A few more trips to the shop to act as a magical elven bus ride later, Fiona had transferred Guild members down to the dock to investigate everything, take the smugglers into custody, and get her the one guy she needed:

  Nick.

  Cita was apparently down with a bad case of flu that even magic couldn’t cure, and on bedrest, and the dark-feathered avian looked rather deflated. Fiona felt the same way. “So, no shenanigans between Cita and me. Foo. Darla, that poor woman needs a bowl of chicken noodle soup.”

  “What’s a chicken?” Darla asked.

  “A desperately needed import from Earth!” she declared. “Why has no one summoned a delivery truck driver with a whole truck filled with chickens by now? The law of averages says the summoners have to bring something useful every great once in a while.”

  “We got you, aaaaand…” Nick trailed off, smirking softly.

  “Shut up. I’m awesome.” Fiona handed off the fresh mana cell to Bonnie, quickly examining it in her hand. “Bonnie, what’s the situation with Varith’s bracer? He said your shop had no power cells except the one.”

  Bonnie was otherwise busily concentrating on the device, eyes laser-focused as a thread of energy went from her claw tip to the runes etched on one side. “Bon-Bon?” Fiona asked again.

  “I don’t know.” She showed the device to the gathered team, with Varith looking nonplussed. “I can’t find anything wrong with it, without breaking down the device into components. And for obvious reasons, we have to figure this out.” She showed the depleted cell. “Varith, how fast did this drain?”

  “A couple of minutes? I really was getting cooped up in Bianca’s mind, all that hand wringing, all that moping about terrible things,” he shrugged. “She needed a break.”

  “Yeah, this is not the kind of break she needed,” Bonnie snapped, and examined the power cell. “There is nothing I can discern that is wrong with this device. But why were the extra mana cells missing?”

  “Greg thought Lex moved them,” Fiona explained. “He says he didn’t, and the kid is sticking by the story. I think someone else took them or misplaced them.”

  Bonnie glanced up from her examination, looking surprised. “Fiona, I don’t misplace things. Those power cells were kept in that drawer for unlikely situations like this. Even if I did, the replacement cell should not have drained this fast, less than a day?” The vixen then turned to Varith. “Did you have something to do with this?”

  He let out a scoff. “As if. Bianca and I are the same person. We just have…differences of opinion on how things get done. I do what she can’t. Or won’t. Conversely...she's got more people skills.”

  “Free will still exists, Varith. And you too, Bianca,” Fiona said impatiently. “You don’t get to hide behind the actions of one or the other. Not unless you two are separate sovereigns.”

  Though there was a darker theory that Fiona had. One that came to the forefront of her mind as soon as she mentioned free will.

  What if neither of them did this? What if there were a third hand on the wheel?

  What if the mark itself was doing this? Could Bianca take on a third personality? And if she could…there was an even darker thought crossing her mind.

  What if she were never Bianca, but a simulacrum of her? Another face of the Druidess of the Shifting Wilds?

  Varith folded his arms. "You gonna stand there and stew all day, Fi?"

  She shook her head. "No." Her theory wasn’t getting brought up here; that was for sure. Neither was she fully convinced of it, either: the Druidess couldn’t possibly have mimicked every memory of Bianca.

  She would have to ask Bonnie later for an opinion. “So, Bonnie? Will this cell work?”

  “It should. Varith, time for you to do the magic disappearing act,” Bonnie said sternly, and motioned for him to put the bracer back on, after inserting the fresh mana cell.

  “Oh, but must I?” he pouted. “You know, there is a part of Bianca that does enjoy this.”

  “Your destructive tendencies need a good dose of meditation and medication,” Fiona fumed. His pouting was followed by sad eyes, then a low grumble of resignation from him. For some reason, this made her reconsider something. “Real talk, did Greg’s lesson help?”

  “A tiny bit. It also doesn’t hurt that Fiefdala has an actual government that doesn't beat or coerce its own people into submission. Why?”

  “Uh…reasons. But Fiefdala does have a massively dysfunctional royal family." Varith wouldn't let go of the 'reasons' part.

  “You want lessons with Greg, too?”

  “I could use a little more stress management in my life, yeah,” Fiona admitted. “Bonnie, drumroll please!” The kitsune ignored her and closed the bracer on Varith’s wrist with no fanfare. And no change to the shorter, meeker, sleeker Bianca form.

  “He’s still here,” Jake said impatiently.

  “We’re still here, thanks,” Varith retorted. “Don’t just ring me up when you have a door to batter down. I’m not all bad, just like Bianca isn’t an innocent bystander either.” He frowned as he put a hand to his chin. “Why does Bianca have essentially zero magic, but I have overwhelming dark energy? Technically, I don’t think we have a class. Not even the Administrators could figure it out.”

  “They asked you about it?” This was new to Fiona. Her brushes with an Administrator had been with an overworked and underpaid clerk named Clarke, but there must be others who granted classes.

  “Yes. And came up with nothing.” He tapped the bracer with one finger. “Maybe it’s like a broken watch? It’s right twice a day?”

  Bonnie scoffed at that. “It must be something broken internally. We’ll get some spares made. You know, you could change back. As an act of good faith?”

  Varith twisted his lips in response. “Yeah, you have a point. But you need to lend me Greg, for some meditation lessons.”

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  “Oh, I am not negotiating!” Bonnie fumed, leering at him with a hint of teeth. “You almost burned us all to death!”

  “Guys? We have other fires to put out, quite literally,” Fiona interjected. Bonnie and Varith continued to leer at each other, folding their arms like mirror images and having a staring contest. “Just change back, please?”

  “Fine, then.” Varith closed his eyes and then scrunched his face in concentration, tapping a foot gently.

  Nothing happened. Everyone exchanged puzzled looks, with Varith biting his lip. “There seems to be something preventing me…from…”

  He suddenly gasped, grabbing his wrist with his free hand and letting out a seething hiss of pain through clenched teeth. Fiona saw a brief, angry glow on his hand. “What happened?” she asked, and instantly went silent and stark-faced as she saw what had happened.

  Black and twisting red tendrils snaked from the bleeding heart of the mark. She was the only one who didn’t take a cautious step back. Except for Doug.

  “The mark…didn’t like that.”

  “Marks aren’t alive, they’re just a manifestation of–”

  Jake’s remark fell to silence when Fiona pointed at the jeweled heart on her own wrist. “Are you sure about that?” she asked calmly.

  He clenched his muzzle gently, but after a moment, he shook his head, averting her gaze before settling on an answer. "I'm undecided."

  “We still have a dangerous amount of pyrogel and other components to track down,” Nick interrupted. “We don’t have just Cepalune to worry about. If those cargo containers were to combust in sufficient quantities, it could cause a massive cavern collapse.”

  Fiona shuddered at that horrible thought. “Yeah, that could be bad. Worse still, if it were under a lake. Or the ocean.” Underlune becoming a giant, drowned mess was a terrifying prospect to her. “Let’s find that trading post for now, and see if we can find out where the stuff was delivered. Hopefully, we can intercept it and find out what Karlin planned with it.”

  “I just don’t get why he’d need explosives of that magnitude and take such a stupid risk, putting it in substandard packaging. It needs to be sealed against moisture, and there’s plenty of other shelf-safe options.” Bonnie adjusted her armor instead of her normal cozy wear and pointed toward the tunnel. “What’s he gonna do, threaten to blow up Fiefdala unless we give him all our gold?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Doug growled as they continued along the path. A mine cart with sufficient room for the team was sitting idle and whirred into motion once Jake adjusted the controls. “But even with that amount? Why send it all underground? What’s the point? He should have been bringing it into the city, but he’s not.”

  “Hot take? He’s going to blow up something that is supposed to be indestructible,” Fiona proposed. “The palace, the banks on Hall Street, an inconveniently placed orphanage, maybe? I mean, if he were to blow up the tax collection office overnight, I sure wouldn’t shed any tears.”

  “The excuse ‘I didn’t file my taxes, because the tax office is currently in low orbit’ is not a valid defense for tax evasion,” Doug chuckled, as the air blew by gently in the upward-sloping tunnel. After a while, the cart came to a small unloading station. The rail tracks throughout Underlune were not all contiguous, and in many places, it was too difficult to place them.

  But there were tracks for an automaton in the large cavern, stalagmites deliberately chopped and set to the side, and a low wind howled from the depths. Glowing moss accentuated part of the cavern wall, and water dripped intermittently.

  And still, no threats. Fiona wondered if the other smugglers heard the detonation and kept going. The treads of the automaton were visible enough in the dirt, but without rainfall or wind, several sets were tracking back and forth. “I wonder if I could teleport an automaton?” Fiona proposed.

  “Dear gods, plural. Don’t even try it,” Jake sighed. “This is gonna be one of those jobs that turns into a quagmire real quick, isn’t it?”

  “Quagmire for you,” Darla purred as she grabbed a sample of lichen hanging from a cavern wall and put it in her portable kitchen, “But a sampling of the finest dishes of Underlune might be an unexpected bonus, if I can find enough.”

  “I can’t believe we went through all of this because you wanted coffee,” Varith grumbled. “It had better be the best damn coffee on the planet for this inconvenience.”

  “Oh, Varith. Have some faith, “Darla said with a smug look on her face. “Even if it weren’t for coffee, you’d be thrilled at an adventure. You like danger. Well, more than Bianca.”

  “Uh…” Varith dared a glance at Fiona, who furrowed her brow at him, “No comment.”

  Underlune was different than the surface. There was a beauty here in the twisting passages and yawning mouths of massive caverns the size of cities lurking in the depths of the world. And it wasn’t lacking in biodiversity, either.

  Fiona was surprised that water trickled its way down here from the surface from time to time, and that some areas had their own weather systems. How that worked, she didn’t know, but some caverns carried a misty haze of what almost seemed like clouds above them.

  But the mushroom forest they found themselves tracking through along the automaton track had no analog in her mind.

  The massive mushrooms had stalks that were as big around as she was tall. The roughly conical-shaped caps of mushrooms were formed from a pale green, slightly mushy texture that left a slight green trace on her fingers. Like running her hands over slime, almost. The mushrooms contained branches of stems that formed smaller mushroom heads, and she saw the faint trace of spores drifting in that faint breeze that carried through the cavern.

  Nearby, she heard the flitter of bats, and beetles the size of her fist skittered away, interrupted from their meal on a mushroom cap. Darla collected a sample of the mushroom flesh with a knife and tucked it away. “This stuff has an earthy, meaty flavor. Not so great raw, but when you sear it…you can make a phenomenal vegan steak out of it if you cook it in butter and add a little seasoning,” she added with a smile.

  “I will try it exactly once,” Jake chuckled. “I haven’t been to Underlune much either. Even as much as I used to travel around on missions.”

  “The history is sparse down here.” Doug pointed to the remains of an encampment, little more than burnt mushroom stalks and a shelter tucked into a crevice in the cavern wall. “Much of the underworld is unexplored, untamed. The populace down here is like… one-fifth of the topside or so. A lot is concentrated in larger caverns near underground rivers. Darla, is your father’s city near here?”

  “Nah. Our city was hundreds of miles from Fiefdala, near the eastern coast of the continent.” She cautioned them as a herd of small furry creatures flitted in and out of the mushroom trunks and from low-lying shrubs containing prickly-looking moss structures, tinted a dark olive color. “Rorganths. A scavenger here, but still dangerous if you’re alone. They won’t say no to eating a single adventurer, even if you’re in tip-top shape.”

  “If it tries to eat me first, it’s fair game,” Fiona muttered.

  “I see a glow up ahead around the cavern wall,” Fiona noted, with a slight golden glow like a beacon, just over a large deformation of the cavern floor. It almost looked like dawn, but underground. “We should be almost there. Does anyone need to take a bathroom break? The shop is but one teleport away.”

  “Only Fiona could say that and not make it sound strange,” Bonnie chuckled. She did, however, keep giving wary glances to Varith, who was up front with Jake, in notable silence.

  “Okay, Bon-bon. What’s up?” Fiona whispered as they passed more lichen draped from the mushroom branches.

  “That bracer should have worked. The mana cell drained almost instantly. The reserve cells went missing from my shop. What does that add up to?”

  Fiona considered her answer carefully. “Someone wanted Varith out in the open. But I don’t think he can force Bianca against her will. Hearing it from both of them? Or both sides of her? There’s one unsettling implication. Well, two.”

  “Bad one first, worse one second.”

  “There’s a possibility it’s her mark,” Fiona whispered. “And it can make both parts of her dance to its tune.”

  [An affront to free will, if the case.]

  Fiona added the quick comment from Wingding, and Bonnie nodded quietly. Fiona could hear the sounds of industry and voices further up, and she could see what looked like large golden crystals bound overhead in the cavern ceiling, like an artificial light source. “Bonnie, your thoughts?”

  “Possible. I can’t believe I find myself saying this, but…maybe Wingding is a nascent goddess with a mind of her own. And if she’s proof of that, then it’s proof of how the other gods and goddesses get around in the same way. Except…not. What’s the worst implication?”

  Fiona tried her best to sound calm, but her tensed ears were another matter. “If it’s not the mark? Bianca willingly went into Karlin's forge to burn us all to death. You know how I mentioned that bipolar is a condition of extremes? Sometimes those depressive episodes…”

  She bit her lip gently as Bonnie finished the words she couldn’t. “You think she was looking for…an exit?”

  “Gods, Bonnie, I hope not.”

  gulp*

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