March 28, 2026 — 1:38 am

They had gotten a number of travel entads from the haul of lutes, and far too many of them had bound to Isra. She had seven lutes, which was seven more than anyone but a bard needed, and worse, they had quite a bit of overlap between them. She had the Commute Lute, which allowed for up to a hundred hexes of travel through repetitive strumming, the Many-Bridges Lute, which allowed for travel to nearby bridges, the Leaping Lute, which allowed for large leaps with a buildup of song, and the Duet Lute, which would transport you to someone playing the same song. She’d spent quite a bit of their lute testing day touring the country and then walking back home.

Then, when Alfric had taken their lutes to Filera for testing, one of the two unidentified lutes she’d bound to was also a transportation lute, this one allowing her to run extremely fast over water.

It seemed a bit like a sign, or possibly some worry of Verity’s made manifest. Isra now had all the geographic freedom she could ever have needed, and with what had bound, could even take a carefully planned day trip to Dondrian. By running across water, she could get to Tarbin, which filled her with worried excitement. When Tarbin had been far away, weeks of travel or tens of thousands of rings, she had felt comfortable putting the past in the past and simply moving on. Now though, when she could be in far-off Tarbin by noon, it felt like the barrier was so small and thin that it couldn’t possibly be put off for too long.

On top of that, all the resources that the party was using to find Kell — or Cate — could easily be turned in other directions. Isra’s mother and father were dead, but it was possible she had family out there, aunts or uncles, cousins, maybe even grandparents. She didn’t know how hard they would be to find, especially without knowing their names, but with all these tools, if she could be allowed to borrow them … the idea was growing. The desire was growing. She had unbelievable amounts of money, and would have more once they’d sold some of the better lutes that the party couldn’t use. With either the garden stone or Lutopia, she would have mobile housing. The only reason not to go digging into her past was because she didn’t want to, and she was increasingly of the opinion that she did want to.

Isra did more travel over the two days following Kell’s disappearance than she had in the entire rest of her life. Traveling by the Commute Lute was not at all like flying through the air with the helm, and even less like ‘riding’ in the garden stone. Every warp point was different from the last, most of them decorated in some way, with the mark of the hex placed on them, or sometimes with a good view of a prominent building. In some hexes that were virtually empty, the warp point was just a collection of stone that had been placed to prevent the growth of weeds on that spot, with nothing more than a few trails heading out from them, though that level of wilderness was pretty rare.

There was so much beauty in the world. Isra had known a lot from the books, but she’d never traveled except for when the party had gone to new places, and those had both been cities. The wider world, especially as seen through its warp points, had all kinds of interesting trees, odd rabbits, enormous birds, special soils, and shapes to the stones. It made Isra’s collections seem small and pointless, but only for a moment, until she resolved that eventually she would have an entire museum to herself, or find an entad that could hold a limitless quantity of objects, or possibly that she would go to work for a museum herself and could bring them the special things she’d found.

Merger’s Point, ten hexes north, was set in a gorge with peach-colored sandstone walls that had been eaten through by a river. There were houses clinging to the sides of the gorge, and some houses that were carved from the sandstone itself, individual windows bored out by human hands. She’d been there to speak with the censusmaster, and to see whether Kell or Lin had passed through, and she’d stayed a touch longer than necessary, admiring the greenery that spilled out from the windows and the way the mild river flowed below.

Fennel City, to the east, beyond the huge Lake Gornorian, had a huge number of tall spires, which she’d learned were created from a bound entad that was now non-functional. There were more than sixty of them, dotted all around, some parts of a building, others freestanding, and the censusmaster had invited her into one. There were steep stairs in the interior, but each floor had plenty of room, and more than a few families lived a vertical life in a spire, with the children traditionally taking the top floor.

Canter’s Isle sat in the middle of a deep lake, and wasn’t a natural island at all, instead having been built using enormous stone pillars that descended down five hundred feet. It was ancient engineering, probably using significant amounts of magic, and the town was built on top of those pillars, with thick wooden arches spanning between them, and a few houses that jutted out over the edge. The lake was deep and filled with fish, and the smell that filled the air was only mildly off-putting.

Isra was supposed to be looking for Kell and Lin that first day, and she did look for them, but her mind was elsewhere, on the splendors that Inter had to offer. And this was only a collection of hexes that weren’t even that far away! They had seen things in their travels as a party, but she hadn’t quite realized how much the world had to offer. Especially with the Commute Lute, it was as simple as strumming to find herself in some fascinating and interesting new place. She felt like a fool for not taking some time to fly around with the helm, though that had a much more sedate speed, and going from one hex to another would take ten minutes or so, rather than happening instantly.

She liked meeting new people, even though many of them were suspicious when she began asking who the hex censusmaster was and where they might be found. With her new understanding of the world, the suspicion bothered her less than it might have. Most people seemed to think that she was a jilted lover or something of that nature, not taking the story of missing persons entirely seriously, especially since she was so far from Pucklechurch. She thought that was at least somewhat fair, and so long as she did eventually get the information she was after, it was nothing she was too worried about.

Understanding that she was a druid, with everything that came with that, and that other people were essentially deaf and blind to the natural world, was really quite freeing. She almost wanted to tell people when she met them, to give her a bit of leeway, but Verity had said that wasn’t the best thing to lead with, and would make people think you were odd for other reasons.

It was actually funny how long it would take people to cotton on, or how much they would ignore. Eventually, she’d made a bit of a game of it, not saying that she was a druid, but calling their cats to her, or speaking with birds that landed on her finger, or watching as a school of fish swam up from the depths. Sometimes people would raise an eyebrow, but often they’d just have some banal comment about how their dog normally didn’t like people, or wasn’t she lucky that the rain cleared up right when she got there.

The second day, she’d been doing virtually the same thing as the first day, only now she was looking for Cate too, talking to censusmasters on the west coast near Plenarch. She’d done this a number of times, apparently, and felt a bit of jealousy for the other Isras who had gone to other places, their adventures known only through a little mark on a piece of paper to say ‘no, none of the people we were looking for were there’.

On the third day, their focus was still apparently on finding Cate, which was a necessary prerequisite for confronting her. This was related to her over breakfast. The Seeker of Secrets was proving elusive.

“It’s all dead ends,” said Alfric. They were staying at Penelope’s large, square house again, though Penelope herself was in Dondrian, in a final attempt to gain aid. They did have one higher chrononaut though, Alfric’s mother Ria. She was wearing a diaphanous silk dress of sea-foam green, and had a serious expression on her face that showed the family resemblance.

“She’s not on this plane of existence,” said Ria. “That actually does narrow it down somewhat.”

This was, from what they’d said, the tenth time through the day, which included Ria, Penelope, and Alfric taking resets. It was almost certainly going to be the last time through the day, even if something new was discovered.

“Same with all the others that went missing,” said Alfric. “We’ve got six options, essentially.”

“Three realistic options,” said Ria. She’d raised an eyebrow in his direction.

“I’d still like to hear them,” said Mizuki. “I think maybe we went over this when Kali went missing?”

“Alright,” said Alfric. “The ‘realistic’ ones first. Those are dungeons, which entads don’t penetrate into and where you’d have to get around the limit of five, doable, I guess, demiplanes, which are much more likely, and certain entad storage options, like the garden stone.”

“Wait, you can get around the limit of five?” asked Mizuki. “Why have we not been taking extra people in?”

“You need the right kind of entad,” said Alfric. “Extradimensional storage doesn’t work, but there are a select few entads that turn people into something that’s not, per the dungeons, a person, which means that they can slip through and be reconstituted into a person. It’s a rare thing for an entad to do, and usually pretty dangerous for those involved, so doing that with hundreds of people … I don’t see it.”

“And you only get to enter a dungeon once for each party member,” said Ria. “I agree it’s unlikely.”

“I really want to hear the crazy ones,” said Mizuki, leaning forward with a smile on her face.

“They’re not that crazy,” said Alfric. “The first is somewhere in space, where entads don’t work, which you could in theory get to by accelerating hard enough.”

“Which people have tried, dying in the process,” said Ria. She gave a little laugh. “Alfric wanted to be an astronaut when he was younger.”

“People have actually succeeded,” said Alfric.

“Yes, you’re just whipping through the sky in a metal coffin with no protection whatsoever, and getting to a very technical definition of ‘space’,” said Ria with a sigh. “There’s no air up there. Look, it’s very unlikely that Cate took them into space.”

“I’m just talking about what the bounds of possibility are,” said Alfric. “I don’t legitimately think that they were taken to space or, I don’t know, landed on the moons.”

“Which brings us to the other possibility,” said Ria. “Beyond the Barrier Storms.”

“Which also has the magic problem,” said Alfric. “And yes, same applies, it’s really not likely to be that, even if she had taken them to a different location with a ship that could non-magically handle transport.”

Isra was frowning. “What’s the third then?”

“Something else,” said Alfric with a shrug. “The unknown.”

“Lame,” said Mizuki. “You know, if I was going to disappear people, I would take them up to the Fractalwoods and just zap them into the future.”

“Creative,” said Ria with an approving nod. “But I don’t think it fits with the facts.

“You didn’t mention that they could be dead,” said Isra.

There was some silence around the table.

“Elaborate way to kill someone, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Sorry,” said Isra. She hadn’t felt that squirming discomfort in far too long. Apparently it was a bad thing, to mention that the missing persons could just have been slaughtered.

“No, it’s possible, and should be considered,” said Ria. “Though I agree that I’d be surprised if this was all a ploy to kill hundreds of people. Normally murderers don’t get the consent of their victims.”

“You know,” said Verity. “It’s possible that she’s spoken to us.”

“Er, she has spoken to us,” said Mizuki. “Several times.”

“I’m going to roll my eyes so hard I strain something,” said Verity, and she did roll her eyes, but still seemed amused, flashing a grin. “Do you think that any of us would have touched that black orb?”

“Without knowin’ what it does?” asked Hannah. “Absolutely not.”

“If she explained it, I might,” said Alfric.

“I’d do it,” said Mizuki.

“No,” said Isra. She hadn’t gloated about being right about Cate, though she’d felt no small amount of satisfaction. That the dragons were off with Cate didn’t feel particularly good, but at least her instincts had been correct.

“Well at least you have some smart people in your party,” said Ria. “I forgot what it was like to be so young. I suppose when I was seventeen I might have touched such a thing without asking pointed questions first.”

“It might still work if people ask pointed questions first,” said Alfric. “We don’t really know. Also, I’m eighteen.”

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“I’m your mother,” said Ria. “I know how old you are. But when I was eighteen, I think I’d have known better.” She gave him a wide smile and a playful nudge.

There was a lot that they apparently knew through Alfric’s investigations the day before. That orb of Cate’s could erase memories, including a bit before and after the conversation, so it wasn’t just like it hadn’t happened, but they wouldn’t even remember her coming or going. Knowing what it did, Isra thought she’d never have done it.

“And Cate never said where she was takin’ him?” she asked.

“No,” said Alfric. “Just ‘someplace else’. The way she described it, it would be a community of like-minded people who wanted a new adventure. One that was permanent and would have some hardship, but a chance to prove themselves.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” said Hannah. “Why wouldn’t Kell ask after the specifics?”

“He did,” said Alfric. “I think, anyway. This is all secondhand through Penelope from my own observations. Cate refused to tell him though, which is no surprise given the lengths she went to in order to cloak what she was doing. If Kell or Lin —”

“Or your cousin Kali,” said Ria.

“Right,” said Alfric. He shifted in his seat, which from what Isra knew of him meant he was suppressing a need for clarification. “If they had known, then potentially the memory could be recovered, or it could be seen through watching the past.”

“Okay, but she might just be gone,” said Verity. “Right? This might have been the very last thing she did before going elsewhere.”

“That’s very much possible,” said Alfric with a nod. “But we’ll keep up the search for at least the next day, and from there, Penelope will keep searching with entads. If Cate sets foot back into this world … we won’t necessarily know, but there’s a good chance.”

When they broke from their entad-made breakfast, Isra was supposed to travel the world with the Commute Lute, going to places that Cate was, per her office, known to have gone. So far as everyone in Plenarch knew, Cate was still Seeker of Secrets, and if she had made her final exit, she hadn’t communicated that fact to her superiors or her staff. She had no guild, nor a party, no one to watch her.

But before Isra left, she found Verity, who apparently had little to do with the day.

“I’d offer to bring you with,” said Isra. “But we’d need some kind of storage for you, and I don’t think it would be all that fun.”

“Plus I would cramp your style,” said Verity with a small laugh.

“That too,” said Isra. “But with the lute, I should have more than enough time. This is no longer the low-hanging fruit. It’s an adventure with no real purpose.”

“I don’t really know what I’m going to do with myself,” said Verity.

“Explore the city?” asked Isra. “Go to the beach?”

“Maybe,” said Verity. “There’s something nagging at me. Do you think that Cate would have visited us?”

“Why would she?” asked Isra. “She knew that I smelled something off about her.”

“Literally?” asked Verity.

Isra frowned, thinking about that. “I don’t know. Everyone has their own smell. Usually no creature with a good sense of smell is close enough that I can smell. She smelled different, but she was different. City smell, for a start.”

Verity turned to look out the view from the house, which looked over the water. “Lin was a cleric, though not terribly accomplished. Kell was a promising young wizard. Kali was … disaffected, but maybe held some promise. Cate knew me. She knew I’d run away, that I had no one other than the four of you.”

“You’re wondering why she didn’t go after you?” asked Isra.

“No, I think she might have,” said Verity. “I want to know.”