The crowed murmured as Adam walked over with Brian towards where Peth was being healed. “We need to take Taj to the city patrol now. If we can show them he was the killer and have people back us up, we can save Vincent from execution.” Adam was ready to go. The east side citizens forming the crowd blocked off Adam and Brian as they tried to walk through, dragging Taj behind them.

“Hey, let us through. We found the killer of Gavvy Townstone. We are going to turn him in.” Adam spoke. The crowd refused, seeming to form a wall across the width of the yard in front of the house they landed near. Peth spoke up, still kneeling down as he was being healed by Matilda. “Let them through people, these outsiders found her killer. I can’t thank them enough. We know it wasn’t Vincent. They want to rescue Vincent, we, no, I want justice for Gavvy, I hope you do too.”

The crowd jostled slightly, one person calling out “Why don’t we just kill him now then, that will be our justice.” Peth stood up, clutching at his sensitive wound. Adam watched as his commanding presence influenced the crowd. “I want him dead more than anyone, but we won’t get anywhere with vigilante justice, that just reinforces what they already believe about us. We do it their way and they can hold nothing against us, these are trying times, we can’t give them free ammunition. Besides, I have to do the favour for these three, they need this man alive to help prove Vincent’s innocence. Let them through now.”

The crowd began to dissipate and Adam and Brian pushed themselves through, the crowd booing and spitting at the captured killer as he was dragged behind. They got out of the dense section of the crowd and headed from that road down to where it met the main road of the city so they could head back towards the centre where the city patrol kept their headquarters. After a few moments travel they heard from behind them “Wait up, guys!” as Matilda come running.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you would need time tending to Peth, we were gonna come back out east after and catch up with you.” Adam explained to her, dodging the truth of simply being caught up in the moment.

“It’s fine, Peth is a tough guy, he said he appreciated the rescue work but that I should join you, that he would get help recovering the rest of the way more naturally.” She replied.

Adam headed with his two friends down the main road towards the centre of the city, so far so good he thought, they just had to deal with the city patrol now.

“Well, we hit level five. New abilities, what are we doing? Should we try and plan out our selections for better synergy or what? Maybe it’s too hard since we need to try and make our own builds with their own synergy as well.” Adam put it out there for his team, he wanted them to work together on every possible level.

Brian started “I’ve already had mine set in my mind from level three when I picked up explosive strike. I had the choice to branch off from explosive strike to either a whirlwind attack that can hit everyone around me or an to spend the skill point on upgrading Primal Strike to provide even more speed and even more power. It just uses the word ‘increases’ on the tooltip but I’m going with that one, I don’t need some whirlwind, I need more raw power. Plus it’s going down the right side of my skill tree where Hammy said there are some more shockwave combos further down.”

Adam nodded “Sounds good, what about you Matilda, you have been using Radiant Burst for everything so far, what’s next?”

Matilda looked up excitedly “Yeah, I have been a bit of a one trick wonder so far haven’t I? Well…” She said flicking her wrist to take a look at her skill tree. “I can path down left from the triple split of Radiant burst into Glowing Nova which hits everyone around me, with my level two passive it will heal allies and damage enemies. So kind of like Brian’s whirlwind but holy magic I guess. Or I can go and path down right for a direct healing spell called Healing Hand. It should be more potent than using radiant burst for healing I think but it can’t do any damage. I’m not too sure, I kind of like the nova but maybe we should focus on always having strong healing available?” Adam was glad to see Matilda so invested in her tree choices.

“But then that point you invested into splitting radiant burst into three spells at once isn’t as useful if you go with Healing Hand right? Would a Healing Hand be stronger than three radiant bursts at once?” He asked for clarification on the mechanics of the interaction.

“Well, I’m not completely sure, but I think three radiant bursts would be stronger if all three of them healed the same person, the issue is a lot of the time the two that cleave off to either side from the center one I cast don’t actually hit anything or go flying away. But I think you’re right, a lot of the time I can still make use of the split burst and I don’t wanna neglect Radiant Burst after investing another point into it. Okay I’m gonna lock in Glowing Nova. I mean Nova doesn’t help radiant burst either but I’m hoping sticking to this area of the tree is just more relevant as well.” She focused in and Adam watched as the icon filled in with colour as she watched her menu.

“How about you, super special Mr Psion?” Brian asked as they made their way closer to the centre of the city, looking up at the great tree that towered over them.

Adam flicked his wrist taking a look. His tree seemed unique compared to the other two as he had three possible starting positions, of which he picked up psychokinesis, beginning at the top left of the tree. The other two started off with no choice at all and had to just start at the top centre. From there he had gone down into Truth Compulsion. Now with his next skill point, he could spend go down and to the far left of the tree for

Synaesthesia- Control your senses, switching between feeling light or feeling sound on the skin of your face. Can only switch by willing to do as shortly before falling asleep. Feeling light will increase your vision in level of focus and distance at which you can make out detail. Feeling sound will increase your hearing in distinguishing sources of sound and distance from which you can hear noise.

That’s quite interesting he thought, it could prove useful in some niche situations but what were the combat uses really? Being able to see a sword in more detail wouldn’t stop it from plunging into his chest. Being able to hear something coming might help, with his quicker reaction time from his agility as well, but he couldn’t think of many great situations even so. He looked to the next available icon, diverging closer into the middle of the skill tree, pathing right from the Truth Compulsion.

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Temperature Control - Grants the ability to heat or cool matter with psychic energy. The draw on users magic pool will depend on total mass being controlled and the speed of temperature control.

“What do you think?” He asked his two team mates.

“I think it sounds really weird to mess with your own senses and perceptions. Any time you switch to better hearing, it would be like losing your glasses you know.” Brian responded as he dragged his axe in one hand, bumping along the ground on occasion, dragging Taj with the other hand.

“True, kind of feels like a tough one, both have uses but neither seem essential.” Adam pondered on which one to choose.

“You could not spend the skill point until the need for either one pops up and then just choose it once you need it, you’ll probably choose the best one anyway if you do it like that.” Matilda stared at Adam’s talent tree.

“True, not a bad idea, but I find it’s really helpful being able to practice using the abilities before I need them as well, it might prove difficult to choose one and find out it doesn’t quite work how I wanted it to work.” Adam had already decided on picking one, but thought it both polite to ask with the way they had discussed the matter and also thought it was worth double checking just in case he missed something obvious, he had a smidgen of doubt in himself still he supposed.

They continued walking, they could see the central plaza in sight now. “I’m going to go with temperature control, I’m already thinking of some really strong ways to use it, but it’s a bit of a gamble, I don’t really know how quickly it will deplete me of my magic pool. But I think it has a lot more potential than synaesthesia in the end. Plus since I have no idea about the rest of my tree, technically, heading towards the centre of the tree should give me more options for later levels right?”

Brian muttered back “If we even get many more levels before its all over.”

Adam gave him a pat on the shoulders “I saw the way you were fighting just before, what happened to that Brian? No need to be a downer, we’ve got this for sure.”

Brian grumbled “I don’t have a great feeling about this meeting with the city patrol. Anyway do what you want with your skill tree, there’s no microwaves on this planet anyway so it could be useful for that at least.”

“It sounds like it could be pretty scary with enough power behind it to be honest.” Matilda added.

Adam focused in on that icon and tooltip on the skill tree and willed it to be selected, it filled in with colour. He flicked away his hiker menu and tested it out, using it on his own hands. They definitely heated up easily enough, it didn’t feel like much of a drain to just add a few degrees to the surface of his hands, but he would need to experiment a lot further to find out what his limits were.

They had tried to keep themselves distracted the whole time as they drew quite a lot of attention to themselves by dragging an unconscious man behind them through the centre of the city. Adam couldn’t think of a more tactful way to approach it though. This was an exceptional circumstance where they were justified in dragging an unconscious man through the centre of the city. By some miracle they had not drawn the attention of any priests yet, but they did now see a couple of guards approaching from the headquarters building straight in their direction.

They walked towards the two guards in their own confidence of being correct, of having all of their witnesses on the east side if needed, of catching the bad guy and being able to save Vincent. Adam felt a pang of concern, remembering Histo’s comments regarding the church weaving its way into the governance and politics of the city more and more in recent times.

“What is the meaning of this? Who is this man and why are you dragging him around? Is he dead or just unconscious?” The guards said as they got closer, poking at Taj who was still very much alive.

“We know him as Taj, he is the one who murdered Gavvy Townstone, we need to speak to whoever is in charge of that case, in charge of deciding if Vincent the healer gets executed. He is innocent.” Adam proclaimed boldly and proudly in front of everyone.

The two guards paused in silence, glancing at each other. One spoke up. “You’re going to have to come with us into headquarters, we’ll escort you in.” Adam felt some more concern over their lack of a real reaction, but eased his own nerves guessing that it was above their pay grade and that they had to go higher up. As they followed the two guards closer towards the main entrance of the headquarters, an entire squad of guards jogged out quickly, ten of them in total.

“What’s going on there?” Adam asked, it seemed both Matilda and Brian had opted to stay quiet for now, they hadn’t said a word so far.

The guard on their left who had spoke up before glanced back at him. “Commotion on the east side we have just heard about. Needs to be checked out.”

“That would be us, we were the commotion.” Adam stated with honesty.

“May very well be true but we will be checking it out regardless. They will handle the situation.” He isn’t very lighthearted or friendly, I guess that’s not his job Adam thought to himself.

Strolling through the huge door to the city patrol headquarters they noticed the quality and luxury of the building, Adam guessed the difference was more noticeable just out of contrast to the buildings they had been surrounded by on the east side of the city. They had detailed carvings of the great tree in the bright white stone that made up the exterior of the building and the ceiling was grand, with beautiful murals painted all over depicting people worshipping near Oak. The general colour scheme matched the black and red uniforms that the city patrol all wore.

“Fancy place. How come?” Adam asked.

The guard who had been doing all of the talking looked back at him and didn’t say a word in response as they kept walking into the open space. They approached a desk where a guard was sat, he peered at them with curiosity as he noticed Taj being dragged behind Brian, unconscious.

“These three say they come from the commotion on the east side and say that the man they have with them is the killer of a Gavvy Townstone, they want to talk to someone about the murder, friends of Vincent, but I’m sure you could guess that from the look of them.” The man escorting them chuckled to the guard sitting down at his large dark brown wooden desk, a couple of neat stacks of paper closer to the man.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Matilda spoke up for the first time since they had first got to the centre of the city.

“Never mind girl, you lot need to see Tob, I trust you know of him. He has mentioned some new outsiders on a few occasions. He’s handling this case directly since it’s so high profile.”

The original escorts stopped off to the side while the new man that was at the desk took the job, escorting them further into the building they took some stairs up to the second story of the building. The three of them followed closely, Adam felt his nerves growing as they got deep into the heart of the building, if any escape was needed in some kind of freak emergency it would take them a while to escape now. After a few more hallways and minutes of walking, they arrived to a room that looked like any other, with the door closed. “In you go, Tob is in here working. He told us that anything related to this case that seems important goes directly to him. I’ll just be watching the door, so no funny business.”

Adam turned the handle cautiously, Tob sat at the other end of the room facing the door, he looked up instantly with his eyes widening as Brian dragged Taj into the room. Adam failed to read anything from his face, he needed an ability to detect emotions, now that would be useful, he hadn’t seen it on any of the icons on his skill tree so far.

Tob stood up, his face slightly red. He puffed out a stressed stream of air as he closed his eyes and rested his hands on the top of his head before vigorously rubbing his ginger beard.

“You made a mistake coming here, this goes much deeper than you know. I told you to stay out of it, why did you have to keep pushing and pushing.” Tob’s expression darkened into a grimace.