We spend a good long while looking for the trick, after the woman’s spell did… whatever a spell called Return to the Source does.

There’s a fair bit of healing to be done and contingency plans to put in place. I use orbs as little sentinels down the corridors, since I have enough feedback with them that I’ll know if they fire, which lets everyone else focus on recovery and figuring out what the hell just happened. Amber and Sara each have a fair few healing tricks, and there’s only really one heartstopping moment when Zidanya shifts back to human shape from being an ursine colossus; she’s got a gruesome cut two-thirds of the way up her torso, and I taste bile looking at her for the moment before Amber is standing between us, channeling her God.

I leave them to it and focus on trying to understand what we walked into. Between a few papers left lying around, some functional familiarity with narratives, and the research that Rei’s team had done before making their way down to the prison, the plot, so to speak, is pretty clear. Lim, Lim Roderick, was a bastard son of the reigning Sky King born to a young woman from a rival political family. Rumor had it that the young woman had initially been a young man, before being non-consensually subject to a change in at least the relevant dimorphic morphology, and between that and the other details that Rei delivers so nonchalantly make my head hurt with fury and my stomach churn until I stop him.

“Are the details of the privation and sundry inhumanities that Lim’s parent was subjected to relevant, Rei?”

“I suppose not. Sacreligious an’ nonsense besides; Eizme’s miracles ye don’t need more’n a prayer and tithe for, not unusual if ye’ve a couple wanting a child who can’t elsewise, but try t’do it to anyone else, won’t be a slow death.” He sighs, plopping himself down in the throne placed in the center of the upstage area of the room, and I swallow a half dozen questions that aren’t immediately relevant but which I suddenly very much want answers to. “Y’know, this throne’s not the least bit comfortable. Why even have it, if ye can’t sit comfortable-like in it?”

“Design flaws.” I shrug. “Maybe if we’d taken a longer road here, the throne room would have been better realized. Doubly so if we’d complained a lot about uncomfortable furniture and unrealistic decor on the way. What’s the rest of the story?”

“Roderick heiress fakes her death in labor, raises Lim in secrecy, he comes back and starts a rebellion. Gets hot, and next thing ye know, everything’s headed fer a showdown here in the palace. Lim gets enough a’the palace guard on his side to sideline the rest, so they’re in barracks instead of being around, and walks inta here for a showdown with his dear papa.”

“Right.” I frown. “Pretty big coincidence, that we walk in just as they’re here for the showdown.” There’s a snickering from the shadows, and my eyes sort of slide off of someone who I think is probably Stella, judging by the sound of her laughing. “What?”

“Hi,” she says, drawing it out, hiiiiiii, five or six syllables long. “Funny meeting.”

“What m’wife, darling of my heart an’ clearest of my skies, is saying is that it ain’t any bigger a coincidence than us meeting in the first place.”

“Okay, that’s fair.” I’m still frowning, now with bonus grimace. “I guess I’m just kind of annoyed that I go to all this length and the scenario still tries to get me back on the rails, over and over again.”

“Temples.” Rei shrugs. “Ye want ta fight monsters without this scenarios goatshit, find yerself a dungeon. Ye want one with scenarios that ain’t so displeasing, find yerself a Temple more to yer liking.”

There’s footsteps behind me, footsteps I recognize, and I lean my head back into Amber’s hug as her arms around me. The links of her chainmail dig into me even through the jacket, but it’s still nice. “Zidanya doing okay?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“She is weary, but well. She is resting and meditating, and says she has confidence that you can handle matters.”

“Does she…” I pause, looking for the right words. Having failed to find them, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Does she, or you, or anyone else know what between star and sensor was going on with how the fight ended?”

“Zidanya thought you might ask.” Amber’s fingers dig into the small of my back, and I hiss as there’s a sudden flare of pain from just how tense I am. “She says that the woman may have been a bound spirit, something she also referred to as a servile. She was the last anchor of the scenario; the conversion cascade has begun, but it will take some minutes to be visible.”

“Wait, what?” I can feel my back twisting itself into a return of its tension against Amber’s fingers. “How? We didn’t do anything that would make that happen, did we?”

“Perhaps we completed the scenario, my lord.”

I make a noise that’s somewhere between argh and grnkh, a wordless, grunted expression of frustration. “I guess!” I lean back into Amber’s arms. “I guess. Whatever.”

“Ye don’t seem too happy ‘bout it, Adam.” Rei’s grinning at me. “Victory, eh?”

“I guess,” I say for a third time. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

There’s silence for a bit. None of us seems to be minded to talk; I have so many questions that they’re all competing for my attention, and Rei’s just lounging on the throne like he’s never going to leave. My eyes scan around, sort of aimlessly, for lack of anything better to do; Amber’s touch is distracting, but something in me is too cranky and tense to really enjoy it. I hadn’t really gotten an opportunity to take in the throne room’s decor, and I’m not impressed now that I take that time. It’s basically just gold and crystals everywhere; the corundum stones are pretty, sure, in their blues and reds, and they contrast nicely against the gold, but there’s no real artistry in the woodworking, the architecture, or the woven fabrics. It’s all… tawdry, like whoever put it together didn’t understand color theory, how a room should flow, or any sort of interior design.

Not that I’m a paragon of them myself, but this is something on another level entirely. I suppose the total lack of anywhere to sit other than the throne is a deliberate measure, but it doesn’t make any sense either; didn’t the King have advisors, a chancellor of some sort, a Queen?

Then again, maybe he just wasn’t particular concerned for their comfort and welfare.

I sit down at some point, and just lean back against Amber. With the adrenaline and sundry draining out of me I’m left a little bit shaky and distracted, realizing that it’s been long enough since we started things that I’m hungry, hungry to the point where it’s probably interfering with my ability to think straight. I wasn’t generally in the habit of skipping meals, never had been, so it’s a bit of a problem, and makes me want to say things I’m pretty sure I’ll later regret.

I say nothing, instead. At some point, the silence becomes too much for Rei, and he starts talking about what he calls nothing of import; just background stuff, little stories of his Lord Mayorship. Crops, petty rivalries between some of the hundred-odd people who live under his rule, and weather; I boggle at the description of the storms that the Heharani welcome for the water that they dump onto their soil, and flat-out tell him, laughing, I can’t believe that they fly four-meter boats in a lightning storm.

Zidanya, of all people, backs him up on it, at least historically; apparently they were known for it back in her day, where you pretty much weren’t an adult, not a full adult, unless you could ride the lightning itself in a skiff. According to Rei, that’s not the case anymore, but you can’t credibly be a Lord Mayor in the long run unless you’re a stormrider. He and Stella both qualify, alone and together, and Tim, though it’s apparently not quite as impressive to others if you do it as an elementalist, and that manages to keep my mind off of more serious things until the familiar cascade of everything turning into nothing happens.

Rei takes a tumble, in the middle of a story about a botched crop rotation by a landholder who had stopped paying appropriate amounts of attention to his holdings. I’m pretty sure it’s on purpose, but it’s still funny.

And then it’s over, or at least, the moment runs dry. The light fails us, and even with a full set of orbs and Motes I have a moment of panic at the fact that I’m blind with other people around, but Amber’s hands tighten around my shoulders and it passes.

When the light resumes, glowing faintly green from our feet, we’re surrounded by pylons.