The meal they had was fantastic. Sev regretted that he hadn't called for Derivan and Vex to join them — this would have been an incredible dungeon delve for the four of them to go on together. His memories of the dungeon were returning, and while it wasn't devoid of its dangers, the Anderstahl Prime Dungeon was a monument to flexibility and adaptation. Every run was different.

"Are our systems still not working?" Sev asked, glancing at Misa. She frowned a little, prodding at the air and then shaking her head slightly.

"It's still connected to my reality anchor, but for whatever reason the signal just won't go out beyond the dungeon," she said, sighing with frustration. "Sucks. I'd really like to check in on some people right now."

Sev grimaced. "I was hoping that would go away once we were out of the staircase."

"Guess it's a dungeonwide thing," Misa said with a shrug. "That, or it's another puzzle and there's something we gotta do to get the system's chat function working again."

"That sounds more likely. I don't remember this dungeon not allowing system communication," Sev said. "Though that means our first challenge is probably going to be about restoring the connection."

"That's not a bad thing, is it?" Misa asked.

"Hopefully." Sev shrugged. "It's been a long time since I've been here, and there have been a whole few Resets between then and now. I don't know if it's any different. But the first Challenge is usually something simple—"

Something in the train dinged. The door further ahead in their cabin opened, and a tall wood-and-silver golem walked through, wearing an immaculately pressed suit. He tipped his hat toward the two of them.

"I am the Conductor. Tickets, please," he said politely. Sev and Misa both produced their silvery tickets, and the Conductor accepted them without a moment's pause; he slid each ticket into a slot in his chest, then stood there for a minute, machinery whirring within him.

"Uh..." Misa said awkwardly, staring at the Conductor. "Do you need anything else?"

Another short whirr, and then the Conductor bowed. "No. Thank you for your cooperation. The train will arrive at the next station in fifteen minutes. Please enjoy the ride."

Misa stared at the Conductor as he left. "You get a weird feelin' about that guy?"

"Depends on what you mean." Sev gave Misa a strange look. "What kind of weird?"

"Not bad weird," Misa tried to explain, gesturing vaguely. "More like... important weird. Like [Intuitionist] is pinging on something agai—"

Misa was interrupted by a blast of light into the cabin as the train moved outside of whatever dark tunnel it was in connected to the entrance staircase; sunlight streamed in through the windows, bright enough that Sev had to blink several times to help his eyes adjust. Outside was, as near as he could tell, open sky and a beautiful field of flowers. The only thing that indicated that they might have been in a dungeon was the strange way the flowers moved — against the flow of the grass, like they were struggling against the wind.

"Whoa," Misa said, forgetting what she was talking about. "Tell me our first stop's going to be out there."

"Probably not," Sev said. "Though it's not like we have to stay at the station we stop at. Sometimes we have to go out and explore, or gather something nearby. This might be one of those."

"It's just been a while since I've gotten to just enjoy a field like this," Misa said, still looking out the window. "We passed through a few guiding the Elyran convoy to Anderstahl, but there were kind of a lot of people to take care of back then."

"Yeah." Sev hummed in agreement. "I wouldn't mind going out there if we get the chance. Would be a great spot for a picnic if we didn't have bigger things to worry about."

"Tell me about it," Misa said.

They both proceeded to stare as one of the flowers erupted out of the ground, a massive creature that looked like someone had haphazardly stuck a worm and a crab together bursting into the air. It ate a cloud, then promptly disappeared back into the field of grass, leaving not a single mark that it had ever emerged.

Sev glanced at Misa. "That didn't make you want to go out there less, did it?"

"Are you kidding?" Misa grinned, twirling her mace in her hands. "Now I really want to go out there."

Vex, Derivan, Raltis, and Novice were all seated together in the forbidden section of the tower library. Vex hadn't had an opportunity to visit this library before, even, and found it fascinating to even enter—there was a glyphic passphrase embedded into one of the tower walls that led into a closet, only that closet was bigger on the inside and held a massive number of books.

Raltis had lied a little bit about the recorded history of the world. It wasn't that everything was completely gone. It was that the records they did have were unsorted, and the residents of Teque had never had the time or the interest to go through and sort everything out from the real and the fake.

Basically, at some point, someone had cast a powerful library-aspect spell to record all of history, essentially by pulling pieces of history from the minds of everyone in Teque. This was technically an incredible feat of magic, and one that had been celebrated by everyone in Teque.

They had then proceeded to ignore the library for the next few decades. After all, the information was technically safe. There was no need to go through and sort it until and unless they actually needed the information.

"Bet you're regretting that now," Novice commented, staring up in awe at the towering shelves of books.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"This isn't even the first time you've been here," Raltis said irritably. "Why are you looking at the shelves like it's your first time?"

"Because look at them!" Novice gestured, spreading his arms wide. "I don't want to forget how cool this place is!"

Vex laughed. He couldn't help it; he felt much the same way as Novice. "How did you even make a forbidden section?" he asked. "If everything in here is unsorted, I would've just assumed no one knows what should or shouldn't be forbidden."

"Helg was one of the few people willing to sort through the library, believe it or not." Raltis sighed, a note of melancholy entering his voice. He glanced around briefly. "She loved this place, too. Genuinely. Could spend hours in here reading, especially when she was a kid. The reason she got so... passionate... about risks, and about forbidding certain kinds of knowledge, is because of what happened when she tried to reenact something from one of the books."

"Oh shit," Vex muttered, already able to guess where this was going.

"Yep." Raltis stared up at the ceiling. "I should've stopped it, but I didn't see it coming. Like I said, most of us don't really know what's in these books. It's not like magic is always beautiful and good and magical. She tried to copy a glyph to cast a kind of summoning spell—to make herself an imaginary friend, or something like that—and..."

A long pause. Vex waited, not saying a word; Raltis seemed to be trying to gather the strength to explain what had happened. Eventually, the otter sighed, looking down at the table.

"Her parents died," he said simply. "The spell wasn't complete. It was wrong, even; she got some of the strokes in the glyph wrong, and she's favored by the mana so it tried to help her complete the spell anyway. That's good when you're an experienced mage. It's not good when it's a child."

"Gods," Vex said, swallowing. "The mana did that?"

"We always say the mana is alive," Raltis said. "And it is. But it's not alive the same way a lot of us are, and it doesn't look at the world the same way we do. It values choice, freedom, change; it loves art and history and power. It's a force of will and imposition. It doesn't distinguish between good and bad."

"Right." Vex had known this, of course, though he'd never seen such a clear example of it before. He glanced at his fingers, where a few streams of mana danced between his fingers.

Still beautiful, he thought. But there was danger hidden in that power—danger he didn't usually let himself think too hard about.

"So Helg's parents died trying to save her from what she created," Raltis said. "It was a sort of... distortion in reality that sucked away people's mana. Incredibly dangerous thing. They were able to overload it, but at the cost of their own mana."

"Explains her reaction to the Fendal thing," Vex said quietly. "...Explains why you didn't fight her on it at first, too."

Raltis looked down, guilty. "It's not an excuse, I know," he said quietly. "She was like a daughter to me, you know? I picked her up hoping to help her after what happened, and she was always so... well, she was sad at first. Then she was angry. Then she took up a role in enforcement, trying to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. She locked up a bunch of books here in the forbidden section—everything remotely related to summoning magic, anything related to new magic."

"I guess I can understand it," Vex said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.

"Me too," Novice said quietly. "I can't forgive it. Not... even if I wanted to. Having my sense of self taken away from me like that... I still get nightmares sometimes, Raltis. But at least I know where she was coming from, now."

"It must have been difficult," Derivan said, not unkindly, speaking up for the first time this conversation. Vex glanced at him to see him staring at Raltis, and saw the expression held in his eyes. Kind, sympathetic, worried. Physical Empathy must have been going off hard. How much did Raltis really blame himself for this?

"It was," Raltis said. His voice was small. "I should have... I don't know what I should have done. I should never have let it all go this far. I didn't realize how scared she still was that it could all happen again. I thought she had a passion for enforcement, for making sure the people were safe... I didn't think she would turn that passion into something that would make an entire town a slave to themselves just to try to keep us safe. And I never even got a chance to..."

Raltis trailed off as he spoke, and this time, even Vex could hear the choked sob in his voice. Across the table, Novice leaned over, the lizardkin putting an arm around the old otter's shoulder and pulling him close in a one-armed hug.

"I'm sorry," Novice said quietly.

Vex stayed silent, for the most part. What else was there to say? He hadn't been here for the fight against Helg. They hadn't even been able to stop her initial barrier spell when she was kicking them out of Teque.

"You should give yourself time to grieve," Derivan said. He didn't seem to have the same problem Vex was having. "You have been working on the relationship between Fendal and Teque in an attempt to atone for your support of Helg's actions. And taxing your magic in order to keep everyone healthy."

"How did you..." Raltis began, startled.

"But you have not given yourself time to grieve," Derivan continued, not giving Raltis time to speak. "You are pushing yourself too far, Raltis. Take some time to grieve. Honor her memory."

"But what she did..." Raltis faltered. "I... I don't even know if I should. What she did was awful."

"What she did does not change the way you feel about her," Derivan countered. "You see yourself as her father. Her guide. You feel you have failed her, but there are many memories you made with her that you cannot let go of. And it is that version of her, real or otherwise, that you have not allowed yourself to grieve for."

Raltis let out another half-choked sob. Next to him, Novice shook his head, his expression a little ashen. "Shit," Novice muttered. "I should've seen this. We have a [Soul Link], for crying out loud."

"I didn't let you," Raltis said. "I didn't—I couldn't. After what Helg did to you and your friends, I didn't want you to have to feel me grieving for her."

"I would understand if you just explained this," Novice said with a sigh. He pulled the otter close, dragging him into a tight hug while Raltis proceeded to quite openly cry; Vex avoided looking at the two, if only to give them a moment of privacy.

"I... I think you're right, Derivan," Raltis said after a moment, taking in a deep, shaky breath. "I think I need a bit of time to grieve her. I don't know if I'm grieving who I thought she was, or if I'm grieving someone she used to be... but she was important to me, and I failed her."

Derivan watched Raltis for a moment, then gave him a slight nod. "I do not know that I would characterize it in that way," he said. "But I will not interfere with your grieving process. You will need time to come to terms. We will still be here when you are done."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Raltis managed a slight smile, though there was no real heart in it. "But... yeah. I'll try to be quick." The archmage slipped down from his chair. "Novice, you stay here and help them. I'll be at my home if you need me. Just, um... just knock first. In case I put any spells on the door."

"I will," Novice said.

With that, Raltis walked out of the library. His steps were slow and heavy, like there was something dragging him down—Vex saw him clenching and unclenching his fists, like he was trying to keep himself steady and stable just long enough for him to get to his usual home. He looked up at Novice, sympathetic.

"I didn't know he felt that way," Novice said, sounding a little guilty. "I guess I should've asked. Never thought to question why he let Helg do what she did. I just thought he was being an asshole."

"What he did to enable her was wrong, just as much as what she did was wrong," Derivan said. "But those mistakes have been made now, and we are left with the consequences. All we can do is try to recover and to learn from mistakes once made."

"Wise words," Novice said, sighing. "Well... let's get back to it, guys. Still a lot of books to get through."