I stepped out of the veil and into the dark basement at home, Max's farewell echoing in my head. Frustration made me stomp as I crossed the concrete floor to the stairs, tension across my shoulders giving me a whopper of a headache, one I'd carried with me all day after leaving the Fates with Iepa.
Once we left Ameline, we spent the rest of our time searching planes for the pieces of Creator. I'd never been part of a more intensely unsatisfying process as this whole search had become. When we'd first begun our task Max calmly divided the entire Universe into sections, assigning his people across the planes and, over the last six weeks, we'd been systematically touching down in each one to see if we could find trace of Creator's physical form.
With a small group of drach left behind at the Stronghold to protect Creator's statue at all times, it felt like our little adventure in futility was going to take forever. And I worried we didn't have that long.