"Any chance that's using Amon's hub to bounce the signal?" Rayna asked. "You said it would work from anywhere on Ember."

"I said the screen would work from anywhere on Ember," Corban corrected. "I shouldn't be able to call Amon with it. We're two weeks away by boat! I don't even know how far that is in miles."

"The signal won't get through, anyway," Din said. "There are wards blocking scrying and other magical communications."

"This isn't based on scrying," Corban said. "We started out with scry glasses as the basis of our design, but they were too unreliable; prone to dropping calls if you were in dungeons or underground. Amon came up with this design based on the System message function instead. If you can access your Menu, the call should go through."

"You have a System Keeper helping you make new System artifacts?" Din asked incredulously. "What are you people?"

"Persuasive," Rayna replied, dodging the true question. "How does this work, do we just call him?"

Corban blinked. "You want me to call Amon right now?"

Rayna almost growled in exasperation. "Yes! He might know what to do. If nothing else, you can give him an update on project reconnect since the two of you are obviously doing something right."

Corban nodded. "Good idea. Someone watch the door; I don't want Lord Myre—or whatever his real name is—seeing these things."

"No need," Din said. "Lord Myre and Queen Naomi are arguing on the dock. I'll let you know if they head back in this direction."

Rayna's cheek twitched. If Din could hear them all the way on the dock, then Harry hadn't been lying when he said that she already knew their entire conversation from earlier. They would have to use written communication if they were going to deal with anything sensitive—at least until Din left the group.

"Call Amon," Corban said aloud. To Rayna, he explained, "We're going to interface it with the System's telepathic web, but for the sake of fast iteration, the prototype is activated by touch and voice."

The screen went blank, replaced by a vibrating phone icon.

Rayna raised an eyebrow. "You all had time for graphic design?"

"Amon added it automatically. Bit basic, but it does the job." From Corban's voice, he didn't actually care what it looked like as long as it performed it's function.

Before Rayna could mention the possibility of searching for a designer—it was important to make people want to use the phones or they would flop—Amon's face appeared above the card as a hologram. It would have been cool if it didn't cut out at the edges of the face, giving it a strange uncanny effect of a realistic floating mask.

Corban grimaced. "Okay, I forgot how creepy that is. Amon, if I get back, let's make the hologram show the whole head if we can."

"If?" Amon asked. "Should I be worried?"

"Myre double-crossed us," Rayna said. "He's planning to lock Corban up on an island or wipe his memory and we're fairly sure I'm not getting off this archipelago either."

Amon's expression darkened. "Is that so?"

Rayna was taken aback by the acid in his tone. Had he grown attached to Corban over the last few weeks? Or was this about being double-crossed in general? Either way, Rayna would have to remember not to get on the Keeper's bad side.

"We need a way off this archipelago," Rayna said. "Do you know how to get past the teleport blockers or…" Rayna took a deep breath. "…can you ask Ronari to drag us out of here with the System teleporters?"

The sentence left a sour taste in Rayna's mouth. If she had more time, she might have waited some before asking Ronari for anything, but they wasted at least ten minutes getting to this point. Myre could grow impatient at any moment and barge in on their conversation.

"Ronari can pull Corban out of there," Amon said without hesitation. "As well as Nali if she is there with you."

"I am," Nali said. "And two others."

Amon nodded. "All four of them could be teleported out."

"And me?" Rayna asked, concerned by the exclusionary phrasing of his reply.

Amon shook his head. "Your… System glitch… makes Ronari unable to access your profile. She would need to do so to teleport you out."

"What if she just held hands with me while teleporting," Corban suggested. "That worked with the tutorial."

"That worked to force Ronari to teleport you together or risk injuries in the transfer," Amon clarified. "She still teleported each individual. Had she tried to separate you… it would not have been a pretty sight."

Rayna gripped the back of her chair. "I don't see the glitch resolving anytime soon," she said carefully. "Do we have any other options?"

Amon's face remained neutral. "No. You will have to find another way off the island without Ronari's assistance."

"Sorry to butt in," Harry said, leaning over Corban's other shoulder. "But how is this even possible? Corban here said we needed a hub to bounce the signal off of. Isn't this like making a voice call with the telephone wires down?"

Amon knit his eyebrows together. "A call should require a hub nearby. Perhaps the call doesn't require Keeper involvement. In that case, we could bounce the signal off of an existing antenna for an inactive or unoccupied hub."

"Then there's a hub somewhere on the island?" Rayna asked hopefully.

"Very likely," Amon agreed. "Judging by the strength of the signal, it's nearby. An inactive antenna will have a much shorter range than an active hub. I suspect the hub is within a half-mile radius of your position."

"All right, new plan," Rayna said. "How do we slip past the Myres and find the hub? I can open it if we get inside and then ask the Keeper to block out anyone I don't want in there. That should buy us enough time to come up with a real plan."

Nali shook her head. "I appreciate your concern Rayna, but I was serious when I said I was staying. I'll find a way off of Lapis on my own. I need to be able to control where I go after that. Not to mention, there are many others stuck on that island—a few humans included—that don't deserve this sort of treatment. I intend to end this insanity before returning to the mainland."

Rayna wanted to argue, but the logic in that statement was irrefutable.

"Help me open the hub," she said instead, the words coming out of her mouth before the thoughts had properly formed in her mind. "There should be a teleporter in it. If it runs on the same principles as Corban's phone, it'll be able to get past the ward. It's a way to get yourself and everyone else from Lapis back to the mainland when you're finished whatever it is you need to do here."

"I never said I wouldn't help," Nali said. "But I can't go with you. And for the sake of not forcing myself into that eventuality, my involvement shouldn't include the hub itself."

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Rayna nodded.

It didn't take long to come up with a solid escape plan. Nali would distract the Myres while Rayna and Corban would sneak out under an invisibility charm. Din and Harry had decided to travel back to Lapis with Nali.

"Do you think it will work?" Rayna asked.

She examined the bracelet that Nali had pulled from her Inventory. Small elaborate beads hung from the thin string and an artisan had somehow managed to carve runes into the beads themselves, despite them being about the size of a sunflower seed.

"Not a chance," Harry said. "The two of you are goners."

Rayna turned to glare at him, and he shrugged.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to," he said without a hint of remorse.

"I was asking Nali," Rayna said. "Or literally anyone else."

"It's not a foolproof plan," Nali said. "But it's the best one we have. Much of it relies on you being able to open the hub. If it's inoperable, well hidden, or worse, nonexistent, this could end very badly for all of us."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Corban said. "Last chance to change your mind and go with us."

"Are you kidding?" Harry asked. "Your part is the dangerous one. The worst we'll get is a scolding. Besides, I just hit booze privileges. There's a tavern on Lapis with my name on it."

The man was obviously joking, but Din rolled her eyes. "Do you take nothing seriously?"

"I'm living in a video game and currently in a room with a bird-woman, lizard woman, and walking charcoal, no offense. It took me half the tutorial just to accept that I wasn't dreaming."

"Life's too short to take things seriously anyway," Corban added. "But spill our secrets again and I'll make sure Amon excludes you when he passes out free phones."

Harry raised his hands in surrender. "Sorry for that. I could see them getting suspicious. Ronari's name seemed like the least problematic secret to spill. You all need to be more careful when you're discussing top-secret information."

Rayna pressed her lips together. Perhaps she should stop talking altogether.

"They're coming back early," Din hissed.

Nali disappeared out the door without so much as a goodbye. Din and Harry moved toward the door, checking that Nali had successfully stopped the Myres out of sight of the hallway.

Rayna and Corban activated their items, vanishing from sight. Using the item didn't give you the ability to see others who were invisible, but Rayna could make out Corban's silhouette via the steady glow from the spell.

"Don't forget to drop some breadcrumbs on the beach before leaving," Harry told the couch that Rayna and Corban were no longer sitting on. "If we can't find the hub, we can't use it to get people out."

"You just focus on not getting yourselves killed," Corban said right next to Harry's ear, making the man jump. "That Lord Myre doesn't strike me as someone who takes a loss with grace."

Harry grumbled something that Rayna didn't catch and moved out of the way so Rayna and Corban could sneak out the door.

"Good luck," Rayna whispered. "Tell Nali that I owe her more than an apology this time."

Din nodded, impressively catching Rayna's exact location from her words. "Don't get caught. We'll see you in a few months."

Harry frowned at her, either not liking the idea of being stuck on Lapis for months or wondering some private thought that Rayna couldn't extrapolate from her limited knowledge of the man.

They snuck out the front door, moving as quickly as they dared. Nali and the Myres were only a few yards from the entrance, engaging in some sort of heated argument. Rayna could feel the power peeling off Lord Myre as his anger rose at whatever it was that Nali said.

Rayna made a mental note to avoid fighting this man at all costs. The only consolation she could think of was that he seemed hesitant to outright kill anyone. A prison colony on an island was the furthest he seemed to have gone to protect his secret.

Though perhaps that was plenty far enough. Rayna had no statistics regarding the survival rate on Lapis. For all she knew, it was a death sentence just sending someone there.

Corban led the way since Rayna could see him, but he couldn't see her. They didn't have a lot to go on for the hubs location besides his communication card, which he held out in front of him. Most of the planning time had been taken by Amon walking Din—a runesmith by trade and Class—through the necessary changes to the artifact. It now gave a signal strength percentage in the corner of the display.

The signal strength was at about seventy-five percent. Unfortunately, the adjustments couldn't tell them which direction to walk, only if they were getting closer. It felt like an elaborate game of Marco Polo.

The percentage ticked up to seventy-six as they entered the forest, indicating that they were going in the right direction. Rayna kept her senses peeled for monsters in the area, though she couldn't tell Corban where they were without blowing their cover.

After the first near death experience in which Corban nearly walked straight into a large canine creature, they developed a system in quiet whispers. Rayna would grab Corbans arm if there was a monster nearby, adjusting which arm she grabbed to match which direction the monster was in. If the situation was urgent, she put a hand on his shoulder and if the threat was coming up from behind them she put a hand on his back. She could tell that Corban wasn't happy with this system, but they didn't have any other ideas at the moment. She would have to apologize to him later.

Luckily, the invisibility worked on the monsters even better than it had worked on the Myres. Rayna only indicated a monster if they steered too close. The birds circling the area didn't seem to notice them and several times large monsters crossed their path without so much as a sniff in their direction.

Rayna kept her hood up, just in case, but her hair was hardly even glowing since her evolution. She was almost sad about that fact, but the sharp decrease in attacks was a huge boon that was worth the change.

"Go faster," Din's voice whispered in Rayna's ear as if carried by the wind. "Nali can't escalate this any further."

Corban looked back, staring right through Rayna as a way of checking if she heard.

The signal strength on the card still read less than eighty percent. Amon said it should be close to a hundred when they saw the hub. This was taking too long.

"New plan," Rayna whispered. "We're going to find a cave to hole up in. Try to convince the Myres that Amon teleported us out as part of a backup plan. We'll look again when you've left the island."

There was a long moment of silence in which Rayna wasn't sure if Din had actually heard her.

"Avoid the caves," she whispered finally. "Larger monsters like to use them as traps for smaller prey seeking refuge. Find a dense copse of trees or a natural overhang in the forest and hide there. The larger the hole, the more likely something is lurking."

"We'll do that. Thanks," Rayna whispered back. To Corban, she said, "You heard all that, right?"

"Unfortunately," Corban said. "It's making my ears itch."

"Let's just find somewhere to hide. I don't want to be caught in the open if Lord Myre starts searching the forest."

It took them an uncomfortably long time to find their hiding spot—a den of some animal that seemed to have vacated it a long time ago. They barely managed to squeeze inside, moving to the back of the hole so they wouldn't be easily visible through the entrance.

They crouched in the dark, waiting in silence. Neither of them dared to move or remove the invisibility charms that kept them dubiously hidden. Close inspection or a listening spell would be enough to reveal their presence. Rayna was half-convinced that the whole forest could hear her racing heart.

Rayna nearly jumped out of her skin when Queen Naomi ran past their hole. She couldn't see the woman, but her energy was significantly weaker than Lord Myre's, making it easy to distinguish between the two.

She pushed her back against the wall, trying to make herself as small as she could.

Naomi's presence shook the local wildlife. Rayna felt monsters and animals alike scurry for cover as the woman searched the trees.

Rayna watched the opening to their hole, expecting at any moment to find Queen Naomi—or worse, Lord Myre—staring back at her with a triumphant expression.

Instead, she found herself staring directly into the eyes of a black fox. It growled, stalking forward toward the humans that currently inhabited its chosen hiding spot. The den was too large to be the foxes home, but it seemed to be willing to fight for it.

[Vulpinox — Level 140]

Rayna's blood turned to ice. Vulpinox had been one of the species in her bestiary: nocturnal hunters that could take down monsters and animals ten times their size. They specialized in sound magic, reducing signs of their passage by magically absorbing the sound from their surroundings.

Rayna didn't bother dredging the foxes stats from her memories. Even at a C-3, she was no match for a Level 140 monster and Vulpinoxes were definitely higher than that.

"What do we do?" Corban whispered in a terrified voice.

Rayna didn't answer. What could they do? They couldn't kill it, and it was blocking their path to the exit. Even if they were willing to cede the den to the Vulpinox, it wouldn't let them leave quietly. Calling for help would reveal their position and the fox could obviously see through the invisibility charm, which meant that Lord Myre could too if he wasn't being distracted.

The plan was a total failure.

A dagger flew through the opening of the den, hitting the Vulpinox square in the eye and killing it instantly. Rayna locked eyes with Queen Naomi, who stood over the opening with a torn expression.

Neither of them blinked. Naomi could clearly see them, so why wasn't she dragging them out to take them to her brother?

Several emotions crossed the woman's face until she settled on one that looked like a mix between determination and resignation.

She reached into the hole.

Rayna flinched, pressing harder against the back wall but Naomi didn't even come close. She grabbed her dagger hilt and yanked it out of the Vulpinox's eye.

"Don't seek me out when you return to Ellis," she whispered. "My brother can't be trusted. I will find a way to teach you, but not like this."

Without waiting for a reply, Naomi turned and ran away, leaving Rayna and Corban in stunned silence.

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