The scream was wordless but it filled Serenity’s mind with a sense of urgency.
Serenity immediately forgot about the show he was watching while he waited for Rissa and ran outside. He couldn’t tell whether Aki had screamed in pain or in anger, but either way, it gave him a direction. He ran from his home set in the side of a hill to the new building near the Adventurers’ Guild, the building Aki had created for the Imperial guests. They’d been good guests until now, but that seemed to have changed.
Serenity hoped he’d be in time. The distance from his house to the Guild building had seemed like a good idea when they set it up but it was often inconvenient and right now it was worse than inconvenient: it might be dangerous.
Aki’s scream had faded to a soft whimper in the back of Serenity’s mind as he rushed through the door then down the hallway to the door that led to the World Shaman’s rooms.
Serenity skidded to a halt just outside the room at the sight of a draconic tail whipping in the doorway. The door wasn’t just unlocked; it had been knocked out of position. Raz clearly wasn’t willing to waste any time when his friend screamed and he must have been closer than Serenity.
That was good, both because it meant he’d been able to get there quickly and because the surprise made Serenity’s mind start working again. He didn’t know what he’d have done if Raz weren’t there and Aki was still screaming. He hoped he’d have stopped to think before he did anything irreversible, but he just didn’t know. It was hard enough to concentrate now, with Aki’s soft sobs in the back of his mind.
That had to be pain. He didn’t know what the World Shaman had done, but whatever it was, he didn’t like it.
As a dragon, Raz was definitely not suited to the interiors of buildings built for humans. He’d still fit, but only barely. Serenity moved forward a little more cautiously until he could get past Raz’s behind and into the room on the other side of it.
The World Shaman was on his back on the floor with Raz’s front paws pressing him into the ground. He’d clearly been taken by complete surprise; there was no other reason he’d still be half-on the cushion he used when he sat on the floor to meditate.
He also seemed to not be able to breathe. Serenity was certain he had a shield-type Skill, but whatever it was must have been inactive and he must not be able to bring it up. In fact, he seemed to be having trouble breathing with Raz’s forelegs crushing his chest.
“What did you do?” Raz rocked forward onto the World Shaman, pushing him a little more into the carpet, then rocked back. He wasn’t balanced to keep all of his weight on his forelegs.
The World Shaman just gasped.
“Ease off a little?” Serenity suggested to Raz. “I don’t think he can talk right now.”
Raz rocked forward again. “Tell me what you did!”
This time, when Raz rocked back onto his hind legs, Serenity set a hand on his flank. He was pretty sure Raz knew he was there, since he’d had to push past him to get through the doorway, but it was best to be certain. Serenity took a deep breath and shouted. “Let him breathe!”
Raz froze, clearly startled. He turned his head enough to see Serenity, then leaned back more than he had before, reducing the weight on Senkovar.
Senkovar took a deep breath and immediately started coughing.
Raz shifted his weight as much onto his rear legs as he could without removing his forelegs from Senkovar. His face didn’t show emotions the way a human’s would, but Serenity could read his mixed feelings in the way he held his wings; they were stiff and raised slightly. He didn’t seem certain what to do next.
Senkovar coughed a few more times, then lay there panting for air.
Before Raz could decide to push the air out of the World Shaman again, Serenity patted his flank and stepped forward. He wanted to be visible to Senkovar and he probably couldn’t see that far down Raz’s body from his position. “Senkovar, what did you do?”
Senkovar turned to look at Serenity. His head seemed to be the only thing he was willing to use; he didn’t push back against Raz at all. “I pushed when I shouldn’t have. I saw the pathway was constricted and thought I would open it wider; I did not know that the constriction was an Area Spirit.” Senkovar turned back to face Raz. “I should have checked. I’ve never seen an Area Spirit that could do that, but I still should have checked. This is a new world; things are often not normal on new worlds. That’s one of the things that World Shamans do, find the anomalies and decide what to do with them.”
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Raz growled at Senkovar. Serenity suspected he didn’t like Aki being called an “anomaly,” even if it was true. Aki was definitely unusual; she was simply unusual in a very good way.
“I definitely didn’t expect the Area Spirit to have a Guardian. That’s rare for any Spirit; they’re hard to hurt permanently unless they’re artificially weakened, like a dungeon, so most never choose to find Guardians.” Senkovar’s attention was fully on Raz now. “I’m not going to hurt her again. I didn’t mean to hurt her at all. I, if she’d still hurt I’ll help to heal her?”
Raz growled again but stepped back, scooting his rear farther into the hallway outside the room.
Senkovar moved slowly and carefully as he sat up. He didn’t even try to stand; he seemed to think that sitting was enough. From the way he watched Raz, Serenity wondered if he thought Raz would assault him if he stood.
“What exactly were you trying to achieve?” Aki finally spoke in words. She no longer sounded hurt; instead, she sounded furious. “You poked directly into my connection to the ley line network!”
Suddenly, it made a lot more sense to Serenity. Aki probably wasn’t really hurt; she was terrified instead. She’d nearly died a few years earlier after a long decline when the ley lines moved away from her on Asihanya. She’d survived being moved and implanted into a ley line nexus on Earth, but that meant she was still sensitive about her experience. Serenity could sympathize.
It also made Senkovar’s mistake a lot more understandable. Traumatized relocated dungeons had to be rare; Serenity doubted Senkovar had ever encountered one before.
“It shouldn’t have hurt, I’m sorry,” the World Shaman started. “I was trying to reach the World Spirit and going through the ley line is usually a good way to do it…”
If there was one thing Serenity could say about Senkovar Et’Tart, it was that he liked to teach. He insisted that Serenity wasn’t his apprentice, but he also insisted on giving Serenity regular lessons. Some of them were incredibly basic, like the one where he tried to teach Serenity how to push his Skills to achieve slightly different results. Serenity knew sometimes forgot that wasn’t commonly taught.
Other lessons were far more difficult. Serenity simply couldn’t manage to completely ignore his senses to the point where he wouldn’t react to something near him because he didn’t notice, at least not when his aura was extended. If the World Shaman was in his aura, Serenity knew where he was and if he moved. It was impossible for him to simply turn that sense off any more than he could turn off his Eyeless Sight without covering his eyes. He could try not to pay attention, but without something else to concentrate on it didn’t work.
The World Shaman considered a state of mindlessness a basic prerequisite to learning to talk to World Spirits. The fact that Serenity couldn’t even reach that state yet had talked to more than one World Spirit clearly bothered him. He was even more bothered when Serenity, with Russ’s permission, talked him through the exercise Russ had shown him that led to his initial meeting with Gaia. It was close to what Senkovar did, apparently, but not the same.
Serenity didn’t go into detail about the times he’d talked to Tzintkra or the first time he’d talked to Aeon. He might eventually mention Tzintkra, but he doubted he’d ever talk about his introduction to Aeon. Using the Voice’s nodes as an intermediary seemed like it would bother the World Shaman but it probably wouldn’t be too much worse than how Serenity normally talked to Gaia by projecting himself along the ley lines. Senkovar seemed to consider that an advanced version of what he was trying to teach Serenity.
Talking to Aeon at the end of a god-maiming altered ritual might be one step too far, however. Serenity wasn’t certain. It didn’t seem likely to come up, so all he had to do was not bring it up and he’d never have to find out what Senkovar thought of it.
Over the past nearly two weeks, a pattern had developed. First thing in the morning, Cymryn and the two guards left to explore Earth. Janice helped them find things that interested them, but they didn’t always take her advice. Serenity knew he could have restricted them more, but he was convinced that letting them see Earth was the better strategy.
Yes, it would give the Empire more time to plan and good information to plan with, but Serenity was fairly confident they’d have that information soon anyway. Ten years sounded long on the scale of mortals, but on the scale of someone like the Emperor it was not long at all. More than that, he might be able to deflect an attack that came at Earth directly and was intended to deal with the people Earth had now; that likely wouldn’t always be true. If there was to be an invasion from the Empire, sooner was better.
Soon after they left, Serenity would join Senkovar, who would give him a lesson or talk to him about various Worlds he’d interacted with. Serenity thought of those as lessons as well, even if they weren’t how to do things. After that, especially if the lesson turned into one of the headache-inducing meditation sessions, Serenity would walk out to the waterfall. If it was particularly bad, he’d run, but that always required checking with Aki first to make certain no one was on the path; he didn’t want to run over anyone.
The afternoon was practice on his own while Senkovar did things on his own; Serenity occasionally heard amused comments from Gaia about Senkovar’s attempts to contact her. There hadn’t been another mistake like the one right before Senkovar started teaching him; if anything, Senkovar seemed to be overly cautious about how he approached his attempts to reach Gaia.
He had no idea that the World Spirit was simply refusing to talk to him. Serenity had talked to her and she’d been quite blunt: she was going to make Senkovar work for it. If he managed to actually get his presence into her World Core chamber, she’d talk to him. Otherwise, she wanted D’Nehr to meet him first and be present when they spoke, which meant Senkovar would have to visit A’Atla.
She didn’t, however, want that to happen soon. Gaia specifically did not want to make Senkovar’s life easy; she wanted him to try for a few months at least before she allowed Serenity to help by taking him to A’Atla.