Indi hit the kill switch.

Jogey moaned, more from the tentacle Chris carefully pried out of its melted fur and flesh than anticipation for Tim's crucial step.

He wrapped his bare finger around the dead shaman’s fingerprints. Spicy power fizzled into his skin. Adhesion so quick and strong Tim saw the ring as an extension of his hand.

Draw sucked a Slurpee full of precious Troll shaman remnant. Tim spun it through the rings and peeled them clean from the platform. They didn’t pop or crack. Just fell, as though gifted from Above.

XP tingled Al strongly his shiver made Jil catch his arm to help his balance. Magic Hunt might have to give him a national holiday.

What does that mean?

Sorry, I just pictured a Smurf like colony of Magic Hunters throwing a huge party for all the aura they just taxed.

With a luau and a flower statue made in your honor?

Yeah, you know, not that they have to.

Right…

Dryfu eyed him with a death glare, though the prevailing essence evoked relief and maybe a bit of hidden laughter.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

Bit of a weird dream…

Khempal spent a chunk of change activating her palm-sized item blueprint into the aura tipped wrench she used to fasten the replacement rings to the platform.

Roz climbed the ceiling and applied the moloran wax to seal them for good.

Tim stuffed the rings in his backpack. Khempal threw her fetching net on another dead animal to turn it into battle coins for her next upgrade. The Whisper stripped corpses of shells, tentacles, and other valuable body parts and deposited them into the packs of the ones who earned the kill.

Rewarded -

1 pair of Enchanted Nugtol’s Eyes

100 lbs of Nugtol armor

1 Nugtol tail

20 lbs of Choq tentacles

4 ounces of Choq acid

The whirlwind of floating parts tempted Tim to sing, “Bipity Bopity Boo,” imagining for a brief respite that this could be a fairy tale and not the stench-ridden dim afterglow of a near-death experience.

Chris shook his head in bemoaned amusement. His new wealth of items kept his downer at surface level before the grin emerged. “What was that thing you did with the nugtol? It was balls to the wall ready to smash you, then its head locked up and you played it like a Spanish bull.”

Tim took out the eyes, one dented like a cheap baseball and oozing fluids into his palm. A yellow glow emanated more strongly from the intact eyeball, though both kept an eerie power within. Enough to keep Tim’s disciplined hand on display and not throwing them in a fit of disgust. The Whisper chose this for his top reward, he assumed for a reason.

“I saw the Murphy in their eyes,” Tim said, making his way to the forward entrance.

“Path’s clear,” Thron said with a tired wave.

“My first Priest abilities are Cleanse, Light Burn, and Swoon,” Tim continued. “Cleanse struggled against the Murphy inside me, but the remnant of its aura, along with an invite to take Pilk’s mantle allowed me to evolve Light Burn.”

“That was incredible,” Chris said. “You were like a DnD Care Bear on acid. Pew pew,” he mocked, thrusting his hips in a posture Tim most certainly had not done–okay well maybe a little.

“Not my fault this belly got bounce,” Tim said with a loving pat on his gut. Deep soreness made him regret that.

“What about Swoon?” Chris asked.

“It came to me as Spirit Memory woke the Murphy’s enchantment on the nugtol. The Cartel paid for the magic storage spells, but the Murphy couldn’t stay out of it entirely. It wanted a front-row seat on the ambush. I took advantage, not letting go of its gaze as I read its past, then somehow I stopped it from reacting in self-defense. I didn’t power its legs to keep running. I just held onto its focus and hopped out of the way while it finished what it came to do. Similar to how a magician draws the eyes away from where they should be. I distracted it from realizing it had to slow down or leap off its path to chase me. It just… kept going. Then splat. Nugtol,” he said in a gargling demon turtle voice.

The sloppy mess of nugtol guts and some of Thron’s blood painted the stone hallway, their corpses already looted, and good riddance. Tim didn’t have any room in his storage and really just wanted to put this place behind him.

“Who’s Pilk?” Chris asked.

Tim filled him in on what he saw in the Spirit Memory while they skirted the mess to a sloping descent. Roz kept their path alight with his medallion still strong in its containment of Aura Light.

“Pilk was a great priest of our people,” Jil said. “Though what we know of his life is limited to a few chapters in our Chronicles of the Winged Fleet. And what we have of that precious tome is limited to little more than that after the sacking of Carnewen over a thousand years ago. If we can get you back with the Jewel, our Elders will bend over backwards to seek your assistance in reclaiming his history and powers. The Winged Fleet started as a small village outside the walled city of Mourydon. Pilk challenged a corrupt politician named Byron with coin from every wicked ruler and group you could name.

“Byron destroyed the evidence but couldn’t stop Pilk from sending word to the corners of the Pillar nations, along with a warning of Childockia and the God of the Wind’s future reckoning. Byron’s local allies set fire to Pilk’s village and chased the survivors south to Carnewen, a city that’s rebuilt through sea trade on our southern shore, but at the time was a single vote city with as much corruption in their tiny militia as Byron could hope for.

“The story of Carnewen’s destruction is lost to mostly oral history and varies widely, with most of it coming from those Byron paid to spin it in his favor. We know that’s rubbish, but Byron’s allies were many and their vengeance still burning to this day. Carnewen’s destruction in 942 symbolizes the failure of Childockia to keep its own borders clean. Our Elders and our people have been at a loss ever since. Byron didn’t last long on our land, and is rumored to have survived with a cursed spirit; him and three of his personal guard, sailed southwest to the Outer Rim, where they may have had something to do with the assassination of any they believed to have genetic ties or even loose association with the survivors of the Winged Fleet.”

“Why do they call them a winged fleet?” Tim asked.

“Legend tells of a remnant running into the sea and through the waves without ship, as though powered by the wind,” she answered.

“Is Tim gonna get that?” Chris asked.

She shrugged, her smile half-baked with a quick retraction before Tim’s head got too big. “He might trip on his own two feet and fall headlong into the Murphy’s mouth. Let’s keep our eyes on what’s right in front of us.”

Chris side-hugged his brother and squeezed. His physical strength and frame had lost twenty pounds or more in his sorcerer body. Even weaker than when they left the entry zone. Chris’s essence emanated holding back a different kind of power. One that longed to grow, no matter what obstacle got in its way. If it could assimilate the new object, all the better.

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Tim hugged back, then faked a gut punch to nonchalantly separate from his brother’s touch before the shiver in his shoulder showed itself.

“First born priest gettin’ feisty cause he thinks he’s the next super Moses. If you walk on water, does that make you brother Jesus?”

“Easy now,” Tim countered. He loved his brother to the core, and they both knew the joke lovingly toed a line.

“Sorry, The Great White Priest flexed and I got scared.” Chris winked and pushed something back into his mouth. Like a tiny finger, or vine. His face formed a mask over the surprise and fear.

Tim’s gaze didn’t let go of Chris’s, and his brother faltered first, brows forward in silent concern. Eyes on the floor.

“What’s wrong, brother?” Tim asked, pleading to their unbreakable bond for a glimpse into his fear.

Chris scowled as though Tim had given him a wedgie in front of his friends. Not that that ever happened… more than a few times. “Aside from being a bit jealous of you, no different,” he added a wink to hide the truth, as usual.

A short set of stairs connected their dead end to an adjacent hall leading farther toward the sewer tunnel Tim planned to take to avoid the Murphy’s next wave. His Danger Sense produced a low hum in his ears. Tim couldn’t tell if it was because they were getting closer to that next wave, or what. He kept it permeating despite the fatigue draining more MP than usual and took another bite of an orev bulb. His head throbbed and the healing of his various tentacle burns itched as though a nest of red ants were claiming his body.

Thron reached the bottom of the stairs first and pointed Roz’s light forward. Twenty paces ahead, a long dead corpse lay in its final pose, clothes chewed through and mottled to expose bone and cobwebs.

A revelation from Tim’s Spirit Memory played out a scene from when that body was alive. Foraging and Magic Hunt sucked him into another time, their hunger greater than he could stifle. The corpse and stain of blood disappeared, replaced by a team of trolls creeping by torch light. drew him in with rapt attention, losing the present world to see the past when the troll shaman killed it. But not before the guard appeared from the wall and struck the shaman. His knife tip sparked a semi-translucent green shield spreading into view like an alien sunrise. A purple dome blossomed out from the point of attack and covering the shaman’s bracelet. Crystal beads jangled, the front and center bead cracked. Red fire squeezed a fissure through the middle and gray vapor smoked the Aura from the inside out.

“Vile!” The shaman’s off hand concentrated caged light into a super nova.

A flash of white coned over the hooded savior deflected the shaman’s hand bolt with a flash of magic coned in white. Yellow bolts vibrated along the surface of the shield. Veins shattered and dissolved. Darkness draped the savior. The shaman ripped a horned battle axe cast in green light through the chest of the savior, who let out a roar, cut a sharp downward hook and stabbed the shaman in the collar.

Down on the ground less than a second, the savior died a good death at the end of the guard’s spear. The shaman pushed him clear and sliced his axe through the savior’s neck, then tossed the dark-skinned martyr’s head like a thick weed. It rolled over, leaking aura with its blood.

Foraging and Magic Hunt spread the outline in virulent purple and blue rays over the dried brown stain.

Tim crouched and swept his hands over the bounty in the mopping back and forth S’Trace taught him. Breathing down the aura into his core, then inhaling it into his Spirit Memory and refilling his aura density. It soaked into his spirit warm and spicy, foreign but increasingly welcome. Strength and mission flexed. Analyze revealed his name:

Rukus, Squire Castle’s last line of defense.

The honorific faded along with the grief of what they’d lost in that sacrifice.

And gained. Why attack the bracelet? The purple dome felt connected to the shield. Yes. Awareness from the shaman in him confirmed this was a kink in his armor that burst apart when the rixin blocks unleashed their fury.

“Did you know Rukus?” he asked Khempal.

“Did?” Khempal’s downcast face shed grief from her spirit.

“I’m sorry. I’ve seen his death. He’s the reason the shaman’s shield didn’t protect them at the rings.”

Khempal knelt beside the corpse. “You were a dear friend. Saved my life dozens of times across three countries. Once, the President’s Kah, you recruited the core of Squire’s Break-Battal. You were their heart and soul.” She wiped her cheek. “They knew these halls like the back of their hand.”

Tim focused Forage on the corpse. A blue and yellow frame drew the perimeter of something thin and hidden in a pocket of Rukus’s sleeve. “Khempal,” he said, pointing. “You can have it.”

She cut along the seem and withdrew a folded note. Her dark brows bent in concentration.

“What’s it say?” Tim asked.

Her face lit with wonder as she read it. She flipped the note to show Tim and Chris the bottom. Finger tapped two initials signed with black ink in the corner. “W. T.” She seemed sorry. Confused.

“For Warryn?” Tim guessed.

She nodded. “Warryn Teithku.”

“The same–” Tim started.

Khempal nodded, taking in something Tim wanted to know.

“Why would he have a note from an Artisan? What does it say?”

“It says—” Khempal slouched. Her lips stuck and peeled apart, and she struggled to speak beyond a huff of air.

Jil, too, suffered under an invisible weight.

Heavy pain pressed in on Tim as though preparing to crush him into a cube—

Tim walked in on his younger brother lying on a sheet of his baseball cards. “Get off my cards!” Tim crossed the room like a bull on parade. What?

Regardless where that strange phrase came from, Tim had a mission to extricate his brother from the situation.

What? Extra… gate?

Where were these words—

Chris scratched his neck and reached teeth bared for his stomach.

Tim wasn’t as big as he thought and collapsed under his brother’s weight.

Why was he in his childhood bedroom?

Chris socked him in the cheek with the Hello Momma point of his elbow. His face was red with anger, his youth’s hair bowl haircut bangs swaying, already matting with sweat.

“Chris, stop!” A vicious twist wrenched his guts. He squeaked before his air cut out and he struggled to breathe.

Chris’s Take on the Mighty Prince Tim barbarianism melted into the calm of the sweetest little boy and brother one could dream for. “What’s wrong?” Chris asked in this innocent voice.

Tim tried to speak. Each attempt produced a mere puff of strangled air.

He pressed into his stomach. Not too hard! A hot presence squeezed back in return. So hard, white spots bubbled into sight.

A layer of vague understanding wailed its arms for attention. Help, I’m sinking! Except not really funny at all. Something told him it was important.

Another spasm wracked his intestines.

Chris leaned over him. His hazel eyes locked on his, then the rest of his face changed; a shaggy bit of brown beard and a mop of shoulder length surfer locks.

Purple gas puffed into his irises. “Tim, what’s wrong?” His voice sounded like what a dork would sound like once he’s old enough to buy his own extra large, cheese crust and pepperoni pizza. What’s cheese crust?

“Tim?” Chris asked, his voice older by decades. Articulately aware. Like his eyes. Pupils dilated in fear. “What’re we doing here?”

Then his older face and excess hair shrank back into smooth skin and his six-year-old cuteness. Controlled fear bled away to innocent concern and confusion in the boy’s gaze. “Tim? What’s happening?” back to youthful Chris. He’d forgotten this voice. Lost to the Peter Pan treasure chest of his childhood and memories best kept locked away.

Why did Tim think that? Mom and dad were on a dinner date. Their babysitter was somewhere. Tim’s mind reached within to scrape truth from his clouded worry. Something he’d been thinking about had been important… he’d been upset about his brother on his cards, but during their wrestling something else had come to mind. Something perilous.

What does that mean?

Tim avoided his brother’s shoulder when he planted a hand to help get to his feet. He sat on the twin bed with baseball sheets, patterned with Cleveland Indians’ logos in thread worn blue and red threads. Chris’s stegosaurus long sleeve two-piece PJs stood out like a rare jewel at the thrift store. History in action. Yet powerfully present.

“I’m sorry I laid on your cards,” Chris said.

His brother never apologized. That was too mature for his age.

Not that he was a renowned repenter to talk. The aged-character in that gesture struck Tim as odd. Out of place. Where to put it avoided him like a nightstand in a dark dream.

“I’m sorry I was mean to you,” Tim said, carting the weight of all his guilt as the older brother bully and hoping he’d not dropped any in this offering.

Chris’s cheeks held a bit of anger flush. His eyes were bags from recent tears, with one a shade of purple, indicating Tim might have caught him with something rough. Tim slid off the bed to awkwardly kneel into a hug with his frail brother. His delayed repose of strength reminded him of Chris’s soul strength, precious as it revealed the purity of his youth. That soul was destined to grow.

Grief swelled in Tim’s spirit as he considered how much weight he’d laid on that soul to stifle said growth. “I love you, Chris.” Hot tears flushed into the gap between his cotton-pressed sleeve and his cheek.

Chris surprisingly hugged him back. His attention elongated beyond what felt natural. Generally, his young bro locked on something with the landing span of a butterfly. This held patience won by trial and the practice of gifting in empathy.

In their former life, he’d found his brother gave the best hugs. Like a rarely won sunrise to remind you that life has sheer beauty if searched for, and sometimes… sometimes it surprised you when you weren’t looking.

This hug felt like the latter. Greater truth permeated their embrace than restoration after a youthful quarrel. A blessing of insight he hadn’t expected possible, yet in his face, truly indisputable.

They had journeyed farther than this place.

And time.

Tim’s questions spread so far and thin, he lost the vocabulary to define them.

Something stood in the way between them and their true home.

“We have to fight back,” Chris whispered.

Tim had no idea how. Fear like their basement at night pressed into his bones with its hollow, cool draft far from the heat and comfort he needed to quell its power.

He squeezed back one more time, then pulled back.

Chris’s smile destroyed the handsomeness of any school photo Tim could pull from his memory. He might not know what they would do, but he had the person before him to stand at his side. His brother was unlike anyone else alive. Their bond could make them invincible.

He aimed to see how. With a nod, Tim and Chris slipped into Hide n’ Seek mode and crept for the hall ready for an adventure worthy of legend.