“Hey, fellas,” the man said. “Mind closing the door?”

  We stared at him. There were four of us, and from the smell of this room, closing it seemed like a bad idea.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Give me, ah, a second to cast a spell.”

  His hands gesticulated, then he disappeared.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered to the others. “We have him cornered.”

  I heard footsteps. The smell got worse. Then more footsteps.

  He reappeared in front of the cot.

  “That usually works, that invisibility thang.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Geoff,” he said. I detected a hint of an American Southern Bayou accent. Growing up in East Texas, we had plenty of those folks after Katrina. But even with my familiarity, I couldn’t quite place where.

  “Well, Geoff,” Bernadette said. “We are glad to see a friendly face. You are friendly, yes?”

  “That I could be,” he said.

  “Want to come on out for a bit?” I asked. “I'm sure you’re tired of being cooped up here.”

  “I could use a walk. Not more of them robots out’cher, yeah?”

  “None working,” I said.

  He shrugged, and we let him walk out of the secret room. He probably could have turned invisible again and run away, but he seemed willinging to give communication a shot.

  His robes hung loose on his thin, thall frame, and he was as pale as can be.

  “I suppose y’all are from beyond the blue door, yeah?” he asked.

  “We are,” I said. “But except for Cal here, who is one of our friend’s kid.”

  “One of Caleb’s kids?”

  “Indeed,” Cal said.

  “Figured that would happen at some point. The crew and I made sure to give ‘em a wide berth. Figured ourselves as a kind of anarchists.” He held his fist up. “‘No, gods, no masters,’ yeh?”

  We all turned furniture over, and settled in. I started with a quick summary of our story: That we were a gaming group, that we got mixed up through time, that we eventually all made it back together except for Mark and Caleb. I ended with what we knew of Sofia.

  “Wait, the Evil Queen is from Texas? Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Whole world jus’ a proxy for two of dem that think they owed it. Fuck. Ain't that just the way.”

  “Where is the rest of your crew?” I asked.

  He frowned, and chewed on his facial hair.

  “All dead.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe they’re hiding like you?”

  “Nope I’m sure.”

  I popped my monocle in.

  Geoff the Abjurer level 8, 50hp.

  Not many hit points. I think I knew what that word meant, abjurer. Probably something like ‘protect’ in the rules of The Game.

  “Well,” I said. “Why not join us?”

  “Nah, I don’t know,” he waffled. “I’m trying to get dem back. Reading books takes a long time.”

  “Get them back?” I questioned. “How? Resurrection?”

  “The Spell of True Return. Should be possible with how the Well of Souls works.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He guffawed. Then stared at us.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes,” Bernie said.

  “Ah, shit. Y’all don’t have an Intelligence score over 12, do ya?”

  I looked at the others then said, “I mean, mine is 13, so is Bernie’s.”

  Geoff laughed again.

  “I’m a charisma caster,” I added.

  “No, no, I’m sure you’re a great… Bard I guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But y’all look like you’ve been trying to be too many things. Nobody’s a specialist!” He pointed to Bernadette. “I bet you’re a rogue/sorcerer multiclass, yeh?”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Warlock,” she corrected.

  Geoff laughed again.

  “That’s worse. You see how that’s worse, right?”

  “I’m just a Barbarian,” Rachel said.

  “With a rapier? What have you all been doing? How did you get this far?”

  “At least our crew is alive still,” Bernadette muttered.

  Geoff’s eyes hardened.

  “Yep. Right you are.”

  There was silence as we all let that sink in.

  “I came here with my friends, true friends. And we was just starting to do some good here.”

  “What time? When?” I asked.

  “The future,” he answered. “The far future of 2010.”

  He let that simmer with us. We tried to have a poker face about it, but his smile showed that he caught on that he was from our past.

  “So my best friend Ginny, my brother Derril, and my, I guess my boyfriend Laurent, we all play The Game together. My uncle ran it. He was in a thrash metal band, looked up to him. Even though metal was pretty much dead. You have any groceries? Hopefully not a raptor steak.”

  We shared some cheese and crackers. He ate and washed it down with wine he seemed pretty excited for.

  “This is great! Thanks. Where was I? Right. Derril was a paladin, Ginny a ranger, Laurent a sorcerer, and I was a rogue. Oh yes, I started as a rogue but changed later.”

  “You can reclass?” I asked.

  “Certainly. Have to take a 10% delevel, but it’s possible. Course, if you find the right ink, you can do it in other, less expensive ways.”

  I filed away that information for later.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “We worked independently for a bit. Fought some goblins. Met some others from beyond the blue door that didn’t want to share. Had adventures plenty. Fought the Evil Queen and the Tyrant’s forces both. Eventually confessed my feelings for Laurent. Had an elven ceremony. It was beautiful, we all cried. Nobody there to throw bottles at me. Then we get here, to this tower. The master of the tower, Liam, and his robot wife. They wined and dined us. The others wanted to move on, but not me. I wanted to know more about the tower. More about the Pillar of the World, and what it could do.”

  “So,” he continued, “I convinced them to stay. I took the delevel to become a Wizard. I shared the spells I’d learned with Liam. He shared magic with me. I don’t know what happened, if it was jealousy, or paranoia, or what. But eventually he decided I gotta leave. We get into an argument. He pulls out the big guns. Time Stop spell. Tore us all apart. I teleported a floor down, and ran.”

  “Shit,” I heard myself say.

  “Yeah,” he continued. “And I’ve been down here, reading and pushing down floor by floor. Don’t think I’m close to the exit. But after five years of hiding, I bet you an ‘dem can tell me how far I got to go.”

  We all looked at each other. I didn’t know what to say, and it didn’t seem like any of us knew better.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What I say?”

  “I think we’re on the third floor,” I said, finally.

  He stood, waved his hands, and teleported away.

  From the floor below, we heard a cacophony of eldritch noise and squelching.

  I headed for the stairs. Three robots, frozen solid by a fine layer of ice, stood in front of us. We ran past them and down the next set of stairs. I turned and followed the hall to the door out.

  The four of us stood and watched Geoff the Wizard, kneeling at the edge of the open doors, in full view of the mountains and lake, right next to the rope ladder down, we watched him bawl his eyes out. Rachel was the first to approach him. The wind picked up, and tousled his hair. Rachel knelt next to him, and held him as he cried harder.

  Soon, he was done. Rachel stood.

  He turned to us, his eyes red and puffy.

  “To think I spent months, months in that cubby — hiding — when freedom was minutes away. I haven’t felt the breeze in five years. Five years!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Rachel wiped tears from her eyes too.

  “I don’t know if I can go back in,” he said.

  “What if you can get vengeance for Harry,” Bernadette said.

  “I don’t know if I want it. I just want him back.”

  “That’s fair,” Rachel said.

  “Give me time to think,” he said.

  We nodded, and walked back into the tower.

  There was intermittent talk about what to do next. We all agreed that having both a dedicated spellcaster — a wizard even — would do wonders to fill out our party. Especially one that could potentially stop the master of the tower, Liam, from frying us all at once.

  I filled Berryhop in on what had happened. She told me, in a rather distracted way, that she was good to stay here with Anne.

  She’d helped to save my life when I was on death’s door. Her alchemical prowess was remarkable. But when the fighting got tough, I was worried she’d get hurt. She didn’t really have the killer instinct to do well in a fight.

  So if she wanted to sit this next bit out, who was I to tell her otherwise?

  I told the others what she’d said, and then we moved on.

  Geoff walked back in, looking somewhat haunted, glancing around like a robot was going to jump out of nowhere, and attack him. He wasn’t likely wrong about that.

  “I’ve made my decision,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I prodded.

  “I think I can teleport y’all higher up, get you much closer to the top. I’ll help you change your classes, should you need to. Then I’ll return ‘cher.”

  “You could teleport all along?”

  “Only to that one sigil. I changed classes, here, remember? I’d not had time to attune to any others.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I’ll need to make a sigil here, first, ‘course.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I climbed the stairs with him up to his cubby, and helped him carry down some paints, crystals, and miscellaneous magical stuff. He started working right away. I understood the instinct to push dread away by throwing yourself into work.

  “So how would I go about changing my class?” I asked him as he marked the sigil down on the tile with chalk.

  “You’re a Fighter Bard. Not a bad combo. Why would you want to?”

  I thought for a second.

  “Well we don’t really have a dedicated caster. Last time we went up against a Witch, she counterspelled our ass into oblivion, because our one wizard couldn’t keep up.”

  “Sounds right,” he muttered.

  “And with my kit being so frontline focused, I’m worried I’ll miss my opportunity to buff or heal while I’m swinging a sword. I think maybe I should just be a bard.”

  “Maybe. Can I look at your stats?”

  I handed him my slate.

  “Now this is handy,” he said. “Your build is fine, great even. But you’re right that it works better if you already had a fullcaster. As it is, your build isn’t working for the team composition you’ve fallen into.” He handed the slate back. “Those are neat contraptions. Too bad you don’t have your physical character sheet,” he said. “Else we could fix it right here.”

  I walked over to Rachel who was talking to Berryhop, and gave her a nod as I grabbed her satchel. I reached in and produced the tube, then walked back.

  “I took it through the blue door with me,” I said, popping the top and pulling my character sheet out.

  Geoff’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s not just a character sheet,” he said, “that’s a prime character sheet. We could change more than just your class. If we had enough magic ink, we could do just about anything we wanted.”

  “What?”

  “That’s an artifact from beyond the blue door. Its relationship to this world is reciprocal.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Good thing I didn’t lose it.”