Kaden slept well at the farmhouse, but woke early as Dominion warned him that Eve had returned. He rushed to fry up a breakfast when she entered. She carried a flower in a pot with both hands, bright orange with a twirling vine. “Good morning. Whatever that is, it smells wonderful.”

“Eye-Bird.” Kaden flipped it over and scrambled the eggs. “I hope I didn’t make them go extinct.”

Eve took out plates and passed him one after another. “Most of them were resurrected. Some the royal keeper couldn’t account for. I told him they’d probably been immolated with fire. Good news, Rachel is safe, all the conspirators have been sentenced to two decades dead.”

“What’s the plant?”

“I have no idea. I like the color. I think it’s some kind of mini-trumpet? I don’t know. The gardner seemed quite upset, but honestly, I could steal the statue of Varun and no one would say anything.” Eve took something out of Inventory and set it on the table.

A statue, a blood-red statue that made his skin crawl.

“Is that Nurav?” Kaden asked.

“It is. I’d like permission to put a small shrine behind the house near Sara’s gardens. No matter what, I am her Priestess.”

Kaden nodded. “What does it take?”

“An arbor and a pedestal for this statue. And a few words from me, of course.” Eve hesitated, then dove in to the omlet. “I swear this is the most delicious sacred bird I’ve ever eaten. How did Ashi and Sara react?”

“Ashi knew, don’t ask me how. Sara didn’t care.” Kaden spooned some more out. “I want to go to the Guild and see if there’s a skill that will help us locate Cutter Karn. Our Quest says we need to find what happened. It never says which party, but I have a preference.”

“I do, too.” Eve paused, an awkward pause. “Did you level from killing those Assassins? Because I very nearly did.”

Kaden reviewed his logs. “No. Are we close enough that it’s worth delaying?”

“Please, no. There will be plenty of experience. Night spawns. Probably assassins. Murderous goats. I remember Sara loved the goat skewers. I brought some with extra ginger. Also some with no ginger. I couldn’t remember which was her favorite.”

Kaden mouthed the word ‘extra’ as Sara trudged down the stairs. “Speak of the snakes!”

“I don’t have the energy to protest.” Sara sat down and lay her head down. “I didn’t sleep much. I’m too worried about the expedition. And that statue is really creepy.”

Eve produced a skewer. “Did I mention there will also be a shrine by the front gate? I want to make a private one near your garden.”

Kaden left the two to talk and headed to the dungeon. Adventuring parties waited on the other side of the lake. “I’m checking out the dungeon to make sure it’s safe,” Kaden said, then walked across the lake working on [Resist Suffocation] until he came up on the island.

Inside, the dungeon felt off, like it was silent when it should be terrifying and alive.

Kaden had only to feel and sense, and he set off for the [Bearserker] den. Trinity was definitely that direction. The dead [Bearserker] was his first clue something was wrong. He sprinted to the cave opening. “Trinity!”

A low, rumbling growl echoed from the cave, and from the shadows, Trinity lumbered forth, her teeth barred, her tail lashing back and forth.

“Hey, girl.” Kaden took two steps back, projecting love and respect. “You want to talk?”

Conflict rolled off the TriTerror in waves. She wanted to lay down and have her scales scratched. She wanted to scream and chase him, and a not-insignificant part of her wanted to kill him for setting foot in the clearing.

“What’s going on?” Kaden reached to pull her into his soul—and felt the panic before it became a hiss and a spit of flaming venom. “You’re going to have to help me here. I want to help but I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Trinity stood still, not even breathing, before her serpentine head let out a choking cry filled with emotion. *Worry. Fear.*

“I’ll protect you.” Kaden projected the memory of Trinity as a tiny [Ruby Hydra] stuck on a hook as bait. “I’ve always taken care of you.”

He wasn’t sure what the next memory was for a moment. Her answer was of Circe, Nature’s daughter. A need Trinity had projected. One answered. When the meaning hit, it would have knocked Kaden off his feet. “Show me?”

Trinity rubbed up against him, the fear and worry getting thicker with every moment. Kaden responded with calm and the best he could do to project “safety” as an emotion, which it wasn’t. And he rose, putting a hand on Trinity’s back and letting her set the pace toward the [Bearserker’s] cave. Five steps in, she stopped, shifting diagonally to block him.

Dozens of eggs, each the size of a terror bird egg, sat in the cool dark. Some were green, some red, some blue and all glowed in the darkness of the cave. But even without [Beast Knowledge] there was something wrong. “It’s too cold here, isn’t it?” Ruby Hydras hailed from the Southern Islands, thousands of islands left over from a cataclysm. “You want it to be warmer?”

That took almost no effort, forming a magma well beyond the rock walls and adjusting its location until the cave began to warm. Kaden leaned against Trinity and rubbed her necks. “Tell me when it’s right.”

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Right was almost warm enough to proof bread. Kaden sweated under his armor, and the humidity was stifling. Trinity could have raised her eggs comfortably in Egalion. “Do you want grass? Bamboo? Thorns?”

Trinity’s answer was a memory so old it was fuzzy and hard to hold to, of her nibbling egg shells and the legs of a dead sibling in a nest made of vines. “I’ve got vines. And you can be a better mother. Your mother did the best she knew how. At least she didn’t have a [Destruction Aura]. You’re doing the best you can, and you don’t have to do it alone. This dungeon is mine. That means it’s yours. We can teach them to hunt. We can train them to swim. And to cook.”

At the mention of cooking, Trinity’s armored head swung round to gently bop him. She was hungry. Kaden forced the dungeon to spawn a pack of wolves. “Go on, I’ll watch them.”

Her three heads engaged in a conversation—then she sprinted out of the cave. Nothing that large should be moving that fast, as far as Kaden was concerned. The eggs were truly beautiful, smooth and gleaming and not haphazardly laying about, no she’d tended this nest.

While he waited, Kaden spawned vine after vine, putting them in a pile.

Eventually she returned, dragging one wolf carcass. The moment she spotted the vines, it hit the dirt as she rushed to arrange them, weaving them with her serpentine head into a protective edge. When she was done, Trinity settled down in a circle and lay her armored head in his lap. Kaden wasn’t a small man and it was still a lot of armored head for a small lap, but he ran his fingers over the edge where the bone armor sank beneath scales. Trinity had been lonely.

Her only request, offspring who wouldn’t know being alone.

Skully didn’t know being alone. Vip was never alone. Rocky wouldn’t remember if he was alone and the Falcrow spent as much time dropping candy or beetles on unsuspecting people as with Kaden. It was time to see how his wyvern was doing. “Girl, I’m going to a different part of the dungeon to see a Beast. Do you want me to seal off the clearing so Adventurers can’t get here?”

Trinity’s low rumble was gratitude.

“I’ll come back to check on you, ok?” Kaden took care as he left, removing the passage that led from the Forest section to this den. Instead, he spawned a giant spider, which turned out to be no larger than Kaden, but he gave it lots of small spider buddies to haraass Adventurers and then placed trees so archers wouldn’t get free kills.

No, if they wanted to kill the giant spider they needed to get spidery by coming close. This was another duck in the dungeon, but if Kaden had to, he’d shut down the dungeon just to let Trinity raise her young.

When he left the dungeon, Kaden found three groups waiting out front. “I think the dungeon’s evolving. There seems to be some kind of spider in the woods.”

“How big?” one of the adventurers asked.

Kaden held up his hands about a foot apart. “At least this large.” It was always better to underpromise and over deliver. The spawn didn’t drop loot, but giant spiders were their own reward.

When he reached the farmhouse, he found Trella devouring breakfast Sara and Eve sat in deep discussion. “Trinity is a mother. She laid eggs in the dungeon, I blocked off the Bearserker’s den. Ashi! Is it possible to have a second entrance? One for Trinity?”

Ashi rushed down the stairs to question him at length. “It is not wise for any of us to approach. I will help you place a second entrance, but the cost in Directed Mana is high.”

“Thank you.” Kaden approached Sara, who grew more animated by the moment. “Everything ok?”

“It is not!” Sara said. “We were headed for the Iron Gear Empire, but Eve relayed your plan, and I discovered something. I had a good relationship with Cutter’s Healer. A great relationship, for a while. He gave me a heart stone, and I dug it out of the fertilizer pile a few moments ago.”

The fertilizer pile, at least, did not contain a corpse at the moment. “And?”

“Circe’s party never made it to the Iron Gear Empire. At least, Rey didn’t, and he was more loyal to his party than any woman. I think they were attacked heading toward the Iron Gear Empire. I think they never made it there.” Sara rushed to the table, where she drew a map scroll from Inventory, followed by a pulsing red stone, which immediately projected a beam of light into an area of ocean. “Nothing on the map, but maps are often wrong. Your basement island, for instance, doesn’t show, and we’ve been there.”

“Lots,” Trella added. “Oceanus comes there once every week or so. I think it’s a circuit he flies. Assuming Rey isn’t dead or swallowed by a whale or something, he’s not floating around in the ocean for weeks.”

Kaden looked at the line they’d sailed from Krevat to Xiao. “That’s really far north. Any pirates there would spend more time sailing back and forth on the off chance a ship to or from Xiao just happens to sail by?”

“See?” Eve said to Sara. “Exactly my point. No, there’s a spy in Krevat, probably one in Xiao, and both send messenger birds. The second question we still don’t have an answer to. Why would they keep Cutter and her party?”

“Rey’s a healer,” Sara said softly. “Healers are valuable. I don’t know that they did keep Cutter or anyone else. But I know where he is and I know where I’m going.”

“Not alone,” Kaden answered. “Faction tokens. They should buy us the services of higher level adventurers, right? How many have I banked up?”

“Too many from the Poteri. Plenty from the Justari and Naturi, but we don’t even know what we’re going after. It could be a full city, it could be a pirate outpost,” Sara said.

Outpost. Kaden had only one inheritance package to return, and the quest offered him an Outpost. “What does it take to buy a fleet willing to take on pirates directly?”

“The Mercari might bankroll some retaliation because pirates constantly harrass merchants,” Sara said. “The Justari may volunteer with the evidence we have. The problem is, they’re going to want more than just a beach port in a northern island. They’re going to want to hit a fleet. The other problem is that the Mercari will care nothing about Rey or Cutter or any of those. They’ll see them as casualties—and pirates are known for burning all the evidence.”

“Then strike first” Ashi said. “Lead the way with a focus on your lover—”

“Ex-lover—” Sara interjected.

“Lead the way. Show these pirates a target they cannot resist. Did we not agree to ship mana-stones to Xiao? Let us ship some and talk in Krebat about how much they are worth.” Ashi crossed her arms, pleased with herself. “Let the villagers in Deshun sell us mana stones. If they do not have enough, buy more. Enough that these pirates cannot resist.”

“How does that get us where we need to be?” Eve asked.

Kaden had a decent idea of that. “We’re going to hit the pirates when they attack, take a ship, sail it back and rescue Rey. He’ll know where Cutter is. Of course, this time they’ll probably be more cautious. If they see any of us, they won’t attack and we can’t sail one of their ships into a pirate cove.”

“We can’t sail at all,” Eve said.

“I’ll learn.” Trella perked up at the thought. “I’ll head to the southern islands, hit a port, pay someone to train me until I have [Sailing]. One of us needs to know what to do and everyone else just needs to listen. Our story is we just barely escaped and I took over as [Captain] until we could make port.”

“I will make arrangements with the Mercari and Justari,” Sara said. “Do I have permission to use your tokens? Most adventurers horde them to help push difficult dungeons or deal with their nemesis.”

“You’d better use them,” Trella said.

“Agreed,” said Eve. “I am not—and will not—be a Pirate. I could be a captive, that’s a part I can play. And I’d be delighted to go to Xiao and retrieve Skully.”

“And you?” Ashi’s question was to Kaden.

He knew his answer. “You and I are going to see a bunch of badgers—I mean, bandits—I mean, mana stone miners. First, we need to swing by the Guild, buy some more rope, and pick up the Quest to hunt down bandits. Just in case.”