"What's happening at Tia's Pointe?" Tim asked.

  Lousa tied off the bandage on his foot, leaving him to sit his duck feathered hiney on a kitchen stool while she packed.

  He recalled Kari's memories of Tia’s Pointe as if they were his own, the cloud sniffing Wizard’s Eye’s tall glass panes and abso molded spires atop the Mount of Watchman's Sorrow. This was the most likely place to find Sa Reoleigh. However, why remained important especially as urgency focused Lousa's packing efforts into bursts of short sprints and quick pilfering of drawers and cupboards.

  Tim was more wanting to have her rip the band aid off with how bad it was that Chris and gang had chosen the tower at the top of the pointe.

  Meanwhile, Lousa drew the final piece of her packing from a safe hidden by magic in a closet floor. Inside she had stored a sword long enough to slice a man in twain, packed in a black scabbard painted with tribal phrases Tim couldn't translate. "My bastard husband made a deal with Hist for the skull's power. Sa Reoleigh went to the tower to prepare a spell to stop them. And the traitors who sent the attack on our towers know that now too."

  Considering he still bore the painful memories of meeting that army on its way out of Adenon Prison, Tim wondered how far in the past he'd come to meet her now. Her outfit matched the one he'd seen her last, with gashes freshly bandaged and tears he remembered in their treehouse defense. "How long since I saw you last?" Tim asked.

  "A day. Why?"

  "So he's going to prepare whatever he did prior to getting kidnapped when we saw him in Kari's vision?"

  "It's more likely that kidnapping has had its timeline pushed forward. You and your brother brought the threat of the future and Gantus is trying to reposition his status with Hist using you and your brother as leverage."

  "How far in the future have you seen?" she asked.

  "Four days since. I captured your husband, but he escaped when a swarm of silverfish overtook our Farmstead and my Enclave Gate. I've leveled up and gained spells, but in our escape, we were tracked. Ghareven sent me to Adenon Prison through a connection with another Scyllatz incarcerated there. We saw a Troll army leaving."

  Lousa snapped her fingers. "Is that where Gantus is? I thought it might be." She looped a canteen in her finger and gestured with it for Tim to follow her out the front door. "Tell me on the way."

  "Is that when you'll tell me what Excalibur’s for?" Tim asked, pointing his wing tip at the sword slung on her hip. A green mist only discernable in his gradually increasing Ranger senses emanated from the hilt where it hovered by magic a few inches from her belt.

  "Traitors meeting within Tia’s Pointe to join my husband's army." She glanced down at him on her way toward a fenced pen outside. "Brizicthi have several strengths. Flight and motor control should be your focus for now. It appears Gantus’s haunt has you stuck in that form. I'm going to ride underneath."

  A cat with long white hair stained red around the mouth pawed toward the fence to meet Lousa. Lime yellow eyes trained on Tim exuded an eager spirit to show its preparedness to meet her call. Its graceful strides and strong frame reminded Tim of a thicker, slightly taller hunting cat than Tonda. Pangs of grief renewed their sucking life at the thought of his recently perished friend.

  Lousa rubbed her cat's jaw, and the lime glow dimmed with the gentle closing of her eyelids.

  Tim analyzed just enough to catch the cat's name and basic info:

  Siwo was the preferred nickname for the origon species of predatory feline. The original cat that their troll ancestor brought from Kehmoja. Siwo was advanced through shaman magic to tier five endurance, speed and war cry—stationed in Siwo's throat where rivulets of blue veins on the outside of the fur amassed in leathery tongues. In battle, they formed tubes to channel a shrill war cry cable of stunning in wide swaths through thick obstacles.

  Tim flapped over and landed on the rail. "Nice to meet you, Siwo."

  The origon's throat tongues expanded the veins and opened slits where they terminated under her chin. Her lime light glowed in a final warning.

  O...kay. Tim didn't dare show weakness by saying anything or turning his back on the predator.

  "Siwo." Lousa scolded the cat with a pointed finger. Her other hand held two orange plugs small enough to fit in his ears. "This is a friend. We're going to follow him. Not." She pointed closer to the cat and her squinted eyes. "Not eat him."

  After a moment where Tim wondered if the cat would spring into disobedience, Siwo licked her lips and relaxed her throat.

  Lousa tossed him the earplugs, which he bonked on his inner left wing, forgetting for a second that he had that instead of a hand and palm to cradle them. He picked up the foamy knobs, brushed them off and stuck them in his ears. A muffled cloak swallowed his hearing into a notification of Origon Protection in his lower HUD sight.

  Siwo squinted one eye while the other trained on Tim, the mark of reluctant friend. Tim's Ranger senses picked up a root of defensiveness surrounding Lousa and how he represented a risk to Siwo protecting her master.

  Tim smiled and took wing. "We're gonna get along just fine," he said. Except, Honk! came out instead.

  Great. Can you still understand me? He thought, circling his flight to catch a glimpse of Lousa’s face.

  Her smile failed to hide the glee in his terror. I wouldn’t worry, yet,” she thought back and opened the pen. A semi-transparent dome lit a green hue over the pen and flashed away as quickly as it appeared.

  Siwo leapt over the fence and maul-hugged Lousa. Standing on her hind legs, she overtook the not-frail warrior and her six foot three or four height. The two appeared ready for the cover of Cool and Deadly. Not that Tim would know anything about that. He didn’t need instructions to be either.

  Meanwhile, flapping like a goose with a twisted spine, Tim wrestled his inarticulate… well, someone might call them circles. Others, a drowning donkey tied up in his own tail. It was cool, though. At least he hadn’t fallen. From this height, even in his reinforced c-mana feathers, he imagined his hollow bones would not fare well.

  Tim cut air like a rhino learning to fly, flapping his grey feathered hiney five stories into the air to surpass the treetops. Once above the sprawling canopy forming clouds of green across the horizon, Tim spotted Tia’s Pointe about ten miles past, where the tip of Mount of Watchman’s Sorrow extended its Wizard’s Eye tower to the sky. Cloud cover bathed it in wisps of white against the dark black stone amassed within.

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  Below, Lousa and Siwo charged an aggressive pace through the trees. Then gone underneath the canopy.

  Tim leaned into the wind and tucked back another strong stroke of wing power, carving through the wind like a fish in the sea. Or a rhino in a bathtub. Like, fifty-fifty subjective opinion, man. I’d like to see you try, Tim thought to Dryfu, who couldn’t hear him. He supposed the stykiller earned a pass on this one. A headwind strained Tim’s neck and despite a breaststroke of full power, his momentum tipped him into a backward flip. He corkscrewed out, and engaged in a turn he couldn’t take full credit for.

  The brizicthi form was learning.

  Tim pushed through the early exhaustion trying to ignore how his agony would exacerbate over the remaining trek over the green foliage sea and her many spears waiting for him to take a dive.

  At this height, Tim’s Danger Sense worked in the permeation flow, concealing his form and raining through the forest to Siwo and Lousa. He tried throwing hail stones to splash and spread his reach, but the aura bled out, leaving little more than drizzle by the time it reached the soil.

  Good thing Lousa and her pet origon knew how to run through these woods. They proved such by the lead they gained, now a hundred yards closer to the mount than him.

  “I appreciate the concern and practice,” Lousa said over a faint connection. “If you can’t do that and hurry, focus on getting there. The predators we’re evading are more interested in you and where you land.”

  Tim took the hint. Instead of scanning the forest floor, he focused on his breathing and technique, uniting new parts in a machine needing refinement and efficiency. Inherent clues coached him through mistakes while Tim lost himself in the minutia, propelling forward breath by breath toward his goal.

  Had Chris’s ‘friends’ told him bringing his brother along to this world might look like this? They were both in over their heads, yet somehow kept kicking.

  Lousa and Siwo reached the mountain first, entering via a tunnel accessed by a woodland trail escalating like an onramp into one of the caves. Green and glowing vines drew Tim’s attention from a couple hundred yards out. They grew from an indentation under the forearm of the mountain’s last story upward. The observation tower of Wizard’s Eye perched in the plateau beyond it appeared dark through the windows.

  Tim charged Danger Sense into the washing machine spin cycle that was his c-mana buildup on the approaching descent. A whiff of charred ganja broke the plane between the sky and this new zone as Tim soared in through an open window. His Danger Sense beamed from his eyes in a channel of Light Burn to mark his landing. No threats remained in the horseshoe shaped observatory level on the bottom of Wizard’s Eye. In between the curling ends at the far side of the room was a wall coated in black aura with a hole in the middle broken open like a spike through a pop can. Inside, Chris’s vines rimming the edge pulsed with life, leaving enough room at the center to make Tim question if he was about to climb into the elephant’s butthole and descend into its dark depths.

  Think of it more like a slide at a creepy funhouse, he told himself, failing to ease any of his concerns.

  Lousa was too far for Tim’s communication link to reach through the stone and notify her of his findings.

  Tim summoned Magic Hunt, reaching for Indi through limitations imposed by his new form, then pressed a combo of Magic Hunt and Danger Sense out from his steps toward the vine chute. Purple whisps licked up clues from the floor and floating dust motes stirred by the gust in his arrival.

  Hints clung to his throat and stuffed in his brain without unlocking the secret. Sa Reoleigh’s observatory had been ransacked as Chieftain Ulmont and guests reeking of rogue leveling and burnt Eiyero spread parchments and stepped on discarded options.

  Tim sniffed deeper into the spell’s reach before digging in on what clues were left behind.

  He moved to a table with colorful rocks strewn across the wood surface and on the floor. Multiple pouches sat in deflated heaps of velvet and other colorful and soft material. Tim focused on the aura gleaming from the fibers frayed along the ropey fibers.

  Hixel Mur’s essence left fingerprints on the pinched portion of thread.

  Indi popped out of his feathers, huffing and spitting.

  “You rang? Pappa Duck?”

  Tim granted Indi his moment of humor. The relief in seeing his friend helped him take stock of the blessing. Thank you, Lord. It was good to have a friend with him. “I did.” Tim picked up the pouch with Hixel’s prints. “What were they doing here?”

  Indi saluted from the brim of his hat and hopped to. He tucked his legs as though falling into a fishing hole and transcended their plane through a white strip of light drawn across the rope.

  A rising coil of yellow-gray smoke rose from the enveloping of his aura into the remnant left by the fingerprint on the threads. Shimmering pink flakes floated into the air, along with a whiff of spicey ozone like raspberry tea mixed with red wine.

  A tether tied Tim’s core to the expenditure of energy, reminding him to breathe well, flexing and twisting his muscles to route the maximum aura into his spell channel.

  “They wouldn’t let me come without you…”

  Tim turned to the surprise that his brother was not standing behind him. He spun, as though chasing a ghost.

  On the second spin to face the center of the observatory, its clutter reshaped into an organized stack of spiral parchment holders set on the desk. The far wall had two duffle bags and a card folded fat and resting in the cushion on top of one.

  Tim remembered when Chris told him about Hist and the FFA recruiting him from Earth and how they wanted Tim.

  Double doors parted to his left. Chris, Kari and Lank entered the room with Sa Reoleigh close behind. Their appearance lacked opaque consistency as the memory sucked through weaknesses in his reception. The warding sorcerer wore a skin tight mask made from black and brown twigs concealing his eyes from his brows and to halfway down the bridge of his nose. The texture bulged over the eyes and creased into his cheeks and forehead as it wrapped around his jaw and under his ears to the base of his neck. His bald head and Caucasian skin buzzed with agitated aura. Ripples blew under the loose folds of his charcoal robe. Fire curdled and leaked in lightning bolts across the cloth and held the collar apart from the emerald hanging from the silver chain around his neck.

  Sa pointed to the spiral casing with the parchments on his desk. “There.” His twig-woven goggles retracted threads and stuffed themselves back in, building a telescope of many mini spires wide of the central stalk rising to telescopic vision over his forehead. “They’re here.”

  While Sa instructed Chris’s group to sift through the parchments, Chris’s voice spoke intimately in Tim’s mind: “Tim, I will send a vine up here to lead you to us. FFA and Hist want his warding for their new leveling jewelry spells. He learned how to use Sa’s warding to make his own, so we’re taking them for us and Open Arms. When you get this, and I sure hope you do, big brother. I’m counting on you. When you get this, hightail it down the vine with the treat I left you under the floorboard.”

  The pressure squeezing Chris’s message through Party Oversight when members were separated by time hemorrhaged an unending spring of pain from Tim’s forehead. While he spoke, a fast forward memory replayed Sa directing them to take parchments and empty jewel drawers into a bag of holding Lank offered for collection.

  At the conclusion of the message, Sa withdrew a silver glove with embedded stones as colorful as Fruity Pebbles. He whistled and a luminescent violet and blue thread drained out in a thin thread Sa wove around the glove.

  Chris and the gang retreated through the double doors as Chris’s message concluded. Sa tossed the glove and made a splash gesture. Thousands of threads unspooled from the glove to encircle the doorframe. Variegated aura warded through itself to seal the door shut behind him.

  The vision fell like a heavy curtain collapsing on top of Tim, dragging him to all fours on the floorboards in its deposit of expended mana. Tim glanced up at the door and his glove appeared, hovering where Sa had tossed it. Luminescent threads untied as Tim walked up to accept it. Holding the human glove in his duck wings, Tim felt… odd, then tried slipping a tip in to see.

  Nothing happened. The glove hung on the end of his wing, but neither him nor the cloth transformed to a semblance of comfort-fit. Tipping his wing over, the glove slid off and Tim caught it.

  That was it. No more messages from Chris. No more visions.

  And Indi was still lost in his search. A low dose stream of aura tied Tim to his friendly and a sense he wasn’t gone, just busy. Interrupting him now could sever his connection as his MP reached the twenties.

  What he knew so far was Chris’s message was sent before Hixel and crew arrived to search for the stones and research. The desperate attempt to warn Tim and deliver whatever this glove was for fell short. Gantus might have turned him into this duck for this reason, so he couldn’t equip the jeweled glove. Did he know about this and what it could do to help Tim?

  I gotta get out of this body.