“Damn it, I don't like this,” Billy said, expressing the feeling of the whole group. “He is going to scatter us across time. We have always fought as a group. Well, nearly always,” Billy corrected himself, as he remembered his lone foray into the Madison dungeon.

  “You heard him,” Bob said glumly. “I don’t think we have much choice. Damn it, first Penny, now him. These people do not deserve hell.”

  “I have a feeling many Immortals don’t,” Jenna answered. “I could make an exception with Necessity, though.”

  She sighed. “Ok, it is clear we are going to do this. If we are going to travel through time, we need to establish a rendezvous point. We’ll meet at Discovery’s apartment one hour after we leave for the Black Tower.”

  “We will meet there, no matter what happens, and the universe can go to hell for all I care. I will not lose either of you.”

  “Let’s make an Oath,” Bob said. “That may tweak things in our favor.”

  The three held hands together, and Bob spoke an oath.

  Oathsealing was a strange skill. Its Perks were one-use constructs that vanished once completed, created instantly. They resisted shaping unless they were binding agreements—or forged in moments of consequence.

  And when Bob let fate speak through him, he did not fully control what emerged.

  “We shall meet again. We will meet at Discovery’s apartment one hour after we leave for the Black Tower.

  I so swear — as the Skillmaster,” said Bob.

  “I so swear — as the Primordial,” answered Jenna.

  “I so swear — as the Everlasting,” finished Billy.

  They felt the oath take form around them.

  The Oath of Reunion (Oathsealing 5): The Losers will make it to the agreed appointment. Anyone who doesn't make it will be forever lost to the others.

  As a reward, once before the Oath is completed, and only when everything seems lost, each of the Losers may ask for a revelation that will have a profound impact on future events.

  Bob let out a low whistle. “Rank five? That is the highest perk I have created so far. I am not sure I entirely like the terms of the oath, though,” he sighed. “They have a way of doing that.”

  “You are going to like this even less, Bob,” Jenna told him sadly.

  “You are going to ask me to give the Cup of Belona to Billy, aren’t you?” Bob smiled. “He must bury it twenty-five aeons ago, so that it can be found in the future by those archaeologists. I always knew that would happen when I saw that photo. Well, I can always craft another one. No, I can’t,” he corrected himself. “I don’t have the ingredients right now.” He kissed the Cup goodbye and gave it to Billy.

  “I have other gifts,” Bob said. “Things you will need.” He opened his satchel and took out the last of his alchemical creations with him.

  “This is for you, Jenna,” handing her one yellow and one blue pill with a flourish.

  “They are rank 3 stat enhancers. The yellow one adds +3 to Mind for ten seconds, and the blue one does the same with Spirit. They were originally part of a set, but you already used the Body one against Bethella. They can potentially grant +6 to a tertiary stat — thousands of times beyond the human limit.”

  He then gave her a stick of alchemical incense. “Light it on fire and breathe it. It will eventually allow you to create one Shadow Gate. Combined with your own powers, it will allow you to travel to other worlds without my help,” he explained.

  “This must be what Governance was referring to,” Jenna said.

  Billy got three pills too. “I based them on your temporary dungeons concept. They let you assume respawn shapes. The first one halves the cost of any shape, but limits its duration to one day. The second reduces the cost to one-fifth of the usual achievement points, but the form lasts only an hour. The last one reduces it to one tenth, but it only lasts a minute.”

  “What happens when the duration runs out?” Billy asked.

  “You discorporate,” Bob explained. “I would also like to add some experience tonic, in case you run into an inactive system, but we used it all for the first task.”

  Billy noticed Jenna become distinctly uncomfortable. He also realized Bob had not created any alchemical compound for himself. He had dedicated all his time and resources to the other two Losers. For all his quirks, Bob was the most generous person Billy had ever met.

  “Take care, you big oaf,” Jenna said, warmly embracing him. Billy also hugged him. Then they left him at the temple. The last image they saw was of him sitting down and starting to read Governance’s instructions.

  Billy respawned into Gryphon form, and they flew back towards the tower. Both felt sad and miserable. They did not want to do this without the other. There wasn't much talk on the way back.

  They were running out of time, but they had all the time in the world, too—quirks of time travel. They decided they could take one day out of eternity. The following morning, they descended the stairs of the Black Tower, holding hands.

  The Keeper watched in silence as they hugged each other—no snarky comments. No subtle innuendo. It let them have that moment for themselves. Maybe he was not so bad after all.

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  “I can’t feel Governance’s dissonance anymore. I owe you a trip. By the way, where is the other? Weren’t you three?” the Keeper said, watching them intently. “I guess you will be wanting to return to your timeline,” the dragon added.

  Billy realized the dragon always existed in the present of whoever stood before him, no matter where they came from. He clearly remembered having talked with them before, even though it was technically centuries before their first meeting. Time rules did not apply to him.

  “You guessed wrong,” Jenna answered. “You will take me to a point four weeks before the Chicago Tribulation attacked Babylon.”

  “Four weeks?” Billy thought. She was clearly up to something. He preferred not to ask.

  “And you will take me twenty-six aeons, four hundred forty-three thousand, six hundred and ten years, plus four months and three days into the past,” Billy said, reciting Governance’s instructions from memory.

  “Two trips for one single task?” the dragon exclaimed, clearly annoyed.

  “Three,” Jenna answered, “you also owe Bob one trip. Your rules, not mine.”

  “Pah. Whatever. I know you cunning types. You will try to meddle with history. Then I will have to send someone equally cunning to hunt you down before you succeed,” the dragon said as he started to manifest two different sets of numbers on his chest.

  Billy memorized his set. They had time for one last hug, then Jenna took the third entry. He looked sadly at her vanishing figure and approached the sixth. He had his own way to follow.

  “Jenna, give my regards to Andara,” the dragon said mockingly, just as Jenna was lost from sight. Damn.

  “What did you mean by that?” Billy asked angrily, glaring at the dragon.

  “I am an honest dealer. I never snitch on my clients,” the creature said, and then dove back into the bottom of the lake.

  Billy continued his walk, his way lighted by a small, bright sphere filled with one of Bob’s alchemical creations, which acted as a flashlight. A minor crafting, he had called it. It seems he could have made things like this long ago, even without special ingredients.

  There were so many things they did not know.

  The journey seemed to drag on for hours. Finally, Billy saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

  He went back to a very changed world. The sun seemed brighter and hotter, and this time, a wild jungle surrounded the Black Tower.

  He summoned the respawn screen and watched it for two hours. His total achievement points remained unchanged. He had a little over two thousand of them remaining.

  Damn! It was the worst possible outcome. He was in a period without an active System.

  They had run out of Experience Tonic when Jenna had to use it to complete her own task.

  He would not be getting any more achievement points without it. Not even corpse-camping would provide any. How was he supposed to build a complete dungeon without them?

  He had the other pills Bob had given him, but he would have to hoard carefully every point if he expected to survive.

  He was also lost in the middle of a wild jungle, in his basic form. He wouldn’t last long like this. He decided to give it a try at creating an Essence Gestalt. He could probably nail it if he used the Headshaker form, but that would add to its cost.

  Billy sighed. He should have used his brief stint as a Headshaker to create and memorize as many Gestalt combinations as possible, but they had all been in such a rush that he simply did not think about it.

  That was a mistake he would not commit again. Headshaker was not a terribly expensive form, as its minimum rank was level 10 for the Moon Goblin, and the addition of Headless Machetist would halve the cost. Still, a cheap Headshaker would grant cheap results, not much better than risking creating the Gestalt by himself.

  Two thousand achievement points — he would have to hoard them like gold. He considered the possibility of using one of Bob’s pills to become a Headshaker for an hour, but the pill was also a valuable resource.

  Ultimately, he chose a more affordable option. He combined the Elven Hunter and Headless Machetist classes. The minimum rank for the Hunter was six, and by adding the Machetist, he could reduce the cost to 25 achievement points per rank. This meant he would spend only 150 points, which was just slightly more than the cost of a quick respawn. He allocated 100 points to the Hunter form and 50 points to the Machetist, blended them in his mind, and then respawned in a flash of blue light.

  The jungle seemed brighter, more in focus. He could hear the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves, smell the musk of beasts, and the hidden aroma of the trees around him.

  He had returned as the most disreputable-looking elf ever. He could not see his face, but his hair was long and black, held in place with pins that seemed to be made of human bones. His belt consisted of the shrunken heads of his decapitated victims. He wore rugged leather armor adorned with tribal insignia and a huge machete tied to his back.

  He summoned his spawn screen.

  Elven Headhunter: Rank 6.

  He had the Elven legacy and a sword-derived competency called Machete Fighting—no new Pantean skills, as was the norm with gestalts. Gestalts only got perks derived from skills included in at least one of the components, meta-abilities, or conditional/passive stat boosts.

  He had the basic Elven stat boost when outdoors and to appearance, plus some extra bonuses to perception and dexterity only while in the wilderness. The headhunter also gained instinctive knowledge of outdoor survival techniques, along with bonuses to resilience and physical stats against environmental hazards.

  The machete competency granted perfect mastery of all machete combat techniques, plus an ability similar to Death Cut that doubled his physical stats for a single cut, with a five-minute cooldown that did not apply if the strike killed its target.

  The shape suited his goals perfectly. For once, luck was on his side.

  He walked for three days, avoiding the dangers of the jungle. He quenched his thirst with fruit juice and sustained himself by eating small animals, insects, and lizards. Billy was sure that he wouldn't have fond memories of this experience when he returned to his normal state of mind.

  He had a clear destination in mind: a grove of enormous trees located a few leagues away. These trees would give him a significant advantage in scanning the rest of the jungle.

  When night fell, he reached the grove and slept for a few hours to regain his strength. In the morning, he climbed the tallest tree among them. It took him all morning, but he finally reached a sturdy horizontal limb that could support his weight, allowing him to use it as a lookout.

  His Elven eyes quickly scanned the whole jungle, finally finding what he was looking for: an enormous cascade whose water fell on the gigantic skull of an ancient behemoth. This was the spot on which he was supposed to build his time dungeon.

  But there was a slight problem — there was already a dungeon at that site.

  The cascade was encircled by what looked to be an enormous labor camp in which sadistic blue-skinned cyclops overseers made humanoid slaves work under grueling conditions.

  His sharp eyes saw the grisly work of whips striking flesh. All the slaves looked beaten and malnourished.

  His respawn screen gave him a warning.

  Name: The Work Field

  Rank seven dungeon.

  Motif: You will toil till you die.

  Tags: Inverted, Reproductive, Durance, Hatchery