A delicious smell catches my nose with something I have never smelt in this life. Pizza!? I restrain myself from rushing off through the crowd and stick close to my grandma like a sensible reincarnator.

[Let's stop and get something to eat,] I send my party telepathically.

"A hot meal sounds good," Rowan agrees.

The place we wind up at is less of a restaurant and more of a food court. Tables, chairs, and benches dot the middle, interspersed with large potted plants. Around the outside, several stalls offer drinks and snacks.

Most importantly, the pizza. I exchange a ten-copper coin for a slice of classic pepperoni.

"What is this?" Rowan asks, wrinkling his nose as he beholds the triangle of bliss about to enter my mouth.

I take a bit and close my eyes as I chew slowly, savoring the blend of spices and textures.

"You'll love it," Kestrel says, buying him a slice and one for herself. "All kids love pizza!"

Rowan does not love pizza. He takes a small bite and makes a face. "It's kind of greasy and tastes weird."

"It tastes absolutely perfect," I moan.

"You can have my slice, then."

Rowan leaves me the rest of his pizza and goes to find something else.

Anise takes a long draft from a draft beer. Colt holds a large blue sucker in his right hand and an orange one in his left, alternating licks between them.

It's hard to zero in on auras with so many of them around me, and I don't want to try too hard when I'm in a crowd. Mostly I just try to stay alert for danger but I feel like an autistic child at a punk concert. It's amazing being out here and seeing places like this but I'm having to lean on Discipline to avoid getting overwhelmed. Amroth is what the sheltered farm kid thinks of as a "city". This is an actual city.

The vis radiating from people's cores wafts and mingles in the air, swirling into pools and eddies that slowly drain away in the general direction of the nearest aether core. There's enough people out here that vis has a chance to build up, leading to a sort of psychic pressure.

One of the vendors is a ghost, his aetherial presence standing out amid the force of the living. He's telekinetically pouring drinks for tourists beneath a sign that reads Good Spirits Brewery: Where friendly ghosts produce fine craft brews for your pleasure.

Skills increased: Discipline (Composure), Clairvoyance (Aura Sight)

The flow of aether around me indicates that we're coming up on a Hearth before I can see it with my eyes. The smooth pseudo-stone walls are familiar, a pattern of essence similar to every other aether core I've seen. Eildon Hearth is small compared to Corwen, more like the truncated Hearth that can be seen aboveground in Grubwick.

The tower is short, the wings are small, and with a wall around it encompassing something more like a narrow urban churchyard rather than a sprawling village green. Only upon seeing that do I realize that it means Flux probably doesn't have the same yearly monster swarms Tempest does. It's big enough to hold services but most of the Hearth's members must live elsewhere, and nothing in this domain looks built like a fortress.

I receive no challenges from Eildon. It is entirely indifferent to my presence. It's watching me only in the sense that it's watching the entire crowd and not me specifically. Kind of refreshing. Getting singled out by aether cores feels weird when it isn't my own.

Across the street from the Hearth is a small bookshop with a sign reading Eildonbooks. It wouldn't do to just walk past a new bookshop without at least taking a peek inside.

While still more spacious than Amroth's shelf of popular pulp novels, this is essentially just a tourist street mall bookshop and doesn't have the deepest selection. I consider picking up a couple of books, but refrain from buying anything for the moment. There are some romance and adventure novels I haven't seen yet, but nothing that really leaps out. I head back outside.

"I picked up a tourist brochure with a map," Kestrel says, holding up a gaudy booklet. "It was free, probably because it's almost entirely advertisements."

"Great," I say with a nod. "Let's head back to the boat and look at it there and not stand in the middle of the road like tourists."

We climb the docking tower and locate our boat where we parked it in space 5-J, and sit down. Kestrel pulls out the map and spreads it out.

"Okay, so the flat we're looking for is in Odell. That's over there." She pokes the map. "North side of the domain, under Gleam's shadow."

[Where is Tresco?] I wonder, leaning in to look over her elbow.

Kestrel locates it and points near the middle, a short ways south of a spa with an ad offering hair removal by specially bred slimes.

"This place is so strange," Rowan says quietly. "And all the people! Out in the crowds I kept being afraid someone was going to stab us or rob us or both."

Absently wondering where the others are and what they're doing right now, I open up the party tab on my third eye UI.

Raid Party Leader: Drake (You) Subparty 1: Drake Basic Psychic Rowan Basic Guardian Kestrel Heroic Wizard Subparty 2: Anise Elite Sorcerer Basalt Basic Crafter Jade Basic Rogue Colt Basic Ranger Subparty 3: Falcon Heroic Bard Belladonna Heroic Rogue Wonder Heroic Wizard Tosko Heroic Crafter Subparty 4: Baldric Elite Rogue Crowfoot Elite Warrior Harper Elite Cleric Meadow Elite Ranger

The system knows these people are in my… raid party, apparently. And Aunt Savannah put me in charge because my mom and grandma have no common sense. (Apparently me stealing a skyboat isn't a breach of common sense in her eyes, but merely taking advantage of a reasonable opportunity.)

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I try to see the threads connecting me to them conceptually linking them into my party. I open extra [Ghost Eyes] to help peer down the glittering chains of vis. With considerable focus, I can get a vague sense of which direction and distance Uncle Falcon is from me at the moment, but don't get any solid numbers until my Inspiration meter tanks. It's enough, though.

Skills increased: Enhanced Soul (Ghost Eyes) Skill acquired: Clairvoyance (Trace Connection) Description: The ability to detect conceptual connections between objects and people.

Of course there's a skill for that. This is another one that I've had the sense existed for a while and hadn't quite made the final push. Between [Aura Sight] and [Astral Vision], there's this. And part of [Naming] requires identifying connections to a core.

I really hope I can eventually push this skill high enough to be able to see the positions of my party members on my minimap when they're out of immediate range.

I lay back in the boat and watch traffic zipping back and forth across the sky. I could watch this for hours. More moving objects than I can count dot the sky beneath Tiganna's orange light. People going on about their business.

If what I know of tropes and how magic works is accurate, I should be able to locate someone if I have something that belonged to them, especially if I had some of their blood or hair. Might be useful next time someone goes missing, assuming it's not me again.

Strangely enough, most of my companions don't want to sleep in the boat when they don't have to, so they tuck in to an inn for the night. I, however, stay on the boat along with my subparty, because I'm paranoid. I get very little sleep, though. I stare at the sky until the skymote turns dark, and even then the noise and lights of the city keep me awake.

At some point, I do manage to drift off, waking only to the sound of voices approaching my boat. I sit bolt upright with a start, but it's just Uncle Falcon talking and laughing too loudly. The azure light overhead indicates that it's morning, and entirely too early to be awake given how late I fell asleep. And they're unsympathetic. Rude.

We head off after breakfast. If there are any traffic laws in Flux, Harper doesn't know what they are.

"Just don't hit anything," Harper says brightly. "I'm sure you'll do fine!"

"Fine, let's see how many levels of [Piloting] I get out of navigating rush hour," I say.

I pull out of the docking area and take to the sky, narrowly avoiding hitting a housecat in a witch's hat flying on a broomstick. That seems awkward but I envy how fast and maneuverable it looks. I still wouldn't use a broom as a serious mode of transportation anymore than I would a bicycle. Maybe I'm just being judgmental while driving around the magical equivalent of a flying truck.

"Watch it, pinkies!" roars an orc riding a griffin. "Where did you learn to fly!?"

"Sorry!" I yell back. "Cool mount, by the way!"

After a short flight that seems much longer only for the number of near-collisions, we tuck into another docking tower in the shadow of Gleam situated on the north edge of Flux. It's in a good position to easily access the rest of the city domains by air.

You have discovered Odell. Skills increased: Mechanics (Piloting), Knowledge (Geography), Enhanced Soul (Aether Sailing), Enhanced Senses (Celestial Inspiration)

I wouldn't even really call the dimmer light dreary as I've lived most of my life never being able to even see Tiganna directly, but the way Gleam eclipses it with inverted skyscrapers overhead is new. I must, alas, eventually stop staring at everything and actually do what we came here to do.

We're working under the assumption that Bee Tresco knows where her son's flat is and will have the place watched. We're counting on it.

After a bit of searching for the address, we find the flat mentioned on the deed and try the key, and get inside. I scan the area thoroughly to make sure there isn't anyone around. Empty. Not even a guard dog or potted plant. Given the very low levels of residual vis, it's likely that no one has been in this flat for weeks if not months.

It looks like it's the sort of place where it's expected that its resident will be flying around different places and not necessarily be living here all the time. It is, however, where Lance Tresco stored the crap he couldn't be bothered to haul with him on his ship but wanted on hand enough to put in his apartment and not a storeroom somewhere.

There are several rooms but each of them is carefully designed to be just big enough to be intimate without feeling cramped. Each room contains small speakers in the corners, linked to a sigil-covered purple box with a turntable. Several vinyl discs in colorful sleeves sit stacked on the shelf.

A hot tub encircled by sigil work sits nestled in a luxurious bathroom well-stocked with fancy floral scented soaps. Embroidered towels with a stylized spear and the name 'Tresco' hang from elegant brass bars.

The only room that doesn't look like it was intended for wining and dining is a small office. A bookcase holds an assortment of dry ledgers and reports. Boring to me, but Milo might be interested.

He has a score book where he keeps notes of all the women he's had sex with and children he has fathered, along with notes like "stupid wench won't let me see my boy" and "I can't believe she turned me down!" He isn't doing a very good job of making me feel bad that he's dead.

One room has several large windows angled around in a corner with cushy places to sit in it. The flat isn't quite located at the edge of the domain, but it still offers a great view. Plush black velvet angled couches with mysterious stains I don't need [Psychometry] to guess at the origin of.

"This place is kind of gross," I comment.

A knee-high safe sits in one corner, and Belladonna crouches down next to it to start cracking it with her Heroic Rogue skills. A minibar with an assortment of bottles with colorful labels stands against one wall.

"Looks like Lance left a bit of a booze stash," Basalt says, pulling out a bottle and examining it. "I call dibs on some of it. To make a dwarven brewer, not to drink."

"Yeah, let's start looting," I say. "Grab anything valuable and portable, and let's see if we can find some notes."

A vial full of indigo fluid, gleaming like Cherenkov radiation, sits tucked away in a cupboard like a dirty secret. I pick it up and hold it up between three fingers thoughtfully.

Skill increased: Search (Inspection)

"Floj?" Rowan asks. "What are you going to do with that?"

"I got a new skill I want to try out," I say. "It's called [Trace Connection]. Little bottle, tell me where you came from…"

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