The members of Silvayn and their newfound ally suited, checked their equipment and were on the move. They hustled at break neck speeds, Winnie once again riding on Eonis’s shoulders. Despite his injured state, Gene managed to keep up just fine. In fact, he didn’t feel winded at all. He chalked it up to his Agility score of 3 and began to wonder just how much his ability scores affected him.

  He thought about it for a moment. His mind did feel sharper and his body was clearly tougher from the relatively minor wounds he received from a fall that should have turned him to paste. He even felt a little stronger physically. With that level of strength, he would’ve been able to easily remove the debris from his apartment and escape with Sam in tow. His heart sank when he thought about her, about what had happened to him. He wondered, was he really ready to embrace this new world or did he still need time to mourn the world he’d lost?

  The group crested the hills with weapons in hand, prepared to strike down any who had survived Gene’s psychic assault, but with great thanks, the bodies still littered the dirt road. No one had passed by here in the time it took for them to knit their wounds and take a quick rest. They hoped this was true for the spire ahead.

  About half a mile away from the spire’s location, they enacted their plan. Eonis spoke to the trees and then to the creatures within them as he cast both Nature’s Passing and Eyes of the Unseen Critter.

  Kyra grabbed her brother’s wrist and squeezed tightly, prompting Kyrie to look her in the eye.

  “Be careful and be swift.” She spoke the truncated motto of their parents, calling on the gravity of the situation.

  Let your aim be careful and your strike be swift. Let your path be careful and your steps be swift. A litany of variations on the phrase ran through Kyrie’s head in the moment and he squeezed her arm tight in response, saying, “Right. Light my path back for me, Cleric of Aliyah.”

  He bowed his head in reverence, prompting a small smile from her that faded when she caught Gene staring. He looked away, overcome with embarrassment, and Winnie called for him.

  “Hey!” her small voice squeaked. “I’ve got my eye on you. No funny business, mister, or we’ll test the limits of your aberrant nature.”

  She glared at him, trying her best to seem intimidating, but to Gene, Winnie was the kind of adorable character you only got in triple A fantasy games that you wanted to protect with your life. He was determined to do as much.

  He nodded to her suddenly to her surprise before saying, “I won’t fail you.”

  “Uhhh….okay,” she said as she turned back to the spire and asked, “Are we ready? Let’s be off!”

  Winnie spoke a string of unintelligible words before her feet began to glow. She took off running in a blur, Gene and Kyrie tailing her at full speed. Gene’s heart was pounding in his throat the closer they got to the building. He opened his mind’s eye and cast his thoughts wide like a neural net. Using his powers felt natural, like letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. The more he used them, the more excited he was at the prospect of what he would be capable of when given time to grow.

  “So far, so good. I don’t sense anyone nearby,” he thought, projecting to them one at a time. With the way his power was configured, it seemed he couldn’t communicate to both simultaneously. Not yet at least.

  Winnie shuddered and thought, “Can you…keep that to a minimum? It’s disturbing.”

  Gene nodded in ascent rather than projecting his thoughts again. When they reached the spire, he gazed towards the heavens, taking it all in. He’d grown up in Washington, D.C. and had seen the Washington monument many times. Though this paled in comparison to the size of that obelisk, the spire was a grand structure that demanded awe in a way the Washington monument only requested politely.

  He reached out with his thought sense and froze before thinking, “I can’t sense anything through the wall. My senses won’t penetrate.”

  Kyrie drew his blade and without a word, Winnie pulled a tome out of thin air.

  “We’ll prepare for anything. Tell Winnie to get us in,” thought Kyrie.

  Gene relayed the message and Winnie began to intone. As she spoke, her words sounded muffled, as if she were casting a spell underwater. Gene thought to himself for a moment, thinking of his long last days playing Pathfinder, “So that’s what a silent spell is like.”

  There was an absence of sound around her that grew until finally they heard a click and a smooth stone door flung itself open. The second it moved, Gene acted, casting his thought sense wide. Like a radar, he scanned rapidly, pushing his mind to its limit to hit as many floors as possible. He’d been told the Warroom was located on the 30th floor but his powers couldn’t reach that far yet.

  “Clear, at least to the 24th floor,” said Gene, sweat beading his brow from the strain. “I can scan further once we clear a few floors.”

  “Astonishing,” said Winnie after being given the okay to speak. “Instant scrying in such a massive radius for someone only level 8 is unbelievable.”

  She spoke with a tinge of reverence, shocking Gene at the near compliment.

  “Thanks?” he replied. “What level are you? If that’s a cool thing to ask.”

  Winnie smirked at him as she entered the building and said, “Later, dear. We’ll have much to discuss around the campfire.”

  Kyrie snorted and both boys followed after. A twisted spiral staircase jutted roughly out of the walls of the spire, twisting into darkness at its peak. Gene looked to Kyrie as the groups split and he tapped his forehead in response.

  “We’ll break here. Diagrams from the most recent spire raid show the armory on the ground floor and the war room on the 30th. Be careful,” thought Kyrie. He held his gaze for just a moment before taking off and leaving Winnie to guide him.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He relayed the message to Winnie as she took the steps and waved him along. He thought, “Surely that was just a general message for the mission and that lingering gaze was just some kind of warrior signal, right? Right?”

  His face was flush and he nearly tripped over Winnie, lost in thought. Panic spiked in her mind.

  “Do you sense someone?!” she thought frantically, pulling Gene out of his momentary daze.

  He cleared his throat and expanded his mind’s eye once more to use his thought sense now that they were a few floors up. He shook his head and thought to her, “The coast is clear. Let’s, uh, hustle. I think I’m still a little out of it.”

  She eyed him suspiciously before stepping aside without a word and urging him to walk in front of her. She was as suspicious as she was cute.

  After the 20th flight of steps, Winnie was huffing. Even with her distance spell, her little legs could only carry her so far so quickly. Rather than saying or thinking anything to her, Gene simply kneeled down to let her hop on his back. Neither of them moved, spoke, or thought anything for a second before Gene said, “Just get on. Preserve your strength if you’re gonna blow this place up later.”

  She considered for too long of a moment before he signed and she relented, snapping, “Alright!”

  He climbed the stairs with her on his back and he couldn’t help feeling astonished at his new body. In his arms, Winnie felt lighter than air and there was no strain from his muscles as he pounded the pavement. He ran full speed until they reached the summit, periodically checking in on Kyrie every couple of steps.

  The young warrior had gone to town on the armory. A room full of weaponry, armor, and provisions was upended in his wake. Gene could hear the glee in his thoughts as he raided the place and provisioned himself a new sword from the spoils. It brought a smile to his face as he let Winnie down by the entrance to the war room.

  “Be careful in here and don’t touch anything!”

  Her thoughts echoed loud enough for him to feel the impact of her words. He frowned and felt like a child being guided through a department store by his mother.

  Inside, a massive crystalline structure floated in the center of the room, connected to crystals of various sizes by webs of energy. He almost stepped to touch it in amazement before he remembered Winnie’s words and backed away.

  He felt her eyes on him at that moment and a wave of embarrassment rippled through him. He stepped back to the door and left her to her work. He watched her raise her thumb and index finger to her eye before chanting a short spell as she surveyed the room.

  From the doorway he could see a table full of books, maps, and scrolls. For the first time in his roleplaying life, he felt the roguish urge to swipe the loot before him but he resisted. Winnie used one hand to scan a map before taking it with the other and slipped it in her bag before moving onto the next item and then the next, only pausing briefly when she noticed something magical and most definitely trapped. She moved on from the shiny object and moved to a stack of books.

  Once again, the overwhelming urge to touch the shiny objects washed over him, but this time, Gene caught the feeling before it left his mind. Something was wrong.

  “Be careful,” he thought to Winnie loudly. “Something over there has a compulsion effect on it. I can feel it, tugging at my fingertips.”

  Winnie looked up from her surveying and rolled her eyes. “Amateur,” she thought. “I deal with traps like this all the time. If anything here were truly dangerous other than the dagger over there, I would know it.”

  Winnie gave a smug grin before reflexively reaching out to a book, cracking its pages open, and reading aloud its words in a daze. “Prepare for death, you fool.”

  Suddenly, the book slammed shut in her hands and a pulse of energy erupted from its bindings, blowing Winnie back with a painful thud and slamming the door shut behind Gene. He dashed forward to grab her, moving faster than he’s ever moved in his office worker life, and projected his thoughts to Kyrie with urgency.

  “Get out of here! Winnie just set off a trap,” thought Gene as she writhed in pain in his arms. Faint blue lines began to cover her skin in rapid succession, tracing painful sigils across her body.

  “Anti-magic,” she said weakly. “We…need to go. Now!”

  Her voice was barely a whisper and her shout was half hearted. “Don’t speak, just think,” projected Gene as he rushed to try the door but when he tried and failed to open the locked door, the unfamiliar glint of a door knob caught his attention in the periphery of his vision. Ornately decorated in jagged patterns, a sinister energy emanated from it. That door hadn’t been there when they entered the room.

  The knob turned on the jagged door and Gene moved before he realized he was moving. He dove behind a table and gripped Winnie tight as footsteps rang out in the silent room.

  “Don’t move. Don’t speak. They can’t see us. They can’t hear us,” thought Gene to Winnie in desperate pleas.

  She looked up at him and then to the corner of the room where she saw the reflection of two men that made her heart beat in her throat. She could only muster the thought, “Oh gods…”

  The two men were clad in obsidian armor. One wore a twin pair of blades strapped to both hips and the other was shirtless and armorless, save for a pair of gauntlets strapped to his massive arms and greaves strapped to his trunk-like legs. They had pale, nearly translucent skin and their features were sharp enough to project an air of menace just from eye contact alone.

  “What in the nine hells,” asked the shirtless man. “Where is everyone?” His hulking figure chilled Winnie to the bone.

  “That’s Tir, the Bloodrager,” thought Winnie. Her internal voice was barely a whisper due to the fear that they would overhear her somehow. “The other man is Melias, the Warlord. They’re generals in the Dark Lord’s army.”

  Gene’s muscles twitched and he strained to keep focus on the two men, repeating to himself, “They can’t see us. They can’t hear us.”

  Tir picked around the room, looking at the papers strewn about in Winnie’s wake while Melias moved to the crystals. He flashed a hand over the largest one, seemingly replaying the footage of the prior day’s events. There, the four adventurers are seen running away from the spire, being pursued by the ravenous hoard of Forsaken.

  Melias scoffed. “Brainless oafs,” he said, drawing Tir’s attention for a moment before the brute continued investigating the room. “It seems a few insects crawled into our pig pen. However, it’s curious. Where have the piggies scurried off to?”

  Melias tapped his chin in contemplation. Mana seeped out of Winnie and panic clouded her thoughts as her fight or flight reflex kicked in. She struggled in Gene’s arms before thinking, “What are you doing?!”

  Slowly, she started to hear a tiny voice in her head.

  “You can’t see us. We’re not here. You can’t see us. We’re not here.”

  The voice was a whisper growing in volume and Winnie looked up in shock to see Gene’s eyes and the mark on his forehead aglow.

  Melias flipped through the surveillance cameras in the building, landing on the armory where the door still vibrated from Kyrie’s sudden exit. He narrowed his eyes.

  “You can’t see us. We’re not here.” Gene’s thoughts boomed out of his head as Tir rounded the desk and set his eyes on them. He heard the Hero System speak.

  Hero System Message: You have used a Power Stunt to activate Illusion Casting 8. You are now Fatigued. Further uses of abilities beyond your current selected powers will result in Exhaustion.

  Hero System Notification: New Mission Objective….Avoid capture and torture by the Dark Lord’s Generals.