No good conversation started that way.

  I swallowed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Straight to the point.” Klix smiled. “You might be a keeper.” She winked at Ether, then turned back to me. “At first we thought that the Six or their minions were responsible for detonating the Dungeon Seed that caused the Dungeon Break, but after a week of rooting around inside their heads, I haven’t been able to find any trace of them knowing anything about a Dungeon Seed.” She folded her hands after she turned a chair around to sit on it backwards. “There are other people I could call, but you’ve lived through one of these, so I wanted to hear your thoughts.” She smiled. “You reminding those arrogant fools where they stand right now was just a bonus.”

  “Okay…” I looked over at Ether. “Then why did you have Ether sit in too?”

  The smile on her face told me everything I needed to know.

  “You’re establishing us both as the heirs of Trent, but why?” I took Ether’s left hand in my right. “Does that mean you’re going to let her stay?”

  “That’s a very complex question that requires an answer only your father can give.” The ivory Goddess chuckled. “But I think I already know what he’s going to say.”

  “What..?”

  “Enough about later matters.” Klix waved her hand. “Back to the Dungeon Seed. I need you to tell me what happened in Wurn.”

  I swallowed. There was a lot about what happened that I couldn’t tell her. “Um… What do you want to know?”

  “There wasn’t a Dungeon Break there, so what did these fanatics do with the Seeds?” She tapped her claws on the table.

  “You think that it’s the Cult of Wurn that did this?” That didn’t make much sense. The Cult had been trying to resurrect Wurn. Setting off a Dungeon Seed here wouldn’t do that. Especially since Trent had killed the ghost of Wurn and Arlo had taken the Mantle.

  “It wasn’t the Six, so unless you can think of someone else who had access to Dungeon Seeds..?” Her red eyes were studying me.

  “It’s possible that one of the Adventurers there could have grabbed one, but I don’t know why they’d release it in town. Maybe to start a coup?” I looked over at Ether, who shrugged.

  “The Cult was trying to resurrect Wurn.” I swallowed as I tried to think of a way to word things so that I didn’t give away what had happened. “They used the seeds to lock Trent and the other high level Adventurers there who weren’t part of the Cult in the Dungeon, then Aryne Minti tried to use the power the Dungeon Seeds were putting out to resurrect Wurn. A local blacksmith sacrificed himself by going through the portal that Aryne was drawing power from to close it so that Trent and the rest of his team could get out. They were able to shut it down and stop Wurn from being resurrected.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Klix nodded slowly. “Mive is still alive, but maybe they didn’t know that. Which means…” Her voice drifted off as she began to think quietly.

  “Maybe the Dungeon Seeds have a different function.” Ether squeezed my hand. “You did say that Tres told you there had been other places where Dungeon Seeds had been detonated.”

  “That’s right!” I’d forgotten about that conversation. “Tres said that one went off in Vefe and Slece had one go off in her city.”

  “Really?” Klix looked up at the ceiling as her face cracked into a toothy smile. “The skeleton has been through one of these too.”

  “So it seems like they aren’t just happening in Godless towns.” Ether leaned forward. “Do you think Slece would know what the Cultists were trying to do in Her city?”

  “If She did, I doubt She’d tell me.” Klix shook her head. “We might hunt together some times, but that doesn’t mean that She’d give me information that didn’t help Her. And to be honest…” Klix leaned forward and tapped Mive on the arm. “She probably wouldn’t mind if this Fox was taken off the board. It’d make Her the oldest one in the Ward, which would give Her a lot more pull during a Quorum.” The Ivory Goddess looked at me. “So even if She does know, unless it really helped Her, She’s not going to help.”

  “So what do we do?” I looked between Klix and Ether. The more I was around them, the more I was picking up on features that they shared. It was starting to feel like I was talking to an older version of Ether when I looked at Klix, which was weirding me out a little.

  “I’ll keep closing gates.” Klix tapped a claw on the table. “You’ll finish waking up this sleeping bum so that He can finish cleaning up His city and I can go home.”

  “Why are you here?” I couldn’t understand why both Klix and Harror would be working so hard to save a city when neither of them seemed to be very happy to be here.

  Klix sighed. “You can’t just leave a Dungeon Break. If you do, the gates start spitting out more and more monsters and those monsters won’t stay in the city for long. And once they get into the wild…” She let my imagination finish that thought. “So I have to stay until Mive wakes up, because the alternative is to leave and let Slece Desolate the place to clean it up.”

  “Oh.” I tried to give her a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Enjoy your day off.” Klix got up and headed for the door. “If you think of anything else, tell Kara.”

  I watched her leave and before I could say anything, my stomach growled to remind me that I hadn’t eaten yet today. I stood up and put my hand on Ether’s shoulder. “Have you eaten?’

  The ivory woman nodded as she got out of her chair. “Kara and I finished just before Klix brought them in.”

  “Good.” I’d have to see what I could grab from the kitchen that I could eat quickly. “So what do you want to do today?”

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