With the surprise above ground taken care of and a far easier exit than the original, things were actually looking up for the explorers despite the destruction. It would take several days for the camp staff to dig out the collapsed area and find out what was recoverable and what wasn't, with all the snow, but it no longer needed significant combat support. Instead, Los'en planned to melt as much snow as he could without damaging things, which would help.

That meant it was time to return back to their exploration, which really meant looking into the weird interspace. Thinking of that made Sophia realize she hadn't seen Scout since the android left after guiding them to the surface; she had no idea what was going on down below.

Two hours after that realization, Sophia, Dav, and Xin'ri reached Othala's chamber. The longest part of the delay was convincing Taika that he didn't need to come. The three ruins apparitions they saw on the trip didn't really slow them down much.

Both of Scout's guards waited outside the room. Neither of them said anything, but one of them opened the door and made it obvious that they were welcome to enter with a smooth gesture.

"You are back." Othala sounded pleased. She spoke in English that was far less broken than before, which made Sophia wonder if Volat had taught her more while they were dealing with the Templar on the surface. "Did you find the hollow one?"

"Hollow one? What do you mean?" Sophia definitely hadn't seen a hollow one here. She'd seen one exactly once, as the final monster on the second level of a six-floor dungeon. They were prepared, but it was a tough battle of attrition since they had to repeatedly "kill" the thing until it stopped being able to revive itself. She was pretty sure it wasn't there anymore, either; she'd mentioned it to her father when she got home and she was pretty sure he went to have a good talk with the dungeon core about appropriate monsters for lower Tiers after that.

"The person who triggered the stairs to collapse had an empty space in the shape of the authority lines of a member of the Emperor's retinue. It was wrong but also close enough that the panel gave him minimal access rights as an Imperial officer," Othala explained.

Sophia took a deep breath and relaxed. Now it made sense; Othala wasn't actually talking about a hollow one, at least not the way Sophia meant the term. It probably didn't know the term at all. Instead, Othala saw something missing in a person and translated that to the person being hollow. "Oh, yes. We found him. Well, he found us, really. He's not going to be a problem anymore."

"Good. I don't like impostors. It's too bad you couldn't hand them over to the Justiciars, but they probably aren't around anymore?" Othala sounded almost hopeful.

Sophia glanced at Xin'ri to see if she knew anything. Xin'ri only shook her head, so Sophia admitted, "I've never heard of Justiciars, but I don't know much about your Empire. I guess they were your peacekeepers?"

"Peacekeepers?" Othala sounded dubious. "In some ways, maybe. Justiciars are the hands and eyes of Imperial law. Anything as important as a false Imperial authority imprint should go to the Justiciars. If they still exist."

That implied there were less important groups, as well. That seemed only reasonable. There certainly were different types of police back home; everyone knew that.

The idea that the Templar had a false-seeming level of imperial authority as one of the Emperor's retainers was interesting, especially since the Broken Lord was supposed to be either the last Emperor or his son, Sophia wasn't entirely certain which. Either way, the Broken Lord was probably the man who "should" be the ruler of Kestii if the Kestii Empire still existed. Pelrith Moonshadow was almost certainly Hallowed by him, which was probably the source of the "authority imprint."

Sophia didn't know what it meant that it was missing or hollow, but she was certain it had to mean something. It sounded rather like Intent-based magic, only not, which should mean that it had something to do with how the Broken Lord saw either himself or his Hallowed.

"I have never heard of Justiciars, either," Xin'ri added while Sophia was still working through the implications. "I'm certain Volat would like to talk to you about them; you know more about the past than we do, and he loves the past. That's not why I'm here, though. We're done up above, so it's time to repair the interspace conduit."

"Really? Oh, that's wonderful!" Othala sounded overjoyed, the concern of a moment before about the false imperial authority gone. "When can you start? I had Scout prepare some bridge-rods while you were above, will that help?"

"Yes, it will," Xin'ri answered. "I was only able to make a couple while we were above, so I thought I'd have to start there." Xin'ri pulled a couple of things out of her pack and held them up for everyone to see. They were simple, a black rod with what looked like blue-white glass glued to it, capped with more of the translucent glass or crystal on each end. A spike more like the point of a pen than something meant to pierce extended from each of the rod's ends.

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It was only about eight inches long, unfortunately, which gave Sophia the sinking feeling that she was definitely going to need to "glue them together with the black goop," if she remembered Xin'ri's instructions correctly. The boulder she couldn't see in the interspace was definitely more than eight inches long.

"These two are as close as I could get. I think they'll work, but more are definitely helpful. I don't think my two will be enough." Xin'ri echoed Sophia's concern.

"Those are beautiful. You must have Abilities for shaping materials, or at least the right tools," Othala spoke quickly, obviously still excited. "I thought about creating a construct to manage it, but by the time I was able to create one, Scout could be done with the materials we have left and I didn't want to use it all up and Issvako's instructions said it would work even if it was crude and I didn't want to wait so i had Scout go ahead and make them, plus extra interspace glue. Scout! Give the repair rods to … uh, what's your name?"

Xin'ri laughed. "Xin'ri. You should give them to Dav or Sophia, though; they'll be working with the materials, I'm only going in because I know what to do. More than they do, at least. I hope it's as easy as the instructions make it sound. It looks simple enough; I could just pick out the right pages if that would help?"

Sophia wrinkled her nose. She knew Xin'ri didn't want to enter the space, but she also knew they didn't really have another choice. "The papers wouldn't survive. Othala made them the same way she made Scout; they'd dissolve in seconds. Maybe minutes. They wouldn't last long enough to reach the break. We'd have to copy them onto something else that would last, and I'm not entirely certain if I'd be able to read them accurately or not. That space is strange."

"Reading should be fine," Xin'ri said with a shake of her head. "Issvako's records specifically say that speaking to others and reading her papers were basic requirements she imposed on the space. Reading requires the ability to see mana, just like seeing anything else."

Sophia frowned and tried to think of how that would work. There were probably ways, but she didn't know them. "Okay, then I guess that could work. I'd still rather have you come, since you understand what's in there. It didn't make much sense to me."

Sophia was certain she could understand it if she took the time to learn. She just wasn't sure she wanted to. It was far easier to ask for help, and it wasn't like this was something she was going to need later.

"Here, rods I made," Scout stated plainly in her broken English. She held out a pair of rods made of some sort of black stone with glued-on bits of bluish glass or crystal. They were similar enough to Xin'ri's that they had to be intended for the same purpose, even though they were very different.

They weren't cylindrical like the ones Xin'ri made; instead, they were roughly square in cross section, with barely-rounded corners and sides that wavered enough that the edges were only barely approximately straight. Blue drops of glass almost like water bubbles pebbled the surface outside the two pointed ends. It was very obvious that the methods they'd used were extremely different.

Sophia took the flat-sided rods, then looked at Xin'ri. She wasn't quite sure how to ask if the very different yet similar rods would work together.

"Will that be long enough?" Xin'ri didn't even question if the rods would work; she had a different question instead, for Sophia and Dav. She held her hands out, as if asking for the two rods from Scout, so Sophia handed them over.

"They'll need to overlap like this, so this is all of the length we'll get." Xin'ri laid the rods on the floor, with her pair on the ends and Scout's in between them. The tip of each pointed section reached the broader middle section on Scout's rods, but the tip of Scout's rods didn't reach as far down Xin'ri's longer tapered sections.

"I think so," Sophia said, then glanced at Dav. "Can you measure it, or do we need to go back in for that?"

Dav shook his head. "It's long enough, with an inch or two on either side, as long as we only have to cross the bottom of the boulder. If it has to cross at the top, it's not even close to long enough."

"Hmm." Xin'ri tapped one of the rods, then scooped all four of them up and presented them to Sophia. "I'd like to have more, but there isn't any more of the black rock. Four rods was supposed to be more than enough. There are some options in the notes about using the pebbles that are also in the protected area, but I'm not sure we can manage them. Let's hope this works."

"I had Scout turn several of them into glue," Othala added. "Go get the pitcher, Scout."

"Do we need more glue?" Xin'ri pulled a glass bottle filled with a black fluid secured with a black-capped stopper out of her pack. It wasn't very big at about two inches tall, but "not very big" when it came to glue could still be a lot of glue. "This was in there, and it looks like it's more than enough. The instructions are to coat both surfaces, then press them together. This was the only vial for glue I saw and it was already full."

"Issvako had that," Othala agreed, "But she always used her pitcher for glue. Well, she called it liquid stone, but that's the same thing, I think."

As if on cue, Sophia heard the door behind her open. She turned and saw Scout enter, carrying an extremely ornate pitcher. It was black , but "black" was an inadequate description. The material was raised in bands at the neck and near the base of the handle, with ornate patterns in swirls across the body and lower part of the next. Crystals had been added, along with enamel in a few places, speckling the handle and covering the body of the pitcher in colorful teal, blue, and orange starbursts.

That was fancy enough to startle Sophia, but the real surprise was the smoke and specks of light that seemed to rise from the top and front of the pitcher. They were mana and essence, visible to Sophia as they slowly dissipated in the air.

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