Charlotte twitched, her left eye going crazy. “I’m sorry, did you just say your sister? Like Nyx and Erebus, that kind of sister?”

Gaia nodded at the girl with a look like she was daft.

“But a sister, from an alternative dimension from ours? One that isn’t a higher plane of existence like what the gods use, but simply a different parallel dimension?”

The Great World Spirit nodded again. “I don’t know why you are having such a hard time with this. Your science has already speculated on their existence for years.”

“Speculated, yes, but you just casually confirmed that there are not only overlapping dimensions, but alternate ones as well. The possibilities of what might be out there… Are mind-boggling!” Charlotte finally managed to finish after struggling to put her amazement into suitable words.

“Well, you’ll have the chance to learn all you want once you finally awaken the full measure of your High God potential. Until then, I’m afraid you’re going to be mostly stuck here, in this universe, and dimension, with all of us. Now, I have work to do. James, if you would be so kind as to take them out?”

Charles grabbed his stunned sister and pulled her towards the necromancer, who had finally dared to move again.

“Wait,” He called out. “What are you going to do with them now? Anything?”

“I’m thinking of putting them through some tests similar to the ones I put little Kate’s group through. I thought it might be useful to help me learn a little more in a focused environment. At the same time, it will let me help them train some of their skills as a way to repay them. Who knows, I might even come up with a helpful item or two that would survive the rules of their system.”

“Why are you going through so much effort for them?”

“It’s simple. They helped me far more than they have managed to annoy me. The amount of knowledge I gleaned from their system has been immensely useful to my future plans.”

“Would this be useful in creating an item for them?” He asked after a moment’s thought, withdrawing Aeshma’s Trident from his inventory. He had originally intended to use it to make some items for Kate and Beth. But if she could use it for their items, he would consider it a decent trade.

“That won’t do, no. However, it does give me an idea of what I can use.” She flicked a finger, hinting that it was time for them to go.

“Wow, Char really nerded out there,” James muttered before the same sphere as before swallowed them up and send them speeding to the bottom of the tower.

“Hey,” Charlotte protested after she finished gagging again. “I had more questions for her.”

“I don’t think she was in the mood to answer them, sis,” Charles grunted. Glaring at the orb, at least with his new spatial upgrades, he would be able to find James on his own now. The lack of decent personal connection wouldn’t stop him anymore. Now he could simply go through Scott’s threads to find him and open a doorway to the man.

Unfortunately, he doubted that would work inside the tower. The rest of the time, it shouldn’t be a problem though.

“What do you want to do now?” He asked as they walked out of the tower sans necromancer, who had vanished to rejoin Gaia.

“I kind of want to practice using ‘Blink’, but I understand if you want to go back up and relax.”

“I’m perfectly alright with practicing the spell. It sounds like a fun one to use, especially when it’s combined with my wings.”

“I agree.” Her own wings formed behind her, taking on the same stormy golden green color as her glowing eyes.

“I was wondering when you were going to show me your wings. I almost doubted you had them a few times, except I remembered it’s a racial trait.”

“I only unlocked them after our fight with Leri in Wales, and I haven’t had a lot of chances to use them since then. I took Scott up a couple of times, and then work got in the way and I just forgot to mention them to you.”

“Right, forgot.” He rolled his eyes doubtfully and flapped his wings.

Together, they soared above the town and through the barrier. From there, they picked a random direction away from everything where they could practice on the ground first before they tried it out in the sky. Odds are they would have been fine, but it never hurt to be careful. You never knew what might unexpectedly happen with something like this.

They kept flying for several minutes, simply enjoying the freedom the action brought with it. It was freezing in Kansas, and even more so when soaring through the air at any speed. Soon enough, they were forced to land and put on some heavier clothes.

The blink spell was an instant cast line-of-sight spell that consumed mana like a baby did milk. It was a near bottomless hole. The farther you went, the greater the cost. In other words, if they were to use it while flying, the drain on their resources could be enormous.

That was why they first had to see how bad it was for them. Just because it was near crippling for a normal person didn’t mean it would be that way for them after all.

Both sighted in on a tree maybe thirty yards in the distance and cast the spell. Charles felt a small amount of energy drain from his body and immediately flow back in as the mana gathering rune on his hand went to work. Charlotte, whose stats were more heavily weighted in magic instead of her intelligence and mana pool, felt the drain only slightly more.

The unknown number of stats they were getting from their slowly awakening race was not small. Especially in her case, since she was so much higher than him. Those question marked filled annoyances were making all the difference for her.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

Charlotte slowly nodded. “It’s certainly useable and would be great in a fight if we ever came across something we couldn’t simply overpower.”

Charles shivered. “Please don’t say that sis, that’s called foreshadowing, and you just threw down a giant flag of doom. We’ve gotten so much stronger since we faced that dragon! Do you know what we would have to fight now for something like that to happen?”

He quickly covered her mouth to stop her from speaking.

“Do not jinx us any more than you already have, please?”

She huffed and folded her arms. “Fine, you are being ridiculous, but fine. Going back to the spell. I could feel the drain from thirty yards, but it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Want to try something farther?”

If only they knew that simple sentence would have had Zack in tears because of how much it cost him to go the same distance.

“Of course.” Charles pointed to the remains of an old barn in the distance. “I’d say that’s maybe around a hundred, a hundred and twenty yards. Give or take a bunch.” He sucked at measuring abstract distances.

“It’s a hundred and thirty-five yards,” She sighed in disgust. “But yes, let’s go with that.”

Over the next few minutes, they continued to experiment, with increasingly longer distances. Then, before they even used half their mana pool, they decided to call it quits on the ground and took to the sky.

They climbed higher than they ever had in the past in order to see the curvature of the growing planet. Looking at it from this height, it was obvious how much the world had already grown. Broken roads that were now separated by random plots of grass and landmarks that should have been just a little closer than they were.

Neither had any idea how much Gaia had already grown the planet, but it wasn’t a small amount. It was something the Morrighan had mentioned during their conversation. From above in the space station, it wasn’t as obvious, at least not yet. No doubt it soon would be if she kept going at her current pace. A foot here and a foot there all over the world quickly added up to a lot of additional space.

Charles picked a spot he felt he could safely handle without killing himself and blinked through the sky. It was a decision he instantly regretted as the thirsty spell went at him with a vengeance he had rarely felt from any other spell. It turns out it was much harder to gauge distances in the sky where there was nothing to use as a reference point.

The rune on his hand heated up as it went to work, trying to save him from his own stupidity.

He turned around just as Charlotte screamed and plunged towards the ground. She had done the exact same thing as him, with similar results. The only difference was she didn’t have a mana-gathering rune that could save her life.

He groaned as his system reached a sort of equilibrium, where it was still being drained but also being refilled just as quickly. It was murder on his strengthened channels, and the rune was growing hotter by the second. However, he wasn’t in danger of burning out for the moment.

His sister and her life were a bigger worry by far.

Charles dove after her, glad they were so high up as it gave him plenty of time to catch her. He plucked the potion from her waist and put it in her hand. “Come on, sis, if there was ever a time to drink this thing, it was now!”

Her eyes were unfocused and her hands uncoordinated as they removed the top from the potion. Unfortunately, she was the only one who could do it. They weren’t in a party at the moment, and Bob had said he changed the permissions to it for her use only.

Several precious seconds passed as her hands fumbled with the lid, finally getting it removed just as Charles landed.

Impatiently, he lifted the potion to her lips and forced her to drink the entire thing. All they could do now was wait and hope the damage that had been done was repairable.

They had been stupid to try something like ‘Blink’ out in the sky without even considering that this might happen. Now they were both paying the price.

Charles held his right hand out to the side and screamed as the gathering rune turned white hot and began to burn the channels it was connected to.