Because of Cooper and Moon's bond, the group underground could instantly tell the group above that they'd succeeded. That they could go.

They'd been spared from deciding if they'd abandon their friends or die in a fight that might not even help.

Running was pretty easy. The cultists were also fleeing the flaming wreckage, and apparently they'd rather keep doing that than murder some teenagers. If they noticed the group at all.

They regrouped in one of the closest buildings, at the edge of town. It was some sort of strip mall, but half of the stores were shut down. And one of them looked like it belonged to the shady man who sold poisons in stories.

Which was for the best. No one gave a second glance when their group ducked into the burnt out shell of a store.

Wren stumbled further into the room, staring wide eyed at the back wall, with scorch marks in it. She knew her eyes were still red, likely permanently. Everyone was apparently just kindly ignoring that.

Or they hadn't noticed. Most species had small eyes, and you had to be looking to notice. Except gnomes. Gnomes had unusually big eyes.

The cult was wrong, or at least they were wrong enough Wren would no longer fall in line with them. And they had escaped danger. And that left Wren with nothing to do but sit with her own crimes. And sit, and sit. No distractions. No excuses.

She had killed people. Including a child. Including her mother. She'd murdered her own mom.

It. . .that wasn't entirely true. She hadn't done it knowingly. There was clearly something off about that memory and someone else might've tampered-

Wren turned back to him, lips pulling back as if her own teeth were impressive to bare.

"Shut up!" she snarled.

She was aware everyone stared at her. Except Rasha, who might've been asleep? Moon whimpered like a kicked dog.

Wren switched to thoughts. 'You always, ALWAYS do this, pretending there's some perfectly innocent reason for things. At least, things related to me.' She was aware being angry at Fleck was like being angry at herself. She didn't care. She loomed over him, eyes narrowed. 'Well you're not helping some poor harassed victim. And you're not making some bold progressive statement about morality. You're just doing whatever you can to avoid the truth. That you chose wrong. You're living with a horrible murderer, and you should stop being in willful ignorance about it.'

She raised a finger towards the door. 'Get. Out.'

It would've been better if she kept yelling.

Then he left.

~~~

Despite the outburst, everyone went to sleep shortly after that. They'd been awake for. . .too long. They needed it. Especially Rasha, who'd been using magic, draining her energy.

No one commented anything to Wren. Maybe they were just too tired. Or maybe they'd actually read the room, and knew that was a bad idea.

Fleck had wandered the abandoned mall a little longer, happy to put some distance between himself and everyone else. He walked into rooms, and even into ones that were still shops. No one stopped him. Then he found an empty store that would be a good place to sleep, and did some of that himself.

He'd been too worked up at first, but walking calmed him down a little, and Wren falling asleep also took some of the emotions out of him.

No one came to him, not even Moon. But this was good for him as well. He was in no mood to try and explain.

He was feeling resentful. Good. He still didn't feel resentful enough in Wren's opinion.

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Then Cooper climbed onto a table that probably used to be for check-outs. He was crouched, so he still didn't tower over everyone, but it did draw attention to him.

"Hey. So. Good news, we did what we came here for. We succeeded. Hooray." His voice had taken on a sort of strained happiness. "But, we should probably figure out what comes next. Rasha was saying she was hungry, and we can't just squat here forever more."

They kept talking, discussing options, but the gears in Wren's head were slowly churning. Bits of her newly retrieved memories were coming together.

"Myparentsprobably don't want me stuckon Morivon forevermore. I can getusback to Iva."

"I wasn't technically living on Iva," Cooper pointed out.

"Icould takeus to Xentron?"

"Well I'm not going to Xentron," Evin said.

"No one is going anywhere," Wren said.

Fleck slowed in the hall he was in, trying to find the source of a wood smell.

She stood up and faced them. And in that time, she realized she'd probably sounded more intimating than she'd wanted. "We can't yet," she explained. "The cult gets their dark magic from some sort of higher power. They do terrible deeds, and in exchange, they get magic. And on May 5th, they're supposed to join those higher powers. They're going to tear open a hole in reality and join them. And I can't imagine that will be good for anyone around."

"May 5th?" Cooper asked. He frowned at his lap. Then he brought his head back up, hands tearing into his hair. "That's tomorrow!"

Wren nodded. "Hence why we have to act now."

When Anvon said the day was coming soon, he wasn't kidding. And it probably explained why the cultists had abandoned their base so quickly, without taking revenge on the people who wrecked it. They didn't need it any more.

The others exchanged glances.

"Wren? Do you know where this is going to be?" Rasha asked.

Wren nodded again. "Gramon."

"I know the place," Evin said. "It's close. Nearest town West of here."

Well yes. Wren hadn't known that, but it made sense. The cultists would want to live close to where they were eventually going. Good. They had time to actually get there.

Evin shrugged, arms crossed. "If you want to warn them, I can take us there. And we should get going. It's close, but a day's still not a lot of time."

Wren nodded.

"Lead on," Cooper urged.

'Oh? May I perhaps be allowed back now? Do you deign it?' Fleck asked, doing a a mock bow, spreading his wings out and everything.

He was bitter. Wren could feel the emotion rolling off him, like his cup sloshing into hers. Good.

'Oh you're rejoining us,' Wren confirmed, as the group headed out into the hall. 'But we might be coming to you.'

"We won't just be warning them though," Wren told Evin.

Cooper nodded along. "We have to help. If we can."

"Of course we do," Evin sighed. "Hey, I said we," he added, before anyone could complain. "I'll be joining you. I'm just going to complain about it."

"Thank you," Wren said.

She wasn't fine. She certainly wasn't a good person. She was a murderer who should hate herself. And she did. She could multitask. But right now, people were in danger from her cult, and she could do something to help. That was more important. So she should focus on that. Until this was all over.

"You know a lot of this area," Cooper said.

"Of course. You realize, I used to live on Morivon? Until I moved to Xentron as an adult. Easier to set up something new on a recently colonized planet than one that's been home to humans since. . .forever. Though apparently, I should've stayed here."

Evin led them through the twisting halls of the mall back into the town. Fleck found them and joined in along the way. Evin took them to the Western edge, where a very short train ran between this town and its neighbor. Nothing fancy like the subway. No self-driving cars or hundreds of tracks. Just a short train, driven by a human, on the one set of tracks between towns.

There was a line at the station, but not much of one, and the train went continuously. Went to one town, unloaded, filled up, went to the other town, repeated the cycle. They got on the train the second time it filled, and were on their way.

They all took a seat where two of the train benches faced each other. There were more than four of them, what the usual limit for this arrangement was. But Wesles didn't take up much space, and the two dragons were perfectly happy lying in the empty space in the middle. Most chairs weren't really built for their body shape anyway.

Cooper sat next to Wren. The other three were on the other side. Wesles looked out the window, even before the train started moving, when the only view was the station. It was still hard for her to read Rasha, but Rasha was right across from her. She looked at Wren, then dropped her gaze. Her head twitched a bit more, like she wasn't sure where to look. Eventually, Wren was pretty sure her gaze fell on Fleck. She even patted the dragon's head, both of them relaxing a bit when she did so.

Evin had no such qualms. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and kept explaining.

"So, the good news is Gramon has a cleric temple. And, you know, law enforcement. We're not pulling a fighting force out of nothing here. The bad news is that Gramon is just a town. And not a particularly big or important one. Yes, they live in a dome, which creates a stricter boundary than most towns have. But people can still just kind of come and go as they please."

The train reached the station by the time he was done speaking, and that sort of proved his point. Everyone got off the train. No one searched them, or any bags people had, or forced them to go through scanners. The other train goers just walked out into Gramon.

"So, what do we do?" Rasha asked.