A joint popped in Girri’s hip as he turned back against the wall to let Tim’s group shuffle inside. His face clenched in pain as he held his ground like a soldier willing to endure, tilting to the opposite side of the hip in pain.

  Tim waited with him, charging a Healing spell while his party’s tired bones carted their tired bodies into a foyer area carved from graystone. The entry way formed a circular station with hovels cut into holes deep enough to hold gear, most of which was covered in cobwebs and disheveled.

  Before Girri could move, Tim cast his spell, directing the Healing Bridge to pinpoint the hottest pain in Girri’s discs and joints.

  The hobbled man straightened then arched his back in a relieved stretch. “Wow, truly, thank you. You must get inside now,” Girri said.

  Tim’s Danger Sense picked up a pack of ricken at full speed clawing down tunnels toward them. “We have company,” Tim said and entered the doorway.

  “You’re running out of time to make it home,” Hist said, his voice hitting high decibels in Tim’s mind.

  “Hist found us.” Girri dodged behind him and swept a hand over a gold patch in the wall. A blue glowing frame of a raft filled the center of one of the holes void of gear. “We have to take this to the other side.”

  Tim’s remnant of Danger Sense exposed a spell trigger in those minerals. They stuck out like needles into Girri’s bracelet, where his reactive spell unlocked the safety measures and slid the door back into place. Stone on stone with no boundaries hinting at an access point.

  Tim suspected the ricken would not go away so easily.

  “Quickly, I have someone who’d like to meet you,” Girri said, his head bobbling on his neck in uncontained excitement. “We heard your ping and read your warning. Ghareven has a request before we go.”

  Tim wondered if he was included in the ‘we,’ and further insight to Girri’s essence suggested intended parting of ways. He sighed, releasing the need for rest if that was the path he must take.

  Girri led them down a hallway from the circular room and followed its winding path through cool air tunnels and half-cocked notes scribbled on the walls in white chalk.

  “I can steer our raft to take us across the Borderland,” Girri said. His spirit emanated ripples of fear he steeled down with layers of character and resolve. “We won’t have time to wait for you, unfortunately.”

  The tunnel descended and coalesced into a hive structure of solid black stone paneled and divided off by seems of glowing blue veins. This doorway resembling a beehive contained dozens of false sensors Tim’s Danger Sense identified as traps to protect the one guarded inside.

  “Scouts reported you had taken the farmstead, but the Artisans were already nearing the tomb. We had to press on.”

  Girri tapped a sequence of panels in the comb doorway, lighting each one to change black to white across the smooth stone. C-mana sparked to life and circulated through the connecting veins to spread the unlocking spell into the crevices which parted in a release of steam and burnt fibers.

  The hive wall separated like two claws being peeled back to reveal a throbbing candle of a creature floating in a room somehow filled floor to ceiling with water and at the same time none of the drops fell from the luminescent tank. Its front shimmered like an ocean turned to stand on its bare feet and the sun still shone white across its ripples. Ceiling windows cast light from an unknown source while motes of light drifted about like alien creatures too large for a microscope.

  Tim recognized the being inside as the Hydrique from his COIL introduction. Ghareven - Level 21 Hydrique - Commander General of the Gwangsando Airsea.

  Chris had introduced them briefly but not in person. At the time, this being appeared a healthy candidate for war. It had also been a higher level than Tim. Now it appeared crippled to the point of requiring this magic intense holding zone to keep his limbs together and his mind from fracturing. Shingles spread loosely from luminated insides throbbing in low, long beats, making him question how many more this guy had left.

  Ghareven drew an appendage from the fibrous sac pumping blood to the rest of its contorted jellyfish looking form, lifting it toward Tim. A flash of light kissed the surface of its head, spreading out in a mask of white. A message sounded in Tim’s mind, “The Artisans are near the tomb. My company tried… to stop them.” Ghareven coughed in a spasm shaking his tendrils in a snap of electric discharge. His floating tilted on its axis, curling inward to endure breaths enough to continue. “When we felt your ping, I conjured the strength to send you after your brother and the Chieftain’s wife, Lousa, both will be critical to our escape.”

  The light pulses of communication wafted out on slow trips into its appendage, barely reaching the floating barb tip where they expelled the message telepathically. Knots in its tendril spasmed and retracted like a frog’s tongue whipping back into the sac pulsing with weak life.

  “He might be the only survivor of his people,” Girri said, “among those who came to the Pillar to help us. Their strength is reciprocal in groups of two or more. He can’t wait any longer before I take him home.”

  Tim gave the commander general a long due bow. “How can I help?” Tim asked. “What’s your escape plan?”

  “If we don’t get past the Borderlands before Teo’s Skull is retrieved,” Girri said, “Hist will trap us down here, maybe transport us with him in the invasion of Earth.”

  Oh, just that, Tim thought.

  “You’re a memory mage,” Ghareven said, his wheezing tone attempting to direct his concerns to solutions. The tendril that retracted shook with a churning strength being pushed into its surface. It slowly reextended toward Tim. The shriveled appendage strained to meet half its former length, crawling to a standstill midway.

  “I am. Do you have something you want to show me?” Tim took off his glove and reached out, unsure if he was gonna shake, fist bump… and prepared Spirit Memory to launch at command.

  Ghareven’s tendril shivered with palsy. “Trolls that killed us came from Gantus’s territory. I’m sending you back.”

  “To save your kind?”

  Ghareven shook his head. “Maybe. I think there is one in custody. If he’s still alive.” An extra pulse of aura blossomed with pink and red inside his frontal lobe. “He’d be in the same prison as Gantus. You have to steal his memory of where your brother and Lousa are before you kill him, otherwise they’ll die with him. I won’t let Gantus leave alive, so this is your only inlet to saving them. When you return to your bodies, give Gorin Three-Knot Gantus’s aura and you’ll have an ally for life.”

  The blossomed petal reached Tim’s forehead and melted with a kiss of static. Teal-gold avenues of aura lit up from the diamond tip of Ghareven’s tendril. It struck Tim in the same point as the petal.

  At their touch, a whoosh of energy seized Tim’s skull. A kaleidoscope of lights and blurred fast edges relayed life and death between a hair’s breadth. Ghareven’s kind, the Scyllatz swarmed into a beachhead curtailed by brick and dim light from cave dwelling bystander bugs. The Scyllatz emerged over bridges and down to the dry streets of an Artisan Troll camp hidden in enchanted buildings carved by Hist’s blessing.

  On the other side of this sleeping city his Aura Form flew, scraping tall dark buildings and dipping with deadly speed over the other side, into the light of an industrial city erected around a mix of mines and prisons.

  These spires of progress doubled as ladders to the muscle and armor engineered creatures immersing the bottom third in their writhing climbers on the assault. Whatever catapult Ghareven shot Tim out of, Dryfu came with, tucked between Tim’s fingers to peek at their trajectory, and while it let go, their momentum reached terminal velocity. Trolls approached face to face, forcing Tim to bend in the air, carving around their blades and horned helms

  Against his shaking stiff neck and water bleeding eyes, pried open and dried out for fear of losing sight and splitting his head on the next—Tim’s back arching met a giant of a troll shifting out of nowhere to enter Tim’s path. With a face like an armadillo humped a NOFX and gave birth by snot, the ugly got uglier at the sight of Tim’s approach. His chest impacted with SnotFX and his body flipped over SnotFX’s back.

  Tim collided with a pair of pointy trolls with sparky attitude and weapons trained to match.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He equipped his dagger and stabbed one down into a flesh hold under its collar. Through vital organs and the green bloodshot eyes bugged wide.

  Next to him, a dandelion head shaped bully on two feet of stout legs rammed a sword into Tim’s gut. Raw and in charge.

  Tim’s involuntary aaaaaahhhhhuyuuuuueggggghhhhhhhowwwwwww, elicited one side of the war cry.

  The other. AHUUUUUUUUUUUU roared a gabizillion other guys, led by the owner of the blade stabbed into Tim’s stomach.

  Screw you too, guy. Tim pummeled three rib shots and Dryfu’s Tornado into his chest separated dickhead and his sword from Tim’s insides.

  Pain forced his sight skyward. Hands gripping him and taking him down. Pocked moonrocks glowing hot like Mario World made him wonder what was up from down.

  The Ahu army delivered a pummeling led by SnotFX’s bowling ball sized fists. Linoleum! He sang in punk rock abandon. Lost in the swell of pain.

  Tim’s HP continued its plummet into the teens. Aura Form would deplete his mana by 80%. Leaving him a third to dead and reeling. Technically. The math’s… was too much.

  SnotFX roared and the onslaught parted to blind him with light from the molten sky. His grip on Tim’s hair lifted his head. Flares of pain lanced down his spine and webbed across his ocular bone to reverberate into his brain. Tim wobbled. SnotFX drew a short sword with gnarly angles finely sharpened to bloody edges.

  Brizicthi possessed similar aura to what lay on his blade. “Brizicthi’s are the most common species willing to make deliveries down here,” Gantus had said, explaining why he’d morphed Tim into one of their ducklike kind.

  Not a good idea, Dryfu thought, as Tim considered Operation Hari-kari Surprise. Dryfu was pinned under a mass of trolls more willing to ground him into mush than see who had him.

  Snots swung his sword at Tim’s midsection.

  Tim focused and cast Aura Form.

  Snots’ sword clapped his hip and splashed Aura.

  Tim absorbed aura from the Brizicthi and spent a portion to split at his midsection without spilling too much life. His liquid parts bisected with one pooling into a slope in the wall dipping toward a crack and window the Brizicthi dead spirits knew about. He ducked inside, grinning in waves, since he lacked a face, and ran down a corner to hide in the shadows.

  His other side found another crack and was on its way to join him.

  Ghareven’s memories coalesced and intertwined with the Brizicthi knowledge of this tower. He pushed himself toward a grate, pausing for the rest of him to show up. In the pipes, he could travel to the sub levels and in the sewers track his way to Gantus.

  Dryfu flipped into the room with him, dumped through a window made between mis angled wood planks. Made it!

  Tim gathered himself into a puddle at the drain and waited for Dryfu to hop in.

  Together, they descended piping with enough hard stops and pitfalls to disorient Tim’s guidance. Dryfu fed him memories from the books and this city’s map, allowing him to trace their path down twenty stories to the sub-basement and sewers.

  Tim expelled into the drainage basin where the miners drew water for their excavating. His body hummed with exhaustion where muscles bending aura with the physical realm to stay within the pipes and direct at interchanges to get here stretched a whole new set of tendons.

  Dryfu pulled him by a grip on his vest until they were tucked behind a tipped over barrel with pickaxes left in the wet sand to rust. Tim regenerated there until his form returned to physical.

  In the return of his flesh his mind gained greater sway over the knowledge Dryfu passed from the farmstead’s library.

  The interior walls had scribbles and small symbols he recognized in relation to their map. It showed four, technically five, ways to the command center of the prison where Gantus had been kept. He didn’t know if the demon was still trapped or where he might be save for Ghareven sending him here.

  We need to get to a camera box, Tim thought, translating the term hoardens used for the rooms on the map with the symbol of the block with frequency border.

  There. Tim stretched and exhaled deed enough to gain a little relaxation, then turned on Foliage and scanned the long tunnel leading toward a prison wing.

  Their map provided only the blueprint, leaving many details of the musty tunnels for him to discover, including a crack in the wall ahead where his Danger Sense filtered in like smoke through a passage. He charged and directed a bubble of Danger Sense to squeeze into the crack and press inside.

  “Conserve your mana,” Dryfu said as he noticed Tim’s spell cast.

  He wasn’t wrong. The twenty five percentile range gave his mana and health regen a hurdle it struggled to surpass. Tim took a moment to breathe and attack the pain walls within with channels of c-mana burning to break through.

  The prison held fifteen levels below ground, with many of the walls reinforced with magic and aura depending on the prisoner inside, or the wing of the building where their kind were kept. Tim’s regen returned his abilities in unpredictable milestones through a fog filled valley. He couldn’t count the prisoners yet, though many cells and private rooms—for prison personnel only, as indicated by the red line around the door on the map, were bare and under stocked. Commotion rose the closer they walked to the community block of the prison. The first level had back-to-back U shaped wings with courtyards in the open space on each side, and most of the prisoners were congregated into two herds in either area.

  Tim didn’t plan to go that far, intending instead to cut left and sneak up on their guard post. However, within fifty yards of the intersection, a fence chained to the wall blocked that path with magical and aura reinforcements.

  He leaned into his Ranger gifting to navigate the tunnel without detection as that strength rose to his surface, streaming on a current aura built by concentrated cycling of his breath and sore muscles as he walked.

  His Danger Ping down the secret alley returned a message that made him turn about face: essence matching E’Tic, minus the Y chromosome from his father. This was his daughter. Not yet twenty, and somehow leading a crew of four prisoners on a prison break through a spoon carved shaft climbing around a foundational pillar to the giant structure.

  Ulin possessed a spirit of barbwire and grit. Tim’s capturing of her essence lasted less than two seconds before she broke it apart in a surprising shattering of his spell. As though he were the fragile glass in her way to the top and she didn’t care what debris landed atop her on her way up.

  Tim’s permeating Danger Sense caught movement at the base of a wall in a hallway not far from Ulin and her partners. His Ranger abilities bristled and fizzed through awkward bubbles in his head, carrying him on a current not born from his intention, and gladly it set him back down with a vision of the pursuers. Tim steadied a hand against the tunnel to center himself between the two locations.

  Between him and about thirty meters of Venom saturated stone were two guards wearing the same essence of defensive enchantments Surion gave the banyan’s watching Gantus on his first prison break. Tim’s level ups since then exposed cloaks not tiered high enough to avoid Tim’s detection. Further distribution of Danger Ping aura granted bits of new information.

  For one, this was in the past. By a few days. The trolls were deployed from Adenon Prison to reunite with their chief, who was rescued near the farmstead and joined the nivelador Hixel. Tim read memories of sending the spiders to the farmstead while the trolls, artisans and allies of Hist fought forces such as the Scyllatz to reach the tomb.

  Ghareven sent him here after they left, depleting the prison to a skeleton crew, and without many prisoners considered its worst offenders and best criminals, including the ones with official badges.

  Between him and these two guards was a long way around to reach the hall access they had to Ulin and her ascending compatriots. That way led to the auditorium where guards overlooked the prisoners ‘enjoying’ some community time outside their cells.

  While Tim would love to know more about their discussions and the guards, his Danger Ping barely registered Ulin’s essence and ID; Tim couldn’t flag her or speak, even Dryfu couldn’t reach her before the guards.

  Tim didn’t want to spook her with a Danger Ping warning her of danger, then lose her up the shaft. He wanted to see her survive more than himself, potentially, and that might be E’Tic’s aura in him burning to life, but he didn’t want to risk her escape either. God of the Wind, be my guide. Dryfu go help. I’ll catch up.

  So, we’re helping her now? Dryfu though back, zipping into a Tornado and buzzing out in a muffled pftt. His stealth had improved greatly since their farm stay. His zip line on a rocket speed lined up on the hole with pinpoint accuracy. Dryfu fit in the hole on his first shot, and barely slowed as he carved inside.

  Just kidding. This’ll be fun!

  Tim didn’t give it any more time gawking. He hoped so. Kit cloud kicker had his own cloud to kick! Tim dropped Forage and charged Peel. Gaining speed prior to discharge would reduce the MP required to cast, and he was already low. At the corner he cut left and bolted into Peel.

  The auditorium brightened and faded in the channel light of his Peel tunnel forward. It launched Tim into hyper sonic speed, bristling against the wall on his left as his aim veered wide. His trajectory and velocity forced Tim to spend precious MP Peeling through the wall in greater depth as he neared the end.

  In his passing, he counted sixteen guards. All with equivalent or higher level enchantments surrounding them and their posts compared to the banyan guards that kicked him in the teeth. Let’s say he wouldn’t be trying to take them on anytime soon.

  His Peel sent him across the gap in a blink, yet in his wake memories and data ballooned behind him like a parachute gathering intel. He was a little busy crashing into turbulence to read and digest the names and ties between rebels who could help him and hardened criminals.

  Thankfully part of his launch was calculating distance and how much mana and MP to spend, so he was already slowing down. The problem was the wall he was now Peeling through. Sharing a spin cycle with a bag of bricks would have been less bruising.

  Commotion erupted in the background of the airplane engine combustion brewing on the outer shell of his spell force. So much for secrecy. He knew there was a chance shooting a Peel farther in one leap than he had by half before. He took the chance because the guards were trained for spotting the smallest inconsistencies and threats.

  Tim tumbled into a hall, lost his wits, and could only wait for the rolling, painful bouncing to end.

  He gained his wits back to the sound of pounding footsteps and claxons wailing. My only friend, linoleum… his mind sang with the punk rock vocals of some NOFX.

  His MP accelerated. That’s odd. Tim had thought to check for the chance he had enough for Battleground and a light spell, yet his MP showed in the sixty percentile and climbing. His gains in Wisdom allowed him to retrace his spell tracks and influences on his magical makeup.

  Forage and Danger Sense, enhanced by the Vacuum effect of his Peel sucked in potions and tinctures from the crowd, and his tumble roll snowballed with the benefits.

  Conversations and plans within plans revealed themselves in a month’s worth of Netflix binging, feeding him with a general’s grasp of the population.

  He couldn’t take on the guards by himself. Nor could he handle Gantus with guards on his back.

  No, it was time to get this whole prison jumping.

  It was time for a punk rock show hosted by a mediocre skater kid from Ohio. Booyah.