Jason took one of the temple's Gleamerbikes that were reserved for High Speakers and Pillarguards in emergencies.

The pair of Pillarguards guarding the entrance would not have allowed him to do so alone, but that was why Jason had detoured past the inner courtyards first, where the High Speakers would be performing their nightly Speaking ceremony, and armed himself with Ariel Cloudspeaker.

"Pillarguards," she said, regal at her full height in her simple white-and-blue robes as they inclined their heads to her. "I'm allowing the use of a Gleamerbike to Jason Frostsong as he deems necessary. I realise it is a highly unusual request to make, but given I have seen fit to interrupt my Speaking, I would ask that you accommodate him."

The Pillarguards hesitated for a moment, then inclined their heads a second time. "Yes, High Cloudspeaker."

Two minutes after that, Jason threw his leg over the Gleamer and powered it on before he looked to Ariel. "Tell the Luminaries that Ella has a lead on Adande and I'm meeting her at the Nari skyshrine, so if this goes badly, they at least know where to start looking. I've already informed Cryo."

Ariel passed him a helmet with her lips pressed tightly together. "Get her back. Keep me updated and tell me if you need anything. I'll bring every Pillarguard in the temple to you if you ask."

Helmet secured, Jason replied with a nod before kicking the Gleamer into gear and speeding off into the street.

It took him ten minutes to reach the inner Nari skyshrine.

Jason startled more than one Speaker as he approached the skyshrine at a speed he generally would have considered reckless. He slammed on the brakes, letting the back wheel of the Gleamer drift around as it came to a complete stop in the space of a few metres.

Ella was waiting at the edge of the skyshrine's ramp, and even before he'd stopped, she was moving towards him, shoving her Liaiser in her pocket and strapping a helmet on over her low-tied pigtails. She wore a similar outfit to that he'd seen her in previously with her knee-length navy coat and loose-fitting pants, but the corset had been replaced with a form-fitting shirt, and there were padded, fingerless gloves with small studs on her hands. Her boots looked like they could do some damage, and the sleeves of her coat were rolled down.

Ella was dressed for a fight, Jason realised as she climbed on the back of the Gleamer and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"Head for that giant entertainment centre in outer Cevinari," said Ella. "I'll tell you where you go once we get there."

"You said it was outside City limits," said Jason, kicking the Gleamer back into gear and speeding forward. "If you know where, shouldn't we tell someone just in case this goes badly?"

"Adande was entirely clear," said Ella, her voice close to his head. "If he sees anyone except us two hanging around, there's no deal, and we won't be able to find anything outside the limit without him. I'm not risking that, so I'll be the bad guy and take responsibility if the bastard is just luring us into a trap."

Jason turned onto a main street, a straight stretch of road that followed the canal line and cut directly through the entire district from temple to outer limits. At this time of night, with the auroras still out, there shouldn't be many people on the road. "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm willing to walk into a potential trap?"

"Are you telling me that you wouldn't throw yourself off Skypillar if it meant half a chance at saving her?"

Jason changed gears. "Hold on."

He'd never pushed a Gleamer this fast before. It hummed beneath him, warm and steady as their speed kept creeping up. The rush of the wind on his bare arms reminded him of flying as Cryo, but without the security that if he crashed, he had superpowers to save him from disaster. On this Gleamerbike, if he lost focus and crashed, he'd be in the hospital for the next few weeks, assuming he and Ella survived at all.

He slowled only twice, once for people occupying the street and a second time as they crossed the canal bridge into outer Cevinari. Once there, it was several minutes more until the entertainment building Ella had mentioned, and by the time they arrived there, the auroras were beginning to fade from the night-wrangled skies.

Even though they were fading, Jason was surprised to realise he could see the ends of the auroras, though he should have expected it. It wasn't often he was this close to the City limits while the auroras were out, but the beautiful waves of violet and teal light never went further than the City's limit. No one was entirely sure why the two boundaries were inexplicably tied together, or which one expanded the other a little more each year.

Jason was left to one or two quick glances at them as Ella's directions quickly brought them into the outskirts of the City.

The outskirts was vastly different from the rest of the City. Each year, the starstone base of the City grew a little more, creeping ever-closer towards the ring of mountains that surrounded it. The outskirts were the starstone buildings that had been built upon this growth, ones not carved by the first civilisation that'd occupied this City, but by the current one.

As a result, the buildings of the outskirts were not as elegantly or carefully crafted as those inside it. They were little more than bad imitations of the actual things. Oftentimes, those who migrated to the City from other cultures and civilisations outside the mountain ring ended up living within the outskirts. It was a rare person who was able to adjust to such a technologically advanced City and a climate of Luminaries and Manifested well enough to blend in with the natives.

More than one pair of outskirt curious eyes followed Jason and Ella as they drove past the close-packed buildings. A large number of items he spotted street-side were not made of starstone, but instead of wood or stone. It didn't make a great amount of sense when the same products in starstone were far more durable and practical when the auroras healed them nightly, but perhaps in the outskirts, habits died hard.

"First left, then go right until you reach the edge of the starstone," said Ella, ignoring an old man who reached out towards her elbow as they passed, yelling something about their 'magic motorbike'. "That should be it."

Jason followed her directions, and for the first time in his life, found himself within ten metres of the place where an uncut edge of starstone met the rocky ground.

It wasn't like the Skypillar-side edges of Cevinari and Taori. They both possessed a clear, definitive line of where the urban part of the City ended and gave way to the forests. Even then, wandering the forests still felt like he was inside the City, just tucked away in some secluded, private part of it.

But this edge in front of him--that was the true City limit.

Outside it, there were no Luminaries. No Manifested. No starstone. No auroras. Just a ring of sloping mountains that were dwarfed by Skypillar's massive size, covered in a scattered variety of small, hardy shrubs, mossy boulders, a few saplings and the occasional pine tree.

Jason put the Gleamerbike into neutral and waited for Ella to climb off and remove her helmet before he followed suit. She shook out her hair, re-tying her pigtails at their usual spot higher on her head.

"Whatever Adande says, don't trust him," said Ella. "I still have no idea what his motive is, but knowing him, it's probably entirely selfish."

"Cryo warned me of him," said Jason quietly, scanning their surroundings. They stood in a narrow street lined by buildings that appeared to be apartments. There was an alley with two doors on their right and a small alcove on their left, but even with careful searching, Jason found no sign of anyone. "He said that Adande is one of the Serpent's main 'hunters', and that he uses the trust of his victims to lure them where he wants them."

"Yeah, well, consider us lured," said Ella with a flat expression before she placed her hands on her hips and called out. "Adande! I know you can see us, and if you aren't out within a minute, I'm going to start searching. You do not want me to start searching."

As Ella remained, her feet planted firmly on the starstone and started counting, Jason moved the Gleamerbike over to a nearby alley where it'd at least be out of sight, even if multiple people had watched him do it.

That wasn't his primary goal though. Now out of sight, he reached into his pocket and brought the small piece of ear-cuff shaped ice close to his chest while he feigned fiddling with the helmet.

"Sae?" Jason breathed. The ear-cuff grew a beak, an eye, and a tuft of crystal-feathers. "Can I take you outside City limits, or should I leave you here?"

"Take me with you," said the beak. "I'll just sorta deactivate like I would during the auroras and turn back on once you're back in the City. And Jase--be careful, yeah? More naptime for me is great but not if you never come back to me."

"I'll come back," Jason promised. "And I'll have Olivia back, too."

The eyeball blinked. "Good luck, kiddo."

Jason placed Sae back in his pocket and set the Gleamer's locking code before walking back to Ella. "Any luck?"

"He has exactly ten seconds before I start looking," said Ella. "Ten, nine--"

"I'm over here, Spirit."

Jason and Ella turned in sync towards a small alcove in the wall to their left to find Adande in the shadows, leaning against the wall in his usual grey jacket, hood pulled up and his sunglasses on.

Jason's suspicions instantly tripled. There was no way Adande could have slipped past Ella and into the alcove without her seeing him, and Jason was more than sure it'd been empty before.

It's like before, how he disappeared with Banshee without any doors. How?

"'Spirit'?" said Ella, narrowing her eyes. "It's Spiritcaller to you, not Spirit."

Adande smirked, hands in the pocket of his coat. "Just thought I'd check to see if your reaction was still the same." Before Ella could latch onto that comment, Adande looked to Jason. "Glad to see you're looking better, Frostsong. Last time we met, I was trying to stop you from bleeding and Banshee nearly stabbed me for it."

"Something that it appears she may have been well within her rights to do, given how that night continued," said Jason, not bothering to keep his disdain from his voice. "Where is she?"

"I don't know where Banshee is," said Adande smoothly, pulling down his hood and sitting his sunglasses on top of his head. Jason's fingers curled into his palm. Liar. He was a liar. "But I've got Olivia in a safehouse outside the City limits. It's the only place I knew that she'd be entirely safe, but..."

As Adande ran a hand through his crimson hair, Ella approached him and folded her arms.

She leaned forward, stopping only when her face was a few inches from his. "But what, buddy? I have exactly two seconds of patience left for you, so you'd better cut to the chase before I start cutting the chase into you. Get it?"

"Your threats were always interesting, Spirit," murmured Adande, scrunching one eye closed. "But yeah, I get the point. This all looks suspicious as an Other-cursed pancake on the weekend." He paused, giving Ella a meaningful look. When she didn't do anything but raise her eyebrows and make a cutting motion with her finger, he sighed and pushed off the wall. "Okay, you don't remember that one either, got it. Anyway, get over here, we're going down."

"Down?" said Ella.

"Into the understreets," said Adande. "Lemme guess. You don't remember those either?" He managed yet another sigh. "Okay. Come here, stand on these three squares of starstone--the ones that run the opposite direction to the others--and pull in your body parts. Worst thing to hit your head on the way down or break an arm or something because it was too far out. Don't do it. Wouldn't recommend."

When Jason and Ella both hesitated, Adande clicked his tongue.

"Look," he said. "I get it. I'm entirely untrustworthy. Don't blame you." Adande sucked in a breath, his eyes on the ground. "But I can't snap Olivia out of it. I thought I could after I pulled her out, but she's... she's not doing well. The Serpent's hallucinations can play some pretty serious mind games. I've seen people crack before to half of what the Serpent put her through, and usually I can just kinda ignore it because they've done something somewhere along the line to deserve it, but she... she doesn't deserve it."

"Let's go," said Jason, stepping onto the starstone that Adande had indicated.

A few seconds of death-staring Adande later, and Ella followed. The three of them were uncomfortably close as Adande reached into his pocket and pulled out an all too familiar green-and-black diamond that'd been powerful enough to knock Cryo out.

Jason lunged forward with a shout, grabbing Adande's wrist and pushing Ella away with the same movement. Ella was instantly alert and searching for the danger that was clenched between Adande's hand, her hand reaching inside her coat.

Adande widened his feet to brace himself but otherwise didn't resist Jason's grip as he forced Adande's fingers closed over the diamond, keeping it out of sight.

"What! What'd I do?"

"Those diamonds knock people out," said Jason through his teeth. "What, do you think we're stupid?"

"Oh," said Adande, shoulders relaxing a little. "Yeah, valid point. They can scale-stun people, but I wasn't trying to do that. It also interacts with certain pieces of starstone and allows us to access the understreets."

Jason didn't release his grip on Adande's closed hand. "What is it?"

"It's... it's one of the Serpent's scales," said Ella, sounding surprised to have remembered it. "He gave them out to people he trusted to help them get around without being seen. I remember... I remember asking for one, only for him to tell me I didn't need it."

Adande just chuckled. "'Asking'? Demanded is more like it. I've never seen the Serpent quiver in its scales more than when he had to explain to you why you didn't need one."

"Why didn't she need one?" asked Jason.

"Look, I'll explain later, but for now, we kinda gotta get a move on," said Adande. "I don't wanna leave Olivia by herself longer than I have to, and honestly, I'm getting kinda nervous being back in the City. Won't be long before the Serpent finds us if we stay here."

Jason glanced at Ella and took her hand. "You keep your eyes shut. If I stop squeezing your hand, Adande's knocked me out with the scale, and you have permission to punch him."

Ella grinned--not at Jason, but at Adande. "Oh, that's a deal I'll make any day."

Adande's lips sucked back into his mouth as he opted to simply gesture to the starstone ground.

Ella closed her eyes and, guided by Jason, stepped onto the tiles, as Jason reluctantly released Adande's hand.

"Going down," said Adande, turning his palm to the ground.

Jason prepared himself for a drop, perhaps for the starstone to lower into the ground suddenly, but he hadn't been for the ground to just disappear.

Ella yelped in surprise but kept her eyes shut and her grip on Jason, who managed to stay on his feet and steady them both as they hit the floor below. Above them, the starstone reappeared an instant later like nothing had happened at all. However, the most unnerving thing of it all was how Jason could see straight up into the streets above.

That's how he vanished earlier in the alley.

"Welcome to the understreets," said Adande, sweeping his hand around the narrow starstone tunnel around them before making a show of pocketing his diamond scale once more. "I'd let you hold onto the scale, but you might just accidentally knock yourself out with it. Now, let's get out of this City before the Serpent sends my sisters after us."

*+*+*+*

A/N - Sorry in advance if I don't reply to as many comments as usual, I'm not having a great time at the moment, especially with my writing-related confidence, so pls bear with me while my brain does a dumb and know that I appreciate the heck out of each one of you who shows up every week. <3

Also, Kiba did merch things for ShadowSong & Indigo~ 

https://www.zazzle.com/46kiba_emporium