When dawn broke, Gene cast his thoughts out to the members of Silvayn simultaneously.

  “Meeting in my room. We had some trouble last night.”

  “What?!” thought Winnie, shocking the others when her voice echoed in their heads.

  To their collective surprise, Gene had upgraded his Mental Communication power, allowing them all to converse with one another.

  “This is strange,” thought Kyra. “I can feel that those thoughts were yours, Winnie.”

  Kyra smiled, amused at the strange sensation. Eonis was unsettled but he tried his hardest to not think about it. Winnie was fascinated and her mind raced with possible applications of this power expansion. They met at Gene’s door and they all smirked before opening it.

  Their amused faces dropped when they saw the two men. Gene stood by the window and Kyrie sat at the table where Verity was the night before. Their expressions were grim and the members of Silvayn were unsettled at the sight of Gene.

  “Everyone, please have a seat.”

  The air was tense. The members of Silvayn posted up around the room with baited breath and Gene took a deep breath.

  “We were attacked last night by The Mesmer and The Magistrate.”

  Shocked expressions stared back at him after he dropped the bomb. Kyrie looked at him with a strange expression he couldn’t read. Their morning had been quiet when he awoke and to Gene, it was clear he was still struggling with what happened.

  He went on to explain the night’s events, the struggle against Verity’s power, the ease with which Verdant co-opted Kyrie’s mind, and his subsequent personal upgrades. As he spoke, Kyra rushed to Kyrie’s side and performed diagnostic spells to make sure her brother was healthy. No effects of tainted magic remained but she could tell something was wrong. It was like a piece of him was missing.

  When Gene concluded his story, Eonis was the first to speak up.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said curtly.

  Gene’s attention shot to him.

  “What choice did I have?” he asked. “We were alone and ambushed. I did what I had to do to save Kyrie.”

  “No, what you did was stupid,” said Eonis gruffly. “You could have contacted us or even Gordona. We could have worked together to drive them away instead of you making this stand alone.”

  He was pissed but Gene held his ground.

  “You think I didn’t think of that?” he asked, trying to mask the lie he was telling. “If I’d called you all in to attack, they would have went all out and someone could have died. Verdant’s powers only worked on Kyrie so he only had one pawn to play against me.”

  Kyrie laughed dryly and said, “Pawn.”

  Gene’s chest tightened and he turned to him to say, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No, you didn’t but it’s no less true,” replied Kyrie. A silence filled the room and Kyra placed a consoling hand on his shoulder before he said, “We’re weak. I understand that now, more than I did when I faced Tir. At least with him, his powers were physical and I could measure the difference. Those two, they were monsters.”

  Gene started to move to comfort him until he felt a sense of unease radiating from Kyrie. He stood his ground and exhaled, trying to clear his mind.

  “That is part of why I called you all here. The Generals are monsters and I need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here beyond what the Winthrops uncovered. I need to know what the Dark Lord Demetrios really is. His class, his race, any capabilities you’ve learned over the centuries of this conflict.”

  The group were silent in reply, confused by the sudden authoritative tone Gene took on. Winnie was the first to reply.

  “You ask a difficult question of us that has a range of answers.” Winnie produced six books from thin and they floated in front of her, pages shuffling before she continued. “Our earliest accounts of his presence have been lost to time but scholars have long worked hard to uncover the exact parameters of his power. He never takes to the field, preferring to use proxies for his conflicts but what we can surmise is that he is a powerful mage of some kind. He normally has throngs of powerful creatures at his disposal but as of late, he has been consolidating power in the form of his generals”

  The books floated in front of Gene. Each volume depicted moving imagery of large-scale conflicts at the borders of the veil over centuries. In each, the Dark Lord led a new force to conquer any unclaimed lands and spread his influence across New Venturis.

  Gene listened intently to Winnie’s recitation of the history of the world as she knew it, but even the pactwielder of the Keeper of Secrets only knew so much. He didn’t like that. It felt like he was reading a grand epic already in progress and the first few pages had been ripped out to explain the setup. He mused on this for a while before Kyra spoke.

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  “Why are you asking about this now?”

  She still sat by Kyrie, babying her twin whose features were drawn from the night’s trauma.

  Gene looked up in response and said, “Because I plan on ending this.”

  Everyone gawked. Kyrie looked up at him in confusion and Winnie asked, “Are you mad? While you are quite powerful, this is a feat no one man can achieve, let alone someone not versed in the ways of the world.”

  He didn’t reply. He turned to look out of the window, his focus drifting to Taos for a moment. With his mental senses, he could see far and wide across the great city. There were bakers putting out fresh loaves of bread and planning out their day’s work. Butchers were meeting farmers making deliveries to prepare cuts of meat for the cooks who came in droves. Small children were setting out on adventures in and around the city, playing games of war and conquest. The city was alive and he was determined to keep it that way. He was determined to be the hero New Venturis needed.

  He looked back at the group and braced himself on the window seal before he spoke.

  “I am not of this world, we all know this, but I think I am what’s needed here. People of New Venturis have been fighting a battle of attrition for centuries against something whose very presence is poisoning the land they called home. It may be arrogant of me to say but I think it’s time for a new perspective. A new plan.”

  The members of Silvayn were flabbergasted. After the night’s event, Gene had changed. All at once, there was a distant and focused look in his eyes that unsettled the group. To their relief, he seemed to notice it. He pulled back his senses and let himself be in the moment, taking a seat on the bed next to Winnie and Eonis.

  For a while, just stared at the wall, trying to collect his thoughts before he spoke.

  “Last night was terrifying in a way that I’ve never experienced. There was no big battlefield, no twisted spire to raid, or arena to clash in. We were sleeping comfortably when we were attacked and for a while there, I felt helpless.” He turned to look at Kyrie before saying, “I thought I was going to lose you and I’ve just begun to know you. I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let them win. You all know that my power is unlike anything else in New Venturis and I need to use them to make a real difference.”

  Kyrie held his gaze until the memory of Verdant’s touch flashed in his mind, forcing him to break eye contact and look away. Gene was pained but it didn’t shake his resolve.

  “I had a long conversation with the Hero System last night. I’m at the next threshold to increase my level and I need to know as much as possible about the Dark Lord and his Spires so I can assess and modify my build.”

  They were conflicted. If it were anyone else saying this, they’d think they had a death wish but a small part of them wondered if he had the power to do as he said. Could Gene be the hand that tipped the scale in their favor? Kyrie wrestled with that thought, with feelings of being weak, and he stood up.

  “I am a son of New Venturis. This conflict was my father’s and his father’s before him. I’ll gladly accept any help you can provide but I refuse to be iced out here. This is our war and we will fight in it with or without you.”

  He trembled and Gene was taken aback. For someone who could literally make his thoughts heard, he was terrible at making them understand him.

  He put up his hands defensively and said, “Woah woah. I never said we wouldn’t work together. I just…I can’t hold back any longer. I can’t hide who I am. People died in our raid because of my stupid diversion. If they had all the facts up front, we could have planned better. I can’t make that mistake again.”

  Kyrie backed up and sat down. “That–that’s extremely dangerous. I know you won’t go down without a fight but if someone tried to capture you and use you–”

  “I’m more worried about them capturing you,” Gene interjected. “I made a lot of changes to myself last night to prevent that from happening but the Dark Lord knows who I am now and probably has a rudimentary understanding of my power. I need to take the fight to him next time and that starts with understanding what I’m fighting.”

  Winnie looked at Eonis and the old man sighed.

  “Letting those twins escape was your second mistake,” he said with a glare. “If you had them on the defensive, like you say you did, you should have finished the job. You’ve had no problem killing Forsaken or Melias duplicates. Why spare them to send a message?”

  Gene was taken aback. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it, reconsidering his next words. Was Eonis right? Did he make a mistake? In the moment, it felt good to see them grovel and flee in terror but was it his ego that drove that decision or was he truly scared of killing a sentient being.

  He didn’t have to puzzle out his feelings on killing for long. Kyrie spoke up in his defense.

  “It was tactical.” Gene looked at him before he continued. “They were crushed by an overwhelming force and sent running back to their master for succor. If he’d killed them, there’s no telling what monstrosities the Dark Lord would rain down on Taos in retaliation. We needed them to go and show Gene isn’t to be toyed with.”

  Eonis slumped back on the bed and sighed. He folded his arms, contemplating Kyrie’s statement, but he didn’t say more. Winnie was busy shuffling through her tomes until she found enough information to continue her history lesson.

  “What we know of the Spires and their exact mechanics is frighteningly little. Every clash with the Dark Lord’s army has been an attempt to take down one of these Spires.” Winnie traced sigils in the air as she spoke and pages of each book turned to cobble together her explanation. “Each of them seems to act as a sort of locus, stabilizing an external mana field composed of tainted mana and expanding its bounds across New Venturis. In addition, they circulate ambient natural mana into their structures and convert them into void mana that’s distributed into the external field. What we call the Veil is no more than densely packed mana that’s toxic to all life except that of the Dark Lord and his legion.”

  Gene nodded along, considering the plan he had mapped out.

  “So you’ve fought to take down each Spire when they rose. What about capturing one and finding out how it works? Maybe there’s a way to reverse the flow.”

  They all looked at Gene, perplexed at his question.

  “Impossible,” said Winnie. “Their technology is only accessible by the Dark Lord’s people. The most we can do is strip the structure for its parts.”

  “But what if it were possible?” he asked, making Winnie sit back in her seat and think.

  “Well…in theory, it would release a disruptive wave of positive energy,” said Winnie as she flipped through her reference materials. “Quite effective against the Generals and quite deadly to the Forsaken. But still quite impossible without knowledge of the controls.”

  Gene smirked. He thought his plan may just work.