March 28, 2026 — 1:38 am

Mizuki was excited, happy to have some kind of solid lead and a plan in place. Unfortunately, the plan involved a lot of waiting, and that wasn’t what Mizuki considered her forte.

She was two days out from starting wizard college, which she hadn’t prepared for at all with everything that had been going on, except to arrange long-range transport. This came in the form of either Isra, with the Commute Lute, or at more expense, the Packer’s Lute and the wardrobe. The problem was that the wardrobe was making them a good hundred rings a day on average, sometimes even more, and if Mizuki took it, there was a good chance they’d get none of that. Paying a hundred rings every day seemed like far too much. But the same could be said about the Commute Lute, which might help them set up a business. They weren’t doing that though, and Mizuki did kind of wonder why. They had money, which was part of it, but she almost felt like if someone was offering you that much money, you couldn’t not take it.

There were a lot of thoughts she wasn’t super comfortable with, which is why she was focusing on Cate, and that unfortunately needed some time to work, if it would.

“How long are we going to have to wait though?” asked Mizuki.

“Potentially a long time,” said Alfric. “And it’s very possible that she’s gone for good, or was spooked, and we’ll never see her again.”

“Yeah, but … she’s gotta come eventually, right?” asked Mizuki.

“We should also not be talking about it,” said Alfric.

“Fine, fine,” said Mizuki. “I mean — not at all?”

“In the garden stone, if you need to,” said Alfric. “Remote viewing is rare, but we’re dealing with the rare entads, and she has been in the house a few times, which she could have used to plant something.”

Mizuki picked her feet up off of the table in the living room, which had been cleaned up following the lute testing. The lutes themselves were largely inside Lutopia One, where they had ectad lighting and some quick shelves that had been moved from inside the garden stone. Lining up all the lutes gave her an almost aggressively domestic feeling, particularly after she’d helped Alfric to affix little labels to all of the entads. Of all their changing circumstances, a room filled with entads seemed like the best.

“Coming?” she asked, once the lute was in hand.

“Oh, you meant now?” asked Alfric. He grudgingly rose from the couch. “Fine, fine.”

Mizuki strummed the lute, and Alfric vanished into Lutopia One, then she strummed it again to get herself there.

“You know what we need?” asked Mizuki. “Chairs.”

“I’ll get the entad,” said Alfric, going to its place on the shelf. He took the oversized quill and scratched deep into his arm, writing something out. You had to press pretty hard, and it was a bit too painful. Mizuki was quite pleased to see an overstuffed red chair appear, and a second one soon followed it.

“For me?” asked Mizuki.

“Of course,” said Alfric.

“I would say that I can scratch my own chair, but I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your chair-ity,” said Mizuki.

“‘Chair-ity’,” sighed Alfric. “You know, I think lute testing broke your brain.”

“Can’t break what you don’t have,” smiled Mizuki. She looked at him. “You’re serious about not talking about the plan outside of a place like this?”

“Yes,” nodded Alfric. “I think Penelope’s was probably fine, but if what we want is for Cate to come, then we need to act more or less normal, which does mean that we can’t be sitting around tapping our feet and talking about how we’re basically just waiting for her.”

“We could have Verity send a letter,” said Mizuki. “Something to bait her?”

“What would that letter look like?” asked Alfric with a little laugh. “‘Hello Cate, I’ve been feeling awfully down, would you like to perhaps whisk me away somewhere?’”

“Well I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “We could do something. Because we don’t know, right? I mean, Cate might be gone for good, and even if she’s not, maybe Verity already turned her down. Right?”

“It’s very possible,” said Alfric. “And if Cate shows her face in Greater Plenarch, we’ll have some contingencies there. It’s better if she tries taking Verity though, because that allows us a path to the demiplane — or wherever it is.”

Mizuki sighed. “I want to do a dungeon, if we’re just going to be waiting around. That’s a normal thing we’d do, right?”

“Er,” said Alfric.

“Oh come on, please don’t replace Verity,” said Mizuki. “Please?”

“The plan was never to replace her, it was to run an experiment and see what kind of dungeon we get out of it,” said Alfric.

“Okay, can you do that in an undone day?” asked Mizuki.

“And spend an entire day of effort, with a full team, clearing a dungeon so that I get nothing but information out of it?” asked Alfric. He seemed offended.

“I mean, you wouldn’t have to remember it, right, if your mom or someone else just redid a day?” asked Mizuki. “And there are chrono services we could potentially pay for, so that it wouldn’t feel like you were auditioning someone to take her place. Musicians are very sensitive about that kind of thing.”

“That’s — yes, probably a better idea,” said Alfric. “I think the bigger issue is that if the dungeons are different then yes, it is her, and no, I don’t really want to get my skull caved in, or worse, see my friends dying in front of my eyes. I could maybe train myself to feel nothing about it, but that’s a big maybe, and I might ruin my mind before I was able to push past seeing that sort of thing.”

“I do want to save your mind,” said Mizuki. “And if we can pay other chronos for that, all the better.”

“You know, we don’t need to be in here for this kind of conversation,” said Alfric.

He shifted in his chair. The seat would disappear on its own pretty much as soon as they weren’t sitting on them, but the quill was a nice one for things that you didn’t need to set down or leave by themselves. It could only maintain three forms at a time, with some limits on mass and volume, and Mizuki was mildly surprised to find that she enjoyed hearing about those things. She’d always felt an affinity to Qymmos, and it was a good reminder of why that was.

“Fine, fine,” said Mizuki. “I guess we should get out just in case there’s word from Verity.”

“We’re likely going to be waiting a full week,” said Alfric. “Maybe more. There will be some logistical challenges if it happens when you’re in the middle of your studies. You’re sure you want to be a part of this?”

“A chance to go to some crazy new place that hundreds of people got disappeared to?” asked Mizuki. “Even if it’s just a demiplane, I’m in. I’ve never been to a demiplane.”

“I’ve been to a few,” said Alfric. “But it might not be a demiplane.”

“I’d also be up for an adventure on one of the moons,” said Mizuki.

“In the best case scenario, we don’t go anywhere at all,” said Alfric. “I just want to make that clear. And even if we do go somewhere, we’re almost certainly going to reset, which means you almost certainly won’t get to experience any of it.”

Mizuki threw her head back against the chair. “Why must you make everything so lame?”

“What we want from Cate is to capture her, get information from her, and get the people she took back, or at least have some understanding that they are, in fact, safe,” said Alfric. “What we don’t want is to go after her in single combat, or gods forbid, to kill her. In theory, we can place her under a citizen’s arrest. In practice, there’s no way to stop someone with a sufficiently powerful entad from just leaving unless you want to go at them with full force. We have to figure that she can leave at the speed of thought. That leaves pure immobilization, including mental immobilization, which is rare, especially without jumping through hoops. That goes double if it’s someone who’s aware, and triple if they’re expecting threats.”

“Which means no spoon to the back of the head is going to work,” said Mizuki.

“You never know,” said Alfric. “But especially if she knows that people are after her, then yes, I expect that it just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work on my mom.”

“Well, you’re right, we should go out,” said Mizuki. She hesitated. “And if we do go in with Verity, when it happens, we’re certain that our exit method will work?”

“No,” said Alfric. “Given that we don’t know where we’re going, we’re not certain.”

Mizuki frowned at him. Hannah had said that he was sometimes bad at being reassuring when that was clearly what someone needed, and Mizuki had defended him, but was now feeling like she shouldn’t have. They were supposed to have an escape hatch if they went out, a wizardly device that could go out from a demiplane but not in. It wouldn’t work if they weren’t in a demiplane, but if they were away too long, they would hopefully just reset. And if they got there, they would get their answers.

“We’ve got a lot of waiting around,” said Alfric. “A lot. You’re ready for that? And for minimal talking about the thing once we’re out?”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki with a sigh. “Let’s set in for the long haul, maybe I’ll help you with some woodworking or read through the wizard books some more.”

She wasn’t happy sitting around, nor with thinking too much about the future, but she resigned herself to put her mind toward other things. Hoping that Cate would pick up the bardic bait was likely going to take a long time.

It took two hours.

~~~~

Verity was meant to be brooding in the woods. She had taken to tending Isra’s garden instead though, which was a pleasant enough task. The garden had never been a terribly large or important part of Isra’s life, given that she could forage anything she wanted with ease, but there was a plot that she’d tended with her father, mostly to give them a wide variety of ready food throughout the growing season. According to Isra, her father had never said anything about his daughter being a druid, but he must have known, because any garden that Isra oversaw benefited mightily from her active interest.

With Isra largely at the house, the garden was going to seed, though less than it had any right to. There were weeds to rip out and parts of the plants to prune, though this late in summer, there was less of a point, and Verity wasn’t going to stay in the cabin forever. Still, it gave her something to do that wasn’t actually moping around, and she’d already gotten her practice in for the day.

She thought, briefly, about the conversation she’d already had with Cate, the one written in the book.

~~~~

“I love these people,” said Verity. “What Alfric said yesterday — he said that I was selfish.”

“And are you?” asked Cate.

“I don’t know,” said Verity. “I think I might be. I think it’s why Isra stopped loving me.”

Verity only had the record of the meeting from the book, but she could imagine how it had gone well enough, maybe even better than well enough, since she had, after all, lived it. She could presume the intonation of her own voice, and picture her saying these things. She had also spent some time with Cate, more than the others.

“Did she?” asked Cate.

“I don’t know,” Verity admitted. She imagined herself smoothing her dress. “I think that I caused problems between us by asking too much of her and not giving enough back.”

“How will she feel if you leave?” asked Cate. Verity imagined her imperious, gentle but firm, less like a cleric and more like a schoolteacher.

“She’ll be hurt,” said Verity. “I hope that she’ll be at least a bit put out. If she shrugged my disappearance off with casual indifference, that would wound me enormously. I don’t wish her pain, obviously, but in a few months, yes, I think she would get over it. The others will be hurt too, but the dungeons were never meant to be a permanent arrangement, and we’re running into stumbling blocks already, which might be caused by me.”

It was painful to read that. It was one thing to say that in her darkest hour she might abandon the team, but it was another to read herself saying that as the moment presented itself. It did make her seem selfish. It was selfish. Even if there were other meetings that she hadn’t seen, there was something deeply unlikeable about saying that you’d leave your friends behind.

“I won’t take you if you have reservations,” said Cate. Again, Verity read it as gentle, but there was no way or knowing without actually having the memory.

“Are there really people without reservations?” asked Verity. “People who say ‘yes, immediately, take me to some unknown place, leaving all my friends and family behind’?”

“As a matter of fact, there are,” said Cate. “Though I do prefer not to approach people at that level of desperation.”

“I do want to go,” said Verity. “You said there would be, ah, people for me to date?”

“Opportunities for courtship, yes,” said Cate.

“Other women around my own age,” said Verity. “Not too much older.”

“Twenty-eight of them,” said Cate. “You would make the twenty-ninth.”

This was the part of the conversation that Verity had felt the most despair over other people seeing. It was so base, so self-centered, and really did make her think about who she was that she was willing to express herself like that to a stranger. It was a sensible question though, if you were thinking about stranding yourself with some unknown number of people.

It was as much as they had about firm numbers, since Cate hadn’t even said as much to Kell, who hadn’t asked about eligible women. It was a high number, and implied a population in the thousands, but Hannah had pointed out that things weren’t always so rosy for women and men with an ‘affinity for Garos’, not in small towns where their prospects would be slim, and all the more so when they were young. It was one of the reasons that they had the church of Garos, but as Hannah was quick to point out, there wasn’t always something for the church to do.

“The time is approaching,” said Cate. “When we go, it will be in secrecy, largely to protect me, and the people who are already there.”

“You need me to be ready,” said Verity. “But … I’m not sure I will be. Sorry.”

“I’m a very patient yet persistent individual,” said Cate. Verity imagined a smile. “I’ll stop by, and we can talk, from time to time. Now, your hand upon the orb, so we leave no trace of this conversation behind.”

And then that was more or less it. The conversation had been brief, perhaps only to plant the idea, or to reinforce it the next time Cate came back with that same orb.

~~~~

Cate came slowly, walking through the woods, the branches somehow not snagging at her fine, flowing red robes. Verity bolted up in surprise, then second-guessed that reaction, then thought that no, her natural reaction should be to be surprised. She wiped her hands on her apron, then took it off, folding it briefly. Under the cover of the apron, she twisted the ring on her finger, which was the signal for the others. Everything would be taken care of, they had assured her.

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“Cate,” said Verity, backing away slightly, almost involuntary.

“Verity,” replied Cate. “Am I intruding?”

Verity looked at the garden. “No, not at all. I’m just — how did you know where I would be?”

Cate gave a sly smile. “I was told, as a matter of fact.”

From within her robes, she drew the black orb that Verity had heard quite a bit about but never seen — except that she had, those memories had just been locked away.

“Place your hand on the orb, please,” said Cate.

Verity stared at it for a moment. “What will happen?”

“Nothing that will harm you,” said Cate. “Please, it’s important, and time is of the essence.”

Verity hesitated, then reached out.

It wasn’t a rush of memories, just an awareness that memories were there, and she could feel her demeanor change as she found a new understanding of where she stood with Cate. She had known there’d been more than one meeting, but she hadn’t counted on just how many there had been, seven in total, with this being the eighth. Cate had made the offer several times, but it wasn’t just about the offer, they had talked with each other a few times, notably after the concert, when they’d spoken together for a full hour. Verity had done most of the talking. It had, strangely, been in the house, before Verity had moved into the cabin. The timing was, in retrospect, suspect.

And Verity had said that she would come on the grand new adventure, but she’d also said that she wouldn’t, which she felt some small amount of relief about. That had been the last time they’d met, not long after Cate had bought the herb dragons.

“You’ve come to see if my answer has changed,” said Verity, letting out a breath.

“I have,” said Cate.

“Kell and Lin, that was you,” said Verity. They had already discussed the other disappearances before those two, and the memory of that sat unfamiliar in Verity’s mind.

“It was,” said Cate. She gave a gentle smile. “I kicked the hornet’s nest with them, it seems. My time in Inter draws to a close.”

“But you came for me,” said Verity. She let out a breath. “To see if I would decide differently.”

“Not just for you,” said Cate. “There are a few others. If you have no interest, I’ll be going on my way, and that will be that. You’ll keep your memories, and the mask will fall from my face. Everyone will know what I’ve done, which will enrage some and provide solace to others.”