I turned my head a fraction to see Eloise holding a long scythe. Her eyes cold and as dark as the black smoke that emanated from her blade. Its edge pressed gently against my neck as a warning.

She’s still so damn quiet. This is the second time she’s snuck up on me. Worse still was that she’d heard me approach and circled around the store without drawing my attention. I hadn’t been using it, but Aura Sight confirmed what I also suspected.

She was shrouding herself.

That only left the obvious question. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Did she send you to kill me?” Her stare unwavering. There was no emotion in her voice. It was the sound of someone ready to take a life without remorse. She had me dead to rights. Only my next words would determine my fate.

I had to think quickly. By ‘she,’ did she mean Samara? If so, what could the Red Queen have to gain by killing Eloise? She was Roan’s champion in the tower, but perhaps the two gods had had a falling out? Regardless, a mere denial would not stave off my execution. I had to offer her something as well.  

“I was told to come here but not to kill you,” I said. “I want you to join my crew.”

She gave no reaction to my offer, and I wondered if I was too late and some other crew had invited her first. Eloise searched my eyes for some hidden deception. I couldn’t tell if it was with an ability or human intuition.

After a long awkward silence, she asked, “why should I trust you?”

“I have no reason to lie,” I said truthfully.

She laughed. “You have every reason with my weapon at your throat.”

I smiled. “Look behind you.”

At first she refused, thinking it some sort of trick. Only my confidence gaze swayed her to finally look over her shoulder. There, two ghostly archers stood with their bows drawn, ready to cut her down. If she somehow managed to dodge or deflect the arrows, there were another three melee spirit summons ready to charge at her.

Eloise’s problem was that she’d given me too much time to prepare and had underestimated the power of the invisible party chat system to co-ordinate with. She’d struck me as a loner when we’d first met and had likely assumed that I was one too. It was a weakness that I filed away for future reference in case she ever became a threat.

Eloise saw the futility in trying to fight six enemies at once and lowered her scythe. The blade part retracted back into the handle with a snap before the rest of it disappeared back into her inventory.

“So you were saying something about a crew?” she asked, eyeing the spirit summons warily.

I tell Hugo to dismiss them in party chat. He whines about how dangerous Eloise could be and refers to her as the cat lady. I respond by saying that we can always kill the lights and bring Ostorox out to play if it comes to it.

The void creature was Hugo’s most fearsome spirit summon. A giant floating mass of teeth and eyes with spiked tentacles dangling below it that could rip a man in two. Hugo is immediately fond of the idea and his spirit summons vanish.  

“Being in a party has its benefits,” I murmur as I move past her.

Hemi still needs that potion and I wasn’t going to leave without it. Thankfully, everything is labelled and I find a single small vial of the Allflower potion at the back of a shelf.

It is a pink, milky liquid and as soon as I touch it, I receive a message.

*Item Identified!* [The Allflower Rejuvenation Potion (Rare)] – This potion was crafted by master alchemists using the Allflower. A plant known to only grow in a particular region of a single planet. It can temporarily restore a person’s health and magic to peak form, but at great cost. There is a rebound effect where the recipient will receive double whatever energy they expire. So someone who runs a mile under the potion will experience the effect of having run two miles once its effect wears off. And someone who pushes themselves to exhaustion after consumption is somebody courting death.  

Huh, a strangely serious and straightforward explanation of the potion. Is it because the System wants Hemi to live? Whatever the case, I’ll have to make sure he understands the risks before taking it.

Now with that out of the way, I ask Eloise why she was acting so strangely before. “Why did you think I was going to kill you?”

“To make things more challenging for me. He would see it as character building.” She did not need to explain who she was referring to.

A tingle forms on the back of my neck as I wondered how many gods were watching us right now. Some gods could only see what the System Officiator wanted to show and what they could read from the aura of the tower climber they patronized. Roan, Eloise’s patron, was not one of those gods.

Hugo had also received patronage from this god, though of a more limited sort than Eloise. He’d been given a brand and when Hugo was about to fight Ostorox, a supposed ally of Roan’s, he’d activated it like a shock collar to put my friend out of the fight. Ironically, the god didn’t seem to care at all that Hugo had stolen its spirit once it was dead. Apparently there wasn’t much respect for the dead among these creatures.

Eloise turned, resuming her search through the store and continued explaining. “Once I’d gone through the portal, I fell into a bay with a Shrikon there to greet me.” She tried to suppress a shudder and failed as she recalled it. “Whereas I hear Jason arrived with a whole fleet handpicked for him.” A hint of bitterness slipping into her voice at the end.

“I don’t know what a Shrikon is, but if it makes you feel any better, I was dropped on a remote island filled with dangerous creatures too.”

She grunted. “It actually does a little.”

Considering Jason had been dropped at the town while we were stranded and left to fend for ourselves, it was clear that the System had not deposited us back here at random. Somebody was playing favorites.

“So what do you say?” I asked. “Team up?”

I try to sound hopeful as she mulls it over. There’s a freedom that comes from going it alone. An independence that can feel gratifying. But its shadow is loneliness. And in the blood and the death, it looms large. Allies can keep that darkness at bay. Friends even more so, if you’re willing to try.

Another silent moment passes between us as she evaluates whether I’m fit to be called either.

When it's over, she gives a curt nod, though I refrain from inviting her to the party just yet. I got the impression that Elise felt a little blindsided when I invited Sebastian.

[Lucas Hudson: Hey, just a heads up. I’m inviting someone else to join the crew. She’s another tower climber I met on the alien planet.]

[Hugo: When are you going to stop bringing that up, mister big shot astronaut?]

[Elise Evans: Can they be trusted?]

[Lucas Hudson: I trust her as much as I trust Pete.]

[Elise Evans: Got it.]

She knew that I didn’t know Pete that well and that I’d be keeping an eye on him. I expected the same from her when it came to the crewmates I’d selected.

“What’s your last name?” I asked Eloise. I’d tried to mentally send a party invite to her and it hadn’t worked.

She looked away, embarrassed. “My name’s not actually Eloise. That was a fake name I gave when I first woke up in the tower. I didn’t know who to trust and early on I saw someone use the invite function to distract them. They kept spamming invite requests and the person receiving them didn’t know how to mute them. He died staring at those things. Ever since then, I’ve used a false name.”

I told her that I understood and then paused. Either she’d trust me with her name or she’d have to go it alone.

“It’s Daisy Moore.”

I struggled to keep a straight face.

“What?” she asked.

“No. Nothing. You’ve just got this whole grim reaper thing going on with the shadows and the scythe. I guess I expected something more…”

“Sinister?”

“Intimidating.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what my parents had in mind when they named me.”

I added her to the party. There was a series of muted greeting and then we left the store together.

Hugo was outside, perched above on the store’s shingle, cursing. If Daisy was surprised that one of our party members was a sapient crow, she gave no sign of it.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“It’s back,” he pointed with his wing to a dark alleyway.

Persephone came padding out of the shadows. “Good work,” she said, indicating that recruiting Eloise had been their goal all along. Had some sort of deal been struck between Samara and Roan? I wondered.

“There’s another one you should consider taking before you begin the journey,” she said. “He’s in the hills outside of the city.”

“How are we supposed to find him?” I asked.

“There’s an old footpath that will take you up there. You can’t miss it.”

Persephone melted back into the shadows. As soon as she was gone, Hugo flew to my shoulder and ruffled his feathers. “She creeps me out.”

Meanwhile, Daisy was frowning. “You did not say that you had a Nimian Shapechanger assisting you.”

I shrugged. “Assistance is sometimes too strong of a word, but she has been helpful. Why? Is that a problem?”

Daisy shook her head.

We briefly returned to the hideout to give Hemi his potion. Elise shook him awake and made him swallow the whole thing. He instantly brightened and asked what our next move was. He, Elise, Sebastian, and Pete were to head to a cove on the other end of the island. There we’d leave on Hugo’s ship under the cover of darkness and punch our way through the blockade.

I had thought getting out of the city might’ve been difficult, but Daisy knew of a place that had been left unguarded. On our way there, she even managed to teach Hugo a rudimentary form of Aura Shrouding by modifying his shadow vault ability. Personally, I had my doubts about him pulling it off, considering how long it had taken me. But sure enough, by the time we’d reached the top of the hill outside of the city, she declared him successful. Hugo asked me to look as well, and I agreed that I could not perceive his aura.

“It only works when not using other abilities though,” she explained. “The shroud can be fragile, and using our powers at this level will cause it to slip away.”

Jason’s patrols are practically deaf and blind and we navigate around them with ease. The lack of success must be getting to them. It can’t be long before more tower climbers join the search.

I admit aloud that I’m curious about who this other person is that Persephone suggested and why they’re out in the hills. Hugo mutters that it might be a trap and Daisy echoes his sentiments. I tell them they’re wrong only because she and Samara have invested a lot in me and it wouldn’t benefit them to set me up now. The part I don’t say aloud is that I don’t know what they expect from me in the future, but I know the day will come when they do ask.

I push those thoughts out of my mind as we reach the top of the hill. No use worrying about tomorrow’s problems when todays are right in front of me.

There on top of the hill, a stone church stands. It is the only structure around and suddenly I know exactly who’s in there. There is only one person it could be. And again, my mind asks questions that I can’t answer. Like how much of that dinner party on Tanis was orchestrated. How much was the seating placements arranged in a such a way to elicit the perfect response?

I entered the church quietly so as not to surprise the Bellicose hammer’s tower climber, Roland. He’s kneeling in the church with his back to me. I’m not sure if he worshipped a god before the System integration or if this is just his way of communicating with his patron, so I wait a moment.

There are no pews in this church. Nor an altar. Just hundreds of shrines packed floor to ceiling around a small open space to walk inside the place. It makes me think of Yakeshi and my eyes start roaming for his shrine.

Roland raises his hand and a knife appears in it.

On instinct, I draw a blood sword, but the knife isn’t meant for me.

Roland strikes, plunging the knife down into his own chest.

“What are you doing?” I ask, rushing forward.

That’s when he finally notices us. He seems regretful that we found him like this. Blood seeps out of his mouth as he speaks his final words. “You should not be here. They’re coming.”