Lillene Enjoy!
“Serenity?” Rissa walked up to her husband and set a hand on his shoulder. “Care to go out and walk in the park for a bit? Jenna’s settled down for her nap and I’m free for a couple hours.”
Serenity nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.”
He needed the time to clear his head after talking to the World Shaman that was probably a distant relative. Rissa probably also needed a break; there was little point in her doing the normal evaluation work she filled much of her days with since her trading accounts were frozen and would be until the situation was resolved. She’d been spending a lot of time dealing with lawyers, but even that couldn’t fill the time. Not really.
Aki’s park areas were beautiful. Many of them were the same as they had been before she took over the area; Aki carefully maintained those areas so that people wouldn’t be either inconvenienced or worried by the changes. The areas that were off the beaten path, however, were very different. Aki mostly kept the same aesthetic; none of it was supposed to look like it was designed by sapient hands.
It was, however, carefully maintained and manicured to be only a bit more wild than the carefully mowed areas near the paths. Where there was grass, it was no more than four inches tall. It wasn’t evenly cut, but it wasn’t wild either. The shrubs were uneven, as if they were untrimmed, but they weren’t scraggly. Serenity knew no one actually worked on the plant life; instead, Aki’s dungeon handled it all since the plant life was actually part of the dungeon itself.
It was all to create a setting for a truly spectacular view that Serenity was certain wouldn’t exist if the dungeon weren’t there: a tall waterfall that fell into a deep, cold pool of water that then ran across a shallow series of rapids and out to the sea. Because it was a dungeon, the tide didn’t matter; that definitely wasn’t true in all dungeons, but in Aki’s, the water was always fresh in that area. The marsh was tidal, the stream from the waterfall wasn’t, even though the dungeon continued past the border with the ocean. There was a small area where the water mixed, but it was a continuous process.
Serenity walked with Rissa along the path that led to the top of the waterfall. They moved slowly, then waited for sunset.
Shortly after they started back, Rissa shivered. Serenity set an arm around her shoulders; it wasn’t that cold, but he knew that he didn’t feel temperature the same way she did and she hadn’t brought a jacket.
Rissa shook her head but didn’t push Serenity away. “It’s not cold, at least I don’t think it is. Something has happened or is about to happen that I’m not going to like, but it’s not strong enough for me to get a clear picture of it. Or perhaps I just don’t know enough? That happens too.”
Serenity Tightened his grip on her arm for a moment reassuringly. “We’ll deal with whatever it is. It can’t be too bad; no one’s called us yet, after all.”
“True,” Rissa agreed, then leaned against him with a smile. “I just … I’m not looking forward to when you leave Earth again.”
“Leave Earth?” Serenity was startled. “I’m not planning to head out for at least a few months. I’m not in that much of a hurry.”
“I know. But next time I can’t go with you.” Rissa set a finger on Serenity’s lips when he started to protest. “Maybe if this whole insider trading mess is settled before you leave, but until it is I can’t go anywhere.”
“It’s ridiculous. You obviously didn’t do anything illegal.” Serenity grumbled at Rissa. He was unhappy with the situation to begin with, and the thought that it might make them separate when he left the planet didn’t help. She was right that he was going to have to leave; he might not go to Suratiz, but the threat to Earth meant he was going to have to follow up on the World-Eaters, no matter how he’d learned about them.
“It’s fine.” Rissa sighed as she spoke. She sounded more tired than anything else. “We don’t actually need the income, not with the Etherium, so this is an inconvenience more than anything else. I’m trying to look at it as a time to figure out what I want to do in the future; I don’t think trading stocks is the answer, but I’m not sure what is. I do know I don’t want to do what my mother did, but that doesn’t tell me what I do want.”
“Who says we have to do anything specific - any one thing, that is?” Serenity didn’t have a specific goal, either, but he knew some things he wanted to do. “We can afford to do whatever makes sense at the time. I don’t want to always be off saving the world. Once we’re past the next problem, I want to settle down for a bit, raise Jenna, and look into Essence-based magic and runes.” He paused for a moment, then admitted the other thing he had on his list. “I might even look into enchanting. The Voice keeps pushing it at me and it wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t a reason.”
He wasn’t ready to try anything other than destructive healing with Blaze, but perhaps he’d do some of that as well. Variety was a good thing and he was better at that sort of healing than Blaze was. It felt good to make an immediate visible impact, too.
“That’s the thing, I don’t know what I want to do or even what I’m good at.” Rissa sighed and started moving forward again. “Maybe I should spend some more time with Katya’s relatives and see if there’s a crafting type I should pick up. I can say that healing definitely isn’t my thing, even if it’s what I focused on in the Tutorial. I’m sure you’ll want to explore dungeons, but I’ll probably stay on the surface. If crafting doesn’t work out…”
Rissa didn’t seem to have an immediate plan if her first one didn’t work out, but Serenity thought she was approaching it the right way. She needed to try different things until she found something that clicked. For Serenity, that thing was magic, but there was no reason to assume that Rissa’s thing would be the same.
“We have time.” Serenity would have said more, but in this case, he didn’t have the time.
Aki’s voice came from nowhere. “Serenity, Rissa? There are people headed your way. They met at the Guild building and claimed they were headed for a dungeon a couple of miles from here, but they walked right past the portal and towards you. I didn’t notice until they entered the expanded area, but now I can’t even tell how many of them there are.”
That made Serenity frown. It took serious magic to hide from a dungeon, generally a spell or enchantment several Tiers higher than the Tier of the dungeon, and dungeons wore away at them quickly. They weren’t even close to worth the cost for almost any use, at least not as an enchantment. As a spell, it could allow a higher Tier person to monitor a lower Tier person in a dungeon suited to the lower Tier, but that was still exceedingly expensive unless the higher Tier person had a strong reason, like escorting a relative who was new to dungeons. It wasn’t something he’d expected to see on Earth any time soon.
Admittedly, Earth had some very oddball magic; having a past that was significantly higher Tier than the present could do that, even if it was a very long time ago.
With luck, this was just a group getting together to do something they wanted to keep secret using some sort of anti-divination charm that was excessively strong. Serenity couldn’t just assume that, though; he had to assume that the group intended to do something that was bad for Aki. It was possible that they intended harm to Rissa or Serenity himself, but that seemed unlikely since they hadn’t gone past the Adventurers’ Guild on the way out to the waterfall. There was no way the group should know they were there.
“Can you at least give me a direction?” Serenity didn’t want to try to find them himself. His fastest method was his aura, which had limited range and wasn’t something that could go unnoticed. His aura control was good, but he was far higher Tier than they were and completely suppressing the Death in his aura was nearly impossible these days.
“Ahead of you on the path,” Aki stated. “Unfortunately I can’t be certain if they’re on the same branch as you are or not; they’re near one of the turns but I can’t tell which way they went.”
Serenity shook off the voice in the back of his head that said he was overreacting; that was Thomas, raised in a relatively safe situation in a relatively safe society. In many ways, Serenity also lived in a relatively safe society, but he no longer benefited from the relative safety of unimportance.
Neither did Aki; while the fact that her dungeon was the entire area wasn’t known, the fact that the area was one of many spatially expanded areas was known. Worse, she was one of the few in a city and was a public area, at that. The Adventurers’ Guild didn’t help. Aki was one of the most visible places for people who hated the change to fix on, even if they hadn’t yet managed to do anything even remotely effective. Serenity didn’t count the protests; the people who paid attention couldn’t do anything.
If someone decided to search for Aki’s core to destroy it, Serenity would have to do something. That was really the only thing he was worried about.
Serenity took a moment to cover Rissa in his armor-self, then did the same for himself. He already had his crystal hilt available, but quite a bit of his other gear was in his rift. He took the time to pull it out and get ready.
“To the left,” a man’s voice stated quietly. Despite the fact that it was a whisper, it carried clearly through the suddenly still air. “I can’t see her but she has to be close. The Vala said she would be here, hidden in the place that was not.”
Serenity traded a glance with Rissa. He didn’t like what the statement implied one bit. There were quite a few trees; that had to be why he hadn’t seen the people who were approaching yet. For a moment, he considered asking Rissa to hide in the trees, but it was far too risky. He didn’t know how many people were out here and he couldn’t say for certain that none were headed through the trees to block them in. What he could say for certain was that he could kill anyone he could find.
Well, there was one other thing he could say. At least some of them were just around the bend, hidden by the foliage. That meant they were close enough to be within his aura if he let it extend to its full width. The only question was if it would scare them off, but perhaps it was a good thing if it did; whatever item they were using to hide themselves was only good for so long.
Lillene
What do you think Rissa is going to end up doing long term (other than raising Jenna)?
Lillene Enjoy!
“Serenity?” Rissa walked up to her husband and set a hand on his shoulder. “Care to go out and walk in the park for a bit? Jenna’s settled down for her nap and I’m free for a couple hours.”
Serenity nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.”
He needed the time to clear his head after talking to the World Shaman that was probably a distant relative. Rissa probably also needed a break; there was little point in her doing the normal evaluation work she filled much of her days with since her trading accounts were frozen and would be until the situation was resolved. She’d been spending a lot of time dealing with lawyers, but even that couldn’t fill the time. Not really.
Aki’s park areas were beautiful. Many of them were the same as they had been before she took over the area; Aki carefully maintained those areas so that people wouldn’t be either inconvenienced or worried by the changes. The areas that were off the beaten path, however, were very different. Aki mostly kept the same aesthetic; none of it was supposed to look like it was designed by sapient hands.
It was, however, carefully maintained and manicured to be only a bit more wild than the carefully mowed areas near the paths. Where there was grass, it was no more than four inches tall. It wasn’t evenly cut, but it wasn’t wild either. The shrubs were uneven, as if they were untrimmed, but they weren’t scraggly. Serenity knew no one actually worked on the plant life; instead, Aki’s dungeon handled it all since the plant life was actually part of the dungeon itself.
It was all to create a setting for a truly spectacular view that Serenity was certain wouldn’t exist if the dungeon weren’t there: a tall waterfall that fell into a deep, cold pool of water that then ran across a shallow series of rapids and out to the sea. Because it was a dungeon, the tide didn’t matter; that definitely wasn’t true in all dungeons, but in Aki’s, the water was always fresh in that area. The marsh was tidal, the stream from the waterfall wasn’t, even though the dungeon continued past the border with the ocean. There was a small area where the water mixed, but it was a continuous process.
Serenity walked with Rissa along the path that led to the top of the waterfall. They moved slowly, then waited for sunset.
Shortly after they started back, Rissa shivered. Serenity set an arm around her shoulders; it wasn’t that cold, but he knew that he didn’t feel temperature the same way she did and she hadn’t brought a jacket.
Rissa shook her head but didn’t push Serenity away. “It’s not cold, at least I don’t think it is. Something has happened or is about to happen that I’m not going to like, but it’s not strong enough for me to get a clear picture of it. Or perhaps I just don’t know enough? That happens too.”
Serenity Tightened his grip on her arm for a moment reassuringly. “We’ll deal with whatever it is. It can’t be too bad; no one’s called us yet, after all.”
“True,” Rissa agreed, then leaned against him with a smile. “I just … I’m not looking forward to when you leave Earth again.”
“Leave Earth?” Serenity was startled. “I’m not planning to head out for at least a few months. I’m not in that much of a hurry.”
“I know. But next time I can’t go with you.” Rissa set a finger on Serenity’s lips when he started to protest. “Maybe if this whole insider trading mess is settled before you leave, but until it is I can’t go anywhere.”
“It’s ridiculous. You obviously didn’t do anything illegal.” Serenity grumbled at Rissa. He was unhappy with the situation to begin with, and the thought that it might make them separate when he left the planet didn’t help. She was right that he was going to have to leave; he might not go to Suratiz, but the threat to Earth meant he was going to have to follow up on the World-Eaters, no matter how he’d learned about them.
“It’s fine.” Rissa sighed as she spoke. She sounded more tired than anything else. “We don’t actually need the income, not with the Etherium, so this is an inconvenience more than anything else. I’m trying to look at it as a time to figure out what I want to do in the future; I don’t think trading stocks is the answer, but I’m not sure what is. I do know I don’t want to do what my mother did, but that doesn’t tell me what I do want.”
“Who says we have to do anything specific - any one thing, that is?” Serenity didn’t have a specific goal, either, but he knew some things he wanted to do. “We can afford to do whatever makes sense at the time. I don’t want to always be off saving the world. Once we’re past the next problem, I want to settle down for a bit, raise Jenna, and look into Essence-based magic and runes.” He paused for a moment, then admitted the other thing he had on his list. “I might even look into enchanting. The Voice keeps pushing it at me and it wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t a reason.”
He wasn’t ready to try anything other than destructive healing with Blaze, but perhaps he’d do some of that as well. Variety was a good thing and he was better at that sort of healing than Blaze was. It felt good to make an immediate visible impact, too.
“That’s the thing, I don’t know what I want to do or even what I’m good at.” Rissa sighed and started moving forward again. “Maybe I should spend some more time with Katya’s relatives and see if there’s a crafting type I should pick up. I can say that healing definitely isn’t my thing, even if it’s what I focused on in the Tutorial. I’m sure you’ll want to explore dungeons, but I’ll probably stay on the surface. If crafting doesn’t work out…”
Rissa didn’t seem to have an immediate plan if her first one didn’t work out, but Serenity thought she was approaching it the right way. She needed to try different things until she found something that clicked. For Serenity, that thing was magic, but there was no reason to assume that Rissa’s thing would be the same.
“We have time.” Serenity would have said more, but in this case, he didn’t have the time.
Aki’s voice came from nowhere. “Serenity, Rissa? There are people headed your way. They met at the Guild building and claimed they were headed for a dungeon a couple of miles from here, but they walked right past the portal and towards you. I didn’t notice until they entered the expanded area, but now I can’t even tell how many of them there are.”
That made Serenity frown. It took serious magic to hide from a dungeon, generally a spell or enchantment several Tiers higher than the Tier of the dungeon, and dungeons wore away at them quickly. They weren’t even close to worth the cost for almost any use, at least not as an enchantment. As a spell, it could allow a higher Tier person to monitor a lower Tier person in a dungeon suited to the lower Tier, but that was still exceedingly expensive unless the higher Tier person had a strong reason, like escorting a relative who was new to dungeons. It wasn’t something he’d expected to see on Earth any time soon.
Admittedly, Earth had some very oddball magic; having a past that was significantly higher Tier than the present could do that, even if it was a very long time ago.
With luck, this was just a group getting together to do something they wanted to keep secret using some sort of anti-divination charm that was excessively strong. Serenity couldn’t just assume that, though; he had to assume that the group intended to do something that was bad for Aki. It was possible that they intended harm to Rissa or Serenity himself, but that seemed unlikely since they hadn’t gone past the Adventurers’ Guild on the way out to the waterfall. There was no way the group should know they were there.
“Can you at least give me a direction?” Serenity didn’t want to try to find them himself. His fastest method was his aura, which had limited range and wasn’t something that could go unnoticed. His aura control was good, but he was far higher Tier than they were and completely suppressing the Death in his aura was nearly impossible these days.
“Ahead of you on the path,” Aki stated. “Unfortunately I can’t be certain if they’re on the same branch as you are or not; they’re near one of the turns but I can’t tell which way they went.”
Serenity shook off the voice in the back of his head that said he was overreacting; that was Thomas, raised in a relatively safe situation in a relatively safe society. In many ways, Serenity also lived in a relatively safe society, but he no longer benefited from the relative safety of unimportance.
Neither did Aki; while the fact that her dungeon was the entire area wasn’t known, the fact that the area was one of many spatially expanded areas was known. Worse, she was one of the few in a city and was a public area, at that. The Adventurers’ Guild didn’t help. Aki was one of the most visible places for people who hated the change to fix on, even if they hadn’t yet managed to do anything even remotely effective. Serenity didn’t count the protests; the people who paid attention couldn’t do anything.
If someone decided to search for Aki’s core to destroy it, Serenity would have to do something. That was really the only thing he was worried about.
Serenity took a moment to cover Rissa in his armor-self, then did the same for himself. He already had his crystal hilt available, but quite a bit of his other gear was in his rift. He took the time to pull it out and get ready.
“To the left,” a man’s voice stated quietly. Despite the fact that it was a whisper, it carried clearly through the suddenly still air. “I can’t see her but she has to be close. The Vala said she would be here, hidden in the place that was not.”
Serenity traded a glance with Rissa. He didn’t like what the statement implied one bit. There were quite a few trees; that had to be why he hadn’t seen the people who were approaching yet. For a moment, he considered asking Rissa to hide in the trees, but it was far too risky. He didn’t know how many people were out here and he couldn’t say for certain that none were headed through the trees to block them in. What he could say for certain was that he could kill anyone he could find.
Well, there was one other thing he could say. At least some of them were just around the bend, hidden by the foliage. That meant they were close enough to be within his aura if he let it extend to its full width. The only question was if it would scare them off, but perhaps it was a good thing if it did; whatever item they were using to hide themselves was only good for so long.
Lillene
What do you think Rissa is going to end up doing long term (other than raising Jenna)?
