Tim tapped back into Indi's trek, seeing in his friendly's sight. The mini-me had his arm up, whip handle gripped for battle and lashed the aura glowing tip into a parchment Sa scrolled at his desk. The contact splashed blue and green ripples down the weathered edged paper.

  Words and ideas came to life as the aura spread down the page.

  Good Indi, keep it up. We need to figure out what Sa kept and why, then what Hixel still took, which Sa left behind.

  "I was already doing that, but that's for joining the party. Would you like to tap in, or should I get back to work?" Indi asked.

  The undercurrent of warm energy churning through Tim's c-mana channels to keep Indi going constituted as work, but he understood. Indi's strain and capturing so much information pushed the limits of sanity. His hopping from Sa's parchments to Chris's, Kari, and Lank, all reading for Warding instructions kept him in a whipping frenzy of target practice and endurance training.

  In the accumulation of data, Tim realized what they were doing was three-part: one, to gather everything Sa found vital to bring with--he was not coming back, and this was his life's work at stake—two, knowing Tim would come for his brother, they instituted a plan to lay out instructions for Tim to draw out how to Ward without Sa being there in the same timeline; and finally the third element of their plan was to not leave anything Hixel could use in creating leveling jewelry that would bestow either the ability to Ward like Sa, nor the understanding of his methods and reverse engineering a nullifying defensive countermeasure.

  Sa's Warding drew from the brightest, most esteemed minds of their Tanning Guild of sorcerers. As Tim learned earlier, they had to pass on their gifts to other sorcerers in training or otherwise in order to gain new spells. This networking of spells, skills, and resources created a plethora of knowledge to transfer into Warding spells that sought to contain dark lords like Hist and their creations.

  The dimensional gas poisoning had created an epidemic among miners, and when they left the dungeons, they carried their sickness to the surface. Hist's influence on the politics of the surface world spread well beyond the Pillar.

  According to geological research of the dungeons below Padstoligan, Hist's dimensional gas was released... seemingly through microscopic rifts into Earth.

  This same magic derived from the Troll entrance to this world on their island, Kehmoja. Part of Chieftain Ulmont's deal was granting Hist the spell so the gas could filter through the gateway back to Earth.

  Sa's research included Artisans and the former Childockian Nivelador, Hixel Mur, and how rogue leveling started a year after Hixel was given his position. He studied Hixel and the Artisans from the Dutchy and Wachamia and how they killed the niveladors to make Eiyero skulls to begin rogue leveling. The secret to countering their magic started with attempting to replicate it.

  Sa’s spell ingenuity incorporated a tier 7 Analyze skill to read their leveling spells and the skulls method of delivery for Eiyero into the recipients. The weaving of fingers into fabric sturdy enough to layer down the same leveling spell one would gain in a leveling in from the leveling jewel, revealed how Sa could contain the same power.

  Of course, seeing the potentiality of how Sa could trap such raw magnificence and then actually trapping it were two distant mile markers in his abilities as a sorcerer.

  Years went by following artisans to their secret leveling dens where they cast their exploding skull leveling method in hopes of suspicious sorcerers like him wouldn't find them. Sa utilized the Fivel and named Commander Oke and Wilqo as invaluable to the group.

  Sa's writing included journal entries noting times and places, names, local transactions entered into official state tax documents, and which were redacted or just plain withheld. The corruption was so bad, it became clear everyone knew the leveling numbers were forged, and all the related black market dealing for favors down to the actual cost of leveling or buying leveled items, was alarming in its global outreach, effective misinformation, and exponential growth.

  Winning this year's Hunt had been a significant goal for Hixel's group, but they were also set up to execute a new plan if they didn't.

  When Tim won, that plan went live, and Sa's days as their number one threat grew numbered. They knew he had copied and improved their transportable leveling system via wearing items enchanted to release a consistent, low dose of leveling. They also suspected his Warding had advanced high enough to disrupt any attack they sent using their items and best warriors, including Ricken.

  The last section of parchments they took showed Tim how to unlock the passive leveling skill present in the glove they left behind, and then how to cast Warding using Sa's flannel layering method.

  This skill set required the glove because Tim was a lower tier. The glove was warded with concentrated aura and spells designed to teach as Tim practiced until he was able to match the intuitive wisdom Sa passed through the fabric to the wearer. Sa's flannel layering method started with shooting flash in the pan lines of hot aura threads as fine as they were identical, and then shifting to different thickness and length to disrupt the defendant’s resistance as he wrapped them in a mummified chamber restricted within his Ward.

  Indi's arms were aflame with ... inflammation and his back ached with a fire of a thousand fires. The grumbling in his spirit bubbled over into Tim's reading, and he knew his friendly’s work would soon be exhausted.

  The whip strokes into Hixel's group and the documents they took were information as muddied as if they were another language. Which it was, so that wasn't helping any in the mana efficiency fizzing into nothing.

  In short, Sa left Hixel a distraction so close to a great plan to be true, that Tim wasn't sure he caught where it was a lie.

  Indi popped out of the spell and plopped on Tim's head as hard as an acorn from a tall tree. He tumbled over and Tim caught him in his wing. The friendly's hat was soaked along the brim with sweat still dripping from his glistening face. Indi sucked in a lungful of air, which filtered into his form with turbulence and fading opacity. "I'm gonna need a bit."

  Tim stroked the curve of his hat and patted his head. "You did great. Take what you need."

  Indi smiled and slowly dispersed into pink and brown flakes of aura drifting into the Ether.

  A cooldown notification read a 24-hour block to cast Indi again.

  That was the largest one he'd seen yet. Thank you, bud.

  Tim stuck his wing in the glove and pulled it down, pressing his feathers into the creases until it hurt, willing the aura to form back into a hand. He cast Cleanse and Light Burn on a whim, restricting the flow to his glove hand.

  A firehose of angry aura eviscerated the feathers down to bone. Kicking and hopping in pain, Tim considered the wisdom of his plan, then decided since he wasn't a duck, who cared. He set his arm on fire and gave it a dance off for its TikTok in memorandum.

  "What in Harry’s Smooth Nuts are you doing?" Lousa rode in on her cat, conveniently waiting the minute after he ignited his right arm into the armpit of the sun.

  "What are you doing? Don't you know this hurts?" Tim asked, incredulous. The firehose blast of Cleanse against Venom blew a constant honker into his glove, and still Gantus's haunting spell and its tingling net persisted.

  "What are you doing?" Lousa asked, sliding off Phoenix the Cat and preparing a potion.

  "No." Tim blocked her with his good wing. "I have to hold this on."

  Lousa cocked a brow in confusion. "You sure about that? It smells like lunch in here. I already had a tail, but I couldn't leave you up here."

  Blinding hot agony twisted a rope burn from fingertips to triceps, and from there the trolly to take me home, country momma, wasn't far. If he admitted a twitch in his ear from the pain, it wouldn't have been unjustified. Still, he held on to the Cleansing, gritting his beak and biting down for the long haul. "I don't care, I say let em come. Chris left me this glove with Sa's instructions to learn his Warding skill. I can't wear it while I'm a brizicthi, and so here we are!"

  Tim didn't mean to snap the last part off in a dragon's roar, but when you're stuck as Howard the Duck and you're able to surpass the honk stage and rise above to demon rage rooster, well, you do it.

  The piss and vinegar charged his c-mana so hot it pinched his eyes, narrowing his vision and spreading it out of focus along a wide horizon—a suction pump eruption shot up his arm, ripping feathers and pealing skin.

  Tim might have squealed. He definitely rolled on his back recalling elementary school advice to stop drop and roll when on fire. He dropped that like it was hot, but the seizure of magic unveiling itself from Tim's spirit dominated his will with a freight train of its own.

  He trembled on his back until the peeling reached his feet. The tearing off his webbed feet sent shivers up his spine. If he ever had to do that again, so help him, God, it would get ugly.

  Haunting Suppression Successful

  Secondary Mission Activated

  Recover Sa and Team at the Enan’s Snow Cones stand, section 217, second deck, Reilly Temple Field.

  Snow cones? Is this for real? Dryfu wasn’t here for the commentary or guiding. As the text disappeared, Tim's focus narrowed to his human hand and body. Intact. He took the glove by the fingers. A zap bit through his nails, halting him. Okay, okay, he thought, and left the glove on. I’m Michael Jackson the Friendly Priest now. Fannntastic. Hee-heee.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Tim started relaying the Whisper text.

  Lousa finished his summary in an urgent recap. "I got it, let's go. If you’re not flying, then we gotta ride fast. Hixel dumped gallons of dimensional waste into many of the connecting passages.”

  Tim’s human form weighed nearly four times the Brizicthi body, and behind the knot of muscles and equally tall frame Lousa, their burden on Siwo’s back slowed their starts and turns to a tick between kiddy ride and is that wind? The dimensional waste permeated the air the deeper they traveled. Thankfully Chris’s vine absorbed much of it. It grew along the tunnel they passed through, dark save for the glowworms scattered in small pockets. They passed a puddle of waste dripping off the bottom of a stalactite. Instead of nuclear neon, it was slimy yellow, the glow issuing an allure that would have stopped Tim to see what it felt like, if not for Siwo and her stronger instincts. The bitter stank only drove his curiosity.

  Lousa turned with one hand on her nose and grabbed Tim’s nostrils. Dark eyes locked in humble concern as she waited to ensure Tim understood not to breathe. After a moment, her clasp’s separation from the smell in his nostrils allowed him to regain his wits. He pressed his own nose close. She smiled and turned back to holding onto Siwo’s mane.

  The boney back was not meant for two riders. Tim told himself it would be over soon and stroked Siwo’s hind leg, patting it in a gesture of thanks before regaining his arm around Lousa’s waist.

  Soon, the stench of dimensional waste made Tim’s eyes water. Its attic insulation scratchiness coated his dry throat in pinpricks seemingly gaining drill depth by the stampeding of Siwo’s desperate to continue strides. Tim squeezed his legs around Lousa’s hips and leaned forward in hopes of shifting his hand to Siwo’s leg wouldn’t jostle him into the next jut in the wall.

  Mount of Sorrows had a meat grinder of a passageway system, as though those volunteers unlucky enough to pick through the abso stone were often lax on what they called ‘clear’.

  Tim smacked a Healing Bridge spell on the origon, starting at her hind leg and networking out to the red sections of his Analyze on her essence. With red representing danger low, she looked like a tomato with chicken legs running around with her head cut off, somehow kept together by Lousa and now Tim’s spell to regenerate her muscle health and stamina through cleansed blood, oxygen levels and circulation throughout her body. His increased Wisdom allowed him to more effectively execute spells by guiding the expenditure to the most efficient places and how. And how, indeed.

  Siwo started to regain her stride speed when Lousa pulled back on her reins.

  A map popped up in Tim’s HUD, white lines overlaid on black representing the narrow passage and their slanting northwest progression. It opened into a delta and soon met a wall of yellow.

  Lousa halted her beast to an abrupt stop. The burn of gas on his eyelids made Tim strain to keep them parted. Ahead, a slope in the trail met a flood of dimensional waste, and Chris’s vine keeping them on track met an impasse.

  “We have to go back,” Lousa said over their party com and steered Siwo into an about face. “I know another way to the field.”

  Tim considered the intentional placement of the waste and blockage and sent a Danger Ping back into the passage they’d come from. It went a long way and found nothing he hadn’t noticed on their way here. In thinking why they were here, another idea sprung to mind and he turned to the waste. His MP was midrange, giving him enough to make it work.

  “What?” Lousa asked. Her eyes strained with the tears. Red veins shaded the whites in her eyes.

  “I’m going to Draw waste into a warding ball.” Excitement and the bubbling up-readiness of his spell on his tongue kept him from saying anymore. He just pointed up like, watch this, and shot a finger trigger spell from his gloved hand. Fruity Pebble lightning zapped out in a zig zag, almost chaotic line into the shallow lip of the waste.

  Drawing in the waste along with its aura took a hefty cost in MP, and he walked closer to reduce some from the carrying cost. His spell carted as much as he could fit if he were holding it in his palms.

  “Careful—” Lousa coughed and wheezed, sucked in a gulp as accidentally as swallowing a fish, and hacked again. She leaned over the side of Siwo and swayed with an obvious lack of control to stop from sliding off.

  Tim dropped the waste orb and quickly charged a Peel. It sparked enough to get him back to Lousa at a dive. He caught her from planting the top of her dome on a jagged rock along the uneven floor. The turbulence to Peel through it hit him like a lineman stomping his opponent before the goal line. Right in the elbow. The ricochet of pain sheered nerves up into his neck, which made the Superman breaking dirt grueling stop all the more chaotic. He held onto the Peel long enough to slow and prevent Lousa from flying back off into something else.

  In the end, he felt the suction of the ground hardening, like quick concrete squeezing his legs and backside into its domain forever. He didn’t have enough to cast Mist or Aura Form.

  Lousa grabbed his arm and twisted, tugging him free of the snapping particles between his aura and the stone.

  She slumped onto her back and vomited onto her shoulder.

  Tim heaved her onto her side with his good arm and swelled under the nausea casting his head on an unseen wave.

  Siwo licked Lousa’s face and set a gentle paw where the sweat glistened on her forehead. Her upward look into Tim’s eyes melted into a soft squint, as though weeping for him to help.

  He glanced right, searching for the dimensional orb he’d dropped. It pooled out from a squashed fruit shape melding with the floor. Brown gray curls of smoke released from the perimeter where the yellow magma burned through abso stone, displaying its patient power as it easily eroded to make space for it to grow.

  Tim recalled Chris’s message about the five gateways on Vignyia. In discussing gate power, he’d quoted N’tibo’s belief that the fittest would be those who harnessed rather than stifled the powers of the dimensional gateways.

  I’m a gatekeeper, and a servant of the Almighty.

  Twisting in his gut and a nausea that wouldn’t quit told him those were all well and good to put on his tombstone next to Lousa’s.

  He swallowed a tasty stomach morsel and its hot juice, then called Poison Resistance to have a cuppa. I’ll just wait here and try not to throw up…

  The picture of one spew led to another and the story Chris said of Surion turning abso stone affected by a volcanic eruption near the same gateway that formed in Kehmoja, the Troll home island. He rolled onto his good arm and took a gander at the in-ground slide he’d carved into the abso stone with the landing of his Peel.

  Aura from his spell coated the slide in a film he felt like cottonmouth on his tongue.

  Surion and Chieftain Ulmont transformed that dimensional gateway empowered abso stone at a heated state and with the right amount and kind of magic to create their magi-cannons.

  Tim couldn’t think of a way to retrieve the abso stone attached to his aura, even at a heated condition more favorable to separation from the cooler stone around it. He cast Battleground on the slide, eliminating his MP regen built supply, sending him to a whopping 4 on the MP scale.

  A passage from Sa’s parchments described an experiment using Warding to heal a wasting disease. Of course, Sa had nearly severed the girl’s leg in the process, but Tim didn’t have such delicate materials to work with. He was delicate, that was for darn sure. His energy level equated to Not gonna break out of a wet paper sack if I had shoulder pads made of steak knives.

  Another breath. Another chance to try again. Okay, one or two more breaths, then, like for sure, I’m gonna do this.

  A search for indwelt inspiration peeled back a record of The Chemical Brothers to spin on his mental music box. The intro beats to Galvanize came to mind. Bum bum bing. Violin harmonics in synthesized awesome rebounded notes in a rhythmic response section. Bum bum bing. Violin harmonics to make Tim its dancing speakers. Come on, come on, come o’. Don’t hold back, Q-Tip said to the techno chorus, encouraging Tim to do this right.

  Lay a foundation one beat at a time, he told himself, riding the c-mana building in his cultivated jam session and flowing beat.

  Tim flexed his core and utilized every fiber burning muscle to sit up. Chemical Brothers spun that track as though daring him to break from their pace.

  Poison Resistance gave him the ability to inhale a deep breath without the pollution forcing his lungs to reject it. He set his hand on Lousa’s arm and her fever-hot skin. One of the bangles encircling her triceps emitted a spark sharp enough to make Tim yank his hand back.

  Gangly fingers in the fragile black scales of charred wood untwisted from a seal keeping them dormant.

  A fear born from spooky movies in the dark screamed for Tim to move his hand post-haste, for the love of God, but instinct and a bit of the wild side left it there. I am a Wild Cat of the coolest kind, after all.

  The branching hand hovered closer with confidence akin to world invading armadas, so fleeing like a scared child might only tempt it to strike, anyway.

  For now, Tim’s permeating Danger Sense read the potential for help more than harm. He didn’t know Lousa’s class gifts, but if this—

  The branch fingers cracked and shot out in growth so fast it seemed to merely be. One second inching near Tim’s hand, then each finger jutted out in widening rake extensions buried at once in the slide.

  Splinters drove out from the implanted stalks, tearing gaps in Tim’s aura as they reacted defensively to the intrusion.

  Tim stretched his gloved hand and cast Healing Bridge. Golden beams lashed out into the gaps, spread over the tears and pulled them back over the stalk’s entry points like a comforter dressing a well-made bed. Once the wrinkles smoothed out between his aura and hers, Tim pressed the middle in a front stroke without holes. Forming a sled with his hands, he pushed excess aura to the slide’s perimeter. Sa called this laying the parenthetical, or in other words, the pliable extremity bordering deeper stitching. This kept everything tied to the most stable section and allowed him to dig deeper in the middle as it surrounded the area to be expunged.

  This was a good thing, because it was about to get spongey.

  Lousa’s bangle branch emitted a strong pulse of Troll magic. Tim wove patterns using Sa’s step-by-step tutorial committed to memory, and once the pattern fully covered the slide, with fingers a foot deep, Tim shifted to stage two of evacuation: the Tablecloth Peel.

  You know, like magicians, except with rock instead of a tablecloth? No big deal. Rangering required adaptation.

  Instead of Tim Peeling and being transported on the railway of speed freaks, Tim would focus his Peel spell to slice the bottom out of this bowl of ice cream.

  Scoop that bowl, he thought, and blammo. Peeled blue light erupted from his hand into a pinball commotion of ten thousand little balls launched along ten thousand threaded patterns, all in the space it took to notice light on his fingers.

  His hand weighed with the buoyed girth of his slide separated from the stone. Enchanted in his aura, and driving with a partial energy source drawn from Lousa’s branches, Tim lifted the slide to waist height.

  A renewed strength in his nausea surged through him, reminding him of his fragility. He held firm in his stance, took another deep breath, and steadily pushed the slide toward the hole left by the molten waste.

  Smoke continued to hiss from the glowing rim basking in the heat boiling and bubbling below.

  In his slow march closer, Tim developed the third stage of his plan: crossing the River Styx.

  While retreating to another vein in this mountain might seem plausible, what seemed clear to Tim was this dumping of waste was meant to block their way. Who’s to say retreating gave whomever thought themselves capable of thwarting his path the time they needed to lay their next trap?

  No, he was going to build a raft and cross this gulf using a warding powerful enough, he hoped, to keep them afloat while he Cleansed the waste and modified the abso into a mineral capable of repairing Princess Pearl.

  Didn’t see that one coming, now did you, he thought to no one in particular, and hoped Dryfu was fairing well in the prison.

  Once he had the slide over the mini-well, he had enough MP to cast Draw into the pit.

  Without Indi to drop in like bait on a hook, he had to withstand the increasingly hot pressure driving through his hold on the slide and keeping it balanced while Lousa’s branching grew a root sufficient for the task.

  Tim activated Cleanse before the waste could reach the underside of his boat—hereby called Styx and Stone—and absorbed the nasty breath of waste curdling into its nether regions. Its chill seeped into the surface as though searching for a weakness. Tim held on and let it think there was some, and once the waste in the pit was licked up, he hardened its aura into the primer coat Styx and Stone would need to stay afloat.

  He reached back and helped Lousa stand, her eyes regaining strength to focus and her legs following suit in time.

  They had to leave Siwo at the shore, the boat just wasn’t long enough to support her weight.

  Lousa kissed her forehead and issued a command the origon received in a burst of speed the other way.