Ike woke up with a sigh. He stretched, fully refreshed after a rare night’s sleep. Rising from the soft bed he slept in, he walked to the window. Below him, the town bustled, full of motion on a fresh morning.
He activated his self-cleaning skill and sighed. So nice. I’ve been waiting for so long, but I finally have it. If not for the weight on his shoulders, he would have felt even better.
“You back asleep again? Making me carry your weight?” Ike asked, peering over his shoulder.
Shawn slept, his eyes shut and hands clawed into Ike’s clothes. He didn’t so much as twitch. His weight bore down on Ike, heavier than ever before.
“Looks like it.” Ike shook his head. Leaving his room, he knocked on the room next door. “Wisp, you awake?”
“Yep.” The door burst open. Wisp strode out, her hands on her hips. “Hello, servant!”
“Who?” Ike looked around.
“You.”
Ike raised his brows. “You’re paying me?”
She paused. Her brows furrowed. “You have to pay servants?”
“Yep.”
“You’re fired.”
“Good to hear.”
She yawned. “We should head out today.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same. There’s no reason to stay in this city. It’s too high level for us to pull anything… I mean, be heroes, and besides…” he trailed off. I don’t want to admit I want to leave because of ‘bad vibes.’ “Besides, we only came in here to avoid the black-robed mages, and they’re probably gone by now.”
“Or at least a little less vigilant,” Wisp said.
“Exactly.” Ike gave her a thumbs up. He headed down the stairs. Wisp hummed to herself and followed at a slight distance, taking her time down the stairs. The bottom of the inn was void of life. Not a single soul stood in the room. Not behind the desk, or in the breakfast area, or anywhere.
The hairs on the back of Ike’s neck stood up again. He ran a hand over his shoulders, uncomfortable. This isn’t right.
Wisp looked around. “The hell is the innkeep?”
A sinking feeling struck Ike. He took a shallow breath. “Wisp. What did the innkeep look like, last night?”
“Huh? He was…” Wisp trailed off. She frowned.
“Do you remember this room? Do you remember choosing our rooms?” Ike asked.
She shook her head. “You?”
Ike shook his in return.
She gave him a look. “Is this some kind of human illusion bullshit?”
“I think it is.” Or something even worse.
“Fuck. No wonder the black-robes stopped at the door. Let’s get out of here. Human illusion bullshit is the worst kind of bullshit.”
Ike grimaced. He nodded. I should’ve trusted my instincts.
They stepped out into town. The townsfolk bustled happily around, the same as the previous day. Too much the same. One of the girls skipped by, carrying the same flowers as before. A dog chased a cat down the same exact alley.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Ike started to run. Wisp ran at his heels. The townsfolk all stopped what they were doing and stared. Neither Ike nor Wisp paid them any mind. They charged onward, chasing toward the walls.
They took a turn. Tall buildings blocked their vision of the walls. When they burst out the other side, they stood at the beginning of the street again.
“Fuck. A maze enchantment. We’re trapped in a looping space,” Wisp muttered.
“You know what this is?” Ike asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “I got caught in one a while back by some annoying human mage.”
“How’d you get out?”
“I ate him.”
Ike wrinkled his nose. That wasn’t likely to help here. If the town had fourth-realm shopkeeps, whoever the leader was, was probably even stronger. Wisp couldn’t eat someone that high Rank. “Not an ideal solution.”
“No,” Wisp agreed. She looked around. “With a spell like this, you need to break the heart of the array. It’s no good to run around like chickens with our heads cut off. We won’t get anywhere. We need to find whatever’s powering the enchantment, or whatever is its focal point, and destroy that.”
“How do we do that?” Ike asked.
Wisp splayed her hands. “Fucked if I know. Kick around until we find something suspicious? Smash the whole place until nothing’s left?”
“Let’s start with option A, but we can hold option B in reserve for when that one fails,” Ike said, nodding.
Wisp saluted. Without hesitation, she fired a spider thread to the sky and vanished to the heights of the buildings.
Ike ran for the wall. He followed back the way they’d come in, where a stream of incomers still walked to the center of town. The wall didn’t elude him this time. It loomed, big and inescapable. People stepped out of the unbroken wall, laughing and chatting, without giving a single indication they noticed anything wrong. The whole process was beyond bizarre. A hand poked out, then swung back as the first plane of a man’s face and chest broke through. A foreleg stepped out of stone and dragged the rest of the man out, as though he walked through air and not stone.
Ike tapped the newly arrived man on the shoulder. “Sir—”
The man didn’t react. Not even a little bit.
He stepped out in front of the next woman. “Ma’am, hello—”
She walked into him. Without once acknowledging him, she pushed him out of the way and carried on talking to her companion.
Ike wrinkled his nose. They’re gone. He faced the wall itself instead. Kneeling, he started to dig.
He didn’t have far to go. A foot in, he hit an impenetrable wall of stone identical to the single formed piece of the wall itself. Ike drew back his fist and unleashed a blast of shockwaves at it. The stone absorbed them without a hint of dust or a crack.
He stood. Jumping at the wall, he latched on with his hands and feet and crawled upward. It was slow going. Still, he climbed on, one leg at a time.
“Hey. Stupid. I already tried,” Wisp called.
He turned to face the ground. Wisp waved up at him from below, closer than he’d expected to find her. He looked up. Before him, the wall had grown taller. He shuffled sideways, and the wall moved with him to block his way.
Ike grimaced. He released the wall and dropped to the ground. “Climbing isn’t an option?”
“No. I tried. There isn’t even a barrier. The space itself is warped. You can’t escape by climbing, because you can’t go up. It just loops back on itself, just like the rest of the town.”
“So we have to find that heart-thing,” Ike said. He looked around.
“Yep. Anything come to mind?”
Ike pointed. At the shop, in the center of the town. “Anyone else have a fourth-Rank aura around here?”
Wisp closed her eyes. Her aura washed over him. A moment later, she opened her eyes. “Damn. You’re right.”
“Exactly. It isn’t that this town is high-Rank. It’s just him. That one shopkeep. Isn’t that suspicious?” Ike pointed out.
“Let’s get him,” Wisp said. She ran off.
Ike grabbed her collar and yanked her back. “We’ll go meet him and ask him politely, you mean. He’s still way higher Rank than us. We can’t just smack him over the head. He’s way stronger than us.”
Wisp pursed her lips. “I need to get stronger so I can bop him.”
“I agree, but for now, we have to play nice,” Ike said. He just wanted to bop the shopkeep too, but he had to be realistic about it. If they pissed off the shopkeep, he could easily just kill them. And if he was the heart of the array, then he was probably also the heart of the city. In other words, its city lord.
“But what the hell happened to all these people?” Ike asked aloud. He turned, taking in the town. The townsfolk laughed and argued, worked their jobs, sold wares and traded goods with the caravan. No one missed a beat. They blithely repeated the same actions as the previous day. And neither did anyone acknowledge him or Wisp.
“Got caught in the warped space and time. Weren’t strong enough to realize it or break free. Ended up lost to the loop.”
“Is that something that can happen?”
Wisp shrugged. “Warped space and time is pretty rare. It isn’t something I’ve encountered before, and the people who can do it keep their secrets close. All I can do is make guesses based on what I’m seeing.”
“Fair enough,” Ike allowed. It was all he could do, after all.
Wisp set off for the skill shop again. Ike followed close behind her, tense. He glanced over his shoulder as he walked.
I feel like I’m missing something. But what?