Damarys wondered if she should do something about Zeter but he looked comfortable enough where he lay. Might as well let him rest for now. In the mean time there were questions that needed answering.

“How long have I been gone?” Jelvaic asked.

“We’re not sure exactly,” Damarys replied. “You were replaced by a fiend in disguise.”

It took some figuring but they soon narrowed it down to only a couple of days at most that Jelvaic and Arjana were missing before the impostor was discovered.

“How’d she get away with this?” Jelvaic asked but Kasyn shook his head.

“She’s gone silent,” he explained. “I can’t get any more answers out of her.”

“Search her,” Jelvaic instructed. “Maybe she had something like those absolution runes Zeter makes.”

It was a fair idea and Damarys, along with one of the healers, performed the search. There wasn’t much in her pockets besides a few coins. There was a hidden pouch in her shirt where a blowgun and several darts were secreted.

“Oh my,” the healer exclaimed as she pulled back Jerlinzia’s collar.

Damarys bent over to see what the healer was looking at and found an intricate tattoo, shifting as if it were alive. It was also breaking in places and vanishing.

“The magic that perpetuated it was tied to Jerlinzia,” Ketty Pordis said from behind them, startling Damarys who hadn’t noticed the other woman’s approach. “It must have begun to break the moment she died. We didn’t find it soon enough, otherwise I could have preserved it. Pity.”

“I don’t think we want people knowing how to avoid our city’s defenses,” Jelvaic grumbled.

“It could have been the key to understanding Akumu’s other runes,” Ketty argued. “Someone clearly understood them well enough to make this,” she added, gesturing to the tattoo. “Imagine what more we could have learned if we could translate Akumu’s script.”

Jelvaic only shrugged.

“It’s too late now, like you said.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure this tattoo is how she was avoiding Akumu’s notice?” Kasyn asked as he joined them.

“It bares many of the same markings as Akumu’s runes,” Ketty replied. “I can’t read it so I can’t be certain but I’m fairly confident that this is what she used.”

As it continued to fade, Kasyn shifted uneasily from side to side.

“You okay?” Damarys asked.

“I can…feel it,” Kasyn whispered. “Or, I can’t feel it? But it’s getting weaker so I’m sensing more and more of this area. I didn’t notice it before but now that I know what to look for I can’t sense anything going on near her body.”

“Speak up,” Ketty said, striding over to them. “What do you mean you can sense it?”

Kasyn grimaced but there wasn’t much use in keeping quiet now.

“I have a sort of bond with the city now,” he explained. “I can sense where Akumu’s runes are, or where they should be, things like that. But I can’t feel anything near Jerlinzia. It’s the same sort of feeling I get around where the runes have been removed or damaged.”

“Can you pinpoint those locations?” Ketty asked.

“Yes, that’s how we got Ichiba Wa under control.”

“And what about Chikara Wa?”

“Yes, even there.”

“Then that should be your next focus,” Ketty stated with growing excitement. “The sooner we can access the Sages tower, the sooner we can fully restore the city.”

Damarys didn’t miss how Kasyn’s face fell and the healer from before who used to be part of the Tower of Light placed his hand on Kasyn’s shoulder.

“I think,” the healer said, “that we’ll get to it in time, but right now I think Kasyn, Damarys, and Zeter all need to take some time to rest and recuperate. There’s no immediate threat right now so we can take some time.”

Ketty was about to press the subject when Jelvaic tapped her on the shoulder.

“You look like you could use some rest yourself,” he told her, “and I hear your ward is awake and calling for you.”

Ketty pursed her lips but nodded and left all the same. Once she was gone, Jelvaic turned to Damarys and Kasyn.

“The healer’s right,” he said. “I can see how weary you’ve all become and we can’t keep asking you to run yourselves ragged. Get some rest. Some good rest. And then we’ll talk about next steps.”

The melancholy that had been dispelled by the healer was returning to Kasyn as he began to walk off towards his home.

“See that he’s alright,” Jelvaic muttered to the healer who hurried after Kasyn. He turned to Damarys next and pointed to her broken prosthesis. “You’ll want to see about getting that repaired. I think the tinkerer’s are coming back now. Arjana can point you to the best ones for that sort of work.”

Sure enough, the other merchants and craftspeople were making their way back now that the fighting was over. Arjana wasn’t far away and heard Jelvaic mention the prosthesis. She approached and examined the damaged arm. After a moment she began unstrapping it from Damarys and took it over to one of the tinkerers to look at.

“I’ll bring this back to you once it’s repaired,” Arjana said.

Jelvaic left Damarys after that, off speaking with the other city leaders and getting caught up on all that he’d missed. The injured who still needed tending were being led away and everyone else was just cleaning up and getting back to business. Jerlinzia’s body finally sank into the ground as the last of her tattoo faded away and she became just another undead serving the city. Zeter was carried away, still asleep, on a magical platform.

No one else seemed to be paying Damarys any attention so she picked up her bow and quiver of arrows and left. A good long rest of doing nothing sounded great to her and she looked forward to several days of quiet when no one would be asking her to risk her life or figure out some new mystery of the city.