Chapter 8

Earth
Spectre Base, Canadian Rockies
August 12, 2019
23:12 PDT (20:12 EDT)

People stopped what they were doing and were watching the reunion taking place. Jonathan didn’t remember his sisters, and neither did they remember him, for that matter. They were too young. Jonathan was a little over three years old, and his sisters a mere nine days old when their parents were assassinated. They were split up upon achieving orbit of Nedovis, and were placed in stasis chambers where they remained for over fourteen hundred years.

Aleena, Lucille and Alexis were actually taken out of stasis three years before Jonathan was, so they would be around the same age. Jonathan just turned eighteen, but the triplets would have a few weeks to go before their own eighteenth birthdays. Their caretakers had done this because events would start to rapidly unfold, and it would be beneficial if all three could defend themselves. Now, all four of them could be trained at the same pace, rather than Jonathan being three years ahead of his sisters.

Alexandra stepped through the portal a few moments after Jonathan did and surveyed the room. She laughed upon seeing Jonathan being swarmed by his sisters. “Girls, let your brother up, and introduce yourselves.”

The girls looked around and noticed all the people watching them. They were unabashed as they got to their feet. Both Aleena and Alexis extended their hands to Jonathan to help him to his feet.

“Thanks. I ... uh ... don’t know what to call any of you.”

“That’s ok. I’m Lucille. Aleena is to your left, and Alexis is to your right,” she said, gesturing to both.

“Nice to meet you, Lucille, Aleena and Alexis. Please forgive me if I mess up each of your names. It’s hard enough telling those two apart when they dress alike,” I said, using my thumb to point at the twins I knew were standing behind me.

“You won’t have any trouble with that when you learn how to Mindspeak. Each person’s mind will feel different. Even triplets are easy to distinguish using Mindspeak,” Alexandra cut in.

I turned to her. “Why can’t I Mindspeak anyways? You said Scyftans are born with the ability to Mindspeak.”

“You can’t yet because when you were removed from stasis, a barrier was put in place around your mind. What that means is that you can’t sense other people’s minds, and people can’t sense yours. Remember what Gabriel said about agents of Kaldrus Dhir searching for you? We couldn’t take a chance of someone detecting you before you were ready.”

“It makes sense. I get it. When am I going to be taught how to use Mindspeak? I’m assuming that I’ll need to know how to use that before I can shapeshift?”

She nodded. “You, along with your friends, if they would like to, can all learn Mindspeak together. The when depends on whether or not you would like to postpone going into the dungeon for a few days.”

“Wait, how can they learn Mindspeak? I thought it was something unique to Scyftans?”

“It is, but they can learn a lesser version of it in Telepathy,” she said, taking four orange Skill Gems out of her pocket. She turned to my friends and handed them out. “These are 537S Skill Gems, otherwise known as Telepathy. Don’t learn them yet as it can be quite disorienting with so many people around. Once you’ve mastered the ability, you’ll be able to communicate with each other a lot more quickly.”

They all profusely thanked Alexandra for the gift. It’s not everyday someone is handed a legendary Skill Gem for free, let alone four people.

“Alright, go catch up with your sisters. Gabriel and I want to have a chat with your friends, and then afterwards there are a few more people to meet,” she said after she turned back to me.

“Okay,” I said with a puzzled look on my face. My sisters wouldn’t give me a chance to ask what they wanted to talk about, however. Two of them each grabbed an arm and led me over to a couch that was positioned in front of a large curved array of monitors. We sat down and I took notice of what was on the monitors for the first time. “Hey, is that the boss room from the dungeon my friends and I were just in?”

“Yup,” the one to my left said. “We were watching you and your friends progress through the dungeon. It was good entertainment. There was even a bet going on.”

“A bet? How do they have cameras in the dungeon, anyways?”

“When you were on the fifth floor walking around in circles because of that disorienting trap, there was a bet on who would figure it out, and how long it would take. I actually won the bet, being the closest, and picking Ben to figure it out,” the triplet to my right answered.

“As for the cameras? Apparently it’s something they do when a new dungeon opens. They send a team in to clear the dungeon and place small cameras around it. The cameras run off the ambient mana in the air, so they never run out of power and can stay in place indefinitely. They even stay in place when the dungeon resets, though the team needs to go back in and place additional cameras whenever floors are added.”

“Why the cameras anyway?” I asked.

“To look for talented adventurers. The Adventurer’s Guild is always recruiting high level adventurers. Now that you know that the Adventurer’s Guild was formed by Scyftans, you need to realize that we’re thinking about the bigger picture. The more powerful the people are, the better chance they have should an enemy force invade.”

“Ah. So what did you win in the bet ... um ... Alexis?”

“That’s right,” she said with a nod. “A few thousand credits. There were a lot of people in it, and it was winner take all.”

“Awesome! So for as long as I can remember, I’ve been living in Ottawa. Where have you three been all this time?”

“We’ve been all over the place,” the triplet sitting to the right of Alexis said. “We’ve lived in Japan, China, India, Russia, England, Spain, Florida, California. The last few years we’ve been living in Hawaii. Oh, and we also spent a few months living in Antarctica.”

“Antarctica? That must have been cold.” I said, shivering just thinking about it.

“Not really,” she replied... “You forget that we’re shapeshifters, so we can change our bodies to suit our environment. We could live anywhere on Earth and be perfectly fine. We spent a lot of time practicing shapeshifting while we were there.”

“What sort of things did you shift into? There aren’t a whole lot of animals that can withstand those temperatures.”

“There are actually a lot more than you might think. Most of them just live in other parts of the world. Would you like to see?” Alexis asked.

“Sure!”

The triplets got up from the couch and stood in front of me. One by one, their forms started to grow or shrink. After about fifteen seconds, there were three different animals standing in front of me, and none of them are native to Antarctica. To my left, there was an Arctic hare, and to my right, there was an Arctic fox, which was only a little bit bigger than the hare. In the middle, was a massive Polar bear. All three of those species could certainly survive the temperatures.

After about a minute of them being in those forms, they switched back to their human forms. “Very cool. Did you three stay in forms like that all the time? Did you have to hunt for food, or what?”

“Ah, that’s where our ability to take on characteristics of other species comes in,” the triplet to my left, who I think is Aleena, said. With that, she started shifting again. This time, she didn’t change into a different animal. Instead, she started growing thick white fur all over her body.

“This is the form we used most often while living there. It kept us warm and still allowed us to use our hands,” she continued, wiggling her fingers in the air.

“Ah, I see. So you didn’t have to hunt penguins or seals or anything to survive then?”

“Nope. Each of us has a storage ring that is enchanted with Preservation. With it, we were able to bring months of food with us, and it was as fresh as it was when it was put inside.”

“Fresh food would certainly be nice. I’ll need to upgrade my ring one of these days. It’s just a normal one that can hold fifty pounds worth of stuff,” I said, holding it up.

Aleena’s fur started disappearing and she returned to her human form. Seeing the transformation prompted another question.

“What happens to your clothes when you shift? Each of you shifted into animals, but when you shifted back you were wearing your clothes. How does that work?”

“We’re wearing specially designed clothes that were developed by Scyftan scientists thousands of years ago. They change with the person when they shift, and can actually make shifting a little easier. When we shift into animals, or the form you just saw where Aleena started growing fur, our clothes are incorporated into the form. When we transform back, our clothes transform back as well. It really helps, otherwise any time you changed your form, you’d have to get dressed again.”

“So when Alexandra and Gabriel showed us their Scyftan form earlier, their clothes were shrinking with them?”

“That’s right. It’s very versatile clothing. I’m sure you saw Omar and Yuki in the portal room. They’re actually using another version of the clothing that was issued for the military. It’s a lot more durable and can be formed over whatever they shift into. I’ve seen Omar shift into a large bear, and his clothing change to cover his form, adding another layer of armor.”

“Portal room? I saw Omar press a button on a console, but I thought that was just to unlock the door.”

She shook her head. “That’s the room that connects the Adventurer’s Guild HQ in Ottawa to other Scyftan facilities. There are many around the world, and that room you were in connects to all of them. When Omar pressed the button on the console, it established a link between the room and this facility. The door is actually a portal disguised as a door, just in case someone else discovered it.”

“So where are we now?”

“The Rocky Mountains. Pretty much smack dab on the border between British Columbia and Alberta.”

“Seriously? Isn’t that over three thousand kilometers away?”

The triplets had all sat back down again, in their original positions. Alexis, who sat to my right chuckled before replying, “Three thousand kilometers is nothing. It also connects to a base on the far side of the moon. That’s almost four hundred thousand kilometers.”

I must have had a dumbfounded look on my face, because the girls burst into laughter. “Get used to stuff like that, big brother. Scyftans are a hell of a lot more technically advanced than humans are,” Lucille said.

“How far can portals actually go? And why is there a base on the moon?”

“The distance is theoretically infinite, but the further you go, the more power is needed to make a connection. As for the base on the moon? Where do you think we keep our ships? We can’t exactly land them on Earth, people would go nuts.”

“Ships?! Can I see them?”

“I don’t see why not. Let me ask.” Aleena said.

I sat there waiting for her to get up and ask. When she didn’t, I realised she was using Mindspeak.

She broke into a smile and looked at me. “Alexandra said we can go up, but we need to be back here in thirty minutes. Let’s go.”

The girls got up and led me towards the portal I arrived from. Aleena pressed a button beside the door and waited until a light turned green. When it did, she opened the door and stepped through. The rest of us followed and we were in the room with Omar and Yuki.

“Hey, Omar, Yuki. His highness here would like to check out the ships,” she said with a grin, motioning to me.

Omar laughed. “Sure thing.” He turned back to the console and pressed another button. He turned back. “You can go back through now. Have fun, your highness,” he said with a flourishing bow.

Even I had to laugh at that. We turned and walked through the portal. There was a Scyftan man waiting when we exited on the other side. He was dressed in a uniform that had some markings on the shoulders. I had never seen anything like it before, but I assumed he was a high ranking military member.

The man saluted with his right hand over his heart and then stepped forward, offering his hand. “Glad to see you again after so long, young Jonuth Kidravia. My name is Tich Igdaris. Tesze told me you were on your way up, so I decided to meet you and give you a tour.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand. “Sorry, but who is Tesze?”

“Ah, my apologies. You know her as Alexandra Stevens. Her Scyftan name is Tesze Inolgeth.”

“Oh. It didn’t take us long to get here. How did she contact you so you could get here so quickly?”

“Within Mindspeak,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“From that far away? Isn’t it something like four hundred thousand kilometers from Earth to this base?”

“Just about that, yes. Come, walk with me and I’ll explain.”

Tich started walking away and I fell in beside him. My sisters followed behind us and he started his explanation. “Think about Mindspeak as a transmitter on one end, and a receiver on the other end. The more power channeled into the transmitter, the further a signal can be sent. If the signal is powerful enough, a receiver can pick up the message from a great distance away. Tesze is powerful in Mindspeak, though there are Scyftans out there who dwarf her in their own ability. Even so, the distance from Earth to this base is minuscule in comparison to how far she can transmit at full power. Even the weakest Scyftan in Mindspeak could cover the distance between Earth and this base.”

“What is her max range? Do you know?”

“I do not. She may not even know what her maximum range is. You wanted to see some ships, correct?”

I quickly nodded. “Yes sir. As soon as I heard there were ships up here.”

He stopped walking in front of a large window. “Well, here we are,” he said, looking out the window. It was pitch black, and I couldn’t see anything. Suddenly lights came on and a massive hanger was lit up. From one end to the other, the hanger was completely full of a variety of different ships.