CHAPTER 147
“Tom, that expression is worrying me. What happened?”
“I…”
He trailed off into silence once more while the implications of what he had just witnessed ran through him.
“Please Tom. What did you see?”
He swallowed. “I glimpsed part of Jeffrey’s murder.”
Everlyn nodded apparently not at all surprised by that answer. “I thought so. You poor man it must have been traumatic.”
He looked straight at her. Her eyes were filled with empathy. “There’s two of them.”
Shock exploded across her features. “Wh.. what?”
“There are two of them,” he repeated.
Confusion warred in Everlyn’s face.
She was not one of the murderers. He mused to himself. She couldn’t be that good of an actor.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The dream absolutely confirmed it. It’s tier nine and I doubt anything could trick it. At least nothing humans have access to could do it?”
“Then who is it?”
Tom laughed darkly at that question. “Well, apparently they can hide that.”
“You didn’t see a face.”
He shook his head. “You know how I’m in their heads.”
“Yeah, you said you experience their thoughts and emotions.”
“Well, those thoughts plainly revealed to me that the ritual has innate safeguards to conceal them from divination abilities. The person thought they were unbreakable.” Tom paused with a bitter smile. “Clearly he was wrong, but not fully because even with tier nine divination I couldn’t punch fully through.”
More surprise flared on Everlyn’s face. “Tier nine?”
He nodded. “Yes. I got a double evolution out of the potion from Mus.”
“What?” She jumped up in excitement. “That’s amazing…” then her expressions froze as she realised what they had been discussing.
“Meaningless if I can’t see who it is though possibly it’s my own fault. I’m not sure I want to know who yet.”
“Why? Wait.” She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Your determined to remain ignorant until after the next event?”
“We need the levels and prizes.” he answered stubbornly. “If the murderer is revealed now that there are two of them, then everything will fall apart.”
“No.” Everlyn told him firmly. “No. There are moral lines. Everything can’t be weighed against the greater good of ranking points.”
“I don’t know.” Tom admitted with a helpless gesture. “I want to know… and then I don’t. I’m afraid of finding out…” He put his head in his hands. “The timing worries me… our response when we uncover the truth is a concern.” He hit the leather couch. “It’s all wrong! Not that it matters. Tonight, it wasn’t me that restricted the skill. True Dreaming failed. I could feel it struggling. It just wasn’t capable of doing that last bit. It couldn’t be stretched to give me a name or a face or any identifying features. The magic of the ritual was too strong. Its wards over powered my skill.”
“Apart from the fact it let you prove there were two of them?”
Tom nodded and sighed. “And that the murders aren’t about twisted desires but about–”
“Power.” She finished the sentence for him.
“It was always going to be about gathering power.”
“Or a psychopath.”
“I never bought that as an explanation.” Tom told her. “I always thought it was someone trying to cheat the system. Boost themselves at the expense of everyone else. A different way to play the game.”
“I remember you thinking it was a depraved killer.” Everlyn reminded him quietly.
“No. I didn’t…”
She shook her head. “I recall differently.”
“You’re wr–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Everlyn interrupted gently. “We’re getting off track. But did you just say that you got a sense about their intentions?”
“His,” Tom corrected. “But yes. It was only less than a second standing over Jeffrey’s dying body.” Tom shuddered when he remembered the look in the man’s eyes. He had not deserved to die like that, but Tom put that consideration aside to recall the emotions of the mind he had shared. “The killer felt a sense of duty, a slight regret for past decisions and events that led to this. There was no joy or excitement in what they were doing.” He looked up and caught Everlyn’s eyes. “He thought he was doing the best for humanity.”
“He?” Everlyn asked, narrowing in on that single point.
“Definitely.”
“And the companion?”
“He too.” Then Tom paused. Could he actually say that? The interference had been absolute. There was no way to tell. “Scrap that I don’t know.”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“But you think it was two males.”
Tom shrugged. “Yes, and no. Definitely not based on the vision. What I saw was too fractured to draw a conclusion. Now that I’m thinking about it, I observed enough that I should have an idea about size, sex, abilities, but it’s drawing a blank.”
“Don’t push it.” She advised. “This isn’t science it’s magic. If you weren’t supposed to know, then there will be a hard block that no amount of self-reflection can pierce.”
“You’re right. No point.”
Everlyn stood abruptly and spun to pace in front of the fire. “Shit.”
Tom said nothing.
She reached the wall and paused briefly to look at the pictures of her kids. He swallowed heavily in response to the cast of her shoulder. “This is a shitstorm.”
“Yes.”
Everlyn turned to face him. “It’s power. It’s always about fucking power.”
“We’ll get them.” Tom promised.
The simple concept that they thought they were doing it for the right reason echoed inside him. Part of him knew that didn’t change anything. They were murderers and had to be treated accordingly. Yet another aspect of him disagreed. The core of him, that bit that had been forged in the baptism violence in the tutorial, that key part of his identity that wanted to win for humanity, no matter the cost, thought the diametrically opposite.
Tom wisely bit his tongue.
To Everlyn the culprit’s morality was clear. They were evil and the bit of Tom that his mum had hugged, the portion of him that had spent hours at the pool tossing his sister in the air to cause her to scream in delight for more… that original bit from Earth agreed with his girlfriend.
The killers had to be brought to justice.
“What are they doing? Summoning a demon, empowering themselves, energizing an artefact?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Some spell to change the future?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll get more from my dreams tomorrow.”
“Two,” Everlyn whispered as she turned back to face the wall. “Not one psycho, there are two!”
“And there are no alibis.” Tom pointed out.
Everlyn said nothing. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and a shudder went through her.
“Evie.”
She continued to face the wall silently as the shivers ran through her entire body. There was a sound. A gasp, a choking noise… crying Tom realised. She was sobbing and in the system room he couldn’t even hug her to make her feel better.
“Evie. Can we go back to the real world?”
She didn’t respond. Her body shaking as each wave went through her. There was a gasp, and she leant forward with her head pressed against a photo frame. “Two psychos. Not one, but two.”
She hit the wall. A photo frame fell and crashed into the ground. Tom was shocked but then he realised that was how she had set up the place. Realism in every detail till he made his way in here and then their inability to touch in this space made the rest of it seem less real.
“We’ll catch them.”
She didn’t turn. The mostly silent crying did not slow down. “I know. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Humans back on Earth were largely shit. Here it was meant to be different. We were all going to be on the same side, fighting monsters and aliens in equal measure. Aligned with the politics mostly removed. But it’s not. Joline with her power plays. These murderers, Thumper, looking out for himself. Even Sven laughed at me when I asked if he would come on a quest with you. ‘What’s in it for me?’ Not what’s in it for humanity?” She punched the wall again. “All he wanted to know was what was in it for him?.”
“Sven’s special.”
She spun to face him tear tracks painted down her face. “It’s not about Sven!”
“I know.” he told her quietly. “All we can attempt is to do our part to save our loved ones.”
“People died, they’ll never see their loved ones but we can complete the mission they started.” the words sounded cliche and trite even to him.
She sniffed. “Everyone who entered the competition expected to never see their loved ones.” She said quietly. “Myself included.”
“But being murdered is different.”
“Yes, it is.” She agreed. “It shouldn’t be, but it is.”
“What pisses me off,” Tom said angrily, matching his fury to hers. “Is the fact they can’t contribute ranking points anymore. That potential gone. It hurts. The killers will pay for that.”
She cradled her head in her hands. A great shuddering twitch went through her. “You don’t get it.”
Tom didn’t know what to say. Everything he was saying was wrong. Even when he tried to empathise with her, it failed. He sat feeling helpless. Everlyn moved away to be behind the couch out of his direct eye line. Tom watched the fire and waited for her to compose herself.
About ten minutes later Everlyn settled in on the couch next to him. Physically, nothing changed, but there was the sound of shifting leather as she slumped.
“Sorry.”
He looked at her and her eyes were puffy.
“I was overwhelmed. I lost control. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise. I don’t like what happened. It shook me. The fact that there are two of them. It seems terrible.”
Everlyn said nothing. “Can we go back to the real world?”
“Sure.”
There was an abrupt change of his surroundings, and Everlyn hugged aggressively into him. He embraced her back just as tightly.
It was extraordinary to think that there were two people responsible for this. It might even be one of his close companions. What would he do if it was Michael? Or Harry?
The thought of revealing them as the murderer and having to deal with that sort of revelation chilled Tom to do the bone. Maybe that was part of Everlyn’s extreme reaction. Would he condemn Michael a man whose very presence had probably saved twice as many lives as the killer had taken. Or Harry, whose assistance against the wasps was the only reason they made it?
The experience he had leached off Tom was a fair indication of his contribution. What was it six percent in the previous event? Five? Whatever. That level of system acknowledgment showed how valuable those mana recharge circles truly were.
“It could be anyone,” he whispered.
Everlyn said nothing.
Anyone?
In his mind, he went over the clues. The crime scenes, the ritual that had been there and then gone. God. If it was Michael or Harry, that would be a disaster. He mentally rehearsed where everyone had been during the attacks, but if there were two of them then all of that positional information was useless.
How about the rest? Rock magic? Well, there was a scattering of obvious candidates for that, but if he was the killer he would have hidden his control over rock, which in some ways meant those who had earth magic were probably innocent.
Maybe it was someone who was weaker than they should have been because they were hiding power. But with how traits worked, and the cost of a single higher priced Spell or Skill apparent weakness meant nothing. He was evidence of that.
How about people who were growing too quickly relative to their contributions to killing monsters? Maybe there was a clue related to the energy that they were stealing? But that sort of reasoning only worked if they were powering up themselves. If it was an artifact or a longer acting ritual, then he might not see anything. Plus, there was no one who matched that search criteria. No one had shown abnormal growth.
It was hopeless.
He held the devastated Everlyn and slipped off to sleep.
He startled.
“Are you awake?” Everlyn asked.
What?
She jiggled him. “Are you awake?”
I am now!
“Yes.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Tom realised he could see in their sleeping area. Everlyn had broken one of the glow sticks and slipped it in the prepared bowl on their ceiling. The bit that made her body from Everlyn vanished from it. One second a distraught, upset woman and the next a beautifully sculptured organic statue. Tom shut his eyes and stepped into his system room.
Everlyn Louise Campbell has invited you to her personal system room.
Do you wish to accept the invitation?
Without hesitating, he accepted and found himself in Everly’s standard space. Which was a good sign, but rather than being on the couch or standing he was sitting at one corner of the worktable. Everlyn was on the other edge of the corner. If they were elsewhere, either could easily reach out and touch each other, but she remained upright on her seat with her hands on her lap.