Every member of the new, streamlined expedition had either arrived with Emir or been hand-picked by Danielle and Thalia. They drew back to the island that had their underwater aperture just offshore, using it as a staging point. As preparations were made to track down their missing people, a steady stream of departing expedition members waded into the water and through the aperture just below the surface. The tricky part was managing the people still unconscious after being healed from extreme injury. The adventurers with water powers were employed to see them through.

With the withdrawal from the astral space organised, the next priority was to retrieve the adventurers who had become separated from the group. Teams led by silver rankers set out, using tracking stones to find them. Only once that was done would they turn to finding and destroying the enemy.

With only the cream of the expedition remaining, bolstered by Emir’s people, Danielle was confident of eradicating the construct army and its masters. Her greatest concern was actually finding them. The follow-up attack she had been fearful of never arrived, and the search teams hadn’t run into anyone but missing expedition members.

“There’s a problem,” Emir said. He was in the command tent with Danielle and Thalia.

“You’ll have to narrow that down,” Danielle said without humour.

“We still have nineteen missing people are still alive, according to their tracking stones,” Emir said. “The problem is that for five of them, their stone indicates they’re still alive, but can’t track them.

“Could they have lost their badges, or had them taken?” Thalia asked.

“If they lost them, we’d still be able to track the badges. The best explanation we can hope for is that the astral space has regions that naturally mask tracking. I’ve seen it in astral spaces before, although they were all less stable than this one.”

“Not unheard of,” Danielle said.

“It could be racial gift evolution,” Thalia said. “Our lost people certainly have the right conditions to trigger it.”

“We know ability evolutions change an ability to meet immediate needs,” Thalia said. “An ability that prevents them from being tracked would make sense.”

“But five people, all getting skill evolutions at once, and all the same or similar abilities?” Danielle asked. “It would be great if that’s what happened and they’re all fine, but we can’t anticipate that being the case.”

“The alternatives get worse from there,” Emir said. “Something may have happened to them that changed their aura so much that they no longer match the aura imprint on their badges, which would break the tracking magic. Which would suggest the enemy found them and did something to them.”

“Who are the five?” Danielle asked.

Emir looked at Thalia with sympathy.

“I’m sorry, but they include Jonah Geller and Thadwick Mercer.”

Thalia’s face twisted but she kept herself under control.