“Alright, one at a time. I want to be very careful after the odd experience I had with Sean’s,” Cal said as he entered the room where the ogres had been waiting for him since his arrival. Andrew, Andy and Bill were with him. He had left Libby with Ethel to see what they could find.


    “What happens to Robin if we can’t find her to release her collar?” Sean asked. Cal didn’t know the answer.


    “That depends a lot on where she is and exactly what happened. Depending on these collars, which I’ll check more in-depth once the others are off, I should be able to give you all a better idea,” Andrew responded. Cal was glad someone had some clue because he still had no idea what had happened to the others and wasn’t remotely happy about it.


    “Which is all the more reason to get these off immediately. We already took Sean’s off safely, so let’s get everyone else’s now,” Andy added, sounding worried. Cal worried his friend felt responsible for the loss of Serilina. He had reacted much worse than he had to the news and seemed to be getting worse.


    “You heard, let’s get this over with so we can see what we can help with around here. Robin may be gone, or she may be entirely safe and helping the others. It’s not something we can dwell on for now,” Sean replied.


    Each of the ogres was soon unlocked and freed from their collars, without Cal having the bad luck of another weird experience. He then sent them all to assist Ethel however they could, as he wanted to speak to the others in private for a moment.


    “So, weird thing happened when I removed the first collar, that didn’t repeat this time,” Cal said.


    “You mean the issue Sean had with this mana spirit and the degradation?” Andy asked.


    “I don’t, but I am glad we didn’t have that happen again, too. I suspect, though, that was done to lure me into what happened when we tried to fix it. I didn’t want to say anything until I had Andrew here as well, but I met another version of you two. I don’t think this one is still alive, though,” Cal said, handing the first collar over to the elder one.


    “What do you mean?” Bill asked as the other two went silent.


    “When we worked on Sean’s situation, my consciousness was pulled into a meeting with a simulated Andrew, from a previous set of loops apparently. There’s a lot to it, and Andrew can pull it all out of the collar, but the gist of it is that a previous set of loops collapsed due to us bringing too many people into them. Somehow, Andrew was thrown back in time and attempted to fix things by building the Agency; clearly, that went poorly. I was a little too angry to ask the right questions at the time, so I’m hoping you can figure more out,” Cal said, trying not to think about that problem more than he needed.


    Stolen story; please report.


    “Great, well I’ll add it to the stack of current disasters we need to deal with,” Andrew replied, sounding annoyed.


    “Oh, there’s more. Twonger is the king of his people now, and a whole star system is apparently missing,” Andy said, shaking his head.


    “We can hold on those two problems until Twonger is ready to deal with them, the more important thing to do is we need possible leads on the kids. So what do we know about Dennis? since he’s the one who has manifested twice so far, he seems to be the key here,” Cal asked the others.


    “Damn, it’s the Under Library. He unlocked another wing of it somehow. Cal I don’t like the idea of exploring another wing without Serilina and her cat, but we may not have a choice,” Andy replied.


    “Alright, let’s leave that as a strong possibility for where we can find information, and if we do that, I’m coming with you. Even if the place doesn’t like me, we are going in force for this one,” Cal replied.


    “Do you know what exactly the Mother Tree is capable of tracking?” Bill asked, looking toward Andrew.


    “Ethel isn’t exactly open about her projects as much as I wish she were. So no, I don’t, so as far as I know, especially with Serilina gone, that makes you the resident expert on magical runes and determining if any were used, Bill,” Andrew replied.


    “So, let’s say they are just somewhere else like Dennis suggested. Will they be back in the next loop?” Cal asked; he doubted it. This felt like what had happened to his brothers.


    “I don’t think so. Obviously, I have no real proof of this, yes, but the fact that Dennis reappeared as his older self, well, you all know who that reminds us of. I suspect, like Ralth they were shunted out of our universe to another. What I don’t understand is why, and why make sure Ethel and the dogs aren’t with them when it happens? You can argue Dennis did it for causality, but why did it need to be done in the first place?” Andrew asked.


    “That’s the big question. What triggered this at all, and I imagine figuring that out is how we find them. Cal, what do you think?” Andy asked.


    “What I think is we need to learn more about our reality and just how magic works. How we do that I don’t know, but that always seems to be one of the cruxes of our problems. We just don’t know enough, well I suppose I don’t know enough. You three know a ton,” he replied.


    “No, and it pains me to admit this. This is likely another thing caused by our lack of knowledge, which means I will also be joining you both on a new trip to the Under Library,” Andrew replied. Since it looked to Cal like that was the end point of this discussion no matter how much they talked, it was time to go look over the scene of the disappearance before they really made that call.