The Zombie Knight

Twenty-Third Oath -- Tower and Tenor

Chapter Two Hundred Fifty-Four: 'The Roar of Old...'

The Eternal Storm was even more ferocious than he'd heard. The raging winds, the skewering hail, the earth-shaking thunder. It was small wonder why everyone avoided the Dáinnbolg. Even if all the feldeaths disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't revive this dead continent unless this storm was somehow quelled.

A gargantuan figure stood in the darkness, barely visible until lightning flashed across the sky and briefly illuminated it.

A tall, narrow building, it was. It looked like it reached all the way up into the dark, long-hanging clouds above, though he couldn't quite tell that for sure from here on the ground.

"This must be the place. It looks just like the voice said it would."

Caster Egmond had no idea what he was doing here. How in the world had he let Paulie talk him into this nonsense? Not only was this going to be a gigantic waste of time, it had already proven to be an insanely dangerous waste of time.

They'd been on Exoltha less than a day, and yet within that brief span of time, Caster had seen more feldeaths with his own two eyes than in the rest of his life combined.

They were everywhere. Even now, he counted five of them on the horizon. Hulking, ethereal reptiles of various sorts. Some with huge shells like turtles, others looking more like dinosaurs. Some had twenty limbs or more. All had eyes that burned with white flames, and beams of black and white energy frequently spewed from their mouths as they attacked each other.

That was the only reason the two of them were still alive, Caster felt. Most of the feldeaths were more concerned with fighting one another than with them.

They'd certainly had a few close calls, though. Paulie was missing his right arm, and half of Caster's face was scorched black and still stinging.

They didn't have access to regeneration, either, because neither of them had wanted to tell their reapers where they were going, much less bring them along. If they both ended up dead, then well, their reapers would realize eventually.

Kalikos occasionally checked in on him, and Caster had to act like everything was fine, like he wasn't staring death in the face and trying not to blink first.

They'd told the reapers that they were going on a training retreat deep into the Otoron Mountains in Calthos. The reapers didn't come with them because, technically, their respective sects were still on duty. The extra respite that they had been granted after the victory over Sair was conditional. They could still be called back to fight at any time, so the reapers needed to stay behind in order to alert them if such orders arrived.

All things considered, the timing was rather convenient--which was perhaps how Paulie had managed to convince him. After all, if they didn't go now, then who could say when another opportunity would present itself? This war seemed like it could go on for a long while. Even if the lingering fighting in Sair died down completely, they would doubtless be sent to a new front within a week; and if they got separated, then it would become that much more difficult to coordinate a little excursion like this.

What utter madness.

He just had to keep reminding himself that he was undead. He didn't actually have to worry about being killed here.

Probably.

He did recall a few old rumors that some feldeaths could, in fact, kill you permanently even if your reaper wasn't present, but those were just rumors, he was fairly sure. They'd never been confirmed. Which they would've been, if they were true.

...Right?

Yes, of course they would've. The eggheads in Research loved that kind of stuff. They would've looked into it and told everyone all about it. Or maybe Morgunov himself would've.

Definitely.

An even-larger-than-usual explosion in the distance made him turn and stare.

"We should hurry inside," said Paulie, "before more hail arrives." He didn't wait for Caster and ran ahead.

It was true. The kid wasn't looking so great. His clothes were in tatters, and apart from his missing arm, he was also covered in blood, having been skewered by hail on several occasions. Caster had been able to protect him from a lot of it but not all, especially when the hail whipped around in the wind and attacked from the different angles.

Caster's own attire was still mostly fine, though. A bit of soul-strengthening applied to the cloth was all it took to prevent it from being shredded. Alas, he hadn't thought to do the same for Paulie's clothes until it was a bit too late.

If they'd known more about what they would be facing, they might've brought some soul-strengthened hazmat suits. The time crunch would've made that a bit difficult, however.

Caster approached the building at a more leisurely pace, uncertain if it would truly prove to be the refuge that Paulie was obviously hoping for.

How in the world could any manmade structure still be standing in a place like this? Even assuming it was strong enough to prevent the Dáinnbolg from battering it to dust, how had all these feldeaths not blasted it into oblivion? It couldn't be luck that had allowed it to survive all this time.

Which was another issue. When could such a thing have possibly been built? And by whom?

Frankly, he hadn't even expected this so-called "Tower of Remoria" that Paulie had been going on about to even exist. Sure, he couldn't deny that a sliver of hope in the back of his mind had been there, quietly nagging at him--an absurd notion that they might actually discover something relevant to the path of destruction.

But now that he was looking at this tower, that notion didn't entirely feel like hope anymore. It felt more like worry. Deep, terrifying worry.

There was no front door, just an empty hole to walk through. As he stepped foot inside, he tried to inspect the building more closely. Thankfully, he did think to bring a flashlight, at least. The pitch black stone looked pristine, and as he shone his light up to it, he could see embossed lines in its surface.

"This way!" came Paulie's voice from deeper in.

"Don't run off on your own," Caster called out. He couldn't even see the kid anymore, but he could hear ascending footsteps. Caster looked for a staircase.

What were they supposed to be looking for? This place was empty. A reaper would have helped right about now in searching.

Being of sufficient age, Caster was able to vaguely sense the soul power coursing the building. If he busted down the walls, he would no doubt be able to see the flowing soul power with his own eyes quite clearly, but as long as it remained embedded within an object, it was still mostly invisible to him.

He found the staircase in question and took it. The next floor looked just as empty as the first, and he could hear Paulie's urgent footsteps already ascending to the next floor again.

They didn't actually have to go all the way up this thing, right? It was touching the clouds. It could have a hundred stories or more, for all they knew.

"Paulie, do you still hear the voice?" shouted Caster.

The kid took a moment to answer. "Yeah! It says to keep climbing!"

Of course it did.

He was beginning to hope that it would tell Paulie to jump off the roof when they got there.

Caster had asked Kalikos about Malast, this so-called "god" that Paulie was hearing. Apparently, as far as gods went, Malast was some kind of lazy son of a bitch who never did anything for anyone. So this whole trip made even less sense than Caster had first thought.

Caster didn't know what to think, now. He'd never believed in any gods, excepting perhaps the Void, but that wasn't a god, really. That was the supreme consciousness that existed within all things. The collective will of the universe. And even his faith in that wasn't terribly strong. He certainly didn't consider himself nearly as fanatical as many of his peers and subordinates.

But if this Tower was real, then perhaps so was Malast.

Ugh. He felt too old to be taking up a new belief system. Even if this Malast was real and everything he said turned out to be true, Caster would probably just... shrug, at this point. To be genuinely moved, Caster felt like he'd have to be shown something so utterly spectacular that it defied his own capacity for imagination.

Boy, these stairs were taking a while. The long trek through the Storm hadn't exactly been a picnic, and without a reaper to pep him back up, he was beginning to feel the familiar and unwelcome touch of fatigue. From the sound of the slowing footsteps over his head, Paulie was feeling it, too.

Without warning, the Tower shook violently, and light filled his vision for a moment, blinding him. The booming crash of thunder that he'd heard a hundred times before arrived again, louder than ever this time.

Disorientation held onto him for a few moments longer, but his passive soul defenses were enough to keep him steady. Lightning had just struck the building, he was fairly sure.

His ears were still ringing as he continued the climb, so he couldn't hear Paulie's footsteps anymore. Therefore, he was surprised when he reached the next floor and found Paulie crumpled over.

Hmm.

Still had a pulse. Still breathing. Just unconscious, probably. Might have been blinded or had his ear drums ruptured, though. Or both.

Caster tried to slap him awake, but the kid wasn't moving.

Wonderful.

Caster scratched his neck, thinking.

Well, he wasn't about the carry Paulie's ass the rest of the way up this tower. Tired as he was and without enhanced strength to help him out, that would not go well.

And besides, Caster was not a large man. In height, he barely broke a hundred and fifty centimeters. He had no delusions about that. Growing up, that had been his single most defining characteristic, and the world rarely ever let him forget it. Paulie might've been his junior by over a century, but that didn't change the fact that the kid outweighed him by thirty kilos or more.

So he left Paulie where he was and kept climbing. He'd worry about the kid on the way back down. Depending on what he found up there and how bad Paulie's condition turned out to be, he might just destroy kid's brain and have his reaper regenerate him. It would mean weaving a tale about what had happened to him during their "training," but that was already sounding more appealing than trying to drag him all the way back to Eloa.

The wind outside the Tower picked up and began howling through the empty windows, casting hail throughout each floor like little daggers, sometimes making it all the way to him in the center of the building. He soon got used to it, though, as the climb continued with no end in sight.

He was left alone with his thoughts for a long while.

He remembered hearing that Gohvis had a home out here on Exoltha. He wasn't about to run into that dragon bastard, was he?

Of all the members of Abolish that Caster had ever met, Gohvis had to be one of his least favorites. Everyone was afraid of him, but the guy rarely ever helped with anything. He didn't even seem like a part of Abolish, really. Caster had no idea why Dozer put up with him. He highly doubted that Morgunov would, if Gohvis worked for him.

That had been a concern of many, in recent years. The loyalty of the Monster of the East. And now, with the war, it was a bigger question than ever, Caster felt. Why had Gohvis not involved himself in the war effort yet? Dozer may not have been taking to the front lines like Morgunov was, but he was at least sending forces to fight. Where were Gohvis' mutants? Why weren't they helping?

There were some who questioned the Monster's loyalty. And Caster was one of them.

He hadn't stopped thinking about it. If Gohvis hadn't intervened at Dunehall, Caster could have seized a glorious victory right then and there. Ivan would not have gotten involved--and even if he had, then Caster would have been there to help him when that damnable Abbas Saqqaf showed up and somehow captured him.

There was no doubt in Caster's mind that, together, he and Ivan would have conquered Dunehall and all of Moaban completely.

And he would have the respect of his peers and superiors--of Morgunov, most importantly.

Instead, he was a joke. And elsewhere in Dunehall, the other Rainlords had managed to slay Collins. Now, Ivan's forces were in shambles, leaderless and getting their members poached by countless other sects who were looking to take advantage of their weakness.

Where before, Caster had commanded eight different sects, now those same men were so few in number that he'd had to combine them into only three.

That wasn't even the worst part, though. The worst part was that after Dunehall, for whatever reason, Jercash had actually given him a promotion. He'd granted him control over all operations in Calthos. It hadn't made much sense to Caster at the time, but he'd tried not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And then, before he'd even gotten the chance to take decisive action, Morgunov arrived and took everything away from him again. Bloodeye and Crowe were placed in charge, while he was all but demoted.

It wasn't like he had much room to advocate for himself, either. He'd allowed Collins to be killed, Ivan to be captured, and any element of surprise regarding an invasion of Sair to be lost.

But the most gut-wrenching aspect of it, the thing that really cut into his heart like a knife... was how Morgunov had spoken to him when taking command away from him. The Mad Demon hadn't gotten mad, not even in that strange, happy-yet-obviously-angry manner of his. He hadn't punished him or even threatened to do so.

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Instead, he just said, "It's okay, Casty. I'm sure you tried your best." And gave him that look.

That look of utter dismissal. Of low expectations being met.

Absolutely soul-crushing. For a man of Caster's ambition, there was almost nothing more damning than that.

But in the end, it was just another example of what they'd been talking about in their meetings for years. The hard cap. Or "the Wall," as some liked to call it.

It always came back to that, sooner or later. No matter how confident he was feeling after a good day or a strong victory, it was just a matter of time until someone or something reminded him of reality.

Oh, what he wouldn't give for the chance to break down that Wall.

They talked about coming to terms with it. They talked about learning to accept themselves for what they were. They talked about looking for other ways to grow their power, to round themselves out and "achieve wholeness," as some put it.

But as he climbed this cursed tower in a dead continent on the edge of the world, he was in no mood to kid himself. If he really believed any of that horseshit, he wouldn't be here, right now. He would've told Paulie to shut his fool mouth and leave him alone a long time ago.

The farther he climbed, the more exhausted he became. And the more exhausted he felt, the more irritated he grew.

What was with all this bullshit, huh? A stupid tower in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by feldeaths and a storm that could rip through even moderately-aged servants like tin foil--why did it have to be here, of all places?

He supposed it would make sense that the "hidden potential" of the path of destruction would be sealed away in such a difficult to reach location, but seriously. Come on, man. If he didn't find the answer he was looking for at the top of this damn thing, then he was going to tear this tower to pieces even if it killed him. So what if even feldeaths weren't able to take it down? He was angry enough that he was sure he'd find a way. Somehow.

His ragged breaths gradually turned more into growls as his pace began to slow, and his climb gradually became a crawl.

Goddamm Paulie and his goddamn voices in his goddamn head. This was going to be a gigantic waste of time. He just knew it. The disappointment was on its way. Only, it wasn't going to arrive alone. It was going to bring mind-numbing rage along with it.

Which was a very uncommon emotion for him.

Caster Egmond was not a nice man. He had learned that about himself at the tender age of thirteen. He realized how easy it was to hurt people, how trusting everyone was in the basic civility of others. They all seemed to believe that true malevolence simply did not exist in the hearts and minds of those around them.

Surely, everyone meant well as long as they were being polite, no? And maybe even when they weren't?

Regular people were so utterly ignorant in that regard.

That was why, in all things, Caster Egmond tried to keep his cool. Being physically outmatched by almost everyone he met throughout the entirety of his youth, he'd had no choice but to blend in. To seem normal.

To conceal his burning hatred of existence beneath a calm exterior.

He'd gotten so good at it, in fact, that he was sometimes able to fool even himself.

He hadn't been afforded the luxuries of so many of these other Abolishers. Able to just speak their minds, to cause mayhem wherever they pleased, get into fights whenever they pleased, and deal with the fallout however they liked.

He'd grown up in an environment of total oppression, and it had never really left him--partly because it was such a useful adaptation. True, he was getting to a point now where the natural field density of his soul was strong enough that more and more people could tell what they were dealing with as soon as they met him, but that was a relatively recent development.

For the vast majority of his life, his calm demeanor had been a boon. By and large, it set him apart from the rest of Abolish. It likely played no small part in helping him acquire promotions--more so than his combat prowess, perhaps.

Every once in a while, though, when circumstances were sufficiently aggravating and no one was around to see, his true feelings were able to bubble their way to the surface.

And it felt good.

To give in to it. Finally. It was like hearing someone speak the truth after listening to nothing but lies for years. Cathartic barely even began to describe it.

He should have been getting more and more tired as he climbed. He should have been nearing the point where he could hardly move.

But that hatred was energizing him. His limbs felt like they were on fire, but somehow, that just seemed appropriate. More and more, he was looking forward to reaching the top of this forsaken tower and going on a rampage when nothing was there. Maybe he would challenge a feldeath to a fight and get it to help him demolish this place.

If this voice that Paulie had heard was actually real, then why wasn't it talking to Caster now that the kid was down for the count? And what was the sense in talking to Paulie in the first place? This tower was obviously too difficult for a young servant like him to reach. Had it just been using Paulie as a means of getting to him?

The more he thought about his questions, the angrier he became, because the more it seemed like this was all leading up to a whole lot of nothing. He was just wasting his time on Paulie's delusions. Of course he was.

At length, he began to notice a change in the Tower itself. Floor after floor had looked identical, but now the stairwell was narrowing. He decided to stop briefly and look around one of the floors more thoroughly. The whole building itself was narrowing, he noticed. As if it were a sword. Tapering toward its point, perhaps.

He kept going.

Fog arrived next, thin at first but growing denser as he continued to climb. And he could feel an electric charge in it, too. He must've climbed high enough to reach the clouds, he figured.

Visibility dropped to almost nothing as he pressed on. He couldn't even see his own feet. He had to use the walls and handrails for guidance. He tried blowing the fog away with the path of destruction a few times, but it only allowed him a glimpse before converging back in on itself. He saw the path break upon the Tower's dark walls, too, with little more than a lingering rumble--which was more of a confirmation than a surprise.

Then came the noises.

Quiet. Muffled. Mixed. Sometimes, they sounded like shuffling or scratching. Other times, almost like voices. The fluctuating wind outside the Tower made it all the more difficult to tell what he was hearing.

He called out multiple times as he continued his climb but never received a response.

Hmph.

This couldn't be what Paulie had been hearing, could it? Or was the fog playing tricks on his mind. It did have a strange odor to it that he couldn't quite place.

If he was about to start hallucinating, then that would just be the icing on this shit-filled cake, Caster felt. One more obnoxious thing to deal with.

He wasn't going to stop until he reached the top. After coming this far, there was no choice. Even if nothing was here, he had to know that for sure. He'd be curious for all eternity if he didn't. There was no telling what--

The top of his head hit something, and he recoiled a few steps back down.

What?

He's been in the middle of a staircase, so how could he have run into anything? What could possibly--?

Brushing away the dense fog above him, he saw it. Dark stone. Just like the rest of the Tower.

A dead end.

For a time, he was just confused.

These stairs just led into the ceiling? There was no next floor? No outlet onto the roof? What the hell was happening?

What did he just climb all these fucking stairs for?!

That was it. The last straw.

He summoned the path into his fist and blasted the ceiling with as much destructive force as he could muster.

The Tower trembled from the impact, but that dark stone didn't budge.

Which just made him even more angry. How was that possible, huh? This power was called "destruction," wasn't it? So why couldn't it even do the one thing that it was supposed to?! If there were things that it couldn't destroy, and if it didn't have any other fucking properties, then wasn't it just useless?!

He growled unconsciously, which in turn became a yell as he kept attacking the ceiling with his power like a battering ram. Everything else was forgotten as he let his rage consume him and mindlessly kept bashing with both hands, alternating between two paths of destruction, not letting up nor ever intending to until this fucking stone was gone. His screams blended with the deep, piping sounds of his paths, and the Tower's rumbling seemed to heighten, reverberating with his very own soul.

He just wanted to destroy.

At length, the stone began to crack. And seeing that weakness in it only emboldened him to attack even harder. He smashed through the ceiling, making the Tower shake so much that it seemed almost as if it was about to tip over.

But when the vibrations settled again, he was finally able to feel a brief moment of triumph. His breathing was ragged, and his shoulders were heaving, but he'd done it. He'd done something, at least.

He climbed through the hole he'd made.

Immediately, he could feel the difference in the wind. The fog was still too dense to see anything around him, but this must have been the roof.

Which meant that not being able to see his feet was a much bigger problem. He could walk right off the edge if he wasn't careful.

He decided to crouch down as he moved and brush away the fog in front of him with more paths of destruction. He didn't much care if he broke through the Tower again. Even if it collapsed with him still on top of it, he'd count that as another win.

It was still holding strong, though. Whatever that damn stone was, it could withstand a lot more than just one hit from destruction.

He took his time searching the roof, wanting to make sure he didn't miss anything. While these damn clouds made everything more difficult, he also had to acknowledge even through his frustration that they were probably the only thing keeping him safe from all the feldeaths around. These were clouds of the Dáinnbolg, after all. They must have been supernatural in nature, which meant they were helping to conceal his soul.

Eventually, after combing the edges and going back and forth across the roof, he found the apparent center.

And to his muted shock, there was actually something there.

Some kind of pedestal, it was. And on it, sat some kind of cube.

No. An orb.

No. A pyramid?

No? He blinked at it, not even sure what he was seeing, anymore.

He stepped closer, gradually realizing that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. Probably. The object itself was shifting between different shapes every few seconds.

How in the world...?

He reached out to touch it but found disappointment again.

His hand phased right through it, as if it wasn't even there.

Confusion seized him another time. Stubbornly, he kept trying and kept failing to grab the object.

He could already feel himself receding back into his anger. Did he need to use the path of destruction on this, too? Because that notion was sounding all the more appealing with each passing moment.

Before he did anything impulsive, however, his ears pricked at the noises around him. They hadn't stopped. If anything, they seemed be growing louder. Scratching, scraping, shuffling, mumbling, whispering.

But this time, he could also hera a familiar piping noise beneath it all. Like paths of destruction were being summoned in the distance--or behind a wall, perhaps. But he couldn't make out a clear direction. They were all around him, yet as he searched the enveloping clouds another time, he found nothing.

Well, his rage was subsiding, at least. Clearly, there was something strange going on in this place. He didn't understand it, but it seemed that this was not a wasted journey.

Thank the Void. Or Malast. Or whoever the hell was responsible for it.

Hmm.

He steadied himself, trying to listen. The whispers were difficult to parse from all the other noises, not the least of which was the damn wind, but as he concentrated, they seemed to become clearer.

"A test, a test..."

"To grasp, to grasp..."

"To breathe, to breathe..."

"To see, to see..."

"To know, to know...'

"A test, a test..."

He couldn't tell if they were in his head like that of reaper voices or not. But they were growing louder, it seemed to him.

Perhaps a little too loud, in fact. Or maybe the other noises were waning.

The world around him grew slowly dimmer, slowly quieter--save only the voices. Their whispers became a chorus, of sorts, and their words, an almost rhythmic hum.

"A test, a test..."

"Come and try..."

"Be my chosen..."

"No, be mine..."

"No, mine..."

"A test, a test..."

Hmm.

He brushed the crowding fog away again with his hand and eyed the object on the pedestal. He'd already tried picking it up with soul-strengthened hands, so it clearly wasn't intangible in the same way that a reaper's body was.

Well.

If this was a test, then there wasn't really much else he could think to do, was there? He was a one-trick pony, after all.

He summoned the path of destruction.

He wasn't sure that he should try to destroy it, though. Somehow, that seemed like the wrong thing to do. If it was truly intangible, then perhaps the path would simply pass through it, as well. But if that happened, then he'd be stuck.

Agh.

He tried to be "gentle" with his use of the path--which, strictly speaking, was not entirely possible, but he tried to will his intentions into existence, anyway. He made it small, narrow. And only loosed it for a split second.

It connected.

The shifting object jostled off of the pedestal and clattered against the rooftop.

"No!"

"Wrong!"

"Return the phylactery!"

"Be quick, be quick!"

The passion in the whispers kept growing, but Caster would not be rushed.

Phylactery? Why were they panicking all of a sudden? And what in the world had just happened, anyway? Why had the path been able to touch it when his own two hands and soul could not?

He eyed the object more skeptically now.

"To grasp, to grasp!"

"Touch, chosen! Touch!"

"Return! Return!"

The voices were all but hissing at him, and he could hardly make out what they were saying, anymore.

He approached the object and knelt down toward it. The so-called phylactery, whatever that meant. The voices wanted him to grasp it? How the hell...?

Maybe...

He used both hands, summoning multiple tiny paths at once. In truth, they were more like bubbles than paths, and he tried to coat his palms and fingers in them as he moved to grab the object.

Oddly enough, it seemed to work. It jostled wildly in his grip, both because the bubbles were constantly appearing and reappearing and because the phylactery itself was continuing to shift. It hovered there haphazardly within his grasp as he did his best not to drop the damn thing.

"Good, good!"

"Yes, chosen! Yes!"

"Become one and see!"

"Breathe and see!"

"Return it! Return it!"

"No, keep it! Keep it!"

"Hold! Hold!"

"No, return! Return!"

What in the goddamn hell was happening, he wondered? These contradicting messages weren't helping. And they were just getting louder and louder, too.

"Who are all of you?" he said aloud. "Why are you talking to me?" It was just an impulse that made him speak up like that. He didn't actually expect a response.

Which was good, because he didn't receive one. Not directly, at least.

Instead, the voices fell suddenly silent.

The rest of the world still sounded comparatively muffled, however. The howling wind was the most prominent noise again, and yet it was scarcely louder than his own breathing.

Had they not expected him to say anything to them? Had they not thought he could hear them? He was quickly getting sick of all these unanswered questions.

"Are any of you Malast?" he tried again.

No answer.

Of course.

The phylactery, meanwhile, was gradually settling down, he noticed. It was getting easier to balance within his hands. As if it were calming down--or his own bubbles of destruction were, perhaps.

He watched it carefully as it eased closer and closer to his bare flesh, sinking through the ability that should have been destroying it.

Until, finally, it touched him.

He felt it there, in his hands. And it ceased shifting its form, too. It merely sat there, having settled on the shape of a trapezoidal prism.

Which made his eyes narrow.

Every user of destruction had a specific, two-dimensional geometric shape that their path conformed to. His was a trapezoid.

This could not be a coincidence, he decided. Given all the different types of polyhedrons that the phylactery had just been iterating through, it had to be connected to his power in some way.

But nothing was happening. He waited, but no new voices arrived. No new anything.

The muted sounds of the world around him began returning to normal, too.

Was that it?

"Hello?!" he called out into the swirling cloud, having to shout over the wind. "What am I meant to do with this?!"

He kept waiting, and no answer came.

He exhaled a long breath, feeling his fatigue wash over him again. Why couldn't anything ever be simple?

Well, he supposed he didn't need to destroy this blasted Tower of Remoria, at least. It hadn't been a wasted trip. He didn't understand what he'd actually accomplished during it, but hopefully, that would come in time. Very much hopefully.

He wasn't looking forward to the trek back down those damn stairs. Maybe it would be better to just jump off the roof and take his chances with the fall. Ah, probably not. Feldeaths might sense him again once he left the cloud. Oh, and Paulie. He was still somewhere on the staircase. Caster wondered if he'd woken up by now. If not, then--

'Check and see.'

Caster stopped. He'd just reentered the stairwell again, and his head hadn't even finished going below the rooftop. He threw a look around the area, as if the fog might tell him whose voice that was just now.

'If you are curious about Paulie, then think of where you last saw him, and you will see.'

Just the words alone were enough to put the idea into his head, and without even intending to, he was already doing what the voice said. He thought of Paulie, where he'd last seen him, collapsed in the middle of the stairwell far below him.

And immediately, an image flashed before him. In midair. Right in front of Caster's face. Like a projector screen.

But it didn't last. After a moment, it was gone, leaving Caster more confused than anything. What had he just seen? What had been in that image? It had been too fuzzy and fleeting for him to even process.

'You must be more accurate than that,' said the voice. 'To control the Tenor of the Veil requires both precision and concentration. You must learn.'

"...What the hell are you talking about?" said Caster, still looking around for a source.

'Go on. Try again.'

Hesitant, he did so. Paulie. Unconscious on the stairs.

The image flickered in front of his face again, and he blinked at it in disbelief. It lingered there this time, but it was still too fuzzy to make anything out. Was that actually Paulie there? It just looked like a vaguely humanoid blob.

And then the image faltered before disappearing altogether.

What the fuck was going on here?

'Ah. A good attempt. Your memory yet lacks depth, but that will do, for now. Here. Allow me to assist.'

The floating image returned, crystal clear this time. Too clear, actually. It looked like Paulie was right there in front of him, like Caster could just reach out and touch him.

'That is because you can.'

What?

He didn't understand. How could--?

'Reach through.'

At this point, he didn't see any reason not to comply. He put his hand through the image and sure enough, he was able to grab Paulie's tattered collar.

'Good.'

Caster retracted his hand. He had to ask. "Who or what are you?"

'A strange question. I am you, of course. And you are me. If you will it, then we shall soon be as one. And we will remind this slumbering world of many things.'

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