“You expect me to stay in a tent with all these people?” a nobleman asked Jason.
“You were in a tent during the expedition,” Jason said.
“A private magical tent! This is just a tarp with poles, and as for what you generously describe as beds—”
“Listen, mate, you’ve got three options. Option one is taking the accommodation and shutting your damn mouth. Option two is you sod off into the desert and find your own way home. Option three is you hang about making a nuisance of yourself and your mouth gets shut for you.”
“You think you can treat me like this? You have no idea who you’re—”
“Fellas!” Jason called out loudly, over the top of the nobleman. “We’ve got another option three.”
A pair of adventurers came into the tent, their bronze-rank auras visibly impacting the nobleman, who they led away. After a very thorough talking to, he would be placed with the other troublemakers in an isolated group of tents with people watching over them.
Rufus and Gary were sent back with the other bronze-rankers Danielle deemed unreliable. Gary gave a brief explanation of Farrah’s absence before Jason sent the pair to the healers for further treatment. Afterwards Jason was sleepwalking through his duties in a daze until Vincent had someone take his place. Suddenly free, Jason went looking for Gary and Rufus.
He found them in the dormitory tents, sent there after their healing was completed. Rufus sat on a cot bunk, staring blankly into nowhere. He wasn’t alone. Everyone in that tent had lost friends or family. It was a cluster of misery and shock.
Jason sat next to Rufus, not saying a word as Gary told the story in detail. Afterward, the three sat in silence for a long time, other adventurers bustling around them. Finally, Jason stood up, patted Rufus on the shoulder and went back to work.
Emir and his people quickly rounded up the scattered adventurers. Even the five who couldn’t be tracked were recovered in short order, found so badly injured that their auras barely registered, to even silver-rank senses. The search teams stumbled across all five while tracking the others.
Emir watched Thalia fussing over Thadwick. He was still unconscious after being healed and she was arranging Cassandra to take him back through the portal. Walking back into the command tent, Danielle was already present. There was a troubled frown on her face.
“Something the matter?” Emir asked. “Beyond the obvious, I mean.”
“It was too easy,” Danielle said. “Our search teams found all five without even looking. That makes the back of my neck itch.”
“You think they were left for us?”
“How often does an adventurer’s aura shift so much their tracker doesn’t work?”
“I don’t know,” Emir said. “I’ve heard of it happening after intense trauma, and you saw the condition they were in.”
“Have you seen it before?”
“No.”
“You haven’t seen it once, and we have five at the same time?”
“It does sound suspicious when you say it out loud. We can have the Magic Society examine them.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Danielle said. “Their families will resist. If something has been done to them, their families will want to quietly handle it. Letting the Magic Society look into it takes control out of their hands.”
“That’s incredibly short-sighted.”
“Welcome to the politics of Greenstone.”
“What about the one from your family?”
“Once we return to Greenstone, I’ll use a speaking chamber to talk to his parents. They should have no priority beyond what’s best for their son. The problem is the director of Greenstone’s Magic Society branch. He’ll definitely come down on the side of the families, to the point of refusing to have any of them examined.”
“That’s not good.”
“No,” Danielle said. “We may have to have Jonah examined ourselves and go from there.”
“I have trouble believing people would choose ignorance. I would have thought they would want to know if something has been done to their family members. Perhaps we can convince them of that.”
“Have you not met people?” Danielle asked. “We love choosing ignorance. This is not the time to start a fight over it. Right now, everyone has lost people. It won’t pay to poke at raw wounds.”
“Then the best we can do for now is keep an eye on them. In the meantime, we have more work to do.”
Danielle nodded. Their original task was to investigate what was going wrong with the astral space. What they had found inside made finding the truth all the more important. She had tasked Emir with fetching back the scattered adventurers while she reorganised the expedition. The group was pared down to its best and reinforced by Emir’s people, all of whom were not only capable, but experienced in exploring unusual environments.
With the missing adventurers retrieved, there were now teams thoroughly sweeping the islands. They found regular traces of the enemy’s activities, bringing back various magical paraphernalia from abandoned work sites. It was quickly becoming evident that their enemy had been occupying the astral space for months, if not years. After the battle with the expedition, however, all signs pointed to a rapid withdrawal. Every site they found showed signs of immediate evacuation.
“Thank you for this,” Cassandra said, squeezing Jason’s hand. He had organised a separate tent for the five adventurers whose tracking had failed. They were all restored to health, but would not wake for some time.
“The least I can do,” he said, giving her a tired smile. “Not the reunion I was expecting.”
“I need to get back,” Cassandra told him. “There’s still work to do.”
He nodded, looking around the bustling camp. There were over a hundred people now, many of whom seemed to feel like they should be in charge of it. His early, stop-gap measures were being overrun by sheer numbers and he could no longer shield Vincent from the pressure.
“There’s work enough here, too,” he said.
“I heard about your friend,” she told him. “I didn’t know her well, but I’m sorry. Are you doing alright?”
“No, but are any of us? We all lost friends. I’ll see you again when this is all done.”
The edges of the astral space were marked by a rainbow-coloured void of chaotic energy, radiating a powerful aura that gave even Emir pause. The astral space, while certainly vast, turned out to be only a fraction of the size of the desert. Even so, there were hundreds of islands, of which the teams could thoroughly search around a dozen each day.
The enemy had fled, leaving most of their constructed army to harry pursuing forces. There were also ordinary monsters to contend with, but neither posed a real threat to the powerful search teams.
The enemy leadership themselves fled through various apertures. The teams followed them through, usually finding they had caused chaos on the other side before vanishing into various areas of the desert. Not all managed to escape, however, and the teams managed to capture two of the enemy leaders. Like the others they had seen, under the robes they were horrifying fusions of steel and flesh. The two leaders gave up no information, suiciding in explosive fashion on being caught.
Emir increased his personal participation in the search, hoping his gold-rank power would let him take someone alive. He approached an enemy camp alone, his aura restrained as his senses spread out. It had been a major encampment, once, with cleared land and wooden huts. Now it was mostly deserted; Emir sensed only one living aura and a plethora of constructs.
Emir closed in on the camp through the thick forest, finally close enough to take a look. He saw the one robed figure packing tools into a dimensional bag, surrounded by artificial guardians. Watching from hiding, Emir held an open suppression collar in one hand and a conjured staff in the other. The staff had a black, stone shaft with golden script running down it and golden caps at each end.