Domrik watched Kelly leave the studio. Their interaction left a warmth within that served to calm him from the preceding drama. It also helped that they validated the Augmentor Bow. If only Jase were here to celebrate. His affinity for Aetheric physics would be going wild right about now. Domrik would have liked to hear his theories on why the Augmentor Bow was practically indestructible. The legends didn’t give any specifics. They simply said it was created.

He took the bows into the back library. The familiar old-paper smell enveloped him again. He welcomed it, knowing that the aroma would always be there for him no matter what he did or how he felt. Even the times when he was too caught up in his mind to recognize it, it was there, greeting him gently every time he entered. The library was home to hundreds of books, but all the deep passages of the mystical texts paled in comparison to the simple teaching of the room itself. How he yearned to embody that level of willingness to serve unconditionally regardless of recognition.

The afterglow faded as he approached his desk. This was a spot of many long nights of deep contemplation. Scouring ancient texts was a pastime of his. That was how he came to know about the Augmentor Bow and its potential power. The knowledge came from an unnamed religion described in a small handbook that had lost its title engraving long ago. He suspected it was Astorark’s but he would never be able to confirm it. The curly handwriting was hardly legible. The ancient Sylgan language had been difficult to translate at first. He still wasn’t sure he was interpreting the passages correctly, but now he was more confident in the ones that spoke of the Augmentor Bow, the Invincible Gift. He had yet to find any instructions on how to use it, but that was the point. He had to figure it out himself.

But that had to come later. Now was the time to locate Jase. His departure had been unexpected, but it made sense. If he could hitch a ride unnoticed back to wherever the Guard Jet had come from, Domrik could locate his vibrational aura while he snooped around gathering intel. He had to be there by now. It took over an hour to return to the studio, but it took them only minutes to arrive after Domrik had cast the cloak. There must have been a secret base nearby, and he was about to unveil its location.

He sat in the cushioned chair and pulled out a notebook and pencil from one of the drawers. He flipped through the first dozen pages. They contained doodles of random objects. He wasn’t that type of artist. He had practiced seeing real objects with his mind’s eye. It wasn’t perfect, but in his experience he did better than chance. This was the real test, not only of his skills but of his trust. Fear had a particular way of scrambling results, and he wasn’t sure how much time he had. Jase had a day or two at the most. He had a limited number crystals with him, so the cloaking would only last so long. Plus, he had his other biological functions of eating, drinking, and waste. He was prepared for none of those, and neglecting them would have dire consequences.

Domrik wondered if Jase had already been found out. He shook his head. Nothing I can do about that now.

He cast a sideways glance at the bookshelf to his right. Should I?

He pondered the possibility of using blasphia to assist his visualization efforts. It was risky. He couldn’t take an entire capsule. That would send him into a several hours-long experience with no contact with the physical world. He needed to be able to handle the pencil and paper.

He took away several of the books and retrieved the small wooden box hidden behind. There was only a handful of capsules left. Years ago, the box had been fuller. Anytime a student graduated to Level Six of his class, he used blasphia to introduce them to the concept of the Aetheric body. He used it himself once a year. It was almost like a vacation, except he never got to choose the destination or journey. There was a saying among “blasphians”. Demand nothing; The plant knows best.

He took one of the almost-empty capsules and estimated the dosage through the transparent casing. It was about a fifth full. After retrieving a water bottle from the mini fridge behind the front desk, he unscrewed the capsule and poured the contents into the water. He swirled the water around to get the mixture even, then took a sip. It was bitter. He downed the entire water bottle as quickly as he could, scowling after he finished. That was his first time tasting the hallucinogen. He would have rather taken the capsule, but the effect wouldn’t have been as fast-acting.

He sat back in his chair and waited with pencil in hand and pad on lap. His eyes closed. He noticed the stillness of the room. His soft breaths were loud against the silence. After a minute of sitting, the contrast faded into the background of his awareness.

When he felt clear enough, he repeated the mantra in his mind: I am here now with Jase Kydma. I am here now with Jase Kydma. I am here now with Jase Kydma.

His imagination became more involved, pulling from his memories of past experiences with Jase. He recalled the sense of Jase’s presence during the balancing exercises. He brought the feeling more into focus and amplified it. There was a subtle change in the Aetheric field as Jase’s presence made its impression. It was an amorphous feeling, like the boundary of a fog bank.

Shapes began to form behind his eyelids. They started in his peripheral vision. The darkness gained depth as the seconds passed. Impressions of colors faded in and out as he kept his awareness centered on Jase's presence. He sensed the anxiety emanating from afar, kept at bay by the persistent awareness of the Aetheric field. The events of the past few weeks were great preparation for Jase. Domrik wouldn't have been able to plan a better training himself. He wanted to know about the Waterling's memories, but that would have to wait. Jase still had the crystal.

Domrik tried to examine the surroundings, yet nothing clear revealed itself to him. He got the impression of two walls. A hallway?

Of course, he realized. Getting a read on Jase's immediate surroundings wouldn't help if he were inside some sort of facility. He needed to see the outside.

He chanted to himself. I am high above Jase.

The effect was quicker and more noticeable. The surroundings cleared away, leaving a rough surface below. The thought-form had little color, just frozen undulations spreading into the distance. He looked down. His hand began to move on the paper. The pencil scratching was incredibly loud. Had he taken too much? He refocused, tracing any landmark he could identify, making dots for trees and lines for rivers and creeks. Very few manmade structures were visible.

Jase’s presence drifted, causing the landscape to shift almost imperceptibly as Domrik’s awareness moved with him. He stopped the sketching, though the sound continued for several seconds. When the sketching sound stopped, he tapped the end of the pencil on the page. There was no sound. Had he tapped the page? The memory was fading quickly. His hand felt like it occupied several different positions at once, one holding the pencil, another closed in a fist, another tracing with the index finger. All were true at once. He wasn’t even sure how long ago he had started this exercise. Had it been minutes? Hours? There was little difference.

He tried to open his eyes, but felt like his eyes were already open. The landscape below began to take on the muted colors of nighttime. He sighed. “I should have measured!”

He couldn’t tell if he had yelled out loud or thought it. The ground shifted dramatically in response. All the details melted into a restless ocean.

“Here come the metaphors,” he thought with a mental eyeroll. He could still feel his body sitting in the chair, but the attempts to move seemed unsuccessful. It was like his body was in sleep paralysis. It was impossible to tell with his drug-altered perception. He tried to remember how much was in the capsule, and a physical capsule appeared before him, large as a car. A black substance sloshed within it. At times, it looked half full, other times, a quarter.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

A hand slapped the inside of the capsule. The torso of a man emerged coated in the black liquid. He slammed both his hands into the casing, calling out in a muffled voice of frustration. “Where is she?”

“Hector,” Domrik realized after recovering from the initial shock. His heart ached at the memory of facilitating Hector’s communication with Adam. He was sure he had conveyed the information accurately, but Adam’s mentioning of Judy seemed to open an old wound in Hector. The man was more ambitious now than ever. Several officers had died mysterious deaths in the West Red Forest, yet instead of backing off, he was petitioning to continue the search, more for Judy than for Brandon.

Domrik had already tried several times to locate her presence from memory, but that was without using blasphia. He wasn’t as desperate then. Would he get a better reading now? He’d done all he could for Jase. Judy was next.

He had trouble recalling the sense of her presence. He had only met her a handful of times, and that was before he’d learned how to remember other people’s energy. The memory was like a wisp of smoke dissolving in the wind. There was no hope of reconstructing the original form.

“What did she look like?” he wondered. There were no hard rules here. There had to be more than one technique.

Her face appeared in place of the capsule. Its middle-aged curves and lines morphed slowly into different variations. He hadn’t seen her in so long. His memory had collapsed her appearance into generalities. Her hair style kept changing, as did the shapes of her mouth, nose, eyes, and eyebrows.

Domrik thought of the last time he had been in Hector’s house. They had pictures of family members hanging on the walls. One was from their wedding photoshoot, a decade before she disappeared. The image before him became more solid and defined. Thick eyebrows over brown eyes. Black hair tied in a bun. An elegant nose and thin lips.

“But older,” he said, noticing her youthful appearance. She looked about his age. She would be at least a decade older now.

The image shifted to an older version. The dark skin showed the first signs of wrinkling around the eyes and mouth. The hair showed a number of gray streaks forming at the roots.

Satisfied with the image, he set his intention. “Where are you, Judy Easton?”

The surroundings went dark. The shadows nearly consumed her face. It seemed to be dimly lit from somewhere behind Domrik. The eyes were closed as if asleep. He imagined backing away to get a better view. Something obscured her face. As he drifted farther away, it resolved into a rectangular shape. A coffin? He looked around. No, it was some sort of medical pod. He had seen a few when he visited Evan in the hospital.

Panes floated above it, undoubtedly the projections displaying the pod’s data. He floated to the side to read the data, but everything was blurry. He could only see general shapes, not fine details. If he wanted more detail, he would need a bigger dose. He could use more practice with the new technique as well. He hadn’t thought of using appearance as the anchor before.

“What is above her?” he asked himself. The scene shifted instantly to the above-ground view. The hills were taller than before and the pattern was different. Roads appeared as double lines snaking around the hills. Directly below him was a hill. A road led to the top of the hill and split into a circle next to a jumble of rectangles-within-rectangles.

“The mansion!” he realized. Everything collapsed into a soup of shapes and voices. With the loss of focus and intention, the pull of the drug’s dreamlike state grew stronger. Scenes played out at the edge of his awareness. They began to merge with each other, combining different aspects of the events of the past week. Domrik slipped in and out of lucidity, completely losing track of time. At some point, sleep took him.

He woke slowly into a daze. He was still in his chair, head against the wall. His limbs felt heavy, either from the previous day’s exertion or the drug, or both. He looked down at the notebook on his lap. Child-like scrawling covered the page. It wasn’t his most proud piece of art, but the real question was if it would help him find his friend and uncover a secret base.

He got a spare wristpad from the desk drawer and brought up a map website. Eredore was the only nation with satellites in orbit around Lativa. Aetheric rockets were still in the beginning stages of development, and it didn’t look like they were sending humans to space anytime soon. There was too much tension between the three nations of the planet to allocate finances toward a dedicated space program. They were only in space for surveillance purposes. It was only recently that the intelligence branch of the military relented and allowed a selection of satellites to be utilized for GPS.

He put the notebook behind the transparent projection. He scrolled and zoomed for over an hour before he found a ground pattern that roughly matched his drawing. He marked the spot and zoomed out to get a general overview. It was a dozen kilometers east of Ridgemire, the direction the rogue Guard Jet had left. It was within a region bounded by a red dotted line. The label read: Antiga Nature Preserve.

That’s no good, he thought. Eredoran nature preserves had some of the strictest trespassing laws. They made no sense. Punishments were often led to decades in prison for the mere act of walking past the perimeter. The explanation was that there was a rare breed of animal that was on the edge of extinction, and that if such extinction occurred the entire ecosystem of the local area would collapse. History books told of the hunting games settlers played with the animals when they arrived. It was true that people had degraded the wildlife, but Domrik had had his suspicions about the story. Now they were confirmed.

He looked at the time. It was early morning. Hector would be awake soon if he wasn’t part of the squad that responded to the museum break-in and theft. Eleanor would also want to know. She had connections. He called her first.

“Eleanor here.”

“It’s Domrik,” he said, realizing she didn’t recognize the number he was using from the spare wristpad.

“Good morning, I’m delighted to know you’re still alive.”

“I may have intel on those who perpetrated the attack. Are you still in good standing with Yuka? I want to burn up the favor she promised me.”

Eleanor chuckled lethargically. “Oh, yes. I have several of hers myself. It’s one of her nasty habits. What do you need?”

“Just her ears. We should meet in a secure location. The church?”

“That should do. I can open the doors early.”

“It’s best if we stay late. We don’t know how long we’ll talk.”

“I can do that too. Yuka is a night owl anyway.”

“Thank you, tell her it’s urgent.”

“Is it related to the theft? Don’t think I didn’t notice your aversion earlier.”

“It might be.”

“Tell me, Domrik. Did it come from the right place?”

His face stung. There was no deceiving her, since she was referencing their previous conversation. She knew. “I believe it did, and when we meet with Yuka, you will see why.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“You hope? I thought you were above hope.”

“It’s too early for wordplay,” she groaned. “I will send you the date and time Yuka agrees to meet.”

“Great, thank you again.”

“Stay safe, Domrik,” she warned.

“You too,” he replied, then hung up. Next on his mental to-do list was to inform Hector about Judy. He deserved to know.

Hector answered with a tired voice. “Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”

“With what?” Domrik said in his best innocent voice.

“The museum theft? It’s all over the news!”

“You know I don’t watch the news. Listen, I think I know where Judy is.”

Hector was silent for several seconds. Domrik checked the call status to make sure it hadn’t accidentally dropped. Hector’s voice came through timidly. “Where?”

“The Rivercrest Mansion.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Another lengthy pause. “Searching the forest is one thing, Dom, but private property is a whole ‘nother level. I can’t submit the search request on your word alone. Do you know how crazy I’d sound if I told them Brandon might be kept within a mansion?”

“Under.”

“Under?”

“There’s something under the mansion, Hector. It likely has to do with Zandith.”

“None of this intel does me any good if they don’t believe me, and I’m this close to a demotion or losing my job.”

Domrik imagined he was holding his index finger close to his thumb. “I thought they were suspicious about why they were losing people in the forest?”

“So did I, but the search has had pushback from the start, even though it was through a Senate Order. The museum case has the priority now anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if they included me in the case.”

Domrik bit his lip. He needed to keep Hector’s focus away from the museum. He wasn’t sure how many lies he could tell before he compromised his polarity. “I don’t know what to tell you. I had a clear vision. She’s over there, Hector. What you do with that information is up to you.”

Hector sighed. “Alright, I know. I really appreciate it, Dom. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

That made Domrik smile. “You’d be doing just fine, my man.”

“Heh, sure. Hey, if you get intel on anything concerning the museum theft, let me know.”

“I will,” he said, forcing the sound of certainty.

“Cool, talk later.”

“Yes.”

The call ended. Domrik released his breath and found his heart racing. He didn’t need to inquire. He knew exactly the fears of this moment. He faced an unprecedented amount of uncertainty. The dangerous flux of the situation was now known to him. There was only one thing he could do.

Take the next step.