Chapter 138 – Overguard

Being ‘jarred’ was risky, but Ria was no stranger to risk. She had gotten into sticky situations before, and it had always worked out, which she knew was a dangerous thing, because it built up confidence that nothing could go wrong, or that every situation was recoverable. Harmon hadn’t liked the plan, but he knew her well enough to know that argument would just make her dig her heels in unless he could come up with something she hadn’t already considered.

When she came back to life, she was armed and ready, wearing a modified version of her standard dungeoneering loadout. There were, she wagered, a very limited number of people in the world who could have gotten the jump on her, and most of them were her friends. Still, being unjarred meant coming into an unknown situation, and it was possible that she’d be immediately facing down trained adversaries who were ready and waiting to slit her throat — though if they wanted her dead, and were already deep into her extradimensional space, all they would have to do was to smash the jars.

When she came to, there was no threat, only five children looking at her expectantly, as though she was the danger. She lowered the two force fields, let her sword fall to her side, and undilated time down to normal, so they wouldn’t just see her as a blur of motion. She checked her diagnostic entads, largely concerned with the time, and was mildly shocked to see that it had been four days. The shock faded fast though, because it wasn’t the sort of thing that was good to dwell on. Though she didn’t need diagnostics for it, she was pleased to note that she wasn’t dead.

“We’re safe,” said Alfric. “For now.”

“It’s my first time through,” said Ria. “Yours as well?”

Alfric nodded.

“Good, then we don’t need to deal with disclosure,” said Ria with a smile. “We’re five minutes off from the witching hour. That’s good, it means there’s much less of a chance that we’ll be retroactively ambushed.” She looked at Verity. “How has it been?”

“Four days,” said Verity, swallowing.

“No, not how long, I know it’s been four days, how has it been?” she asked. “You’ve been treated well?”

“Very well,” said Verity. She seemed self-conscious. “Better than ever before in my life.”

Ria regarded her. She was in different clothes, and they seemed like new clothes, a blouse with a dark blue vest and a fair amount of cleavage with a lighter skirt, slit up the side. She was clean and styled, in spite of the lateness, and it was fairly clear that the girl hadn’t suffered much if any hardship.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like for you to relate the events of the last few days,” said Ria. “Use as much detail as you can, particularly about the layout.”

This took some time, and Ria stayed silent for as much of it as possible, which helped encourage the other children to stay silent as well. Verity started somewhat guarded and uncertain, but grew more enthusiastic as time went on, letting her enjoyment of the place seep into her descriptions of the places and people. When she got to their revival, some of that enthusiasm dampened. She had done well, overall, Ria thought, not giving anything away, pulling them at the right time and place, being cautious about what she revealed. They were late, but they appeared to have maintained secrecy. Verity had been careful to use the book a few times, for the sake of making it look like it was just an entad that she’d brought along for storage.

Ria, of course, had some pointed questions. “Have you made contact with anyone?”

“I saw Lin,” said Verity. “There’s been no sign of Kell, but I haven’t found a way to ask that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Kali lives in the palace, but I didn’t speak with her.”

“Not asking after someone you personally knew could arouse suspicion,” said Ria. “But I don’t fault you, you were never trained as a spy.”

“What are we doing now?” asked Alfric, turning toward her.

“Escaping, to prove it can be done and get the details on what’s been happening in the last four days,” said Ria. “Then I’ll reset and we’ll get to work.”

“We want to burn a whole day on that?” asked Mizuki.

“Want to?” asked Ria. “No. Need to? Yes. I need to assure Alfric’s father that I’m alive and have things handled.”

“Alright,” nodded Alfric. “And we shouldn’t burn a day with you in here and Verity on the outside?”

Ria hesitated. “An entire day where I do nothing but get a report from her?” asked Ria. “I … can see the sense in it. But no, I don’t think that level of caution is necessary. We also need to be cautious of the intricacies of the priority system. If Cate has set up methods for it, she might be able to send a message back.” She let out a breath. Alfric could seem so mature sometimes, in ways that made him hard for her to relate to. She worried that he’d been raised wrong, but with six children, she’d learned that they were simply people with their own personalities. It was hard, sometimes, to see that.

“Should we go with you?” asked Alfric.

“What would be best would be for the four of you to stay in here, saying nothing, possibly re-jarred,” said Ria. She turned to Verity. “And you should go back out, as though nothing had happened.”

“Alright,” said Verity. “I’ll do that now. I need my sleep anyway.” She picked up the lute and hesitated. “Shall I strum you out?”

“Now, please,” said Ria. She looked at Alfric though. “If you’re bored, jar yourself.” She turned back to Verity. “And if a day passes and for whatever reason I’m not back, you unjar them, then all of you flee. Leave the rest of these people behind.”

She hoped that the children would deal with it appropriately, if it came to that. She trusted Alfric, at least.

They unnested themselves from the various extradimensional spaces, and as soon as she was on the ‘ground floor’ of the demiplane, Ria began using the magical device that had been prepared for them. She had tested it three times before they’d put this plan into motion, using a friend’s demiplane, and she prayed that it would work here — a prayer to Kesbin, for help with escape. She was in the demiplane itself for only moments, the dark bedroom that apparently now belonged to Verity, and then she was in the woods, still whole. She’d worried that she would end up in the crystal cage Verity had described, which would be a minor disaster, but the device worked as advertised, pushing her through the barrier between worlds.

She ended up somewhere in Tarbin, her map told her, but it was the work of a moment to make her way back to Dondrian, teleporting and then leaving an entad behind to teleport her a second time, more permanently.

Harmon was waiting for her.

“We’re safe,” said Ria.

“It’s my second time through,” said Harmon. He hesitated for a moment, then wrapped her in a hug. There was a tension to him that didn’t seem to go away, even as their embrace went on.

“Let me have it,” said Ria.

“The argument, or the facts?” he asked.

“The facts first, please,” said Ria.

“A day after picking up Verity, the very last thing that Cate did was to put out information and release memories,” said Harmon. “She claims to have relocated — she never says that there’s a demiplane, but it’s more or less the only option that makes sense — along with roughly a thousand people who went of their own free will. Because she released memories en masse, we also know of a number of people who she approached that said no, and their statements are still being collected and collated. I imagine that this was her plan all along, but it means that there’s very unlikely to be much national response, especially given that most of the people she invited to her demiplane were relative outcasts, disconnected from their communities in some way. So far as we know, she hasn’t stepped foot out of her demiplane since then.”

“So it’s up to me to dig up the dirt,” said Ria.

Harmon had a pronounced frown. “The argument was about whether you should extract,” he replied. “You felt that you needed to stay, to gather information, to confront this woman, and I argued that you were pursuing risk and seeking thrills in a way that I had hoped you were over. I’m extremely thankful that you were able to get out, and that does give you a cushion of safety, but this woman is an unknown.”

“You think that I couldn’t best her in single combat?” asked Ria. She was keeping the levity in her voice, though Harmon was doing his best to be serious. That was how it went sometimes. She thought that Alfric likely got his seriousness from his father.

“I think, first, that it wouldn’t necessarily be single combat, especially if it’s as you fear and Cate is setting herself up as a benevolent dictator,” said Harmon. This was the sort of thing that Ria didn’t particularly like, when someone repeated back words you’d never said. She supposed that it was accurate to her feelings, but it still grated. “Second, I think there’s a legitimate chance that Cate herself could beat you. She has a ‘living’ demiplane, which as described to me has workable weather, permeable borders, and who knows what else. She has this, and has been able to keep it quiet. That means she likely has other unknown powers. This is aside from whatever enormous entad cache she’s got. Incidentally — and it may mean nothing — that table you described to me matches one that was stolen seventy years ago.”

Ria frowned. “We did entad tracing then?” she asked.

“We’re still doing it,” said Harmon. “As best we can, anyway.”

“Hrm,” said Ria.

“Did you want to have the actual argument?” asked Harmon. “About why it might be best for you to simply leave?”

“Kali is, by some measure, my niece,” said Ria. “Family matters.”

“That’s weak and you know it,” said Harmon. “It’s your sense of justice, and more than that, your sense of adventure.” He sighed. “We really don’t need to have the argument, because you decided that you would do your own thing, and I let you know that I would do my part in shoring you up, even if I didn’t like it.”

“Thank you,” said Ria. She kissed him, going up on her toes to get the extra inch of height. “I’m spending the day out here, to gather as much as I can, then going back in for another time through, this one to gather information on that end.” She paused. “The children are well?”

Harmon nodded. “They’re mostly grown. You going off to do a dungeon isn’t the most shocking thing in the world to them.”

She hadn’t wanted to lie to the children, but she also hadn’t wanted to have five teenaged — or near teenaged — people who could potentially leak information. She would tell them later, of course, but lying to children was no way to engender trust.

“Alright,” said Ria. “Then let’s get to the task of finding out what we can.”

~~~~

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” said Ria. “What we do know is that she’s hiding something. There’s prior history to this place, and the ‘living’ demiplane needs to be explored. Unfortunately, the best method of exploration would be to have us go out, but the minute we step out there, there’s a good chance that we get detected. I don’t just mean remote viewing, I mean census-like entads, which there’s a good chance she’d have acquired, given she’s acquired so much else.” She turned to Verity. “Today, I’m going out. It’s going to be dangerous, and late in the day, but your job is to do the day as normally as you can. Be a model citizen. Can you do that?”

Verity nodded.

“Good,” said Ria. “Then we burn the day on this, we wait, and we probe.”

The waiting was difficult, especially with the children. They weren’t actually children, Ria knew that, but she was in her late forties, and the oldest of her boys was twenty-two. He’d been talking about children with his pactmate — they’d been living together for almost six years now — but she thought once she was a grandmother maybe her view on what a ‘child’ meant would change. Or maybe they would always be children in her mind.

“Talk to me about your loadout,” said Mizuki. “Unless you’ve already told me?”

Mizuki liked her, and in the time Ria had been around the party, it had been Mizuki that had come to her most often, maybe because the girl was without her own mother. They had more than a few conversations, many of which hadn’t risen to the level of requiring disclosure when the day had been undone. There was a viciousness and violence to Mizuki that Ria liked, and if the girl had been a chrononaut, she’d have made a perfect match for Alfric so they could temper each other’s impulses. Alfric’s pact situation was a complicated one, and she wanted to get it settled one way or another, mostly so it wouldn’t be hanging over his head. At eighteen, he wasn’t yet thinking about children, but in her opinion, it was best to have them early.

“Certainly,” said Ria, smiling at her.

This took the better part of two hours, which had a lot to do with the number of questions that Mizuki asked. She was very curious, and also seemed to have a desire to touch things, which wasn’t a particularly good instinct when dealing with a high-elevation dungeoneer’s things. Ria had ten swords in her standard rotation, all kept in extradimensional space and ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice, three sets of armor she could rotate through and a fourth set that could be worn beneath the other three, and more ‘trinkets’ than almost anyone she knew. From experience, she wasn’t invulnerable, but it was as close as she could reasonably be.

“Entads are funny,” Ria explained. “It’s quite rare for there to be complete immunity to something, but not at all uncommon for that limit to be quite high, high enough that you wouldn’t normally need to worry about it. Sometimes entad sellers will shorthand it and say ‘this will make you immune to heat’ when what they mean is that you can safely dip your hand in molten steel, never contemplating that you’ll be fighting monsters so hot that they burn the air itself.”

“So you run it past a cleric of Qymmos?” asked Mizuki.

“Ideally, yes,” said Ria. “Not personally, since I have a counterparty for that sort of thing, but yes, Terra is my minder, he deals with all that sort of thing.”

“So are you immune to fire?” asked Mizuki.

“Complete fire immunity eludes me,” said Ria with a sigh. “But yes, I can withstand temperatures hot enough to flash-boil steel. I do have a complete immunity to acid though, which is neutralized on contact with me or anything I’m wearing, and likewise electrical attacks get stored in an internal reservoir to be used at my leisure.” The list of defenses was quite long.

“Wow,” said Mizuki. “Is there any possible way that I can see you in action?”

Ria laughed. “Only in dungeons, I’m afraid, or on undone days.”

“Undone days?” asked Mizuki.

“All out sparring,” said Ria. “Unfortunately, you mostly remember the losses rather than the wins.”

“You fight people?” asked Mizuki.

“High-elevation dungeoneers,” Ria replied. “And yes, I do. Mostly other chrononauts though, which is a safer display of power.”

“Safer in a ‘they will come for you at the witching hour’ kind of way?” asked Mizuki.

Ria raised an eyebrow. “Alfric’s been telling you our stories?”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “It’s important for him, I think, so I try to listen.”

Ria liked Mizuki, even though she was a bit like an overeager puppy dog. Though Mizuki did eventually drift back over to the others, there was a sense in which Mizuki was clearly a fan, which wasn’t entirely the relationship Ria wanted to have with Alfric’s party.

They slept in what the children had dubbed ‘Lutopia One’, in beds that Alfric had apparently made by hand. She hadn’t known that he’d taken up woodworking, and felt a pang of loneliness that he hadn’t shared it with her.

They ate food made by Ria’s entads, a selection of exotic fruits and meats, exotic not in the sense that they were from another land, but in that they had never existed except in the dreams of the entad. All of it was safe, and most of it was delicious, but it gave a feeling of strangeness that Ria normally liked. You couldn’t quite place the taste of anything, and sometimes the meat seemed to have been cooked with strange spices, which meant that there were layers of strangeness.

Verity returned to them after what felt like an enormous amount of time, but was almost exactly appropriate given what Ria’s timekeeping was telling her.

“How was the day?” asked Alfric.

“Pleasant,” said Verity. She seemed intensely uncomfortable, beneath the blank face she kept. “I saw Kell. Apparently he’d been out in what they call the Wildlands, the places beyond the permeable border.”

“Doing what?” asked Alfric.

“Exploring,” said Verity. “Mapping.” She shrugged. “Is this important? I did ask questions, but he didn’t seem to want to talk with me, and I didn’t want to seem overeager.”

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “There’s a chance it might be important. If this is a ‘living’ demiplane, that might be a vital distinction.”

“It wouldn’t change that she picked these people up under such poor circumstances,” said Ria.

“He didn’t seem surprised to see me,” said Verity. “He was pleasant, if a bit curt.” She glanced at Mizuki.

“What?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know,” said Verity. “He didn’t ask about you, and I’d thought that he might want to. But I’m glad that he didn’t ask, because I would need to lie.”

“The coast is clear?” asked Ria. “I should remind you all that this is going to be an undone day, so if there’s something you want reported back to yourself, you should tell me now.”

“Oh no,” said Mizuki. “You’re going to have to explain your loadout again.”

“It was my pleasure, I don’t mind doing it twice,” smiled Ria. She looked around. “Anyone else?”

“Stay safe,” said Alfric.

“She’s immune to fire,” said Mizuki.

“I’ll be safe,” said Ria.

And with that, she had Verity strum her out. The children would stay in there until the witching hour, which was for the best.

Night had fallen over the demiplane, and the irregular grid of stars above were shining. Most of the houses were unlit, and Ria looked around for a moment before cloaking herself. She didn’t have all that much for infiltration, just a pen that made her blend into shadows, a gauntlet that made her silent and impossible for wizards or sorcerers to view by magic, and a necklace that made people forget about her if they were within ten to a hundred yards of her. A few of those had been borrowed from the family stash. Harmon had true invisibility and incorporeality, but those were from entads bound to him.

Verity had left the door open, and Ria slipped out into the small town.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She rose into the air, surveying the demiplane, intensely worried that she would be seen or found. She had nothing to guard her from a pseudo-census entad, or from other entad surveillance. Entads were notorious for that sort of thing: they interacted with each other often, but it was through the medium of the world, and if you wanted to not be counted as a person for some entad that was looking for you, virtually the only way to do that was to not be a person.

There was the village, where the lights were slowly winking out, and the palace, which was still a blaze of illumination, including a grand fire in the courtyard, where people were dancing and merry-making, their music and chatter floating easily through the empty air. The courtyard was situated within the mountain, in a sort of caldera, the holes poked through the rock providing views of a large, sheltered park which the courtyard was a part of.

Beyond, there was wilderness, true wilderness, rambling forests and rushing rivers that seemed to have been completely untouched by human hands, or touched so long ago that there was no trace of the last fingerprints of civilization. It was beautiful, in the way that Ria always found nature to be beautiful, unspoilt, or having regrown from spoil. She saw animals among the woods, but enhanced senses were enough to identify them as owls, deer, badgers, foxes, nothing terribly unusual by the standards of Inter’s biosphere.

More than a mile away from the palace, there was a ruined tower, and Ria swept toward it, looking for answers, if there were any answers to be found anywhere. Harmon thought that this was all for nothing, that perhaps Cate really had been setting up a paradise. This could be nothing more than that, paradise, though Ria had a healthy skepticism of anyone who organized their own planned community away from the oversight of others. Cate could be faulted for the secrecy with which it was done, for the ways in which proper emigration proceedings had not been followed, for the months during which the families of the disappeared had worried, but it was very possible that there was no other fault. From everything that Verity had said, there was no real reason for anyone to leave, aside from homesickness.

The tower had been made of stone and was half-melted, the rocks heated so much that a few of them had exploded from water in tiny crevices. The stones which had been put in place with mortar had merged together as they grew pliable in the heat. It was clear there was nothing to learn here — it was too burnt, too old — but perhaps later on it might be possible to come back and watch the past. Whatever had happened, it had been a long time ago.

Ria heard the fluttering of cloth before she had eyes on Cate. The other woman was flying through the air, effortless and serene, exactly in the direction of the ruined tower.