Serenity opened his Status and glanced at his Path section wistfully. It moved quickly when it moved, but he hadn’t found a reliable way to slowly advance his Incarnate of Death Path.

  Wait. When did that happen?

  There was only one time it could have happened: when he killed the four assassins in the spider dungeon. He must not have checked since then.

  Serenity sighed to himself and pulled up his list of possible Paths. If he was lucky, the Voice would have something for him and he wouldn’t have to get Death to edit a custom Path again.

  The list did have something on it, but only one thing. He’d never seen a Path like it.

  -Error- SERENITY

  It was the same as his Core was at this Tier, but he had no idea what it meant.

  “Voice? What is that Path?”

  [The origin of that Path is unknown. That is why it is marked as an error. It is also unknown what Skills it will grant, if any. If this were anyone other than you, I would recommend against taking it]

  “Anyone other than me? So you think I should take it, then?”

  The Voice didn’t immediately respond. When it finally did speak, there was an undertone of frustration in its normally emotionless tone. [Yes. Your history indicates that this is something you made and it will therefore be well suited to you even if it does not follow the normal rules of Path construction]

  That was enough for Serenity. He accepted the Path.

  As usual, nothing happened immediately. He’d have to level the Path to find out what it did. With only the clue of its name, the best way to level it was probably to be himself. All he could say about that was that at least it wasn’t something he’d have to think about specifically.

  Even a ship as advanced as the Death’s Wings shouldn’t go directly from Suratiz to Eadsyt; they were simply too far apart. The direct travel time was a little over a month, which was possible but not desirable; it was far more comfortable for everyone if they took a handful of stops when the route happened to pass near another world.

  Serenity knew that a trip that would take a month in the Death’s Wings would take far longer than that through portals unless there happened to be a direct route between the two planets. The portal system almost seemed to have been designed to be inconvenient; after all, why shouldn’t a portal open to every place that was close enough if the local Lords permitted it to?

  Serenity didn’t have a good answer, but he’d never seen a world or a portal that did. Every portal selected a few destinations and that was it; you had to physically travel between portals to get anywhere that wasn’t on the list. He hadn’t opened that mch up on Earth yet to prevent unexpected dangers; perhaps that was the real reason?

  Either way, he knew there was no way for them to beat the speed of a message sent from Imperius to Eadsyt, but they ought to reach Eadsyt well before the few people who didn’t participate in the assault on Rissa. Since the leader of the group, Ida, was among the dead, there was even a chance no one would send a message. Serenity wasn’t certain the “guards” had the appropriate contact information.

  He couldn’t count on that, unfortunately, any more than he could count on the information he’d gotten from Ida’s zombie that the Mimir, or Memories as she called them, didn’t know about the Death’s Wings. Ida hadn’t known, but she’d been repeatedly directed to a new target. They’d even managed to arrive at Imperius ahead of Serenity, though that was probably mostly due to the time they’d taken to deal with the White Tiger and her cubs.

  The one thing he could count on was that they clearly had no idea who he was or what he could do. His Unbound trait had to be responsible for that, since the Mimir clearly depended on oracles. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to cover everything, especially not when others were involved.

  If he wanted to, Serenity could kill everything on Eadsyt, or at least everything on the apparent capitol, what Ida called the Mound. He had more than one way to do it; the simplest would be to use the full power of the Death’s Wings. Unless there were defenses Ida didn’t know about, it would easily level the Mound and kill almost everyone nearby. The Death’s Wings wasn’t a true combat ship, but even an armed yacht could do some serious damage.

  The problem with the plan was twofold. First, Serenity would almost bet that there were some defenses Ida didn’t know about on the Mound. They might well be enough to stop the Death’s Wings’ attack entirely. Even if they weren’t that strong, the exact people Serenity wanted to deal with were the ones the most likely to escape and the people the most likely to die were the people Serenity would prefer to leave alive. It simply wouldn’t work.

  There were similar problems with the next easiest plan, a large ritual to kill everyone involved. Serenity had no way to separate the people who were responsible from the people who weren’t. He almost certainly could kill the Memories, but he’d have to kill everyone on the Mound, possibly everyone on Eadsyt.

  There was another reason to dislike the plan as well: it was far too much like what the Final Reaper would have done. In fact, in many ways it was exactly what the Final Reaper had done more than once. There were reasons Serenity knew it would work and also knew that it wasn’t a good solution.

  Things were different this time. He could leverage Ita’s connection Affinity or Rissa’s time magic and foresight. Neither of those seemed likely to be enough to solve the problem.

  Serenity was a hammer, but he’d learned that not all problems were nails. Sometimes you needed a screwdriver.

  He’d spent many hours during the journey going over options with his companions. Senkovar had even contributed before they left him at Suratiz. His contribution made Serenity feel a bit closer to Senkovar. His suggestion that Serenity should simply visit Eadsyt and call out the Memories, especially the Memories of Light and Blood, before killing whichever one or ones was responsible sounded foolish but also like something Serenity might suggest. Senkovar phrased it better than that, but as far as Serenity could tell what he meant was really that simple.

  In the end, it was Blaze’s suggestion that won. Serenity didn’t like it, but Blaze’s point that they could always revert to another plan if Blaze’s failed was well taken. Blaze was also fairly confident that if he structured the plan so that it was solely Serenity that acted, the Mimir would be unable to foresee anything about the plan. Rissa backed up the notion.

  Blaze’s plan meant that the Death’s Wings stopped her mad dash towards Eadsyt several star systems away from the world and bought some trade goods. As it turned out, Blaze was able to make contact with a merchant who was thrilled to be able to obtain affordable fast transportation to Eadsyt; the fact that the Death’s Wings had unusually large cargo holds was better and the fact that they were configurable apparently made the merchant overjoyed.

  Serenity, Rissa, and Ita were all carefully kept away from the merchants, so Serenity only had Blaze’s reports to go on. None of them knew what the Mimir truly knew, but while Blaze was somewhat recognizable he wasn’t nearly as obvious as the actual target, a Sterath far from their territory, or a man who looked like a half-dragon.

  The next two and a half months were simultaneously boring and stressful.

  The boring part was what they actually had to do. All they had to do was act the part of an armed merchant ship bouncing around the area accepting both passengers and goods. All too often, they had to accept prices that were a little too low to really pay their costs; the Death’s Wings was not cheap to operate. That didn’t matter since Serenity was happy to subsidize the time; in many ways, the Etherium they were paid was a bonus. Serenity would have been paying almost the same costs either way.

  The stressful part was waiting for Blaze and a few people he’d picked to travel with him to reach the Mound and infiltrate it. If they were discovered, Serenity might well not be able to save them; he was all too likely to be on a different planet or even in transit between worlds. No matter what Blaze said about always having a way out, Serenity knew that Blaze would absolutely hate to use his diehar abilities. He also knew that the people accompanying Blaze didn’t have those abilities, even if Serenity didn’t know any of them.

  Despite the ship’s high level of technology, the tsarualk hadn’t figured out how to connect to the Voice’s network at all. They couldn’t create nodes. Serenity didn’t think they’d really tried since they had other methods. Unfortunately, an indefinite-point repeater, the technology the tsarualk used to communicate across space quickly, was not exactly something an individual could carry, so Blaze was stuck using the Voice’s system.

  Serenity didn’t get Blaze’s message with the time, date, and location until he landed on another planet. Blaze had clearly allowed for the delay; there was plenty of time to find passengers who wanted to pay for travel to Eadsyt and still make it there in time.

  The capitol city’s name was Thot. To most of the population, that was probably no more than a sound, but to Serenity it meant something more, especially when combined with the fact that the leaders of the Mimir were called Memories. The city definitely had ravens.

  The location turned out to be a bakery a little distance from the Mound, in the larger city that serviced the walled compound. Serenity spent his time on the way there getting a good feel for the city. It wasn’t nearly as hopeless as he’d gathered from the Valkyries he’d questioned. In fact, instead of a depressing heap of stone filled by people who were one step above being useless, Serenity saw a thriving city.

  The streets were filled with people, most of them either busy or trying to get others’ attention to buy things. More than once, Serenity felt hands touch his belt and come away stymied since he carried his small valuables in his Rift rather than on his person. Neither of those things said anything about the condition of the city.

  The fact that the city smelled of fresh manure was unpleasant but Serenity had been in enough cities to know that it was actually a sign of prosperity. A poor city couldn’t afford enough horses for the manure to be a problem. It was clear Thot’s government tried to handle it and didn’t seem to be quite keeping up.

  Even more than that, though, the best sign of the city’s health was its people. Almost everyone, including the thieves, were well fed and few showed the signs of long-term illness or injury. That meant Thot was prosperous and relatively safe. It wasn’t perfect; there was a long way up from “almost everyone usually gets enough food.” It was still better than many places Serenity had seen in his travels.

  Serenity's Status

  General

  Magic

  Resistances

  Heritages

  Chimeric

  Pure (Innate)

  Essence Dragon (Primary)

  Asura

  Child of Time, Unbound

  Dhampir, Essence/Mana

  Draugr, Sage

  Elemental, Essence

  Elemental, Mana

  Godling

  Human, Earth

  Lich, Paramount (Primary)

  Vampire, Daywalker

  Potential, Sovereign

  Wraith, Nightmare

  Other Known Heritages

  Azata, Lightning

  Curse Witch

  Healing Light

  Hexen

  Heavens’ Fire

  Jiang-Shi

  Knight of Blood

  Malevolent Spark

  Mote of Decay

  Mote of Stasis

  Mummy

  Remnant Wisp of Life

  Revenant, Star

  Sea Lion, Earth

  Abilities

  -Error- SERENITY -

  -Error-

  Unknown

  I may not have been showing Serenity’s Status very often at all, but I have been keeping up with it. It’s been a long time since there was significant progress on it!

  A careful look might also reveal some Affinity and Concept progress. It’s all natural progression, though the kind of natural progression that only happens when you’re moving into new areas that you are actually very well suited to.