I read the notice over and over again, my heart hammering and my breath caught in my throat. Failed. I had failed the quest. It was the first time I it had happened to me, and for a moment I glanced up at the sky through the dragon’s adamantine body, expecting to be struck down by a bolt of rainbow lightning, or to be whisked away into Xiournal’s strange space-station looking office. But nothing happened. A minute passed, and then two without reprisal and I was about to call out for Jorl and the others when a new prompt in grey glass popped up in front of my eyes. I flinched, thinking the Ascended dragon had waited for my caution to fade before striking, but it was another quest, the same as any other.

Assignment Received... Difficulty C+… Time Limit: 4 months, 12 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes.

Minimise civilian deaths, where possible.

Bonus Reward: Locate Anan Al’monhad.

Minimise civilian deaths? That was a pretty ominous mission, and given what I knew of the both the Risen Throne and the Multiplicitous Self, something that likely deserved more than a rating of C+ difficulty.

Not wanting to waste any more time, I opened my mouth to shout.

“Jorl! I just got word that the Multiplicitous Self has escaped!”

I caught a blur out of the corner of my eye, and the wall rippled as the Apex of the Crystal Drake stepped out of it, his normally jovial face hard and set.

“What do you mean, escaped?”

“That’s all I know. Can we go faster?”

“We can. It’ll hurt.”

The Apex did not wait for assent, he just sent out a pulse of intent, indicating to all present that they were going to experience some unpleasantness. As the wave of implicit communication passed, the clear stuff of the dragon’s body rose up to envelop me, and I had to assume the same was happening to my friends. As the crystal finished encasing me, I felt the world shift like I was being stepped on by a mountain, the pressure darkening my vision until, after only a few minutes, I simply passed out.

*

***

*

I woke to a clouded sky and the worst headache I had ever experienced, a thundering rhythm that pulsed in time with the shadows tunnelling my sight.

“Don’t move, you took a lot of damage, though less than the others.”

The words were muffled, but I recognised Darina’s voice as her face came into focus, the obscuring dimness retreating. I finally felt her hands on my chest as the headache faded sufficiently for me to feel the rest of my aching body.

“Oooow. Shit.” I summoned a healing pill into the hand opposite the young healer and with a groan of effort lifted it to my mouth, before stuffing it in my mouth and dry-swallowing it, before letting my arm flop back to the ground with a light thud.

It had hurt, a lot, but not as much as when I had ruptured my channels.

“Idiot, I said not to move. You had some muscle death from restricted blood flow.”

I chose not to say anything, deciding I should probably listen to my doctor. The effects of Darina’s healing, the pill and their multiplicative effect when combined with my own Lesser Regeneration soon began to force the pain from my body as well as my head, and after a half an hour, the diminutive apprentice backed off and told me I should be okay to sit up. Doing so with a groan, I saw my other companions sat with their backs pressed against tall stones in a wide circle, like Stone Henge if it was three times as large.

“I healed the others first, as they were in much worse shape. You’re lucky you heal as fast as you do; the others almost lost limbs.”

“Thanks, Darina. You’re a lifesaver. Sonja would be proud.”

Darina must have still been pretty concerned, as she did not even admonish me for referring to her master by her first name, without the title.

I staggered to my feet and walked with Darina over to the others, sitting down with a sigh as they greeted me.

“Everybody okay? Well, I mean, as okay as can be expected? Jorl said that would hurt, but damn.”

“With careful understatement, it did indeed hurt somewhat. Are you aware of the reason for the sudden requirement for speed?”

“Jorl didn’t tell you? Wait, where is Jorl?”

“The Ever Flowing was the only one of us awake on arrival, Nameless.”

Tora had a trail of dried blood running from her nose, over her chin and down her neck that she had apparently not realised was there yet. I almost got irritated at her calling me Nameless, but it did not carry the same bite it did when used by Kestin; less of an insult than it was a description. Or a lack of one. Turning my head, I raised my eyebrows at Darina in question, but she just stared at me blankly for a moment. It was then that I realised how tired she looked. Her face was pale, far paler than normal and she had deep, dark bags under her red-rimmed eyes. It struck me that if she had been awake, she had likely been constantly healing herself for however long we had been travelling, after which she had then healed all four of us.

“Darina, are you really alright? I know I said thank you already, but really, thank you. You must be almost out of Praxis.”

The exhausted woman waved me off stubbornly, taking a deep steadying breath and straightening her back.

“I’m fine.”

Darina sat, her words quickly proven false by a sudden sway, catching herself as she fell sideways.

Scrambling over, I helped her sit straight concern making me forget my rapidly fading pain.

“Hey, it’s okay to be drained after healing everyone, and that’s not even counting however long we’ve been traveling. Relax, sleep.”

“Two days. It took two days to get here once he sped up. He said he was sorry when we got here, but it would have taken longer to turn around, whatever that means. Then he vanished into a gateway like the one Walker brought you back through. Maybe I’ll take a short nap...”

I helped Darina lie down and she was asleep almost as soon as she was horizontal. Sitting back up, I looked around at the concerned faces and rubbed at my beard, thinking about what she had said. We had been on the eighth day when the quest failed, and he had been going slower so as not to injure us, but if I recalled, we were more than half-way through the journey at that point. It would have literally taken more time to go back and find help than to continue, given that the other Apexes would have scattered to the wind to in order to tend to their own tasks by that point.

I mentally kicked myself for putting myself forward to tag along; if I had not, Bo Ai’rong would have arrived well before the escape, though if Jorl had gone through a gate like the one Walker used, it was possible that the Risen Throne could have tunnelled in without ever actually being here, given their apparently ability to tunnel through reality. I recalled Walker saying the Multiplicitous Self was imprisoned in a demi-plane, but given the need to travel to that specific place, it seemed they did not think it possible to enter from elsewhere. Setting my self-recriminations aside, I turned my mental gaze forward; the past was the past and could not be changed. I would discover at some point how the feat was accomplished, and I could either sigh in relief or slap myself then. But until that time, I would move forward. Like lightning.

“If Jorl built a gate, I don’t think he’ll be back for a few days. Walker managed a second gate in a matter of hours, but that was under special circumstances – the world we were on was really energy dense. I’m pretty sure it normally takes a lot longer.”

“I have seen the Paladin use such gates, and it does indeed take days, or potentially weeks before it can be repeated.”

I nodded at Toria and looked around; when I woke, my attention had been somewhat occupied by the sky, and then the giant stone circle, but now that I was paying attention, I saw that we were at the bottom of a wide forested valley, surrounded on three sides by barren looking hills that rose high enough to be viewable above the normal looking trees surrounding the circle. I say normal looking, because these were the first trees that I had come across that looked significantly smaller than your average redwood. The ones I could see – those closest to the stones against which we rested - looked like some sort of oak; gnarled, twisted and ancient. Of course, it was impossible to know their exact age – age was something my new home made difficult to discern by its very nature, but if the world had been treated as a whole the way the Sha Forest had, then they were at least 10,000 years old, though that did beg the question of why they weren’t huge.

Dismissing the trees for the moment, I looked beyond them to the barren hills; they looked like moorland, or heath, which made sense, given the grey skies and trees. I was no longer capable of feeling cold, but I noticed that my friends were wearing their heavier clothing. I could not tell what time it was, as the sun was hidden behind the dense grey clouds, so I had no idea if it was perhaps morning and the area would become warmer, or whether this was normal and the night would be cooler.

I was considering pulling out the alchemical heating flask I still had from our trip to visit the phoenix – it has not been necessary once we actually made it to the Sha Forest, even when there was a distant rumble of thunder and rain began to pour around us in huge, frigid drops that seemed to come down in a sheet. Darina must have been very tired, as she did not wake up, even as the rest of us scrambled to our feet. Stooping to pick the apprentice up, I moved a short distance to stand beneath one of the massive overarching stones that my companions had taken shelter under. Even though megaliths were tall, they did not provide great protection, as wind began to throw the downpour at us from an angle, but it did keep some of it off as Reff and Riffa quickly erected a truly huge tent to protect us from the thrashing rain.

It did not take long to get the risi sized tent set up, and I quickly set Darina down inside one of them. Her robes were wet, but there was no way I was doing anything direct about that. Instead, I pulled the alchemical lamp out, added the activation liquid and set it down next to the unconscious apprentice, hoping the heat would dry her out.

For my part, through my hair and beard were wet, it seemed my shiny new robes did not just divest themselves of sweat, blood and other viscera, but also water, which was very convenient, as it left me mostly dry.

An hour or so passed, and I was growing drowsy from the heat in the tent – Reff and Riffa were engaged in low conversation with Toria, and I was just contemplating taking a nap when my Instinctive Precognition triggered. It was the feature that seemed to engage the least for me, that told me when I was about to do something truly stupid.

With a frown, I rubbed at my eyes and looked around to see if I could see anything wrong, but there did not seem to be any issues inside the tent. The rain was still drumming against the treated canvas, but I opened the flap and stepped back out into the torrent and looked around.

Generally, beasts avoided our group, as we were pretty powerful, meaning it would take a very strong Foundation or Pinnacle beast, or group, to be brave enough to attack us, but there was always the possibility that there was such a creature or group wandering around. I thought that Jorl would have warned us if it had been dangerous, but given the fact that he had been in something of a rush, and enough time had passed for thing to have moved in from outside his sensory range, I checked the tree line.

Spotting movement, a vague feeling of danger crept into me, like my Precognition was triggering on its lowest setting, and even before I made out who or what it was, I was yelling for the others.

Reff, Riffa and Toria popped out of the tent, one after the other at my yell and I pointed at the trees where a group of people had emerged. Totally a dozen or so, I recognised only one of them and I felt my eyes narrow, even as I saw Reff tensing out of the corner of my eye.

At the head of the group was V, my former torturer. A grim smile stretched across my face, because in that moment I knew something that he did not. The last time he and I had fought, I had not even been a peak Core stage cultivator, and my speed, even with my lightning urging me on was barely above that of one. But there and then? At my maximum output, I was faster than a peak Foundation stage cultivator.

Payback time.