"If you think I'm going to let him out of my sight for even one minute during this week-long period of time that I've got him, then you're absolutely wrong."

  Dinner with his family and friends was going well. The arguments that his father had raised, about why he showed up with the Oracle, had died very quickly. Having Gia and Erebus there as well, to back him up, was so refreshing.

  "What happens when he has to go see the Senator? He's going to want to talk to his sponsor. Or at least, his sponsor is going to want to talk to him."

  It was almost guaranteed that he would need to see the Senator before lunch the following day. “Grammarian Tyler would have been sent already, but he was attending to other business.”

  Erebus held up a hunk of meat. “Your patron’s finest trainer is going to be late? How terrible. More time for Gia and I to fill you in on arena politics.”

  “Unless you and Gia became an item, I doubt that there’s anything that happened there that could raise my notice.”

  Gia frowned at him. From her spot across the low table she couldn’t reach him. “Oracle, hit him once for me. I would never. This is about the people that were behind it. I don’t know what the military uncovered, but after the event, they closed the arena down for a week. When we were called to return to work, there was someone notable missing from the crew. One of the managers was gone, with no explanation.”

  “You forgot the best part,” Erebus said.

  “I’m getting to it. The military, in their infinite wisdom, dug up a pit in the center of the arena right where you’d done the thing. So now we have this giant hole in the center that we have to fill with sand, but, oh no, we can’t just level off the whole arena with the existing sand, no, it has to be fresh sand, apparently.”

  Something tugged at the back of his mind. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. He never thought to go back to investigate how they'd come in. He had a theory that there was some sort of anchor. If they could imbue the anchor on this side, then they could tie it to an anchor on the other side.

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  Theoretically, it was possible.

  He just wasn't entirely sure how they would do it.

  He tucked through his pack to find his most recent acquisition. The text on fundamental theories of Will utilization was packed to the gills with useful things, but they were all pieces of a larger problem. He hadn't gotten those foundational courses because he'd come in so late.

  Now he was trying to make up for lost time. He was a bit lost in the classes that had to deal with Will theory and Will shaping, but he understood imbuement well enough. Now he had a week, and nothing else pressing, he would take this opportunity to make good on his promise to his friends to do as good as he possibly could.

  “Were you there for any part of this?”

  “No. We just saw the aftermath. Gia asked some people that were there and apparently they had a crack team from the fourteenth Legion digging up dirt for—how many days was it?”

  “Five days. They even put up a temporary structure so no one could see what they were doing. It was madness.”

  Ludere considered it. If they needed an anchor to align their gate to, then there was all the chance in the world that this anchor had been put there under the ground intentionally. If his spear was cooperative, then he might be able to get an answer out of her.

  When had he started thinking about his spear as a woman? Spears were male! Couldn’t succubi, even dead ones, pretend to be male? It wouldn’t accept his reasons, but it might… no, that wasn’t happening at all.

  It wouldn't even make it better if the spear was male. There wasn't even a way that could help him.

  "Son," his father placed a hand on his shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, what?"

  "You did the thing again."

  "What thing?"

  "You were staring off into space. Remember, you told me you wanted to stay present.

  "Thanks."

  Ludere looked at the man who had raised him. "You've come so far in so little time."

  There was a knock on the door. Cire was there with Mila, and they had brought Marcel. It wasn't unexpected, but it was a party.

  "No. Stay sitting. You're alright where you are. I'll handle this."

  The tension he had been bottling up released. He could let someone else handle it.

  He would let them handle it.

  They wanted to take care of him. He could see himself letting them do it, too. Would that be so bad?

  Then he saw her. The Oracle was looking at him. For the first time since they had become an item, she looked scared. He shrank back.

  What had she seen?

  She whispered in his ear. "I need you to promise me something."

  "Anything."

  "If you can do anything, I need you to stop what's coming next."

  The End Book One