Europe’s Final Countdown helped Tim find his way back with its hair metal and glorious keyboard synthesizer setting. His Aura Form ignited like chewing gum smothered in Eiyero powder. His biting down on the spell ruptured a mine field of explosive barbs and reciprocal awesome. They ran through him with burning efficacy, shredding him into a blob straining to hold itself against the onslaught of rushing water.

  Aura Form excelled in playing Gumby from time to time. Despite the blinding headache and prickly pears shuffling like malicious cramps throughout his elastic frame, Tim felt a bit like smiling. Just a bit mind you, but a bit, nonetheless.

  See, his Aura Form and the Tide flushed him beneath the river of Venom, floating into the abso stone like a wraith greeting the morning moon.

  Flashes of Aura burst in frequent pulses of Crystal and Venom light. Their battle concentrated in a vestibule at the bottom of a stairway. Tim ducked his head and swam, surprised when the strokes he learned flying allowed him to swim in Aura Form through dense matter.

  Dryfu? You okay?

  I’m coming. I can mirror your Aura Form when you enter that state, I’m just not as fast as you. Do you see that?

  The lightshow?

  Yeah.

  I wouldn’t mind seeing it a little closer if you don’t—

  Yeah yeah. I’m moving fast as I can. Don’t showboat me, human. I’ve crapped more interesting… crap than you.

  One thing at a time, as you always say. Focus on swimming. You fly too, right?

  Dryfu’s figure replicated his flying strokes, but the resistance and stickier substance than flying in non-Aura form made him look clunky as a toddler in new shoes.

  I never signed up for guiding an aura mage, but here we are, learning new things.

  Tim used the extra time to solidify thin areas stretched out and eroded by the Venom he struggled to Cleanse from his system. His health continued to dip below thirty percent as Venom shot through him and fought against the eradication of its kind.

  Tim breathed freely, aura magnifying oxygen as his needs transformed to more of a health within the aura, similar to getting the right seasoning and consistency in your chili.

  Hunger clenched his gut and the memory of peppers, ground beef, spicy beans and the aged flavor of his mom’s chili took over, so enraptured in it he thought he could chew through its barrier and release true flavor. True substance.

  His body responded in regenerated health and mana. When Dryfu and his duck in a windstorm approach met him side to side, he’d recuperated to fifty percent.

  They swam for the now less frequent tracers of aura light. Abso stone made it difficult to see more than that. It appeared the defending Crystal aura fighters had been reduced to one, while most of the fire came from the stairs and in increasing intensity.

  Tim opened his Party Oversight.

  Inte’s sight provided first-hand, up close and personal axe fighting with him and Wilqo battling against ricken and trolls. Lousa ran through a seam in their victory of blood and dashed for Chief Ulmont on his ricken lion. A blown glass bulb shaped like a sea monster glowed in emerald atop his war staff. He clutched it like Moses before the Red Sea and locked eyes on his wife. Venom glistened in the blood flowing from an arrowhead embedded in his lower ribs. He growled, “I gave you plenty of time to come along.”

  Lousa raised a crossbow and loosed another arrow, black as the one snapped in half and hanging in to her beloved target. It shot on a lightning bolt, but Ulmont put his lion’s massive breast in the way and it absorbed the critical hit.

  Lousa slid another arrow into the chamber and fired higher, both her and target closing at full speed, down to ten feet between them. The arrow sliced through the underarm and caught a hunk of flesh before skipping off and falling behind.

  Tim kept swimming, not wanting to disturb them mid swing and had to let go of their sight as he approached the tomb. His Aura Form strained with inflammation worsening by the stroke.

  He sent an Analysis ping after the epicenters. Their return of Venom poisoning forced him to send a Cleanse. Maintaining the Aura Form this long, with the exertion required to escape the tide and swim this far put him in the last third of his aura stores, and the Cleanse took a good chunk of his MP toward the same status.

  He kicked and stretched for the stairs. A flare below, smaller, as though farther, he guessed. Deeper into the tomb?

  Danger Sense permeated through the wall into the stairwell. Troll warlocks tossed marbles the size of softballs to bounce off the wall and explode into the safe door in the floor below.

  He dipped and swam around the stairs, sensing the warlocks had not reacted to his presence as they continued their onslaught. The vestibule connected to the safe door by an additional short hall. The door was weakened and pockmarked inward with stretch marks thinning at their pits. It was only how long before they’d break through.

  Swimming lower, his permeating Danger Sense seeped into a new mineral vein. It traced around the top of a building buried underground, with the center vestibule’s downward set of stairs descending to a new room where the Crystal Aura Bearers hid. Or waited? He couldn’t see what they were doing now.

  There was a tower that met the border between Ulmont’s true home and ours.

  Had he read that or did they impart it upon him?

  Tim’s aura form strained with exhaustion. He swam through the wall to see them up close and return to his physical form.

  Inside this new room, Wraith One trough Six hovered in place, tucked into shielded postures with hands crossed and chests puffed, surrounding a block of abso stone enchanted with a containment spell humming so violently it shook his eardrums.

  Tim’s entrance landed on sluggish steps as his aura form stepped into the floor and met additional resistance. Normally, he’d land with more grace and keep his feet from sinking like that because of how it would trip him. Not this time, and he guessed that was alright. At least he didn’t tumble forward like Dryfu. Then he realized Wraith One’s scream had given him the ability to pass through the safe.

  He was meant to be in this room. Booms rocked the outside, the sudden pressure great enough to close Tim’s eyes and rattle him to stormy waters. His HUD icon profile of Aura Form showed a black cloud to signify Burnout status.

  He released Aura Form and the removed stitches feeling unlacing and relacing aura into his physical form. Not the most pleasant experience of Aura Ranging, but so goes the show.

  The remnant of Venom formed clots in his aura, which when pulled into the weaving cut and squeezed desperately vulnerable sections of his body.

  Tim crawled toward the floating box cradled between the wraiths. Dryfu hung in his pocket, exhausted as a dog after a long walk. “Wraith One…” Tim forced himself to rise through pain stiff and unrelenting as he stretched to a hunched height. Bombs continued blasting Hell by Door Dash against the safe wall, now faint upon faint in the pits of the convex popcorn surface.

  Venom seeped through, poisoning the air in hissing mini tornados of smoke that meat at the ceiling and spread in billows curling closer.

  “Maybe we should go?” Tim asked the mannequin still wraith. When it didn’t respond, he said, “You were going to show them out?”

  Again, no movement.

  “Am I supposed to take the skull?” The question made him think of his Exorcist Crown and how he’d been able to talk to the wraiths before it was broken… Crap. Dryfu, I have to fix it.

  More concussive blows rocked the wall, releasing funnel clouds of poison into the air. Tim couldn’t help inhaling the burning air and every inhalation took him farther from rational thought.

  The tomb had crates stacked against the walls, but he didn’t have time to search. He equipped his pickaxe and swung it at the floor. Abso stone hit back with resilient hardness, barely chipping a quarters worth from the enchanted blade.

  Put your back into it.

  Do you have any Guide skills that could come in handy before I pass out staring at your ugly mug?

  Words hurt. My mother thinks I’m quite special. Swing again. You’re on the right track. There’s nothing I can do to stop those holes.

  The gap since the last explosions extended into an unnatural break.

  Tim put his back into it and swung his pick down. Not once. Not twice. Three times! He stuck stone, activating Triple Whammy, and shattered the smooth black stone into a spider web of fissures. He grabbed one Triple Scoop size and clutched it in his gloved hand.

  His head felt like the swirls of Rocky Road ice cream, and he had to eat his way through Hella brain freeze to escape its muddling.

  Tim woke with his hand on his head and the realization he’d frozen in place there for a second or three. The poison stopped hurting. Now it was sweet like Cool Whip.

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  Thwack! Dryfu slapped Tim in the face. “If you don’t get a grip I’m aborting this mission. They can have the skull.”

  Tim unequipped his helmet, allowing the roots to withdraw from his skull so he could lower it into his misty vision. He didn’t have his dagger, so he equipped Farji and Hist’s Venom Ball and laid steel to the ball’s surface.

  “Where did you get that?” Hixel Mur said through the weakened safe door.

  Tim cast Cleanse with half of his MP and carved a silver the size of his finger to lay on the chunk of Abso stone. It burned and emitted a white, black entwined pillar of smoke. Tim inhaled and exhaled, c-mana warming in his gloved hand, he reached for and swiped a dollop of abso as soft as room temperature butter, black as a witch’s throat. He slathered it on the crown’s broken edges and stretched it to close the gap where he’d lost sections. The pillar of burning abso cleansed the poison gas swarming in, allowing Tim to regen and enhance his Crafting ability to mold with Aura Armor and prepare for the task.

  He carved a couple strips of abso and Warded that over the newly placed crown holds, sewing aura and cleansed abso into the also dark but not abso stone base. They bonded like reunited brothers and in the completed circle and his crown shone like new.

  Tim equipped it as soon as the slash in his HUD disappeared over its mini-icon and its durability percent peaked at 82%.

  Poisoned clouds bloomed around him to blind his view beyond a few feet.

  He inhaled c-mana into his crown and exhaled through his cranium to break the prison containing the Crystal Aura Bearers.

  A snotty wheeze awoke within Wraith One, followed by the remaining fallen niveladors. They moaned and stretched against the air to break from the spell’s cage. Every inch of trembling success impressed their long-standing mission on Tim’s soul, encouraging his fight into the miasma of combating spells. Venom magic popped and burned like cramps squeezed with thorns. Unpacking the spells that had twisted them one way required uncorking them in the direction of increasing pain, knowing it was right despite life screaming otherwise.

  His sharing in their battle opened an expressway to feed the roar with his soul’s strength. You’ve got it all. Take it and win!

  The poison gas billowed over and around his hands; its threat cared not for his revelations, nor Dryfu’s Tornado darting efforts to draw the smoke away.

  A heavy weight pressed on his lungs. The poison seeping into the wraith’s prisons drew him through darkness to the black diamond garden in the stillness of night.

  Was this a Spirit Memory?

  A helpful spirit guided him into view of all twelve niveladors gathered to discuss their newly discovered location of Poia’s Tomb and Teo’s Skull.

  Wraith One, also known in life as Chava Nwam, a middle islander who grew up around the Troll island, Kehmoja, admonished the niveladors of Chieftain Ulmont’s real reason for dividing the Trolls: a secret treaty with the Artisans to give them access to the Troll homeworld.

  In the midst of this warning, a swarm of leth huri snuck through their protective spell and bit into the niveladors. Once paralyzed, the Artisans in the wings offered the niveladors’ bodies upon the black diamond stones. Their skulls and the subsequent rogue leveling plan fulfilled Ulmont’s side of the deal.

  All that was left was Ulmont reaching Teo’s Skull, contained in a spell housed mere feet from Tim. Nivelador Nwam reached out to Tim because he sensed Tim could understand, giving the skull to the trolls so they could return home would lead to them becoming their greatest ally. In no way would this allegiance be another exile as it had been when Hist first brought them here. They would be welcome and encouraged to settle on Vignyia. What Nwam wanted was to show them a way home outside of partnering with Dark Lord Hist. Especially with Hist’s goal of world domination and extermination of all life outside what he corrupts in his rift.

  An understanding passing the time from this meeting to the Artisans murdering the niveladors carried Tim to the present and Nwam’s calling to him before he would release the skull.

  Tim would have to sacrifice the skull’s chance to reach Earth, at least for now. Teo’s Skull could only be used once. This would unlock the gateway between Vignyia and the Troll homeworld, Evezin, but nowhere else.

  A doorway beside the contained skull led down to a tower entrance to Zil’s Pass, a castle from Evezin—back to where the trolls really came when Hist opened a riftvein to their home. They hadn’t originally come through the caves at Kehmoja, but through that door.

  If Tim gave the skull and its passage potential to break through Hist’s barrier to the Trolls, and Ulmont didn’t agree to help them, Tim… wouldn’t accept that. Yet he knew this was right as well as Nwam did.

  First, he had to show he could access the skull.

  An unlocking of restrained power birthed green swirls over Tim’s hands. Amoeba like pockets of neon light, growing as though in breath and power, rose past his chest, tickling at his collar. A warm rash spread across his chest, flaring in his wounds’ scars and still healing sore points.

  “I agree to your plan, Nivelador Nwam,” Tim said, raising his hands to accept the box.

  The wraiths’ frames melted from their pillar poses, expanding and shaping out into human forms. Faces from that night, in their life and with a new relief they hadn’t seen since before that fateful evening met Tim with gratitude in their eyes.

  “I would like to offer an alliance with the Troll kin in exchange for this skull, and the mantle that Pilk gave you. I accept it and whatever may come.”

  Nivelador Nwam smiled with the joy of a man given his heart’s desire.

  A pinprick of light expanded from the center of the box to surround the top in a crease that popped open and exposed a blinding pulse of enchanted aura. Rays of light heated his skin, clearing his rash and soothing the burn from his aura form burnout.

  Beams poled out to the ends of the room, tunneling and vacuum suctioning gas through cracks in the wall before mending them shut.

  “Chieftain Ulmont. I offer you Evezin in exchange for your brotherhood.”

  Hixel shouted and fell in a pathetic sound as quickly over as it had begun.

  “No!” Lousa’s cry echoed through a distance Tim pegged to the top of the stairs on the other side. His Danger Sense took a moment to track more details. In its expanse into that area, Tim saw how the Chieftain had retreated and the surviving ricken and trolls had barricaded themselves between Tim and his reinforcements.

  “I accept your offer,” Chieftain Ulmont said. His tone exuded solidarity and barely restrained aggression. At least it felt honest.

  Tim returned to the skull and the box was gone. The humanistic skull had a finely etched, arrow-sized hole in its cheek and another in the back of its cranium. Both holes had been filled with a core of crusted aura so powerful it seemed to carry itself. Tim’s muscles were merely the vehicle it drove to cart itself away from the center of the wraiths to his right. Toward the tower entrance to Zil’s Pass.

  Only now he had the key to the gateway.

  “This makes you one of us now,” Gatekeeper Sylve said. The gatekeeper appeared in the tomb beside him, hood up and staff at the ready. “With all the perks and downsides you can imagine, and many you can’t. Including my assistance in your first world-gate unlocking. You now have a a voting membership in our worldgate security council. If the Rift Altars charge a Gatebreaker spell, you will be called to approve or reject the majority vote to open a rift to a new world. The same goes if Hist and the CWAD charge a Gatebreaker to force open a gateway back to Earth.”

  “Rift Altars? Majority vote?” Tim asked.

  Sylve smiled and simply said, “I will have books delivered to Squire’s Castle for your research. Each Rift Altar has a Rift Token matching its image. Kiber’s invasion is mainly motivated by locating a hidden cache of tokens the CWAD need to gain a majority vote and access the spell.”

  Tim nodded briefly. “Thank you. Helping Kiber is one of our Quests. I’ll add this information and study when I return.”

  Chieftain Ulmont has agreed to your offer, contingent on the opening of the gateway to Evezin and free entry to his kin.

  All Troll kin, Tim countered to the Whisper, and Ambassador protection for me and my appointed advisors.

  Agreed.

  The skull trembled and heated in Tim’s hands. Its eye sockets glowed orange and red until Tim pointed them at the wall. Beams shot from the sockets into the frame of a door with details drawn in by the separating angles of light.

  Cracks in the wall behind him shed chunks of the falling safe door and its magical protection exhausted into disintegrating minerals and swooping dust clouds.

  Poia’s Tomb has been granted to the Nation of Hoyoriktuk. Allies will enter the doorway to Zil’s Pass and Evezin’s Worldgate. An Enclave Gate, Teo’s Gate, will be established here, in the place of Teo’s sarcophagus, connecting your allies to Cabir’s Gate by means of this growing Enclave Tree, which now also reaches to Padstoligan’s Sepulcher Garden.

  The Quest to Remove the Nivelador’s Curse has been achieved!

  The Quest to Connect your first Enclave Gate has been achieved!

  The Quest to Recover Kiber’s Rift Tokens is activated.

  An elevator channel opened from the former location of the wraiths, now gone, and resting in peace, to the sepulcher in the garden of the black diamonds where the niveladors were sacrificed. Empowered by the passing of the wraiths, this doorway replacing the former waiting place of the niveladors glowed with blue, transparent pillars through the ceiling as though accessible merely by entering.

  Tim and Ulmont met in the middle of the tomb. Both warriors sulked in the discharge of adrenaline and the beginning of recuperation. Tim extended a hand to shake, which Ulmont only briefly resisted. Their grip met with a fierceness as honest as the hesitancy to give it, and they both seemed to learn each other better as their eyes held in a gaze between leaders. Their people would be better off in the end, and in that, they found mutual respect.

  “Return as soon as you’re able,” Tim said, not feeling the need to specifically call out the threats from Hist and the Artisans for this backstabbing deal.

  “We will.”

  Their shake met its end and Tim turned to see Sylve gone and the doorway finished. A carved and painted mural of a troll warlock seated on a flat rock along a river’s bank filled the door with colorfully extravagant details. Fourteen yellow sparrows with red eyes formed a thinly veiled motif, caught in medias res, as though in every angle ready to protect the warrior while he wet his lips.

  Ulmont knelt before the image. “Grandfather.”

  With the skull gone, and the passageway ready, Tim stepped aside and gave a discreet nod in respect for the glory of their going home.

  Ulmont waved his warlocks to follow, his glance back searching beyond his eager troops to Lousa and her glare.

  The chieftain’s countenance fell, and he turned to enter the doorway alone, surrounded by the few troops Lousa and friends hadn’t killed moments ago.

  A tragic history bled from this moment, forever staining what Ulmont had hoped would be a glorious return. He’d slaughtered many to earn himself this honor.

  Tim pitied his soul even as he hoped for its restoration.

  Hist’s creeping presence pestered him from his reverie, watching the Troll Chieftain disappear through the gateway as though entering the basement for a short time.

  Hixel’s corpse lay in the vestibule, soaked in blood and a pool of aura luscious enough Murphy could bathe in it.

  “Donkey!” Tim called out and strode toward his friends.

  Ricken corpses slain by the trolls in Ulmont’s group about face greeted his closer proximity with the stench of a stew made from Hell’s sweat and poo.

  Danger Sense around the surface level gathered an approaching horde of ricken, not ridden by trolls, and totally sent by Hist in retribution for the blackmail.

  “Let’s round up our loot and get up to the garden,” Tim said. I don’t have the space for all this, so take whatever you can fit.

  Ricken corpses disappeared into storage and weapons and items stored in their saddles provided healing to Tim and his party.

  Murphy slowly descended the stairs, his off-timed clap of hooves producing empathy for the endured pain. Tim met him halfway and greeted him with a hug around his neck. Scratching his ears, he said, “Good job, donkey.”

  His “Free Rides” tattoo melted away, replaced by a flush of shiny brown hair as thick as the rest around Murphy’s forehead.

  “You’re still a donkey, but no more ridicule, my friend.”

  “Aye, and I’ve got a patch or two for you when you mind taking a break,” Inte said.

  Frahnk, Girri, Ja Seong and Wilqo all greeted Tim warmly and they sidled over to the floating whisps of blue light in the tomb’s corner.

  Tim’s Healing Bridge spell continued to mend the Farmstead and connect the enclave Veriki built. He decided to keep that going so they’d have a way back, and so the trolls could get to the Farmstead and black diamond garden above.

  He couldn’t help the swarm of ricken save for the fact neither the elevator nor the gateway to Evezin could be crossed. If either decided to come through here and exit the tomb, the ricken would be waiting.

  Tim entered the whisps of light to their freeing power as though separating Tim into molecules, yet still lifted him in one piece.

  Dawn’s gentle purple sky and Padstoligan city graced his grateful sight.