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“If we lose contact and you don’t hear from me in five minutes, wake me up.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Slap me, pinch me, be creative.”
I could feel the magic ward’s power as I reached the door, but I already knew, it wasn’t going to affect me. Not while I was Ethereal. All it took was a thought, and a bit of intention, and I went through the wall of magic and the physical door itself, appearing on the other side of it, inside the Recondite temple building.
“Wow,” I said, “I made it.”
“Wow?” I heard Lucien ask. “You’re surprised?”
“A little bit.”
A pause. “You should know that I hate… all of this.”
“I’ll be careful, just keep my body safe until I get back.”
Lucien fell silent, and I started to explore the building. I tried feeling for the crown’s power, but I wasn’t having any luck. I couldn’t sense any magic whatsoever, not even the ward I had moved through. I could see it, and I figured that meant I would be able to see magic auras or active spells, but not being able to sense them meant I was flying blind.
I exited the stairwell on the next floor down, and quickly moved into the adjoining corridor. I couldn’t have been more disappointed to find that the inside of the building looked remarkably like the office complex it pretended to be. There were cubicle rooms, meeting rooms, watercoolers, vending machines, computers, even a small kitchen with a coffee machine, but it was entirely empty. Every room, every corridor, not a single person working or loitering. “What the hell is this place?” I asked.
“What‘s going on?” asked Lucien.
“Why go through all the trouble of making your building look as mundane as possible when the inside of the building is just as mundane as its façade?”
“I… don’t understand.”
“This place, it’s all cubicles, desks, and espresso machines.”
“What?”
“Exactly. There’s nothing magical going on up here, only boring meetings nobody wants to go to. No wonder that guy last night looked like he was up to his tits and needed a break. I would be too, if I worked in this graveyard of an office.”
“None of this makes any sense.”
“It doesn’t. I’m going to check the next few floors.”
“Be careful…”
A thought occurred to me then, as I stood in the middle of what looked like a small break room. If I could phase through doors, I could phase through floors, couldn’t I? I looked down at my feet, concentrated, and made myself slip through the floor.
I felt myself fall, as if I had made myself suddenly heavier and lighter at the same time. I saw the space between the floors, all the tubes, and cables, and steel beams that held everything together. I had to stop myself from falling any further when I reached the next floor but all it took was a thought, and I was there, anchored on solid ground again.
Well, kind of.
This room wasn’t a conference room or a break room, but it was equally dull: a gymnasium. There were treadmills here, punching bags, and stationary bicycles, but still, no Recondites. Stepping out into the adjoining corridor, I found no evidence that there was anyone on this floor either. There were still many floors below to explore, but this was starting to get weird.
Things got even weirder when I found the bedrooms.
“Bedrooms?” Lucien asked.
“Yep. With bunks, too,” I said. “Looks like they all live and sleep, here.”
“I haven’t seen anyone leave or enter, not since we got here.”
“Maybe they don’t?”
“They have to… they can’t spend their entire time in that building.”
