Chapter 188: Chapter 179 – On the way to the Dungeon

“Rissa? Here’s the printer. Can I get maps of all of New York City? Starting close to the Central Park Giant Wasp Dungeon, I’m not sure which way the ley line goes, but there has to be one there.” Serenity set the box down and started opening it.

Claws were surprisingly helpful in opening boxes. They were somewhat less helpful in getting the printer out of the box undamaged, but he managed.

“Why don’t you? You know what you want, wouldn’t it be easier?” Rissa had that cute wrinkle she got in her forehead when she was puzzled.

“I can’t see,” Serenity admitted, distracted. “At least, not anything other than that something’s there. To see color or computer screens I’d have to shift back to the dragon or use someone else’s vision.”

Serenity stopped setting up the printer. He hadn’t even thought about Linked Sight in …. He wasn’t sure how long. It wasn’t useful on Tzintkra since there wasn’t anyone whose sight he could borrow, but Rissa was right here. “May I try something? Er, may I look through your eyes?”

“Sure. Do I need to do anything?” Rissa sat down in the chair next to her computer, staring at Serenity.

“I don’t think so?” Serenity reached out, trying to find the Link that was supposed to be there. The moment he started looking, he could feel it waiting for him. A moment later, he was looking at himself through Rissa’s eyes and Rissa through his own vision.

“Oh wow. That’s really weird. Do you normally see stuff like this?” Rissa’s vision moved around the room as she turned her head and Serenity started to feel slightly dizzy from having two independent viewpoints.

“Like this?” Serenity concentrated on Rissa’s viewpoint and realized that it wasn’t only normal vision he was seeing; he was also seeing with Eyeless Sight through her eyes. It added some solidity to things, but wasn’t a large effect. Perhaps he was just used to it?

“That’s how my vision was during the Tutorial. Now, it’s, hm. Can I share that with you?” Serenity concentrated on the link and realized that he could.

So he did.

He couldn’t tell the difference, but Rissa stopped looking everywhere and seemed to freeze in place. “That’s … huh. Yeah, that’d take some getting used to.I’d like to go back to one set of eyes, please.”

That was easy enough; he stopped sharing his vision with her. “Do you want to keep Eyeless Sight? I’ve got a few others I could share, but they can be distracting.”

“This is fine. I’d like to try the others later but not right now. That was … I’d like to keep my lunch where it belongs. So, uh.” Rissa turned to face her computer. “Maps, right. Central Park…”

Serenity kept the link active, but tried to pay attention to his own sight instead of hers. He needed practice, but seeing two independent things at the same time wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done.

Rissa hugged Serenity. He wasn’t expecting it, but he caught her and hugged her back. “Good luck in the dungeon.”

Serenity relaxed his arms and leaned back a little to get a better look at Rissa’s face. “I thought you were coming? I mean, I guess we didn’t talk about it but I assumed you would. If we’re escorting a reporter, I need all the help I can get. Plus, it’ll make the ley line divination easier, you, me, and Raz, maybe Aki...” Serenity trailed off. Rissa had a look on her face that he couldn’t interpret. “What’s wrong?”

Rissa hugged Serenity and snuggled as close to him as she could get while they were both standing. She seemed to be shaking a little.

Serenity looked over at the others. Russ and Raz looked just as lost as Serenity felt, but Phoebe had a stern frown on her face. “I was afraid of something like this. She hasn’t left the house since we got into town - and she had us take the subway to the closest station. That’s the only time I’ve seen her even set foot into the yard.”

“Rissa? Honey?” Serenity ran his palm over her hair, hoping it would calm her down. He could feel her shaking.

“He’s still out there. I don’t - it’s not safe out there.” Rissa’s voice was muffled by having her mouth nearly against his shoulder, but he could still make it out.

“He?” Serenity looked down at the top of Rissa’s head. He wasn’t that much taller than her normally, but even a few inches mattered right now. He moved the hand that wasn’t holding her back to her shoulder, to rub the muscles. She was very tense.

Rissa’s voice was still muffled as she spoke into Serenity’s shoulder. “Macho. He’s out there. And the only protection I have is the ward.”

Serenity wasn’t sure the ward was even still up; it didn’t feel like he was in a warded building. Still, he hadn’t checked, so it was possible. That wasn’t the right tack to take anyway. “You have me. And you have your father. Have you Seen anything?”

“No. I just - I’m scared.”

Serenity held Rissa close. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise. It’s up to you if you come. I’d like it, but you don’t have to.”

You are reading story After the End: Serenity at novel35.com

It was quite a while before they made it out the door.

Rissa was with them when they left - but her father was driving while she huddled against Serenity in the back seat.

It was still light out when the four of them reached the dungeon, but only barely. Central Park was busy, and the group attracted a lot of attention. It seemed to be mostly on Raz; fortunately, none of it seemed to be particularly hostile, simply curious.

Google Maps led them right to the dungeon.

As they got closer to the dungeon, they could see that new infrastructure had been built around it; the new sidewalk ran through a strip of dirt with squares of sod on it to reach the dungeon. It wasn’t until they were close that Serenity felt the ley line. He’d almost forgotten how much better it felt to not be continually leaking mana and essence.

He suspected he was also glowing again. Not that he could do anything about it.

As they walked up to the entrance, Serenity could tell that the camera was already running. It was pointing directly at him, and he could hear the reporter standing in front of it talking. She didn’t seem to have noticed him yet; her cameraman (who was also female) kept making gestures at her to turn around, but for whatever reason, she didn’t.

“-expecting to arrive any time now. Once they’re here, we’ll be heading into the dungeon. Remember that a live video feed isn’t possible inside the dungeon. It will be broadcast once we return. Tweet your questions #AskSerenity to @NewsChannelSix! For the entire video feed, visit our website at-”

Serenity tuned her out. He had the sinking feeling that she was going to be fun to keep alive in a dungeon, but he’d already committed to trying. The reporter’s voice was pretty and Serenity was sure her face was as well, but the complete lack of attention she paid to her surroundings bothered him. At least the cameraman seemed to have the sense to keep her eyes open.

“Serenity! Good to see you. Did you know you’re glowing purple?” Lancaster’s voice was clearly audible over the reporter, and she finally turned around to see the group walking up.

Serenity pitched his voice to carry to the camera. There was no point in answering the question twice. “We’re in a ley line; they’re sort of like rivers for magic. I seem to glow when I’m in one; I’m not sure why. I think it has something to do with my Path.”

It might instead have something to do with his Species, but when you got right down to it, Path could mean anything from an individual chosen Path to the overall Path a person took through life. It was close enough.

“Most dungeons are on ley lines. It’s supposed to be necessary for them to form, but ley lines move with time. So a new dungeon will be on a ley line, while an old dungeon might not be.” Serenity had heard that some dungeons seemed to form away from ley lines, but they were always Field Dungeons, and he’d heard arguments that maybe they were simply older than they were thought to be. He hadn’t cared, before. Now he was curious.

Serenity smiled, careful to hide his teeth. He’d give them a real smile later, but he wanted to do a theatrical reveal first. “I should introduce everyone. This is my fiancee Rissa and her father Russ; Rissa will be coming into the dungeon with us, but Russ isn’t planning to. He hasn’t been through the Tutorial yet, and plans to wait until afterwards to start trying dungeons.”

It suddenly occurred to Serenity to wonder what Russ’s Status looked like. He had a very different core; did the Voice count him as Pathed or monster? For that matter, did he already have a Path? He’d have to remember to ask when he left the dungeon.

“This is Raz. We met on another planet and he decided he’d like to visit Earth and see if he could help out a bit. He’ll be coming into the dungeon as well.” Serenity pulled off his ball cap while the camera focused on Raz and looked over at Lancaster, trying to figure out if he should introduce him. Lancaster gave a small shooing gesture.

“And I’m Serenity.” As the camera moved back to him, Serenity removed his glasses and dispelled the illusion that disguised his armor as normal clothes and hid his wings. He flared his wings out far enough to be clearly visible. “I hear you have some questions for me. Where would you like to start?”

The reporter seemed a little startled, but got control of her face quickly. “There’s one thing I’ve wanted to ask you since I first heard about the Tutorial; what made you decide to lead so many people through the dangerous parts?”

“They’re safer than you might think. The Tutorial does have its risks, but it’s designed to teach, not to kill. All you have to do is keep moving and keep trying and you’ll be fine in the mandatory Trials. What I did is to help people do that; everyone I took through the Trials earned their way through. I just gave a bit of a push to help people start.” It wasn’t quite true, but it was close. It certainly was possible to get hurt or die from a mistake or bad luck, especially in the later Dungeon Trials. Those weren’t the ones he’d spent most of his time in, helping people. The slime and goblin trials were the two that everyone had to do, and they were both straightforward and simple; even a mistake probably wouldn’t kill you as long as everyone tried.

“As for why? I have to give a lot of the credit to Lancaster.” Serenity indicated the policeman who was standing a little ways away; he moved closer and the camera turned to focus on him. “He suggested that we should help as many people as we could.”

“I don’t know whose idea it was originally,” Lancaster growled, “But you’re not getting out of it that easily. You’re the one who came up with how we were going to do it; we were helping you, not the other way around.”

Serenity shrugged. His wings echoed the gesture. “It’s what anyone would do.”

The reporter butted in. “And there we have it, Serenity claims he just did what anyone would do! We’re going to turn to Twitter for our next question! The most common question for #AskSerenity is… a firefly emoji?”

Serenity couldn’t help but laugh at the reporter’s confusion.