It was late when Seras returned to the Inn the Caravan crew had been staying at for over a month. At some point she going to have to learn its actual name. Her steps were light and airy, and she was even swinging her arms a bit as she went.

  She turned a corner and came face to face with a stunned and horrified looking Dustin surrounded by the rest of the crew. “What’s up?” Seras asked.

  Dustin’s befuddled look turned to anger, “what’s up-, Seras you nearly died, bailed on us without a word, and then showed with more cheer and contentment in your aura than I’ve ever felt from you!”

  Seras halted midway to the bar and considered what he had just said. As best as she could she tried to read her own aura, and while it was hard to parse your own aura she did feel a bit of what Dustin had felt.

  “Did you, ah, you know?” Athena began hesitantly.

  “Did you get your dick wet?” Petra asked bluntly.

  Athena punched the Leonid in the side, “don’t be crude, she doesn’t even have one of those.”

  Petra glanced at her, “oh, and how are you so certain? She could have had one installed.”

  Seras glared, “I didn’t.”

  Petra glanced at her, “didn’t have one installed, or didn’t get it wet?”

  “Both!”

  “Then what the hell happened?” Flint asked.

  Seras scratched the back of her neck, “uh, long story. But its not a problem, I swear.”

  “Its drugs, that’s to only possible answer,” Frank chimed in.

  “Do you have any left?” Chase asked,

  They all stared at the two of them.

  “Kidding, drugs are bad,” Chase said unconvincingly.

  Seras pressed her hand to her face, “No it’s not drugs, it’s just, Dead gods I can’t even say. I’m starting to think that my options aren’t so bleak. I’ve my mind opened and I can see a way out for myself. Is that so unbelievable?”

  Seras felt her body suddenly untense all over as the pain momentarily left her. “Nope, not drugs, I’d be able to tell.” Athena said, her voice and face suddenly tight.

  “Stop that, please. Its not so bad right now, so you don’t have to do this to yourself.” Seras pleaded.

  Athena let it go and Seras felt her burden return. She took in a deep breath and let it out. “See, nothing to worry about.”

  They looked unconvinced, but no one brought up any other explanation for her sudden optimism. She’d really underestimated how much meeting the Builder cult changed her.

  It was like before she had felt alone in this great strange world, and now that she knew there were other people like her a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She saw a stack of letters that Dustin had been reading and gestured towards them, “what are those?” she asked to change the subject.

  Dustin looked down as if he had just remembered he was holding them, “a couple of things. One’s from the adventurer society telling us that we’re officially on call for something, what that is they won’t say. So now even if the passes open back up we’re not allowed to leave.”

  “That’s strange. Isn’t the adventurer society looser with controlling its members?”

  Dustin shook his head, “Not Director Arlee it seems. He’s a reformer through and through, and has the continental council’s backing. But even then, this is a stretch for him, something big is happening. On the plus side he says the promised awakening stones are ready for us. he’s got something interesting for each of us, including Miss Athena.”

  Athena blinked, “but I’m not a member of the Adventurer society.”

  Dustin glanced at her, “does that mean you’ll be turning down his generous offer?”

  She opened her mouth, and then closed it. “No, but just don’t expect me to use it right away.”

  “The stone’s your to use as you please.” Dustin said.

  Seras leaned in, “when you say us, does that include me as well?”

  He quirked a brow, “that is generally the accepted definition.”

  Seras grinned, “I just wasn’t expecting it after he fast tracked my admittance. I thought that was the favor.”

  Flint shook his head, “even if it was you proved that you’ve got potential when you were trapped in the Labyrinth. The Adventurer society likes to reward promising talents.”

  “Gah, now I’m regret having all my essence powers!” Petra griped loudly.

  “Is there something you dislike about your powers?” Athena asked.

  “No, but imagine the cool rare stone the Director might have gotten me.”

  Seras laughed with everyone else over Petra’s antics. “That’s good, I’ll probably swing by to grab it in the morning. Its been a long day though, I think I’m gonna head to bed.”

  “One more thing. Another letter from the Magic society arrived, one with the Director’s seal.” Flint said pointedly looking towards an unopened letter on the counter.

  Seras looked at the letter and walked over to pick it up. “Hope your recovering well… like to discuss magic theory… meet at your earliest convenience, huh, he probably just wants to see if I’m alright.” Seras surmised after quickly skimming through the letter.

  Flint stared at her, “and why would the Director of the Magic society want to check in on you in person? The last I heard you had written an essay insulting his magic primer books.”

  “Wait, what?” Athena gave Seras a disappointed look.

  “It wasn’t an essay, just some disgruntled comments scribbled between the lines of my placement test. And that was all before he and I had a run in with Knowledge.”

  “What do you mean you had a run in with a Goddess?” Flint snapped.

  “Did I not tell you that one? It’s not really that important. I had left him with a few formula’s from my world and nearly gave the Director a crisis of… faith… science… I don’t know which one specifically. Anyways while he was freaking out Knowledge popped in and told me off and calmed him down.”

  Flint buried his head into his hands, “nothing but trouble,” he muttered to himself.

  Dustin patted his partner on the back, “there, there, it’s not so bad.”

  The rest of the caravan crew speared Seras with very judgy looks, and she felt like that was her cue to teleport upstairs before things devolved even further. Really, it wasn’t like she ever went looking for trouble. It just happened to find her, consistently, and often.

  Maybe she should buy them something nice as a treat while she was out?

  ~~~*~~~

  The adventurer society was far livelier in the day than she had ever previously seen. Lots of people in exotic looking armor and colorful weapons milling about. Very few gave her a second glance in her mundane looking trader’s hat and cloak, built more for keeping clean on dusty roads than fighting monsters. Though she garnered a little attention when she stepped up the Dannias the Leonid secretary. “Yo, Dan, what’s going on?”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The Leonid grinned, “Ah, the Outworlder, er, Sera.”

  “Seras,” she corrected.

  Dan snapped his fingers, “Right Seras, sorry, hectic day. The Director put a large freeze on missions, and that there’s going to be a big announcement.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Don’t know, but my cousin Linda is saying there’s a similar sort of stir at the Akemi camp, so I think they might be related.”

  Seras blinked, “wait, Linda as in Lindascarn of Dunestrider?”

  “Ah, you’ve heard of them.”

  Seras grimaced, “yeah, she was trying to recruit me, but there was a bit of drama between teammates.”

  His eyes went wide, “oh, that was you huh.”

  “So you’ve heard then?”

  He nodded, “yeah, she didn’t outright mention an Outworlder though, just a Celestine with strange skills.”

  Seras opened her mouth to correct Dan, but decided that it really wasn’t worth it. Most people were going to keep thinking she was a Celestine due to her hair color, and changing it now might be suspicious. “Yeah, that’s me. Did you here how that ended, I kind of had my own shit going on at the time.”

  “Yeah, she put her foot down and forced her teammates to have a heart to heart, now they’re a full on couple.”

  Seras crossed her arms, “huh, well good for them, at least they’ll quit dragging people into their own drama.”

  “What, nah, they’ve got this open relationship going on, so they’re causing trouble in a whole new way.”

  Seras closed her mouth.

  Dan shrugged, “some people are just addicted to the drama, Linda says it’s about small steps.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.” Seras said flatly.

  Dan laughed, “don’t blame you, was there anything else you wanted, because there’s a line forming behind you.”

  Seras turned and stared at the line of adventurers forming up behind her. “This isn’t an information desk though, and magic hearing means they should have heard that you don’t know what’s going on?”

  Dan shrugged, “eh, its just one of those things about groups of people. They see one person line up at a desk and they think there’s a reason to line up as well.”

  “But, but they’re adventurers, shouldn’t they be a bit more aware than that?”

  “People are people, its best not to question it further.”

  “Riiight,” Seras drawled unconvinced, “well I received a letter from the Director saying that there was an awakening stone with my name on it?”

  Dan snapped his hand, “oh right, that. Ah shoot, where’d I put, ah, here it is” the Leonid said as he pulled out a piece of stamped paper, “take this over to the desk that handles mission bounties, they sort you out.”

  “Kay, thanks Dan.” Seras said as she turned away from the counter and moved on to the next. A few minutes later Seras turned away from that counter to see that another line had formed up behind her, she was shaking her head lightly as the first Adventurer began to press the payment desk for information about what was going on.

  What was worse was that after the first one had been turned away the next one stepped up and leaned on the counter in a fashion he probably imagined was suave and asked the exact same thing.

  Not for the first time in her life Seras was thankful she had never had to do any jobs in the service industry. If she had to deal with hoards of dumbass people she’d probably commit an act of domestic terrorism and blow her job to smithereens.

  She glanced down at the awakening stone before sending it to her pocket space.

  Awakening stone of Adventure, three star, contains the power of Adventure within.

  It was a decent stone; she just wasn’t sure if she wanted to use it immediately or hold onto it to trade up for something more specific. Though the powers it could unlock were generally pretty interesting.

  After only a few minutes of walking she had made it to her next stop, the Magic society campus. There was a small hubbub going on here as well, and now Seras was starting to get very curious.

  A clerk had noticed Seras the moment she had walked in and had once again guided her through the warren of secured doors to the Directors private laboratory. She was let in after a single knock and Seras was stunned into complete silence by the mess before her. The last time she had been here Dundee had contained his research and murder boards to a side room, that was not the case anymore.

  His whole lab was filled with chalk boards and red strings connecting between them and seemingly random spots. Most curious was the lines of taped on notes hanging from said red strings. At the center of it all she saw a chalk rendition of a sight Seras had only seen the once but remembered very well ever since.

  It was a stunning sketch of the reverse waterfall within the center of Karstess. Way back when Seras had first seen it her mind had been filled with awe and a sense of disbelief. Something like that shouldn’t have been possible. Since then Seras had seen flying sky ships, floating disks within the city Briaxis, and the Stellar astral space and the colossal tunnels of floatstone outside its entry points. After all that she had been doubting her own belief in constants like gravity.

  Seras glanced quickly through his notes and began to try and parse where Dundee was trying to push his research. There was one phrase that kept appearing on every board, “the inconsistency consistency?” she said aloud curiously.

  “Yes!” A half crazed voice said from behind a board, Dundee quickly finished what he was working on and turned the board around. “You were right about gravity being a constant, or supposedly. It only becomes variable when magic gets involved, just like all things. It’s what makes magic research so dangerous in unpredictable.”

  Seras stared at what he was doing and realized she recognized what he had just written down, it was a value of speed, a value of nearly 300,000 meters per second. “You figured out lightspeed?” Seras asked incredulously.

  Dundee blinked, “the, the what?”

  Seras opened her mouth only for her mind to catch up with what she was about to do. She did her and Dundee a favor and shut the fuck up, “nothing, forget what I just said, what is all this about?”

  Dundee stared at her intently for another long moment before moving on, “all my calculations kept coming to one conclusion, that gravity was a constant, but I know that it isn’t, I’ve seen where it isn’t. So I began to pull at the thread, trying to figure out why and when it fails to be a constant, the answer of course was magic.”

  “Yeah, nearly lost my faith in science when I first entered Karstess.”

  He looked at her, “yes, as you can see that’s where I began my search as well, and what I’ve noticed is that there’s something there. And rate at which a constant like gravity stops being constant, I’m close to putting it into a precise formula.”

  “An inconsistency consistency, that’s brilliant!”

  “Its only the begging, I’ve been using it and some other research to begin revers discovering other constants, that one you saw there was my first. You called it lightspeed?”

  Seras quirked her head, “do you actually want me to answer that?”

  He frowned, “no, no don’t ruin this for me.”

  Seras looked around the room and really got a good idea for what he was doing. On her world they had discovered universal constants, hard lines in the rules of reality. Just a decimal in variation and all of reality would unwind. But magic seemed to spit in the eye of that very idea, it was something she had a hard time reconciling. But this… Dundee was trying to put a value to the magic’s ability to ignore the rules of physics.

  In her Magitech primer book, the one she had received from the Builder cult, it had almost hinted at the idea of the two paradigms being separated. One existing separately from the other, and the pure joining of them was what the book termed as ‘true’ Magitech. It was more than the some of its parts, and she was starting to see why.

  Seras wondered what a society with ‘true’ Magitech could accomplish. Machines that twisted reality to their own ends to extraordinary ends, and magic that let you step beyond those final limitations.

  “Is this why you asked me to come by?” Seras asked.

  Dundee paused, and then seemed to realize who he was talking to, “ah, no, you weren’t actually supposed to see this, one second.” He waved his hands and the boards began to vanish away.

  Seras balked at that, “what do you mean I wasn’t supposed to see?”

  He was shaking his head, “it’s too much to trust to an Iron ranker. I calculated over a dozen ways to use it for terrible destructive means, I have to be careful with how it gets released to the world. In the right hands it could elevate us into a new era, but in the wrong it will mean devastation like we have never seen. Destruction’s followers alone would go from a great threat to an existential one.”

  “Then why am I here?” Seras asked exasperatedly.

  “Why, why, why, oh, yes. Miss Cross, why are you using magic society resources to mutilate and torture yourself? Soul research is a banned study for darn good reasons and I don’t want my branch implicated with such dark research!” Dundee went from oblivious to spitting mad in seconds, his face turning bright red. And his aura went from a manic fizzy background presence to a wall of unquestionable adamant around her own.

  “Hold the fuck up! I’m not trying to mutilate or torture myself, it’s the opposite actually.”

  His aura relaxed just a bit, “I’ll be needing an explanation,” he said gruffly as wiped a bit of spittle from his cheek.

  Seras stared at him in shock, “how the fuck did a mad bastard like you get put in charge of a magic society branch. I swear your danm mood swings are giving me emotional whiplash!”

  He looked chagrined, “well, I’m usually more composed, you’ve been catching me in moments of passion more than is strictly polite.”

  Seras sighed, “first off, I’m not mutilating myself, well, not in the way you’re thinking. Its, one of my Outworlder abilities. My body got remade in the image of what my soul thinks of as me, and that happens to include my Cyberware.”

  “Cyberware?”

  “Yeah, like magical prothesis, but way more developed.”

  “Hm, I see, that explains the air tastes of metal around you.”

  “You-, what does that mean?”

  He blushed, “er, well it’s my perception ability. I have a much greater sense of taste, I can even taste magic like a fine wine. It’s an unconventional one, but something I’ve learned to use well.”

  Seras gave him a sidelong stare as she turned, “right, that’s not totally weird.”

  “Hmpf, don’t change the subject. You haven’t explained why I caught you without your usual arm and trying to hook in a crude replacement.”

  “It’s, its, well, that’s a really long story. One that goes back to my rebirth on this world. To sum it up its something that went wrong with my rebirth, and now every minor essence advancement I get puts my soul in more and more pain. I was trying to find a way around it, but as you can tell that didn’t work out so well.”

  “I see, you have my condolences. Is it fatal?”

  “Supposedly, but I’m onto a cure.”

  “Still, to have to deal with that-,”

  “It’s just another fucking bit of bad fortune in long string of it. I’m starting to get used to it.” Seras lied.

  “Has it really been that bad?”

  “Oh you don’t know the half of it. I go from dying in space to naked and unarmed in an Astral space. My first essence ability was a piece of shit I couldn’t use until recently, and then I got a second one I can’t even afford to use. I can’t advance to bronze without unimaginable pain, and worse yet I need to hide a whole part of who I am.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Seras kicked the ground, “well its not all bad, I got to make some good friends, and magic’s pretty fucking cool. I even got to essentially cheat my way into the Adventurer and Magic societies.”

  He chuckled at that. “Yes, well, I think any position lower than you current one would be a travesty.” He glanced around his lab awkwardly before glancing back to her, “what do you mean by an ability too expensive to use?”

  “Huh, oh, it’s a familiar summoning power but the resources and costs are way out of reach for me.”

  “AH, I see, yes I’ve heard of such things happening, kept promising adventurers stuck in lower ranks until they could afford to summon their familiars. Which one did you get by the way?”

  “A Spark of Madness.”

  He huffed out a small laugh, “just what the world needs, more mad Outworlder’s. I take that was from a madness awakening stone, or a Mania one?”

  “Uh, no, those are awakening stones.”

  He nodded, “yes, they’re on the verge of being reclassified as restricted though. Which kind of stone was it.”

  “Celestial book.” Seras said before she could think better of it. The Celestial Book was another one of the Great Astral beings, like the Builder. Then again there wasn’t really anything innately illicit about either, it was just that her interactions with Builder cult had her paranoid.

  Dundee froze and slowly turned to her, “ah, what?”

  Well in for a bit in for a chit. It would more suspicious to clam up about it now. “Celestial Book. It’s like some sort of super god from the Astral, not that I really understand the difference there. I guess it left the awakening stone in my pocket space as my soul was flying through the Astral. Actually, now that I think about it how is that even possible?”

  Seras was just beginning to ponder the implications when Dundee appeared before her in an instant and pressed his hands to her shoulder, “you got an awakening stone from the Celestial book, a familiar power? Did it cause a racial gift evolution?"

  Seras blinked, “yeah, how’d you guess?”

  “Great Astral beings will sometimes include their token within an awakening stone or essence. My own granted my greater mana well and magic affinity.”

  Seras balked, “you, you worship the Celestial book?”

  He let go and waved off her words, “just venerate, there’s a difference. And yes, a small portion of us researchers do so. Oh don’t look at me like that, it’s hardly heresy, I’ve spoken with Lady Knowledge herself on the matter. What was the costs?”

  Seras was starting to feel dizzy by how often Dundee’s mood swung from normal to mania, she was beginning to wonder if he had used one of those ‘crazy’ awakening stones himself. “Uh, two thousand iron spirit coins, as well as fifty lightning quintessence, seven dimension quintessence, thirty light quintessence, and an Opal of portent.”

  Dundee flinched, “ah yes, I see now. Those Opal’s are far too difficult to acquire-,”

  “-yup, basically impossible.” Seras interrupted

  “-I’ve only got the two,” Dundee finished.

  Seras paused and stared at the mad orange haired researcher, “t, t, two?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes, I got lucky.” Dundee tapped his foot pensively, “I was planning to use one for, but now that I have my new project, hm, yes, yes, indeed. Come with me, we’ll knock out the circle and see just what a Spark of Madness entails.” He began to stride for his personal ritual chamber.

  “Hold on, what! Just like that?” Seras squawked as she followed after him.

  He turned towards her briefly, “of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Wha-, because, well, it’s too much! Why do that for me?”

  He laughed to himself, “Oh Seras, you have much about life and power to learn. I’m doing it because I want to, and because I can.”

  “You’re insane, you’re actually insane!”

  He grinned, “ah well, I tried my best to hide it.”

  Seras laughed unbelievingly. She tried to squash that giddy feeling in her chest, but after meeting the Builder cult and now this Seras was finding it harder and harder to give up on hope for the future.