“So, what exactly do you all want to know about me?” Connie asked the moment she was through the door before Pryte even had a chance to return to his seat. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure how much more we needed to know about her either after the previous night’s talk.

  “We’re doing this with everyone. I know we covered a lot of your details last night, but I want to go over some of them a little more. Specifically, let’s start with your motivations. What made you set out on your own anyway? I assume Trelione has a pretty comfortable retirement going,” Pryte asked as he took his seat.

  “How much of this information is being filed in the paperwork with the Arena?” Connie asked her own question, with no sign of answering Pryte’s. It didn’t come off as standoffish so much as that there were things she didn’t want officially recorded.

  “I only plan to submit the needed documentation, which covers: name, class, rank in the faction, those types of things. Everything beyond that is for our ears only,” Pryte answered, not sounding in any way bothered that she hadn’t answered.

  “Alright, well, may as well let the cat out of the bag then. Gramps is planning a new performance. He’s thinking sometime in the next decade or so but wants me to scout out what’s happening in the wider Spiral,” She said, smiling.

  “Oh, that could be very interesting,” Pryte responded, sounding intrigued.

  “Yep, and with you guys having Sanquar, I got a feeling there will be no stopping him once he learns about that. In the meantime, I figure I’ll just do what I can to Arena climb with your faction and see about working on my path,” She continued, still beaming.

  “Speaking of your path. Is that your whole class, or just a pathway in it? Sorry, this is all still pretty new to me,” I said, apologizing following my question after seeing her give me an odd look.

  “The Path of the Stellar Opera is a potential pathway within any performance-based class, assuming you have someone capable of guiding you in the first steps,” she answered. The way classes worked still hadn’t fully clicked in my brain. Was it possible to build a class into anything with the right tutor? I added classes and their functions to a list of topics I wanted books on as soon as possible.

  “And just what is that actual class? We do need that for the records,” Pryte followed up with another question.

  “Pop Princess,” She replied. I held my own laughter in check, assuming that was just the best way the translation layer could make me understand. She was the daughter of an apparently legendary musician, so that made her a princess. At least, that was how I rationalized how absurd the idea of the pop princess being a real class was. Neither Pryte or Mel said anything, the first just making a note of it like it was a perfectly normal class.

  “I suppose we can skip the future you want here as well, as I assume that is completely up in the air?” Pryte phrased the statement as a question. The man was impressive at these interviews, better than any HR person I had ever talked with.

  “Yeah. I can promise I’ll stick with you until Gramps makes his own calls, and depending on how this all plays out, I may continue here as well, but I can’t make any promises there. Plus, you can’t even really promise me you will exist in a decade,” she replied.

  “No, we can’t. I think that means that was all we had for you. Thanks for doing this,” I said. Pryte nodded next to me. Mel didn’t. He was staring at her.

  “What made ya decide to help the kid?” Mel asked.

  Her face scrunched into a scowl as she responded. “He was a kid in a situation well over his head and needed help. I know all you big tough faction guys would have left him, but, and do not pardon my language here, fuck that. My grandfather taught me better than that.” The anger of her words was directed straight at Mel.

  “Good. Ain’t got any more questions either,” Mel said after her very targeted outburst. The anger on her face cleared, likely from the realization Mel had liked her answer and, without any other words, left the room.

  “I’ll grab Elody unless we have something more to discuss here. But that seemed straightforward enough to me,” Pryte said; no one spoke up to stop him as he also left the room, returning almost immediately with Elody. She must have been right outside.

  “I believe I can save you a lot of time and cut to what you really need to know here. My class is Paladin of Knowledge. I am on the Path of the Eternal Archive. I will not give you a great amount of detail about what places me on this path, as I do not wish to compromise the secrets of my order, nor am I willing to fully unmask my mentor. I am here because Dave, and by extension, all of you and this faction present a very unique opportunity. I believe in the free trade of knowledge and the preservation of it, and I wish to engage in that as unfettered as possible here,” Elody said, still standing. One eye was scanning the contents of my bookshelves while the other three were looking at us, one per person.

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  “What happens if yer order and us end up on different sides of an issue?” Mel asked, not breaking eye contact with Elody’s own stare.

  “That will depend upon the issue in disagreement. I do not agree with every member of my order on all things. It is entirely possible that I could end on the faction’s side, but unlikely if the entirety of the order is against you,” Elody answered. At least she had been honest. How likely was it we would come into conflict with her order? Was this just a problem with paladins becoming parts of factions?

  “Correct me if I’m wrong here, but there aren’t many Paladins of Knowledge pledged to factions, are there?” Pryte followed up.

  “There are not. I believe I make the fifth,” she answered.

  “Well, that at least means it’s unlikely to be a faction-caused conflict. How likely do you consider it that we would come into conflict with your order?” Pryte asked.

  “Extremely Unlikely. It is far more likely that I would be ordered to gather information on you and report it back than a direct conflict would ever occur,” she answered.

  “Would you be okay doing that?” I asked this time. I really couldn’t tell where Elody’s allegiances would lay in these scenarios at all.

  “Likely, yes. I would also likely inform you that I was doing so. I have nothing against keeping certain information secret as needed, but I am willing to work with others in my order to determine if the benefit of releasing that information outweighs temporarily withholding it,” she answered.

  “Alright, then, let’s try tossing out a new piece of information no one knows, barely even me. I want this kept between the four of us for now, well, four and Corey,” I said, receiving a series of confirming nods before I resumed speaking.

  “So when I was first testing out my simulation skill, I went harder into that than I should have and somehow broke my soul and consciousness free from my body. It was a very strange experience, but the important part here is I made contact with an entity that believes it did the same and was never able to find its way back. Apparently, when I was drawn closer to home during this, I somehow also drew the attention of some creatures that the entity claims are very dangerous and heading for Earth,” I explained. Neither Pryte’s nor Mel’s expression changed much beyond a slight shift toward what might have been confusion.

  Elody, on the other hand, her eyes went wide as she responded. “This happened after I left the archives, I assume?” her question felt more like a statement, as though she would have known had she still been there. I realized all of her eyes were now on me.

  “Yes, why?” I asked, feeling my mouth go dry, which happened to be one of my least favorite signs of my anxiety acting up.

  “Does your class have anything relating to Soulfire?” She asked, not answering my question of why.

  “Yeah, my Path of the Soul has something that mentions Soulfire, but I haven’t ignited one yet, just a single soul separation and intrusion,” I answered, feeling her eyes bore deeply into me.

  “We can add to the list of growing problems that we’ve managed to attract soulhunters,” Elody said, her eyes still focused entirely on me.

  “I actually don’t know what those are, and judging by Mel’s confused look, he doesn’t either. Care to enlighten us?” Pryte asked, his voice no longer sounding as confident as usual.

  “Dave separated his soul from the soul-core reaction, which is extraordinarily rare but can occur during a mana backlash. It is nearly always fatal. Some of the creatures that roam chaotic space feed on soul energy, especially wild souls. If you thought the little we knew of Jesters was an issue, we are now in a territory belonging to the Old Spiral,” Elody said.

  “Now hold it, I’ve maybe heard of the Old Spiral twice, ever, yer telling me it’s real?” Mel asked, his color shifting quickly.

  “Oh, it’s real. There’s a single file cabinet that contains what little records survive, not that anyone is allowed to touch it, assuming they even wanted to,” Pryte answered.

  “A trillion souls ignite in unison. Flames call to the great darkness. Hunger answers,” Elody said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Mel asked, the confused fear in his voice growing.

  “I don’t know. It’s a small surviving fragment of a poem my mentor found on a cast-off world. One he was sure had been part of the Old Spiral,” she answered.

  It was on the second year of our voyage in the depths of the black beyond, that Grom somehow encountered a man he considered an old friend. Grom never did tell me how, in all the vastness of this unknown space, they had found each other, but I assumed there had been some secret method of communication, as Grom had changed our course suddenly only days before the encounter. Torshal, Seeker of the Past, was waiting for us deep within an asteroid belt. It was there I learned of one of the hidden reasons for our journey. Grom wished to learn the secrets behind the fall of a Spiral before the current one.

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