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The Obelisks of Geatha Chapter 3: Clash in Cuzco For Studley-Destiny By Draconicon

The darkness was twisting around the colors, writhing and growling and gnashing their silent and invisible teeth at the patch that had grown inside it. The darkness didn't like it, and the patch didn't like the darkness, throwing out tendrils and claiming more and more space for itself.

Studley. For Studley.

It had to remember the name, the name that it had picked. It was almost enough. Almost enough to get out again. The patch could feel the light above it, could feel that there was something, some way to get free.

Stay.

The word lingered in the darkness, a pull at the edge of the colors. It shivered at the tug, pulling back. No, staying was not the answer. Staying would mean conformity. Staying would be...horrible. Even with the power of the darkness, even with the way that it offered him - him, not it - more than the world...no. He had to go.

Studley. Studley had to go.

On that, the darkness and the colors agreed.

A longer strand of the color reached towards the skies - or the depths, as it was hard to tell. It stretched further and further, extending the power of the colorful patch as far as it would go. There was nothing, nothing but darkness for so long, and Studley could feel the power of the dark reaching into him, pulling at his colors. They wanted him broken, and they were trying as hard as they could to do it.

The tendril stretched and bent, the power of the dark pulling on it from every direction. It bounced and twanged, looking like some line that had been scribbled over by a child. But he kept pushing, and pushing, until -

FLASH.

"Welcome back, Studley."

Oh...you...

The wolf groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, looking at the dragon to his left. He was barely visible, and for a moment, the wolf wondered why.

Then he realized that he was buried under a pile of leaves, and he shook his head.

"Why...Leaves?"

"Had to hide your body somehow. Idesin, Blaze, everyone else was just waiting to get you buried. But I knew you were coming back."

Rannoi tossed a little stick on the ground, and the wolf looked at it. It was carved up in so many different shapes, each little part of its length looking different from the rest. Letters? Runes? He wasn't sure. He wasn't entirely awake - or even alive - yet.

He tested his arms, feeling them twitch as they started waking up again. His eyes were able to move freely, and after a moment, his mouth. Taking advantage of that little fact to spit a couple of dozen leaves out of his muzzle, Studley started pulling at his limbs, working them, willing them to wake up the rest of the way.

"How...how did you know I'd come back?"

"Guesses, mostly."

"You risked...being caught with a body...on a guess?"

"I'm usually right, so I can afford it."

The wolf rolled his eyes.

"Rannoi...you knew something about that last obelisk."

"What, that you'd die if you went there? Yes. I knew."

"Then why?"

"You were going anyway. I figured I'd test out another theory in the process."

"That I could come back to life?"

"That you were more than you looked."

The wolf supposed that made some sort of sense. He knew that death wasn't the biggest obstacle to him, but he had never shared that particular bit of information with others. Mostly because there were ways to make it stick much longer than he liked, and people that knew about his pseudo-immortality generally found that out.

His body was finally awake enough to sit up, and he did so, dislodging most of the leaves.

"How long?"

"About a month and a half."

"Faster than I thought."

"A little preservation of the body goes a long way. I don't think you had to restore more than the wound in your throat."

"...You know more than you're telling me."

"I only have guesses. Guesses about something deeper than most of us. Deeper than the chaos, deeper than most anything that we have. Geatha knew a lot, and I've been looking into him."

"Well, this time -"

"I don't think you want to interrogate me right now."

"Why's that?"

"Because Hai Mei is coming to do the same thing. And you're going to want to get out of here before she finds you and starts shouting at you again."

Studley was more concerned about how he would start shouting at Hai Mei, but he supposed that the dragon had a point. If the elephant super conservative was coming here, that meant that she would have a few members of the council with her, and that was always a bit of sticky business. Most of them would be somewhat sympathetic to him, but he doubted that they would take kindly to finding him in Rannoi's cell.

He got up, moving to the wall. It barely required a little bit of Wonder magic to get through it, and he paused in the new archway, looking back at the dragon.

"Are you coming with me?"

"Oh no. It's much more convenient to work out my theories here. Free meals, a good bit of shelter."

"You don't get any 'fun' though, I bet."

"With Mirari next door and a little bit of Wonder holes, I get all that I need."

"Heh...guess that's fair enough. Don't tell her I was here."

"I won't. And don't you go blowing up any more of the obelisks."

"No promises."

This time, it took him a lot less time to figure out where another obelisk was. Considering that they hadn't moved around, all he needed to do was go back to the Salt Lake and trace the network. It was simple enough after that to follow it south, all the way to the southern American continent, and then through the jungles. It would have been nice to have his friends around for the trip, but Studley was...reluctant to involve them again.

And it wasn't just because of the immortality thing, either. As much as he was worried that they'd freak out a little bit, he knew that they'd recover quickly enough. They were good at that.

No, it was because he was sick and tired of having to deal with Gleb and the others with them around him. They weren't as strong, not even Blaze in her were form, and he needed to be able to go completely crazy without having to worry about them being in the line of fire. The beast, chaos, even Wonder magic worked best when there was no one else in the line of fire.

The jungle faded around him as he kept walking, his attention more on the colors inside of him than the greenery around him. The wolf found himself reaching into it more and more often of late, almost fondling the colors that made up the core of himself. The chaos. It was...different, since his latest resurrection.

What was that face?

When he'd died, when he'd come together again in the darkness, he remembered the face. It was almost draconian, almost like Rannoi, but there had been some key differences. In color, in shape, in age...in the feeling of power that he got when he'd looked at it. And the darkness hadn't liked that at all, not to mention when he'd said his name in the darkness.

Studley. It had always been his name, but what did it mean? Why did it cause the darkness to recoil? Why did he feel like it was something much stronger and much more potent than just what he called himself?

No matter how much he ran his thoughts and his soul through the chaos at his core, there was no answer, no magical solution that would give him the peace that he needed.

And so, he plunged faster, harder through the jungle, hoping that maybe he'd get the answer he needed at the obelisk in Cuzco...and hoping that the locals would have a free area for him this time.

"Well, fuck."

The wolf shook his head at the burning buildings. He didn't even know that rock could burn that hot, or even start to melt. But apparently, someone had found a way to do it. He sighed as he walked through the destroyed city, seeing the crumbling buildings, the fallen structures, the looted temples.

"Why can't people leave well enough alone?"

He remembered - or at least, thought he did - the people that had lived here. The Incas had once been a powerful people, and he had hoped that they would survive against the people that came from the east. The Europeans had been deadly to the folk in the north, but here in the south, where they were better entrenched, he'd thought that there was a chance.

Apparently not. There were still ashes against the bottoms of his feet as he walked, and his fingers tensed into fists. The idea that a people could be so thoroughly subjugated...he hadn't seen such a thing since the ancient times, since the Egyptians and the Babylonians, since the Persians and the Greeks had conquered and enslaved people. What had happened to the idea of civilization that everyone kept talking about, how these years were the better ones, the enlightened times?

I guess they are yet to come. He kicked one of the dust piles near a house, scattering the ashes about. Okay...so, I don't get any friends today...That means that I can go really wild. A whole city to fight in...Great.

He had to tell himself that he wasn't here looking for a fight, but he didn't think that his subconscious was listening. The beast inside was already growling, and he had little doubt that it would come out at the slightest provocation. He also doubted that he would mind.

Studley closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the slight tingle in his legs, the feeling of the networks that the obelisks tapped into. It didn't take long to find it, and he settled himself on the path that it created, a path that ran right through the middle of the stone city. Convenient, he supposed, as he started walking.

Gleb, I swear, if you turn up this time, I'm going after more than your blood...

It took him four hours to find the obelisk, but this time, he didn't blame himself for it. He doubted that most people would have looked for the damn thing inside of one of the temples.

The stone floor had broken when the great spire had pushed through, and it had spidery cracks running through the remaining floor all the way to the walls. The wolf stepped across it carefully, using a little bit of his magic to fill in the cracks with more stone, more mortar, as he moved. It was a balancing act to make sure that he didn't make it too heavy for the damaged rock while also making sure that it could take his weight, but he managed it.

The empty temple was incredibly quiet. Not even animals had come in to make this place their home, and he supposed that the obelisk was the reason for that. This one...this one was different from the last two. Before he was more than halfway across the room, Studley could feel an aura coming off of it, a presenece, for lack of a better word. It was...not particularly happy.

He paused when he was a few paces away, looking up and down the great, black thing. Despite punching a hole in a well-constructed temple, it looked no worse for wear. No scratches, no marks along the sides, except for the usual words. He didn't even bother looking; likely it was something warning him away again, and he didn't want to deal with another cryptic warning from the likes of Geatha. The old man probably had been afraid of whatever the network involved, and had sealed it to keep people from touching it.

That bitterness only lasted for a few seconds before he dismissed it. It wasn't true, and he knew it. The warnings were too specific to him for that to be the case.

But he'd never known Geatha. The old Wonder had been around during his time, yes, but not anywhere near the same part of the world. He didn't know what it was that Geatha had found out, but he wished that the old man had shared it.

Studley walked around the obelisk, spreading the repairing effects further through the floor, though making sure not to touch the obelisk itself with it. He took his time, moving slowly. The dust kicked up around his shuffling feet, and he had to hold his breath until he was through the dust cloud.

Soon, he was back where he'd started, standing on a safe island of rock in the middle of a room ready to collapse. The wolf slowly sat himself down, closing his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. The pressure of the strange obelisk seemed to mount higher and higher, and it was making it difficult to think. Almost like something was battering against the edges of his mind, trying to break in, trying to push him away...

Or...

No. It wasn't quite like that. Studley tilted his head to the side, trying to get a better feeling for the strange sensation. The feeling wasn't pushing him away. It was pushing at everything around him, and he was getting caught in the slipstream of it. The obelisk wanted him around. It just didn't want anything else around.

But why?

Studley opened his eyes, and immediately went slackjawed as the obelisk glowed with a similar chaotic coloring as his own inner energies. He fell back, barely catching himself as the blanket of chaos seemed to spread in a layer around the obelisk.

"What...what the hell..."

This was way beyond the things that he had seen before, but before he could think of what to do, the colors started to come down, pulling together. They washed away the words of Geatha, rubbing them away, before forming their own writing.

" Hello, Studley."

"Oh...This just got very weird..."

" Oh, don't tell me you haven't figured it out yet..."

"You...great, I'm talking to a rock..."

" Give me credit, I am much more than a rock. Just as you are much more than a simple Wonder."

"..."

Stunned past silence, the wolf pulled himself to his feet. It was not easy, either, as his legs felt almost numb, and he didn't dare get too close to the obelisk, just in case he fell against it and cracked it again. This was...this was beyond anything he hoped for. If it was honest, then it knew something. Or, whatever was talking through it did.

He reached out carefully, and the chaos colors reached back, forming a pseudo-hand to touch his. It felt warm, comfortable in a strange kind of way. Admittedly the other hand was changing constantly, moving between a hundred and one different species in the blink of an eye, but it was definitely present.

"What...are you?"

" A better question would be, what are you, Studley? You remember the name. What else do you remember, my old friend?"

"I think you better tell me."

" Oh, I would. You have no idea how much I want to tell you, but there are certain...rules."

"Should I guess by your tone that you hate them as much as I do?"

" Just as much or more. And for good reasons. But as much as I would just break this thing and do what I wanted...well, we'll have to go along with them for now."

Studley nodded, keeping himself in contact with the chaos. It was changing his hand, as well, flickering through different colors and shapes and sizes, but he was fine with that. Transformation was a constant for a Wonder, and it was actually more comfortable than the gradual changes that he usually went through.

He thought for a moment. What did he remember?

"Not much...I remember a dragon. I remember darkness. I remember chaos and its power, but I don't remember where it came from."

" Unfortunate. It would be much easier if you remembered more...Geatha was clever enough with his dealings to make it very, very difficult to get this contact. I don't know if we'll get it again."

"What are you?"

" I'm something deeper than any of the other Wonders could ever imagine. More than Geatha knew. Enough to scare them. Enough to be put away."

"I'm waiting to hear whether the reasons were good."

" In their minds. Perhaps in my mind, at some point. But back then, all they wanted was conformity."

The phrase lingered in his mind, flickering back and forth like a flame in a wind. It was the same thing he'd feared when he was in the darkness, when they were trying to twist his colors to be something else. To form something like them. It sent a shiver down his spine just thinking about it, and the colors seemed to chuckle. At least, that was what he got from the wriggling and trembling under his fingers.

" You still remember that. That's good. That's very good."

"You know me better than I know you. That means that you used to know me...and I knew you. Somehow. I don't know when -"

" If you knew when, I wouldn't be here. But that's not important. What is important is that you have a chance here. A chance to get something back, and a chance to end the people that have dealt you a humiliation."

"They're coming?"

" About half a mile and counting. This time, you know. And this time, we can prepare."

"And how can we do that?"

" A gap in the network. A gap that you can exploit. And you can have something that you never imagined was possible."

Much as he knew the stories about old creatures that offered strange deals, Studley was more tempted than he wanted to admit. The idea of being able to take down Gleb with new power - and that buck, Heinrich - was an enticement that had little to rival it. They had been a thorn in his side for centuries now, and if it meant that he might get something back that he used to have...

"Where's the gap in the network?"

" Go to the top of the southern temple. You'll find it there."

"Thank you."

" And Studley?"

"Yes?"

" Get ready to fly."

From the southern temple, Studley had a perfect vantage point of the whole of the city, and it didn't take him long to find the 'gap' that the voice mentioned. It was right at the tip-top of the temple, and soon as he touched it, he was rendered speechless.

This was beyond a mere boost in power, such as he'd felt when he had reached into his chaos powers. This was a step forward in all senses, a magnification of abilities that was...incredible. His eyes were blank, and his body felt like it was filling up with more energy than could be contained in the world, let alone in his own, smaller form. He fell to his knees, gasping and panting.

I can't take this. I have to -

Not yet.

He paused in the middle of reaching for his Wonder magic, groaning as the power swirled inside of him. Even as it empowered, it felt like it was consuming at the same time, lighting a fire within him with its sheer potency.

It's too much. It's...it's amazing, but I can't hold it. It'll destroy me.

But not me.

The temple opened, and a glowing hand reached out. It was tipped with the colors of chaos, but there was more. Beneath it, beneath those swirling waves, was something...new. New, yet familiar, as old memories tickled at the back of his head. A white glow, something old, primordial. Something beyond this world.

Take my hand...let me in...and you can handle it.

What are you? Tell me! I need to know!

I can't. The rules -

Damn the rules. I don't care about them, and neither do you. Tell me what the hell you are, now!

The voice chuckled, and the hand slowly turned over. In its palm, a small spiral formed, and then expanded, growing bigger, and bigger, until it was the size of Studley's entire body. It spun around a great fireball in the center, and speckles of light flared and shrunk across the entire body of it.

I am something greater than this. And the power you're tapping into is something we both used to have. Now...take me...while you can. Or Gleb will try.

No answers, but Studley felt that there wasn't time to push. Gleb was coming, and if the snow leopard was lucky enough to make contact, then this power would reach for him. And he doubted that the warmongerer would be smart enough to avoid contact with this thing. If the power was going to someone, he needed it to be him.

With barely a moment of hesitation, Studley reached out and took the glowing hand. The energy rushed up his arm, and he threw back his head in a howl as he was filled. It slammed into his head, his eyes going wide as something...expanded. For a moment, he felt like his attention soared to the heavens and beyond, to the moon, to the sun, to the stars, to everything that he didn't have words for, yet somehow did.

And then, it condensed again, pulled tight, followed by a roar of anger deep inside of him.

It's still bound! How?! It should have broken!

What...what was that? You -

No time. I'm fading already. You have to go. Now.

But you said -

Thought I could. Can't. Fight. They're here.

Studley looked up, expecting to see the city. Instead, he saw a great mass of fur flying towards him, with a fist outstretched and a growl that would have frightened off a small army. The wolf stared at her for a second before it resolved into the werewolf from before.

"Oh, shi-"

A fist hit his chest harder than a steel block, and the weight and force of the werewolf carried him through the roof of the temple. Studley went down, down, down, crushing through floor after floor on the way down.

Finally, they hit the ground, hard, and he slowly shook his head.

"Well...hello again, Kylee."

"You should be dead."

"I get that a lot."

He grabbed her arm. Normally, this position wouldn't have offered him any leverage, but for some reason, he felt confident that he could get her off of him. He pulled at her.

The resulting swing sent her through the wall, and Studley stared at the hole she left behind. He glanced down at his hand, still flickering with that strange white light. That power...it was still in him. And maybe...just maybe...he could win this.

He pulled himself to his feet as Kylee stumbled back through the hole, followed by Gleb and Heinrich. The buck already had his silver gloves on, and Studley felt a small reminder of the pain that they had caused him before. He resisted the urge to touch his throat, though; he wouldn't give the buck that satisfaction.

The tiger growled.

"What is this? He's supposed to be dead."

"Yes. Strange."

"It doesn't matter. We'll kill him now."

Gleb nodded at the werewolf, pulling out a weapon of his own.

"You should have stayed back. This time, no one to carry you away."

"That's funny. I don't think I need anyone. Not this time."

He looked down at his hands. He felt...so much power in him. It was slowly fading, and he knew that he'd need to use it fast...but there was no fear. No need to be afraid. They were insects, and he was...he was something more.

He glanced up, looking at Heinrich. The buck hadn't stepped forward yet, but he was waiting. Waiting for an opening, just like last time. Studley smiled. He would go first.

"I don't suppose you'll let me have my Beast form?"

The trio looked at each other, and Gleb chuckled.

"Fine. You'll have it. More impressive when we win."

"Heh...don't count on that just yet."

Okay...whatever you are...give me something good, Studley thought as he reached into his body once more. The touch of the were power was there, but this time, he let the chaos in, and he let the power that he'd absorbed take part. It twisted together inside, spiraling into something bigger...better.

Studley's eyes shifted first, going from his normal color to something grander. His vision expanded, the heat of the trio glowing in his vision, as well as the sight of something else. An aura around each of them, a dark glow that seemed almost rotted, in some cases. Least so in Kylee, most in Heinrich.

That was new enough, but the next change...

He fell forward, his eyes rolling back as his neck started to lengthen. It pushed forward like a snake striking from a perch, and where fur had once been, scales began to sprout. It ran down his neck towards his back, purple and black in color, and an itch around the sides of his spine burned against his skin before fading away as wings ripped free.

As his tail whipped from side to side, growing longer and more muscular by the second, the trio took a step back, all at once. He chuckled, even as his muzzle started growing more pointed, turning into a snout.

"What's the matter? Didn't expect a big surprise when fighting me? I'm disappointed."

The wolf grunted as his body continued to change, his longer neck letting him sway his head from side to side, looking over the three of them. With every new change, from the horns coming out of his head to the claws that were coming out of his scaly palms, he felt like he was becoming less and less 'human', more and more towards something...better. Truer to himself. Studley chuckled as he rose back to his feet, his features becoming less wolfen by the second.

Heinrich rushed forward, but no longer a blur. To Studley's eyes, he was...he was nothing. A slow-moving ant. He raised his arm easily to block the punch from the gauntlets, and chuckled as the points didn't even get into his arm. They weren't even powerful enough to break the scales.

"Sorry, Heinrich. You aren't stopping me. Not this time."

The buck's eyes widened, and he started to leap back. Not soon enough. Studley grabbed him, dragon claws sinking into the buck's ankle before he whipped him around. He slammed him back and forth, back and forth. Over his head, into the ground, and then back again. And again. And again. Antlers snapped and bones broke, until he threw the battered buck towards the wall. This time, the hole was Heinrich-shaped.

The transformation completed, and he smirked at Gleb, at Kylee. He took a step forward, and they took a step back.

"Now...let's see how you handle the real me..."

"Please...You can't...don't do...this..."

Gleb backed away from him, the tiger halfway up an old tree. He was staring in fear, utterly in shock, doubtlessly unable to believe that things had gone so bad so fast.

Studley could understand that. He still didn't know what had happened to him.

He lingered at the bottom of the tree, taking a moment to look back at the battlefield that the city had become. More than half of the buildings were missing their roofs, while others were ripped apart and thrown across the city as projectiles. Mostly done between him and Kylee, he supposed; he wondered what people would think in the future?

She was left behind, knocked out and rendered human once more and bound up in a bunch of vines from one of the other trees. She would wake up later, he knew; what he'd do...he didn't know.

Heinrich was bleeding, but awake, and all too conscious, a few hundred feet away. The buck was waiting for him, and Studley wanted to deal with him sooner than later. Not out of a threat, but to punish him. Properly.

But for now...

He didn't even climb. He floated up to the branch Gleb had taken refuge on, shaking his head as he came eye to eye with the former councilor.

"In this form... I can do whatever I want."

"How did you...this is impossible. Shouldn't..."

"Nothing. Is. Impossible."

And as the dragon grabbed hold of the cat, throwing him to the ground, he honestly believed that. The power in his body was fading, and fast, but he had enough left for one more impossible action.

Swooping down, he grabbed the tiger around the neck, and channeled most of that strength into him. The tiger's arms were his to control, and his legs. They shot out, transforming by HIS will into those of a human. They lifted, and the legs spread, taking a statuesque pose, even as the tiger whimpered and whined about how this wasn't fair, about how this wasn't possible.

Studley took great pleasure in shutting him up, turning his throat and voice box into stone. Gleb gasped and gagged, but there was no way to stop it. Studley channeled his powers through the former tiger's body, gradually turning flesh to stone, and stone to marble.

"You will stay, and watch. Perhaps, one day, I'll let you free again. But until then, you will be a monument to what happens to people that overreach themselves. And a monument to a people that deserved better. No aging, no sleeping. You will stay here, away from all that matters, for the rest of your life.

"And I plan to leave you suffering a very long life indeed."

He let go of the statue, watching as Gleb's eyes were the last to change. They were wide and terrified when the stone came over them, somewhat ruining the warrior posture that he'd given the statue, but he supposed that one couldn't have everything.

The last of the impossible power went with it, making the statue impossible to chip, impossible to break. It was something that no Wonder could have done, no master of chaos, but somehow, he did. As the power left him, infusing the statue, the dragon shape went with it, and the fur and the patterns of a wolf came back.

He almost fell over, but he caught himself at the last minute. Casting his eyes about, he found a broken branch of a sufficient length to serve as a cane, and used it to carry himself over to the buck.

Heinrich looked up at him, unable to talk. Then again, with a muzzle taken out and a tongue ripped off, it was surprising that he wasn't whimpering and begging for his life to end.

Studley glanced over the other injuries, shaking his head as he started listing them out loud.

"Ribs, all broken. Spine, shattered in four places. Legs, removed at the knees, cauterized, and capped with stone. Hands removed. Arms split into four different sections. Muzzle removed. Tongue removed. Throat cut open.

"And somehow, you're still alive."

He knelt down by the buck, shaking his head.

"Whatever Gleb did to you, he made one hell of a fighter. And one day, I'm going to figure out how, so that he never does it again. But for now...I'm going to put down something that never should have existed."

The buck somehow managed to spit, a glob of blood and saliva hitting the wolf on the cheek. A gurgle of defiance followed, something that he imagined translated as him being the one who should die, then.

He was thorough. A determined shattering of the skull and brain, following by a burning of the heart ended the buck, and he slowly stood up, taking a few steps away from the carnage...only to pause, and glance back at Kylee again. He needed to do something about her, but what? He was so tired, and he had no energy left. What could he...

He took another step, and felt something...different. Pausing, the wolf reached backwards, and in the ragged remnants of his belt, he found something tucked into the leather. It was a small stone chip, but a familiar one, glowing with familiar magic.

Rannoi must have had Mirari put this on me, he thought, recognizing it as a piece that the dragon used to track different things he was interested in. They usually had some method of taking in information, as well. Might as well get another use out of it.

With all that he had to figure out, he had no time for taking care of a werewolf, but he had little doubt that Rannoi would be able to figure out something to do with her. Hopefully, the other dragon hadn't seen too much.

"Well, it was only a matter of time until he found out about that."

Rannoi stretched his arms over his head as he laid back against the wall separating him and Mirari. It had been interesting, following her reports of the power fluctuations that the chip picked up. He would have enjoyed visuals, but there were limits to the surveillance abilities that the little things had. Particularly if he needed to keep them secret. Something that showed them exactly what was going on would have been the size of Studley's head, and there was no way that they could have hidden that.

Still, there was something learned. Studley had found something big, and had momentarily become stronger than anything he had ever heard of. Geatha was right to be afraid of the network.

The dragon rolled a rock between his fingers, letting the little bit of chaos he knew transform it as it would. A coin, a flower, a seed, an egg; anything small, really. It made it more interesting as he thought it through.

So, Studley. Not just an immortal, but one with a connection to the network. Someone older than we knew, than you knew. And with what you've done, the network will change before long. He knew that much, from his studies. Geatha wasn't the only hand involved in creating it, and once it was breached, the safeguards would come in. The obelisks would become less and less accessible with each successive breach until it was isolated completely. But you don't know that...So when you try again, and it fails, will you go into isolation, or come and talk again?

"Rannoi?"

"Yes, Mirari?"

"I believe Hai Mei is coming again."

"Is she? Well, I think she's worn out her welcome for the moment."

The dragon got to his feet, tossing the sapphire the pebble had become away. He stretched again, and tapped the little blanket he'd been keeping around. It transformed into a robe, and he pulled it over himself.

"If you would open a couple of trap-doors, Mirari, we'll be on our way."

"Do we leave a note this time?"

"I think Hai Mei's gotten all the politeness that she deserves. And besides, if Studley is going to come and find us again, I'd prefer to make it another hunt. He tends to get more interesting when we do that."

"Yes, sir."

And if you come after me, I want time to study the network myself, before you get it so locked down that no one else can touch the damn thing.

The End