The conversation on the other side of the door had continued while Serenity was listening to Ita, but it came to a sudden stop at Serenity’s knock.
After a moment, there was a quick pair of knocks on the other side of the door, followed by the man’s voice. “Why did you knock?”
Serenity chuckled as he opened the door towards himself, then stepped around it. “She was answering my question, of course.”
The room on the other side of the door was small, little more than a pass-through with a four-foot-wide space to one side. There was a small table that held a small oil lamp surrounded by four chairs. Only one of the chairs was occupied, but it looked like the woman had recently risen to answer the door. She was dressed in the same clothing as the workers Serenity had seen pretending to work in the garden, but the man was dressed in an acolyte’s robe.
A good look at them confirmed Serenity’s suspicion from the man’s reaction to the knock: the woman was definitely from Earth, while the man definitely wasn’t. He might well have heard something like it, but that particular call-and-response wasn’t woven into his culture. Admittedly, it wasn’t used everywhere on Earth, either, but Serenity could tell. He definitely wasn’t from Earth.
While he looked the pair over, they also took their time staring at him. They probably had it easier than he did; he was well illuminated by the lamp. Even so, he could tell when the man paled and when the woman recognized him.
Her mouth dropped open for a moment before she managed to gasp out, “You’re here?”
It was almost the best introduction he could have gotten; the only better one would have been if she’d actually said his name. He could resist poking a little fun at her reaction. He grinned. “No, my name’s Serenity.”
“You - but, argh.” The woman seemed to lose some of her shock after his bad joke. “You know that’s not what I meant! Why are you here? Are you here to help us get home? How did you even know we were here?”
Serenity nodded. “You and anyone else who’s from Earth and wants to go. I don’t know what I’m going to do with others, yet.” Serenity turned his attention to the man. “What are your names?”
“Denise Alvarez.” Her name was a slight surprise; her appearance could possibly be Hispanic but her accent definitely wasn’t. She sounded like she was from the American South. Admittedly, her name didn’t necessarily mean anything; there were people with that surname that probably predated the Rothmers’ entry to the US.
The man didn’t reply until Denise turned to him and frowned. Even then, all he said was “Aaron.”
Serenity sighed. He didn’t really want to make a point of it right now, but he probably needed to. “Why are you scared of me, Aaron?”
He hoped it wasn’t his nonhuman appearance; he’d decided to use his chimera form to make it more obvious to other Earthlings who he was, but that didn’t mean he wanted to scare people.
When Aaron didn’t reply, Serenity tried a slightly different tack. He gentled his voice; the last thing he wanted to do was scare the man into doing something he couldn’t take back. “I already know you’re not from Earth, but you seem to be trying to help. You don’t need to be so scared.”
Denise glared at Aaron. Serenity wasn’t certain what her sudden problem with him was, but it was clear that there was one.
Aaron gaped a moment longer, then shook himself. He flushed bright red; Serenity was impressed. He hadn’t thought someone who wasn’t a redhead could get that red in the face from embarrassment. His voice shook with suppressed emotion. “I’m not afraid. The sigil on your armor. Are you really oathsworn to a dual Planetary Lord?”
How exactly was he supposed to answer that? Serenity didn’t want to say that he was the Sovereign of two planets.
Well, he’d sidestep it for now. “The sigil is accurate. I take it that you’ve seen one before?”
Aaron nodded. “I’m from Tablerock, the capital of Ranar. Only the best in service to the Planetary Lord are allowed to bear his sigil, and one that obvious…” He shook his head. “You startled me.” That time, the words were almost accusatory.
Serenity couldn’t remember anything about Tablerock offhand other than the fact that it was also the city that Guildmaster Tirmanak Oathbinder’s branch of Order’s Guild was located in. It was probably either named after a particular rock or situated on a flat mesa; that sort of a city name almost always came from a local feature.
“You said you were from Earth!” Denise accused Aaron.
Aaron froze. The red had already faded from his earlier embarrassment, but Serenity could tell he wasn’t comfortable with being directly confronted about this. “No, I just let you believe it.” He paused, then shook his head slightly. “You and everyone else. I couldn’t come up with a way to tell you that wouldn’t make it look like it was deliberate once I realized what you thought I was from the same planet as you but it’s not really a lie, I really did end up on Lyka without wanting to be here even if it wasn't at the end of a Tutorial, it was when I tried to portal home from a dungeon. I don’t know how it happened, it was just one of the dungeon exits, but then I was here and everyone else wasn’t.”
“How long ago was this?” Serenity couldn’t help but be interested. No one was supposed to be able to interfere with the portals leaving dungeons, but he knew it was possible; he’d hidden the signal when they left one back on Tzintkra. This wasn’t quite the same thing, since it was actually changing where the portal led, but that had enough similarity to the situation with the Tutorial that Serenity had to wonder if it was also deliberate.
“About three years,” Aaron admitted. “Seems like forever sometimes. Especially when I was back at Steadfast Three; that was awful.”
Serenity could guess. He’d seen the conditions at some of the places the abducted Earthlings were kept, and it sounded like Aaron’s story was similar; he simply wasn’t part of a large group. He couldn’t remember if Steadfast Three was one of them or not.
Aide? Have I seen Steadfast Three?
Yes. It was very similar to several of the other locations; the victims were relatively safe, simply hungry. There was no portal at the church; the closest portal was a mile and a half away.
That was good; there were a couple of places that would haunt Serenity. He could only be grateful that there weren’t supposed to be many people at either. He’d never know for certain what happened at those two places, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to. It was better if he assumed it was monsters of the dungeon variety.
Serenity wondered if Aaron was caught the same way as the Earthlings. Was it possible that the problem was larger than he’d thought? He hadn’t found any other large groups, but he could easily have missed some individuals, especially if they came in at different times. “Do you remember when you’d last used a portal before that one?”
Aaron blinked. “Why? Does it matter?”
Serenity simply nodded.
Aaron bit his lip and thought for a moment. “I’m really not sure. Probably the last time I visited home, portals are expensive when they’re not the way out of a dungeon. The dungeon portal only went out of the dungeon or back to town, though. I remember that I couldn’t take it back home and that was still on Ranar. It shouldn’t have been able to send me here.”
Serenity nodded. He’d have to ask the Voice later if the portals out of dungeons operated using the same system as the teleportation the Voice provided, but it seemed likely. It would explain so much about dungeons if some of their features were really the Voice handling things.
“Do you happen to remember seeing a priest of Lyka’s religion before you ended up here? Perhaps after the last time you went home?” There was no reason that whoever tagged Aaron had to have been dressed as a priest, but there was also no reason not to think so, and it would certainly make finding out easier.
There was one other possibility, of course. Arkandaeon tagged equipment rather than people in the Tutorial; if whoever tagged Aaron did the same, it was entirely possible that he wasn’t even the actual target. The fact that Aaron thought portals were expensive meant he wasn’t wealthy, so it was entirely likely that the equipment he had for the dungeon was originally used by someone else.
Aaron shook his head. “I’d never heard of Lykandaeon before-”
“Don’t say his name.” Serenity interrupted Aaron. “Speaking a deity’s Name can draw their attention. It usually doesn’t, but it can, so don’t. That’s why people use nicknames for them.”
Aaron’s eyes widened. If Serenity had to guess, he’d heard that but didn’t really believe it. He might not believe it now, but as long as he acted like he did, Serenity didn’t care.
Denise, on the other hand, seemed actively skeptical, if Serenity was reading her expression correctly. Serenity decided he’d better answer the implied question before he did anything else. “Yes, gods are real. Some, at least. They’re far more like the Norse or Greek gods than the modern ones. Many are more like what were called Heroes than gods. Powerful people rather than actual forces of reality, though those exist as well. I don’t know if there’s a single Creator; I don’t plan to try to find out, either.”
Serenity had his suspicions; he had pursued that possibility for a while as Vengeance, shortly after he destroyed the Sterath. The tale of Lazarus made it seem possible that he might be able to get Rissa back, after all, and it wasn’t the only story of faith leading to revival.
He’d eventually given up. Even looking into that question was dangerous, strangely so. Serenity got the impression that someone was actively trying to stop people from looking, but he was fairly confident that it wasn’t anyone who followed a Creator-god. It just didn’t fit; followers of one of the various annihilation cults trying to keep people from asking for help seemed like a far better fit, even if it meant that they were, ironically, believers in a greater Power.
Both of the others watched Serenity. He wasn’t certain if they thought he was an annoying religious nut or simply a lunatic, but they had almost exactly the same expression as each other. Serenity smiled and shook his head. “Only one deity matters here, and I’d rather not get his attention. Let’s move on to what we can and should do, instead. What’s your current situation? And what about the priests here, are they a problem?”
“Our situation is that we can’t leave Lyka and we also can’t live here,” Aaron stated. “Not that it’s going to matter; I heard that Investigators arrived today. There’s no way we’ll pass as a real church this time, it was close enough last time and the cracks were a lot less obvious. That has to be why they’re here; we thought they’d be here sooner but they much have been delayed by the dungeon breaks.”
Serenity was going to have a little discussion with Rourke when he got back to Aeon. If he’d sent them to Steadfast Seventeen without full information deliberately, Serenity wasn’t going to be pleased.
On the other hand, if Rourke’s team saw something and didn’t tell him, that was a different problem.
Lillene
I think this is the first time we've had confirmation that Earth wasn't the first place that people were stolen from.
The conversation on the other side of the door had continued while Serenity was listening to Ita, but it came to a sudden stop at Serenity’s knock.
After a moment, there was a quick pair of knocks on the other side of the door, followed by the man’s voice. “Why did you knock?”
Serenity chuckled as he opened the door towards himself, then stepped around it. “She was answering my question, of course.”
The room on the other side of the door was small, little more than a pass-through with a four-foot-wide space to one side. There was a small table that held a small oil lamp surrounded by four chairs. Only one of the chairs was occupied, but it looked like the woman had recently risen to answer the door. She was dressed in the same clothing as the workers Serenity had seen pretending to work in the garden, but the man was dressed in an acolyte’s robe.
A good look at them confirmed Serenity’s suspicion from the man’s reaction to the knock: the woman was definitely from Earth, while the man definitely wasn’t. He might well have heard something like it, but that particular call-and-response wasn’t woven into his culture. Admittedly, it wasn’t used everywhere on Earth, either, but Serenity could tell. He definitely wasn’t from Earth.
While he looked the pair over, they also took their time staring at him. They probably had it easier than he did; he was well illuminated by the lamp. Even so, he could tell when the man paled and when the woman recognized him.
Her mouth dropped open for a moment before she managed to gasp out, “You’re here?”
It was almost the best introduction he could have gotten; the only better one would have been if she’d actually said his name. He could resist poking a little fun at her reaction. He grinned. “No, my name’s Serenity.”
“You - but, argh.” The woman seemed to lose some of her shock after his bad joke. “You know that’s not what I meant! Why are you here? Are you here to help us get home? How did you even know we were here?”
Serenity nodded. “You and anyone else who’s from Earth and wants to go. I don’t know what I’m going to do with others, yet.” Serenity turned his attention to the man. “What are your names?”
“Denise Alvarez.” Her name was a slight surprise; her appearance could possibly be Hispanic but her accent definitely wasn’t. She sounded like she was from the American South. Admittedly, her name didn’t necessarily mean anything; there were people with that surname that probably predated the Rothmers’ entry to the US.
The man didn’t reply until Denise turned to him and frowned. Even then, all he said was “Aaron.”
Serenity sighed. He didn’t really want to make a point of it right now, but he probably needed to. “Why are you scared of me, Aaron?”
He hoped it wasn’t his nonhuman appearance; he’d decided to use his chimera form to make it more obvious to other Earthlings who he was, but that didn’t mean he wanted to scare people.
When Aaron didn’t reply, Serenity tried a slightly different tack. He gentled his voice; the last thing he wanted to do was scare the man into doing something he couldn’t take back. “I already know you’re not from Earth, but you seem to be trying to help. You don’t need to be so scared.”
Denise glared at Aaron. Serenity wasn’t certain what her sudden problem with him was, but it was clear that there was one.
Aaron gaped a moment longer, then shook himself. He flushed bright red; Serenity was impressed. He hadn’t thought someone who wasn’t a redhead could get that red in the face from embarrassment. His voice shook with suppressed emotion. “I’m not afraid. The sigil on your armor. Are you really oathsworn to a dual Planetary Lord?”
How exactly was he supposed to answer that? Serenity didn’t want to say that he was the Sovereign of two planets.
Well, he’d sidestep it for now. “The sigil is accurate. I take it that you’ve seen one before?”
Aaron nodded. “I’m from Tablerock, the capital of Ranar. Only the best in service to the Planetary Lord are allowed to bear his sigil, and one that obvious…” He shook his head. “You startled me.” That time, the words were almost accusatory.
Serenity couldn’t remember anything about Tablerock offhand other than the fact that it was also the city that Guildmaster Tirmanak Oathbinder’s branch of Order’s Guild was located in. It was probably either named after a particular rock or situated on a flat mesa; that sort of a city name almost always came from a local feature.
“You said you were from Earth!” Denise accused Aaron.
Aaron froze. The red had already faded from his earlier embarrassment, but Serenity could tell he wasn’t comfortable with being directly confronted about this. “No, I just let you believe it.” He paused, then shook his head slightly. “You and everyone else. I couldn’t come up with a way to tell you that wouldn’t make it look like it was deliberate once I realized what you thought I was from the same planet as you but it’s not really a lie, I really did end up on Lyka without wanting to be here even if it wasn't at the end of a Tutorial, it was when I tried to portal home from a dungeon. I don’t know how it happened, it was just one of the dungeon exits, but then I was here and everyone else wasn’t.”
“How long ago was this?” Serenity couldn’t help but be interested. No one was supposed to be able to interfere with the portals leaving dungeons, but he knew it was possible; he’d hidden the signal when they left one back on Tzintkra. This wasn’t quite the same thing, since it was actually changing where the portal led, but that had enough similarity to the situation with the Tutorial that Serenity had to wonder if it was also deliberate.
“About three years,” Aaron admitted. “Seems like forever sometimes. Especially when I was back at Steadfast Three; that was awful.”
Serenity could guess. He’d seen the conditions at some of the places the abducted Earthlings were kept, and it sounded like Aaron’s story was similar; he simply wasn’t part of a large group. He couldn’t remember if Steadfast Three was one of them or not.
Aide? Have I seen Steadfast Three?
Yes. It was very similar to several of the other locations; the victims were relatively safe, simply hungry. There was no portal at the church; the closest portal was a mile and a half away.
That was good; there were a couple of places that would haunt Serenity. He could only be grateful that there weren’t supposed to be many people at either. He’d never know for certain what happened at those two places, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to. It was better if he assumed it was monsters of the dungeon variety.
Serenity wondered if Aaron was caught the same way as the Earthlings. Was it possible that the problem was larger than he’d thought? He hadn’t found any other large groups, but he could easily have missed some individuals, especially if they came in at different times. “Do you remember when you’d last used a portal before that one?”
Aaron blinked. “Why? Does it matter?”
Serenity simply nodded.
Aaron bit his lip and thought for a moment. “I’m really not sure. Probably the last time I visited home, portals are expensive when they’re not the way out of a dungeon. The dungeon portal only went out of the dungeon or back to town, though. I remember that I couldn’t take it back home and that was still on Ranar. It shouldn’t have been able to send me here.”
Serenity nodded. He’d have to ask the Voice later if the portals out of dungeons operated using the same system as the teleportation the Voice provided, but it seemed likely. It would explain so much about dungeons if some of their features were really the Voice handling things.
“Do you happen to remember seeing a priest of Lyka’s religion before you ended up here? Perhaps after the last time you went home?” There was no reason that whoever tagged Aaron had to have been dressed as a priest, but there was also no reason not to think so, and it would certainly make finding out easier.
There was one other possibility, of course. Arkandaeon tagged equipment rather than people in the Tutorial; if whoever tagged Aaron did the same, it was entirely possible that he wasn’t even the actual target. The fact that Aaron thought portals were expensive meant he wasn’t wealthy, so it was entirely likely that the equipment he had for the dungeon was originally used by someone else.
Aaron shook his head. “I’d never heard of Lykandaeon before-”
“Don’t say his name.” Serenity interrupted Aaron. “Speaking a deity’s Name can draw their attention. It usually doesn’t, but it can, so don’t. That’s why people use nicknames for them.”
Aaron’s eyes widened. If Serenity had to guess, he’d heard that but didn’t really believe it. He might not believe it now, but as long as he acted like he did, Serenity didn’t care.
Denise, on the other hand, seemed actively skeptical, if Serenity was reading her expression correctly. Serenity decided he’d better answer the implied question before he did anything else. “Yes, gods are real. Some, at least. They’re far more like the Norse or Greek gods than the modern ones. Many are more like what were called Heroes than gods. Powerful people rather than actual forces of reality, though those exist as well. I don’t know if there’s a single Creator; I don’t plan to try to find out, either.”
Serenity had his suspicions; he had pursued that possibility for a while as Vengeance, shortly after he destroyed the Sterath. The tale of Lazarus made it seem possible that he might be able to get Rissa back, after all, and it wasn’t the only story of faith leading to revival.
He’d eventually given up. Even looking into that question was dangerous, strangely so. Serenity got the impression that someone was actively trying to stop people from looking, but he was fairly confident that it wasn’t anyone who followed a Creator-god. It just didn’t fit; followers of one of the various annihilation cults trying to keep people from asking for help seemed like a far better fit, even if it meant that they were, ironically, believers in a greater Power.
Both of the others watched Serenity. He wasn’t certain if they thought he was an annoying religious nut or simply a lunatic, but they had almost exactly the same expression as each other. Serenity smiled and shook his head. “Only one deity matters here, and I’d rather not get his attention. Let’s move on to what we can and should do, instead. What’s your current situation? And what about the priests here, are they a problem?”
“Our situation is that we can’t leave Lyka and we also can’t live here,” Aaron stated. “Not that it’s going to matter; I heard that Investigators arrived today. There’s no way we’ll pass as a real church this time, it was close enough last time and the cracks were a lot less obvious. That has to be why they’re here; we thought they’d be here sooner but they much have been delayed by the dungeon breaks.”
Serenity was going to have a little discussion with Rourke when he got back to Aeon. If he’d sent them to Steadfast Seventeen without full information deliberately, Serenity wasn’t going to be pleased.
On the other hand, if Rourke’s team saw something and didn’t tell him, that was a different problem.
Lillene
I think this is the first time we've had confirmation that Earth wasn't the first place that people were stolen from.
