For someone without any experience riding horses and a fear of heights, flying through the air on the back of a pegasus had been a rather unpleasant method of travel.

  Though at least it was somewhat more dignified than this.

  “You okay back there?” Samantha asked for the third time as she peered over her shoulder, glancing at his face as Asher held onto her back. The two of them were currently soaring across the sky, heading from Whikoga back toward the remains of Horntho village. Through much trial and error, they’d discovered that carrying Asher on her back was the best method of allowing the two of them to fly together, as Samantha was able to prevent her wings from turning fully solid easily enough with a little focus. Them being more ethereal was their natural form, after all, it was only because of her Winged Shield skill that they were able to turn solid in the first place.

  “I’m just as fine as the last time you asked!” Asher called back over the whistling wind, his arms wrapped tightly around her upper torso as he tried not to focus on the ground shooting by beneath them. A small part of him had hoped that with time he’d come to completely eclipse his fear of heights, but while the edge had dulled a little bit, the thought of what slamming into the ground from such a height would do to him kept the fear as fresh as ever. He could come back from quite a lot of injuries, and even death in most cases, but impacting the ground from a quarter mile up and potentially popping like an overfilled water balloon would almost certainly spell the end for him.

  “Sorry, I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable!” she said, giving him another warm smile before turning her focus back on flying.

  After temporarily pulling Samantha into his Personal Rift and Recalling back to Whikoga, the two of them had taken to the sky and made a beeline back toward where Horntho village had once stood. Without any Eternal Marks to direct them, they’d had to fly up above the road and travel via an actual map Asher had Incorporated ahead of time, but they were still making phenomenal time. While they didn’t know her exact speed, Samantha could clearly fly far faster than anything moving about on the ground. And thanks to her fifth and final skill for the Wing element, Long Flight, she could keep that speed up for close to half an hour before having to come down and take a break. That time would only grow longer and longer the more the skill leveled, and Asher could tell Samantha was more than a little excited about the prospect of being able to one day stay up in the sky for hours at a time without worry.

  “There’s the village!” Samantha called out, pointing down at the charred remains of what had once been her home. Asher could feel her stiffen slightly under him as they soared past the darkened foundations of various buildings and the blood-soaked lands she’d grown up on, but rather than break down at the sight, he could practically feel her resolve hardening as she no doubt swore to herself to avenge all those who had perished at the lich’s hand. He briefly thought about asking if she wanted to stop and pay her respects, but before he could even get the chance, Samantha shot past, not slowing down in the slightest.

  “Are you going to be able to find the tower again?” he asked as they hit the wall of trees and began soaring over the Lavash forest. “It was what, somewhere around a hundred miles from the edge of the forest?”

  “Remember how I managed to get us back to the village after we escaped the tower in the first place? One of the skills from my Forest element is Natural Guide,” she explained, her eyes scanning the trees zipping past beneath them as they flew deeper into the forest. “Nothing fancy, but it basically gives me a mental map of any area I travel within a forest. Even while I’m unconscious, apparently, as it kept logging my surroundings when the imps knocked me out and dragged us back to the wizard’s tower. It was thanks to that I was able to backtrack and lead us home, and it’s how we’ll find the tower again.”

  “Alright, just don’t tire yourself out too much. We want to be rested and ready when we finally hit the tower!”

  Feeling Samantha nod under him, Asher went over their bare-bones plan one more time as they flew. Donvath hadn’t been able to give them any future-assistance as to what they’d be getting into, but that alone was telling. Presumably, taking down one of the members of The Council of Death would have enough of an impact to actually change some of the critical points he was capable of seeing, which meant whatever they ended up doing today, they probably wouldn’t end up encountering the wizard who had originally trapped them within the tower.

  Granted, Donvath had already admitted the Timeline got a bit fuzzy and hard to read where greater demons, wizards, and Asher himself got involved, for whatever reason. And seeing as all three of those things might be involved in the near future, they weren’t planning on relying on the High Prince very much.

  Even so, Asher had a feeling they wouldn’t encounter the lich in this old tower. While they moved slowly and liked to delegate important tasks that they really should have tried to handle on their own, one thing the liches weren’t was dumb. Seeing as Asher, Samantha, and Brian had all escaped its tower alive, the lich had to know its tower had been compromised, and had most likely withdrawn to a different location.

  Rather than seriously trying to take the lich down, today was more about killing whatever demons and imps might still remain, and potentially searching the tower for any hints as to where the lich may have retreated to. Not to mention looting it for valuables that might assist them in the fights to come. Seeing as Donvath wasn’t willing to open the royal vaults for them, and for good reason, as those futures always led to the destruction of the entire Noala Kingdom, they could use whatever assistance they could get.

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  Luckily, they already knew that the lich had a small stockpile of powerful potions and enchanted weapons tucked away within its tower, all of them just ripe for the taking.

  A hundred miles was quite a large distance to cover, even with the power of flight, and Samantha had to touch down to rest two more times before they found the tower once again. Though curiously, they didn’t manage to spot it stretching out over the treeline like Asher had expected.

  “There, the tower is down there!” Samantha said, pointing at a seemingly random spot of the forest from up above.

  “Uh… Not that I doubt your skill, but that just looks like a bunch of trees,” Asher said, squinting as he tried to pick out what she was pointing at as they hovered in place with a few flaps of her wings. “The tower is definitely larger than the trees surrounding it. It should be rather visible from up above.”

  “Well Natural Guide is telling me this is the place,” Samantha said, carefully bringing them lower as she flew in a lazy circle around where the tower supposedly was. “My skill’s never been wrong before, it should definitely-”

  The two of them gasped as they finally got close enough that the tower shimmered and suddenly appeared out of nowhere, jutting out of the treeline like a giant obelisk. Until they’d gotten within about fifty feet of it, the tower hadn’t just been completely invisible, there had been the illusion of trees growing where it was currently standing, completely hiding it and any sort of opening in the treeline from sight.

  “I guess that explains how the lich managed to remain hidden all this time,” Asher said, staring at the stone tower as they continued descending.

  “No kidding. I knew we were in the right spot thanks to my skill, and part of me still wondered if I wasn’t going crazy,” Samantha muttered, drifting closer. “Are we still going with plan A?”

  “I see no reason why not!” Asher said, grinning as he began mentally preparing himself for what was to come.

  “Alright, get ready!”

  While Samantha had gotten far better at flying, her landings were still more than a little bit rough when she had to account for his weight on top of her own. Despite her best efforts, she’d yet to figure out a way of smoothly landing with him on her back, so they’d come up with a simpler solution. As Samantha drifted down toward the roof of the tower, Asher waited until the last possible moment before slipping into the astral. His timing was perfect, and as Samantha landed on the tower roof, he only dropped a few feet after phasing through Samantha’s body before hitting the roof himself. Returning to the material realm, he matched her wide smile as their practiced landing went off without a hitch.

  “Ready?” he asked, pulling her enchanted bow and a quiver of arrows from his rift and handing them over. “Remember, even if you’re not flying, keep your wings manifested. Not only will Winged Savior keep you alive in the event of a surprise attack, you need to practice fighting with them.”

  “I know how my own skills work, thank you very much,” Samantha said, sticking her tongue out at him as she secured the quiver across her back. “Don’t you worry about me. As long as we don’t stumble across another greater demon, I can hold my own just fine.”

  “I know you can,” he said, smiling as he held out a hand. The moment she took it, Asher pulled her into his Personal Rift, before slipping into the astral and dropping through the roof.

  Landing in a pitch-black room holding nothing more than a simple stone pedestal.

  Hoping beyond hope, Asher let out a defeated sigh as he confirmed his suspicions. Unlike the last time he’d entered this room, he now had an evolved resistance to darkness, which meant he didn’t need to rely on a tiny, flickering flame from a primitive match to see. That also meant he didn’t have any issues making out how the stone pedestal, which had once held fourteen heavily enchanted objects and the element of Eternity, was now completely barren.

  They’d all figured that The Council of Death would move their phylacteries with the tower’s location being compromised, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping that taking down the entire council would be as easy as making fourteen quick thrusts of his dagger.

  Of course, each of the phylacteries was supposedly warded to the realms and back, which meant destroying them would almost certainly be a little bit tougher than just stabbing them, even with his masterwork mithral dagger. Donvath had promised he’d look into what was needed on that front in the event they actually managed to get their hands on one of the phylacteries, and Asher had been more than happy to leave the research to the High Prince to figure out.

  Slipping into the astral one last time, Asher stepped through the vault door separating the phylactery room from the stairwell before reaching into his rift and pulling Samantha out. The hunter shivered as she took in the tower all around them, gritting her teeth as she preemptively nocked an arrow on her bow.

  “This place feels almost worse than the last time we were here,” she muttered, gazing around at the cold, stone stairwell. “I’ll be happy once we’re done.”

  “You and me both,” Asher said, mentally switching his class from assassin over to demon hunter. The moment he did, he paused, grinning at the subtle itch in the back of his head. Along with allowing his weapons to better bypass a demon’s impressive defenses, he’d noticed in the past how the class also seemed to give him a sixth sense that triggered when demons were nearby.

  “What’s that grin supposed to mean?” Samantha asked, raising an eyebrow as she glanced at him.

  “It means even if the lich isn’t here, they left a few new tenants for us to greet in its stead,” Asher said, pulling out his daggers from his bandolier and gesturing for Samantha to take the lead down the stairs. “Want to go say hello?”

  Discord