On our second morning in Kethra, Elyr and I met up with Tomsk and his Aethri colleague, Fiera in a small artisan tech gallery that did the most brilliant hot chocolate I’d had since leaving Bern!

As we sat down I noticed that there was a bear motif on the edge of the table, I asked Tomsk and he simply said, he didn’t know why, but places with bears always felt safer. I couldn’t help but agree. He also said that bears used to come into the city a lot more, they would wander the streets looking into certain workshops and sleeping outside houses. They haven’t been around so much recently, although Tomsk says he still does see them on occasion when he goes outside the city, just in the distance, watching.

It seems like Tomsk and Fiera were the best people to get talking to, the piece of technology we were working on yesterday is part of a new skein tech mapping engine, and Tomsk himself is on a secret mission to map all the lost paths around Kethra.

He said secret mission, which made it sound very mysterious, but i think he really just didn’t want any competitors getting to know about it.

Elyr was quite amused by this and kept chuckling inside my head.

When I told him about the mapping issues the riverwardens at Bern were having, he and Fiera exchanged looks again. They stated that it shouldn’t be possible, and the problem sounded bigger than mapping. When I explained it definitely was and told them briefly of the school and the village hall problems, they looked worried again. Fiera said they knew a skein wright who might be able to help. I told them of the Ministry’s plans to centralise the skein links to outlying villages like Bern, and how this felt wrong to me like it was trying to force the system into a pattern it was never meant to be in.

It was at this point they told us about the unsettling building we saw. It was constructed in the last few months and is the Residence of Vivia Thorne, the Director of Resonance Integrity for the Ministry of Alignment. This raised far more questions than it answered, what was a Director of Resonance Integrity?

As I started to ask, Elyr Screamed in my head “RUN!!” and simultaneously Tomsk looked up and said “I’m sorry! We must have been overheard”

We fled from the gallery as four official looking people in uniform entered by the other door.

We made it back to the inn but I am not sure how long we will be safe here!