Tenthé drifted through the City Center, just now noticing how late it had become. He was chewing over the fact that the City was not his city, anymore. Everything was gone, or changed, with his friends scattered about, their lives now controlled by others. The hopes and dreams they’d had from before the Dreamer’s re-do were gone.

That he was a copy of the Dreamer was interesting, but not very useful. He and the Dreamer had followed completely different paths and it didn’t look like there was going to be any help coming from him. In fact, quite the opposite. Tenthé expected the Dreamer would try something to affect him as soon as tonight, but he wasn’t too worried. The Dreamer hadn’t impressed him as the most capable individual, and whatever he was going to do would probably bounce off.

It was very disappointing, but the visit to the temple had shown that there was no going back. He believed the Dreamer about that.

Experience had taught Tenthé that being outmaneuvered was just a part of life. Accept he wasn’t perfect, and move on. Although, it was okay to hold a grudge.

For most of his life, Tenthé went with the flow. He didn’t often have a lot of reason to choose one thing over another, but now, he had friends, and, when you dug deep enough, his friends had given him purpose.

It was time to repay them for their friendship. To be honest, whether they wanted it or not. But, this time, he’d do what he could to make sure they would survive his help. Apparently he could learn from his mistakes.

He hoped that Magister Grenville was okay, but she could take care of herself. Leo and Elishua were still unaccounted for, so he would try to find them, but he had a time limit. Tomorrow was the day.

That thing with the cross-eyed god was strange. Maybe he should keep calling her the god of Toast. Tenthé sniggered. He had thought, for sure, the name would have set her off, but she’d just rolled with it. Tenthé was a fan of that kind of random. Anything to keep people off-kilter. He had no idea if being one of her followers would be of any use, but the god had helped him out with a little advice. If she got too annoying, he could always stop worshipping her, but it felt right. Although… his impulses had gotten him in trouble before, a few times. As in, quite a few times.

Anyway, Tenthé’d try to find Leo and Elishua tonight, and dodge whatever the gods and Dreamer sent his way.

Scrambling to survive. Just like normal.

Leo was first he’d look for, since there was supposed to be a family store somewhere around here. Tenthé tracked it down by the simple expedient of asking someone. The lady had gone on, at great length, about how the LePoiterices had the most lovely fabrics, quite the best to be had. Tenthé’d smiled and nodded until she took a breath and he could make a break for it. Sure, he wanted to remain unnoticed, but there were limits.

He found the store, which was still open. Tenthé entered. As the lady had said, it was full of bolts of cloth, on the floor, on shelves, and even hanging from the ceiling.

It appeared this was going to be one of his easier quests, because Leo was standing behind the counter.

“May I help you?” he asked Tenthé. “Oh. You’re a Runner! Do you have a message for me?”

“Um,” Tenthé responded brilliantly.

“I know! You are wondering why I don’t have my uniform on,” Leo filled in while Tenthé was lost for words. “It’s the store, you see. The ladies expect me to dress like this. They tell me it is quite the thing, and I do enjoy pleasing the ladies.”

“No, that’s not it,” Tenthé mumbled.

“Perhaps… are you looking for someone else?” Leo probed.

“Um, er, uh, yeah! I was, uh, told they were here.”

“Do you have a name? Maybe I can help.”

“No, I see they aren’t here anymore. Um… thanks though. Bye.”

Tenthé fled. It seemed that the Dreamer had gotten to Leo.

Tenthé was somewhat sad. Leo had lost a lot to the blue glows, and now he’d been overwritten to become some bland merchant. He really must have been bad in a previous life. Not that Tenthé believed there were previous lives, but he didn’t disbelieve, either. It kind of depended on what Gods you followed and how they felt on any particular day.

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As for Elishua, he was unsure where to look. She came from some farm outside the City, but anyone out there would have either fled to the Wildlands, or be Horde by now. Not being a complete idiot, she was probably still here, somewhere in the City.

The Envoy has said they had been hiding out, but he’d forgotten to ask her for details. He would have to have a word with his spy department, they were falling down on the job.

She might be okay, since she was supposed to be a spy herself, even if she hadn’t done that good with him. In spite of what people said, he was pretty sure that he wasn’t all that different from everyone else.

So, where would she be? Tenthé wandered through the streets around the City Center, debating his options, when he suddenly sensed a change. The City wards were being reinforced with modifications, specifically to look for him! He felt them become stickier. The ones he was close to were sending out questing strings with a good deal of information about his abilities. It made Tenthé feel like he was walking through a patch of clinging plants. So far nothing had latched on, but if he wasn’t careful, it could happen at any time.

Quickly Tenthé threw on a different stealth, another of the ones he’d been taught by the assassins. This one borrowed an identity from a passerby and covered Tenthé with it. On top of that, it would randomly steal and adopt new identities as he walked along.

Tenthé checked himself out. Currently, he was a distinguished looking older gentleman, and with this new stealth, the stickiness was fading away.

Back to finding Elishua. What would he do if he were her, other than be nicer to him? Well, she could try to fit in. Pretend to be an ordinary citizen, or a soldier. Unfortunately, she was pretty big. Bigger than most. Since she and the Envoy had been together, it was unlikely she’d gone into the army.

Oh yeah. He’d never seen any women soldiers, either. Cooks and such, but not soldiers.

But that didn’t seem like Elishua, to be a servant. More likely, she was living in some random house, pretending she was supposed to be there. Tenthé wondered if the extra houses the rich people kept were still there. That was a possibility. Probably not, but he was coming up a bit short of anything better to try. The City was too big to do a door-to-door search by himself. Plus, he wanted to see what had happened to the house they’d blown up. It would be interesting to see out how the Dreamer had handled that.

Oh, another thing. He had to find a body for Bear. He’d be on the lookout for an abandoned toy of some sort.

With this admittedly lame plan, Tenthé headed out. He took a roundabout way to avoid the main streets and patrols, also to keep away from the City Center and the temple. This route added quite a distance to the trip, but he didn’t really have anything else to do. Eventually, he reached the gate for the district where the families had extra houses. By now, it was fairly dark.

Tenthé kept to the shadows and snuck through. It wasn’t difficult since there weren’t any guards and the wards were few and far between. On the other side, the area was mostly deserted. Only one house had any sort of lights on.

This would be a good place to hide, but the lack of people might be a problem. Tenthé looked into a few of the houses, including the one with lights. There was nobody in any of them, at all. With the Horde besieging the City, this district probably wasn’t a big part of Turtle’s plans.

Tenthé followed the streets to the house he and the others had searched from before, and discovered it had been completely restored. Tenthé hopped the fence and broke in through the kitchen door. There weren’t any wards, or anything.

The inside was dark, but that was no hindrance for Tenthé. He poked around and was surprised to find that the upstairs room was still full of Horde armor. That was odd.

But, since the armor was here, perhaps the underground cavern was too. Tenthé descended to the first floor and made his way to the dining room. From there, he entered the little room that had led to the cavern. The other door was still there, so he opened it and peered into the gloom on the other side. Sure enough, the cavern was just as he remembered! Well, before it had been blown up.

Tenthé slipped in. It was utterly dark, and even with his enhanced vision, he found it difficult to make out details. He risked a small light, then realized it didn’t really matter. It was so dark that any light would stand out like, well, a light in a dark cavern. He made his light brighter.

The cavern had been restored to how it was before the glyphs had been etched on the floor. Probably because this was what the Dreamer had a record of. There wasn’t anything interesting here, so Tenthé continued through and into the tunnel.

When he emerged into the huge cavern, he made his way to the area where the battle had taken place. It too had been reset to before when the Horde and House troops had fought. He searched the cavern but found no sign Elishua had ever been here.

He had a thought. It might be that the Sage had already collected her. He hit himself. Another thing he should have asked!

Oh well. This was a pretty good place to wait for morning. He couldn’t detect any City wards, which was probably why it had been used for smuggling. To entertain himself, he investigated the tunnels he hadn’t explored, before. The first one headed into the district where the families had their manors. When the tunnel terminated at a solid gate, Tenthé decided he didn’t care who’s manor was on the other side, and turned around.

Back in the main cavern, he went down the tunnel the Horde warriors had come from, and eventually found it dead-ended at the City wall. His estimation placed this point a little north of the temple district, at the edge of the Manor District. If Mach-Anot had told the truth, the passageway used to go through the wall on one of the planes, but now it was cut off everywhere Tenthé could get to. Finding himself becoming bored and tired, he returned to the cavern.

Choosing a boulder with some sand beside it, he pulled out a few blankets and made himself a nest. He hauled out some food and water, ate, and went to sleep, dreaming about Isabell as she was supposed to be, all cubes and everything.

They were laughing and running around. He kept finding hidden cubes in the cavern and throwing them at her. She was catching them in her mouth and eating them, yelling for him to find more. It was a good dream.