same epiphany I did.

Unfortunately, the more I marked, the more I started to realize there was a pattern.

I stopped working on the map, staring down at it. My eyes darted from dot to dot, connecting them in my head.

“Ferrisdae,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Grab the map with the old dungeons, the ones that we thought were suspect, and start marking down the ones I tell you to.”

“One moment,” she said, and I heard rustling behind me.

“Here’s a pen, lass,” Brackenhorst offered.

“Thank you. I’m ready, Badger,” she said.

“Alright, I’ll try to go slow,” I replied as I began pointing at the different dots on the wall. Every time I did, the names of the dungeons popped up. It worked for the names of people, and I was glad to see that it worked here, too. “Add in the Courtesan’s Sepulcher, Drake’s Grove, Firebelly Marsh, Maze of the Forest Fey…”

I continued naming off dungeon after dungeon. As I did, I became even more sure that the pattern I was seeing wasn’t a figment of my imagination. It was easy to connect the dots and say that it was there for a reason, but this had a purposeful feeling about it. Like someone went out of their way to make an effort.

“Is this a circle?” Ferrisdae asked when we were nearly finished.

“Just a few more,” I told her.

“No, wait,” she said as I was about to feed her another name and position. “Is this a ritual circle? Badger, what-”

“Just a few more,” I firmly reiterated. “And then I’ll take questions.”

“Right, sorry,” she replied.

“It’s fine,” I said before naming off the rest.

Once we were done, I jumped down from the chair and walked around the desk to the step. The map didn’t return to normal when I left it, but that didn’t bother me. It just appeared as though my ability was getting stronger, either thanks to using it or because of the increase in ambient magic. What did it didn’t matter, just that it was working.

“That’s definitely a ritual circle,” Sophia muttered.

“That’s a really, really big ritual circle,” Ferrisdae agreed.

“Nation-wide,” I added. “Though, if anyone would have the life span to do so, I’d say an Elf was a good choice. Sophia, did you find anything on the Archmage?”

“She’s clean,” the Kitsune answered. “I’m positive about that, by the way. She’s got nothing to do with Carimella Rose. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“Badger,” Brackenhorst said slowly before I could question her further.

“Yeah, Chief?” I asked.

He reached forward and tapped on the map. “Isn’t this similar to the ritual circles Camilla had scarred onto her body?”

I pursed my lips as I looked it over. The sight of the horror her body had to have gone through to become a vessel for CC was seared into my mind. It wasn’t something I thought I was ever going to forget. So when Brackenhorst brought that up, I could clearly remember what he was.

“Almost. It’s definitely in the same family of rituals,” I confirmed solemnly.

“Is she coming back?” Ferrisdae asked.

“She’s going to try, but we’re going to stop her,” I said absently as I started tracing the map with my finger. With only one known rune, it was going to be nearly impossible to figure out exactly what was going on.

“It looks like there’s two missing in the obvious spots to complete a ritual circle,” Ferrisdae stated, pointing towards two of the dungeons that I had sent Cojisto and Moose to. “Do you know which ones these are?”

“Yeah, the Leaf Blade Grove and the Karst of Vile Spores,” I answered. “There might be more to the ritual circle than we know, especially in the middle where Athir is. Still, this isn’t good. Our presence may have made the cult speed up the process after the Blackwood Queen attacked me. If so, they-”

“Oh, gods damnit,” Sophia growled.

I scowled at her interruption. “You don’t have to stay here, you know,” I said unhappily. “If you want to go get some coffee or something then be my guest.”

“No, Badger,” she returned, slapping me on the shoulder before pointing towards the map. “We’ve got a blue light.”

The three of us all turned to see the map on the wall. Just like she said, there was a brand new blue dot indicating a new dungeon. Its location was easy to figure out, too.

The Karst of Vile Spores was active once more.

“Gods damnit,” I growled, sharing the Kitsune’s frustration. “One more dungeon to go.”