Russ turned to his daughter, obviously puzzled. “What’s wrong with it?”

Rissa took a gulp of air and tried to stop laughing. “It’s a translation.” After another gulp, she seemed to have it more or less under control. “I bet it was originally something like “each time a Seer is born, a Child of Time is born.”

Russ frowned. “How is that different?”

Rissa was still grinning broadly, but she was no longer gasping from laughter. “There’s more than one way to read it! Each Seer is a Child of Time, or could be. That’s what’s so funny. We’ve been looking outside ourselves, trying to find One True Match, when all along we already had what we were looking for, only it was hidden from us! Look at what’s happening to Mom, something’s changing what she thinks she’s Seen. If that happened to all of us, we never had to be fixed in Time! Maybe we never were! We were being fooled.”

“Does that mean that I don’t need to buy one of these?”Aki sounded hopeful.

Serenity shook his head and sighed. “No. If Rissa’s right, maybe there’s another solution, but maybe not too. A Child of Time is the only one we know about. I hope she’s right; it’d mean we can give it to the affected person and won’t have to somehow match them with someone who will stay with them.” He paused, struck by a sudden concern. Had he really broken it for Rissa or was it just suppressed when he was nearby? “Rissa? Have you had any issues when I wasn’t with you? Either when I was just away or when I was on Tzintkra?”

“Uhh.” Rissa’s frown flipped as she tried to think of a way to answer the question. “I don’t think so? But would I know? I hid in my house the entire time you were gone. It was. Huh. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t much like me, was it? So maybe. I don’t think it’s affected me since you got back.”

Rissa tapped her finger on her lip. “I might not be the best person to ask, though. When we were in the Tutorial, when I gave you mana, you set up a link between us. Maybe that’s protecting me? At least when we’re close enough?”

It was possible, but if that was true it meant Rissa was still cursed. What would happen if he got too far away again? Or even when he went to the Tutorial? “I wasn’t able to find a curse on you. Then again, I never saw it at all and I certainly never intentionally broke it. If it’s just been hiding from me then maybe it’s still there.” The thought made Serenity sick to his stomach, even though he didn’t exactly have a stomach anymore - at least, not an ordinary one.

Rissa looked at Aki’s crystal. “How expensive is it? The second one, that is, since it’s the one I could take without becoming a monster tied to the dungeon.”

“The number doesn’t matter. I can afford the unlock, but that’s all. That’s why it’s designated an extreme rarity reward. If I make it anything more common than that or deliberately spawn it, it has a tremendous cost.” Aki gave an audible sigh before continuing. “There are some ways to make things cheaper. The top two don’t look like they’re usable for this. One of the easiest, limiting who can use it, has already been done. The next best is to have someone make it; I can provide materials a lot cheaper than I can spawn the item.”

“Will that even work for this? I know we don’t have any monsters that can make things, but even with the crafting area, I wouldn’t know where to start.” Raz frowned. “What’s the next option?”

“I don’t think it would work for this. It’s similar to what the Voice calls a Skill Seed, and I don’t think anyone knows how to make them. It looks like there’s another option for this, sort of the opposite of the last one. Someone provides the materials while I manage the matrix. It’s a lot like a spawn, but all I have to do is rearrange the materials; it’s expensive, but far less so than if I do it all. It looks like the material I need is Time-Affined Essence drawn from a Child of Time. It says mana can substitute for it, but at a terrible ratio. So in order to make one at anything approaching a cost a dungeon could pay, you have to already have a Child of Time.”

Aki was wrong about Skill Seeds. Serenity knew that there were people who could make them; he’d simply never heard of anyone below Tier Twenty who could, and even then, it was only for low-grade Skills. Better Skill Seeds could be made by higher-Tier people, but that didn’t make them affordable for any but the wealthiest.

Serenity was fairly confident that even the people who could make Skill Seeds had to have the Skill available in some way. The fact that she could make this without it even at an unaffordable price was a huge advantage of being a dungeon.

“I can provide the Essence,” Serenity offered. “Can it be done in stages if I don’t have enough?”

“It can,” Aki confirmed. “In fact, it’s set up to be done that way. It looks like it assumes most will use mana, which starts at a cost of hundreds of thousands of mana, depending on the mana density. There’s leakage and it gets worse the closer you are to the end.”

Serenity blanched. He had a lot of mana, but hundreds of thousands wasn’t going to be fast, even if he could refill it quickly at a ley line. Simply applying an Affinity to that much mana would take quite a while, and draining his mana repeatedly might have consequences as well. Aki had said it was much more expensive in mana than essence, hadn’t she? “How bad is it if I can provide Essence?”

“Mm.” Aki sounded distracted. She must be looking through the information. “At least a hundred times less. It looks like the projected range is five to twenty thousand Essence for a Tier One Essence Seed. It has to be matched in Tier to the person using it. Tier Two costs twice as much as Tier One, but with a higher variation and higher top end. Oh now that’s interesting. If the person that will be using it is present when it’s made, the cost can be reduced by up to half depending on where they are in the Tier. It looks like you spend a little on turning it to them, but the added efficiency of the tuning can - oh that’s not good.”

Serenity held himself back from asking “What?” but Raz, Russ, and Katya didn’t.

“There’s a note at the very end of the Cost section. Externally-imposed Fates can increase the cost based on the Fate imposed, and that the additional cost is unrelated to the Tier of the trait recipient. It is recommended to tune the Skill to ensure proper Gate neutralization.”

It was clear Aki was reading directly from whatever information the Voice gave her.

“It sounds like our options are to try this or to hunt down whoever created the curse. This sounds expensive but still more possible.” Serenity took in a deep breath then let it out. “May as well buy the unlock and we can start, Aki.”

“I already did. That’s where I got the cost information; discounts and tiny details are usually not in the top-level stuff before you buy the unlock.” A strange object that seemed to be made of bent metallic rods appeared in front of Serenity; it almost looked like a strange flower. Perhaps a candle-holder? If so, it was for a candle that was larger at the top than the bottom. “The unlock for the accumulator was cheap, but don’t expect me to be providing anything else that can be taken out of the dungeon for several days. Keeping the plants appropriately solid so the non-dungeon monsters can eat them and not starve is going to take most of what reserve I have left, and that’s generally minimal.”

“I’m guessing this is the accumulator. Where do I add the Essence?” Serenity spun it and noticed that it seemed to be symmetrical, with six identical sides, though it was based around curves instead of the lines of a star.

“I don’t know; it doesn’t say. Try it and find out?” Aki wasn’t helpful.

Serenity shook his head and tugged on his Essence. He wasn’t good with it, but adding an Affinity was a fairly simple exercise. It was one of the first things to get good at with mana; surely Essence was the same. It would be good practice. “Rissa? Can you touch it, just in case?”

Some trial and error was required to get it working, but after half an hour, Serenity was confident he was doing it correctly. Unfortunately, it was going to take a long time and he couldn’t concentrate on anything else while slowly and steadily feeding the wireframe SpaceTime-Affined Essence.

Serenity wasn’t certain how long it took; he didn’t care enough to ask Aide for the exact duration. What he knew was that Rissa fell asleep on the table and was carefully propped in place with pillows by Raz, Katya, and Ita while Serenity was still working.

Eventually, it was done. Serenity knew he’d regenerated a good portion of his Essence in the process, so it was hard to tell how much he’d used. It was good that he could do it in a single attempt.

It was also time for a nap.

Janice woke Serenity the following morning. He was surprisingly not stiff, even though he’d been on the table ever since he fell asleep. “Get up, Serenity. You only have half an hour before we need to leave for the airport.”

Serenity blinked, then glanced at the center of the table. Sitting right next to Aki’s position in the middle of the table was a strange flower-like contraption made of metal rods with a tiny crystal at the bottom. It was almost depressing that thousands of Essence turned into something that small.

Wait, airport?

Rissa was already gone, though Serenity could see the pile of pillows she’d left behind.

Serenity jumped and hurried to get ready. He hadn’t prepared the night before, but all he needed was his overnight bag and a change of clothes. He’d have to skip his morning shower; there was not much choice if he was up this late, and not the first time it’d ever happened.

When he was ready, he met Rissa and Janice outside. Rissa waved a small plastic case at him; inside, Serenity could see a tiny crystal that had to be the one he’d made for her the night before. :You didn’t go ahead and use it?:

Rissa shook her head, but followed his lead and spoke soundlessly. :No. I asked Aki; she said there was no information on how long it would take, but that it would probably put me to sleep while it worked. I can use it once we’re on the airplane; I can even stay on board if I’m still sleeping when we get to Texas. Hopefully I’ll wake up before we get to the Settlement.: