Their lunch was a little late. Diane had to pause in her Monstrous Conversion, saying that it was tiring her. She had been using her new Sigil for a few hours on end by the time Alyssa and April had set out food, and Rory had pulled her in beside him to hear the results of her endeavours so far.

“It’s slow,” she said. Diane did look tired. Her cheeks sagged and her eyes looked sunken deep into cavernous pits. She didn’t look like a young office worker anymore. “It takes a long, long time, like a really bad case of needing to thaw something. I can’t believe I’m still comparing it to food.”

“What did you achieve, exactly?” Viv asked from the other side. “How many of them were you able to turn back into people?”

Viv’s question seemed to make Diane’s face grow darker. “I… think I got three of them? In just over three hours. I need to focus on a single individual for a long time and make sure I get everything. Don’t want to accidentally leave a patch unconverted and then have it grow back. But… I’m not sure it worked, honestly.”

“What do you mean?” Rory asked.

“They turned back,” Diane said, a little haltingly. “Like, they look like normal people now. But they still won’t talk. They don’t register if anyone’s there. It’s like they’re asleep, just without being asleep. And it won’t be fixed by just turning them back to normal humans.”

Rory frowned. Still in their vegetative state was what Diane meant. Apparently, turning them back into regular people hadn’t fixed that aspect of the issue.

“Maybe they just need some time,” Oliver said. He seemed as though the problem had forcefully taken over his attention. “Maybe we just have to coax them into paying more attention to things. There are some exercises that help with that kind of thing, right?”

“But what if that’s not it?” Diane asked.

That was worrying. If she was right, just turning the people back to human wasn’t going to do the trick. Of course, Oliver could be right too. There were just too many unknowns.

“There’s something else there that I haven’t been able to see,” Diane said. “I think I’m going to have to dig in deeper. I know I’m missing something, something about more than just turning them physically back to normal, and I think once I have that, I’ll be able to really help them.”

Diane made to move off right then and there, probably to try to find and figure out what she said she was missing, but Viv pulled her back down.

“Eat your food first,” she said. “Then you can worry about the others.”

Diane relaxed, then nodded.

They finished up their late lunch and resumed their normal activities over the evening and afternoon. For the others, that was a combination of continuing their patrols, clearing out the monsters who’d died at the hands of Rory’s traps—there was a pile Rory would have to Weave away soon—scavenging the local neighbourhood, continuing to explore the palace—Malcolm’s group had found more armour and weapons—or just practice with their Sigils.

Well, for most of the others. For Rory, that meant resting. At least until he was accosted by Samson at dusk. He had taken it upon himself to find the ingredients Rory had listed for the Sigil of Wielding. Maybe he wanted to take his mind off the destroyed school, maybe he was a workaholic. Who knew?

What mattered was that, amazingly, Samson had found all the materials Rory needed.

“How’d you get all of them?” Rory asked, incredulous.

“It’s my Sigil of Gathering,” he said. “It can find whatever, without trouble, so long as I think about it real hard. It’s like I get a sense of where they are and just follow where it leads me.”

“I meant how you found the exact ingredients.” Rory tried to remember what they had been for the Sigil of Wielding. “Are they really what I think they are?”

Samson grinned. “I think so. Found some grasshoppers in the forest and extracted these little glowing bits that I think are their glands. Baked Blades of Grass and War-torn Stones are exactly what they sound like—grass that’s been pulled off and baked, stone from rubble that broke during fights. And you won’t believe what this Moonsilver is.”

“What is it?”

“Come on. I think it’ll be better if I could show you.”

He led Rory outside, under the canvas of the navy evening. The moon rode high in the sky, bathing them in a soft silver light. Rory wasn’t even sure if he had seen it since this apocalypse madness had started.

“Here, watch this,” Samson said.

He walked over to the pool at the centre of the garden and cupped out some water in his palm. Then he held it up as though offering it to someone. Nothing happened for a while, until the water glimmered. Rory was pretty sure he would have seen the water gleam anyway under the silvery light, but it felt like there was something special about that water specifically.

“This is it,” Samson said. “More of the Moonsilver.”

“Wait, really?” Rory stared, somewhat nonplussed by the liquid in Samson’s hand. Interesting to note that not a drop was spilling through the gaps between his fingers. That was no longer regular water. “How does that even work? Were you keeping your Sigil active? But no, I don’t see it glowing on the back of your hand.”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think I have to keep it running all the time. It’s just a matter of locking onto something. I latched onto the Moonsilver, and it guided me to the water. After that, I just followed my instincts.”

Rory decided not to ponder too much about how strange the Sigil of Gathering had turned out to be. With power like that, he figured Samson could locate just about anything he set his mind too, though the Sigil’s area of effect likely set certain limits.

For the time being though, he had more important things to take care of. Namely Weaving a Sigil of Wielding from scratch.

Rory got the rest of the materials from Samson. The Grasshopper Glands turned out to be dried bits of some kind of organ from grasshoppers the size of an apple seed. Samson had contained all the Moonsilver inside a plastic bag and supplied the War-torn Stones and Baked Blades of grass separately. Rory himself had the Cynium they needed.

“Here goes nothing,” he said.

Rory activated his Weaving and concentrated the lines of white light on the combination of materials. He focused on the idea of getting a Sigil of Wielding out of them all. When the light faded, he had another Sigil of Wielding. The circle of blue triangles around it confirmed that it was at Cerulean VI as well. Rory grinned.

“It worked,” Samson said, eyes shining as he took in the new Sigil. “And it only took a tiny number of materials too.”

He was right. 5 drops of Moonsilver had been nothing compared to the whole bag of it Samson held, and 2 Grasshopper Glands could be found from a single grasshopper. Rory had a large supply of Cynium from the grocery store, and he could get more from there as well. The War-torn Stones and Baked Blades of Grass were incredibly easy to obtain as well.

“We can make so many of these now,” Rory said, unable to hold back the excitement bubbling out of him. “Great job, Samson. You’ve basically solved our next biggest problem.”

The lanky man’s flush was visible even in the low moonlight. “It’s just the Sigil. Wouldn’t have been able to do anything without it. And that’s thanks to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, stop deflecting credit. But right, let’s see to making some more of these.”

They got to work on more Sigils of Wielding. Rory had to run back to the main hall to get more Cynium, but once that was accomplished, he was able to make several more Sigils of Wielding. He had seven by the time he was done.

Samson was staring so intently at the new Sigils, Rory offered one to him.

“Here you go,” Rory said. “I’ll just need to Ward something for you to Wield.”

Samson held up his hands in protest. “No, no, it’s fine. Give them to someone who needs them. I’m just a lowly Gatherer.”

“That way you say it… is Gatherer your actual class?”

“Yeah. Arcane Gatherer. Doesn’t provide a lot of information about what it does, but we’re quickly seeing what it’s capable of, aren’t we?”

Rory nodded. “That we are. I think we can make a lot of good use for that, provided we can get that Sigil to higher Tiers.”

“It’s already at Cerulean II. That high enough?”

“Oh wow, already? Nice. But hmm, I guess I haven’t mentioned this—there are a lot of Tier levels you can reach.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. So, after Cerulean, I think you have Teal, then Viridian, Umber, Carmine, and so on. I don’t recall all of them at the moment. But fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of power levels that you can achieve.”

“That’s… incredible.”

“Right?” Rory gripped the Sigils in his hand tightly. “Anyway, I’m going to see to getting the rest of these Sigils of Wielding to other people. Take a break for now, Samson. You’ve done a lot today. You need some rest too.”

“Aye, aye, captain Rory. Will do.”

Rory wasn’t sure how much he believed that, but he gave the guy some peace and space. He had been working hard, and what he got up to on his own time was none of his business. Instead, Rory climbed the stairs all the way to the roof, where April was tending to her gardens even at this time of night.

“Surprised to see you here,” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed soon?”

“Old people,” Rory said, after dragging in an exhausted lungful of air. “Actually need less sleep… than young people.”

“Uh huh. But yeah, what’s up?”

Rory gave her the new and shiny Sigil of Wielding. “There you go. Now you can use your gun with the Warded Sigil as much as you like.”

She stared down at the Sigil for a while, then absorbed it. “How’d you get this?”

Rory explained how Samson’s Sigil of Gathering had found them all the materials they needed. April had a wondrous look in her eyes, possibly due to both her new Sigil and the way it had been obtained.

“Try it out,” Rory said.

“Right here?” she asked. “I’m not sure we want to alarm anyone with a gunshot in the night.”

“That’s… a good point.”

They retired for the night, deciding they’d trial it tomorrow. As exciting as it was, Rory did need his rest and sleep. April promised she’d get her share of decent rest once she was done tending to the plants on the rooftop. Rory left her to it.

Only to find Viv consoling a tearful Diane in one gloomy corner of the main hall.

“What’s going on?” he asked. His heart lurched a little in his chest. “Are the newcomers…?”

Diane looked up with a devastated expression. “I can’t fix them. It’s not really working.”

“What exactly happened?”

Viv pressed Diane’s shoulder with her hand. “Take it easy. Let me explain.” She turned to Rory, letting Diane recover herself. Something of the haunted look on Diane’s face was reflected in her expression too. “The monsters can be made human again, except that it looks like it’s a choice between physically human, and mentally.”

“What?”

“It’s exactly as it sounds. It wasn’t something that was visible before, but Diane’s Sigil basically lets her either transform a person’s physiology or their mentality.”

“So, you’re saying they’re going to stay in their vegetative states, unless we make the Sigil of the Stormscale only affect the mind. So, even if they have their full faculties back, they’ll still be… Neophytes?”

Viv nodded. “That’s what it’s looking like.”

Rory found his eyes drawing back to Diane, who was trying to get a hold of herself. The question of what they ought to do now went unsaid. Of course, the right decision in Rory’s mind was to grant the poor Neophytes their full mental faculties back. But that would mean leaving them in that horrible condition for the rest of time. At least until Diane’s Sigil increased in Tiers.

But did they have the right to make such a momentous decision for other people? Even if they did, what if the half-monsters became more monstrous instead of human in their mind? What if their physiology was rooted so deeply, they couldn’t think as humanly as they could monstrously? Maybe their new bodies required new kinds of sustenance. Carnivorous kinds.

They’d all be in danger, then.

“I don’t know,” Rory said. “I have… no idea.”

Viv looked crestfallen a moment longer before her expression hardened. “We’re going to have to experiment and see. Diane, you with me?”

It took the other woman a moment to reply. “What if I mess things up even more?”

“Is that going to stop you from helping them?”

There was a sharp intake of breath form Diane. “No.”

“Then we’ll just have to try our best and see what works. And if nothing does, we’ll know we did what we could. That will have to be enough.”

“But not tonight,” Rory said. “We’ve done a lot already. I think we all need some good rest for the rest of the night.”

Viv took Rory’s hand. “Agreed. Let’s go get some rest.”

Rory, Viv, and Diane all went out and found their sleeping spots. Everyone else was starting to settle down for the night as well, apart from those who would keep watch. Rory didn’t speak much as he got down beside Viv. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day. The seventh day of the apocalypse.

The beginning of the battle between the Homeworlders and the Otherworlders.

Rory was going to have to find the last piece of the Safe Zone puzzle. Luckily for everyone involved, he knew exactly where he could get it.