Yuri had begun his explanation with, “We walk many hours. Kill grey dead. Drink water and rations. Then found you.”

Then he shrugged, as if days hadn’t passed in the NextOver, and Nico’s presence here wasn’t odd.

Nico groaned. Friggin Russians. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Nope. Not this. You’re not gonna wipe away important information behind your stoic-I-speak-in-broken-but-succinct English persona.”

“I tell you everything--”

Nico waved his words away. He collected himself before the frustration got to him, and he used Measure to figure out a line of questioning that was the most efficient.

A frustrating half hour later, Yuri gave about as much information as the guy could give. A storyteller, he was not.

Nico was pretty sure the guy wasn’t fabricating anything. He used Measure to analyze for any traces of active deception. He got nothing.

In summary, Yuri’s story was about what Nico predicted. Yuri was an unfortunate by-product of whatever Pullman’s plan was. He seemed to have been roped into this mess as much as Nico was. Well, not to the same degree that the entire magical community was not after him.

At least there was one thing Nico one-upped Yuri with.

The last time Nico saw Yuri was at the examination. He had gone off with Pullman, who took him to the NextOver. The middle-aged plumber-magician had told Yuri it was a minor expedition to find something lost to Pullman. Yuri had just taken it in stride.

And why wouldn’t he?

“Then you showed up here,” Yuri said. “Pullman went crazy. He became different person.”

“You didn’t see any signs of his darker persona?”

Yuri shook his head. “Pullman is determined man. Very. Anything in his way, traps or grey dead, he obliterates. Except the death knight. It almost killed us.”

Nico blinked, trying suss out any clues the Russian might have overlooked. “You never asked what he was looking for?”

“Nnyet,” Yuri replied, rubbing the pendant-shaped bump on his shirt. “An apprentice does not question his master.”

Nico used Measure one more time to divine anything out of Yuri. Still, nothing. He tapped his fingers to his lips, and sucked in a breath.

Just to make sure, he had Measure divine for anything from Yuri. Nothing.

Crap. At first, Nico was trying to look for any signs of Yuri lying. Measure came up empty. But when Nico tried to get any information about Yuri, even his height which wasn’t protected by his pranic barrier, Measure came up with nothing.

Nico sat very still, making sure he looked to be lost in thought, rather than worried. He had a problem

Measure couldn’t divine a single thing about Yuri.

He was pretty sure it could before. Why not now?

Yuri seemed to be about Nico’s age. He could have been older and had a special ability that protected against divination. That seemed to make the most sense.

If that was the case, Yuri would have already been part of a Hold. But if he was pledged to a minor Hold of minimal power, then it would make sense why he would want to switch allegiances to the Union. They had more resources than almost any other collective of Holds.

Nico didn’t know exactly what switching pledges and allegiances to different Holds entailed, but he knew it was a possibility.

He asked, “Where are you from again?”

Yuri looked confused. “Are you okay, Nico? I’m from Russia.”

Oh, duh. He had to make sure.

So, Yuri had some kind of protection from divination, and it seemed situational. Nico didn’t want to push it because it would reveal he didn’t trust Yuri. He did, but only about seventy percent now, when it was about ninety percent before.

Was Yuri brought here as a sacrifice? Probably. But for what?

Pullman had said that the Russian was a traitor, but only said that when saving Nico’s life. That reminder lifted Nico’s trust in the Yuri to eighty percent. If the Russian wanted Nico harm, he would have just let Pullman get away with killing Nico.

But something was amiss here, and Nico didn’t like it.

Yuri didn’t seem to be lying to him, but without Measure, it wasn't certain. Maybe he wasn’t lying, but just withholding information.

Nico placed his palms together for the Prana Piercing formation, and injected twenty MP into divining anything off of Yuri. He could feel his magic slip off the Russian, like water on glass. It was an odd feeling. The magic returned to him, refilling his MP bar as if he never lost it in the first place.

He sighed, and put the thought aside.

Another came to him. Yuri seemed content to explain only his side of the story. He had no curiosity about how Nico got to the NextOver. None.

It could be because of his Russian nature, but Nico had known plenty of Russians in his life. None were like Yuri. No. Something was up.

Yuri didn’t seem surprised or curious at all to Nico’s presence in the NextOver. That only meant one thing. He was expecting it.

Nico’s trust in the Russian went back down to seventy percent.

Could Yuri be playing a long con with Pullman, gaining Nico’s trust and somehow using that for Pullman’s mission? That didn’t feel right. Pullman was here for something, and that something seemed to be for him and him only. Yuri seemed oblivious to what that was.

Then…

Dozens of ideas floated in Nico’s head. Measure organized them with logic. In a few seconds, he came down to the most likely conclusion. He didn’t like it.

There was another player in the game.

It made the most sense.

So far, there had been three total, separate parties in the tower: Pullman’s party, Nico, and the treasure hunters. What were the chances that all three of them would be in the exact location and time of the NextOver, a dimension vastly larger than Earth’s surface?

What if Yuri was part of a different party?

The more Nico thought it over, the more it made more sense. But what exactly had he gotten himself into. His entire purpose was to track down the person who framed him, which was obviously Pullman, and bring him back to Earth for evidence. Except, Pullman seemed to only be one part of this.

If everything happening at the tower wasn’t a coincidence, then that meant something larger was happening. But who were the pieces and who were the players? He needed to find out what was happening if he was going to have any chance of getting Pullman back Earthside, let alone survive this whole ordeal.

He set the unsettling thought aside, and mused on Yuri’s possible involvement. Nico’s own ability was a reflection of his desires. At least, that was his theory. It was a bit faulty because Balthazar Patel had given him assistance with stabilizing it. Balthazar said it was in exchange for saving his daughter.

But it wasn’t just desire. Nico had wanted more magical power. He didn’t get it. But his years of methodically experimenting to understand magic definitely played a part in getting Measure as well.

If Nico’s ability he gained on his birthday reflected his desire to understand magic and measure it better, then it would stand to reason Yuri’s desires and abilities should reflect that as well.

Nothing about Yuri’s magic hinted at any form of divination. It was all attack magic. Very little defense.

It was flimsy evidence, if he could call it that. That, along with Yuri’s complete lack of surprise or curiosity as to why Nico was here in the NextOver the same time as he was added to the theory. Mostly Nico just could feel it in his gut, but he trusted his gut on this one.

Yuri represented another party.

“There is other thing you should know,” Yuri said.

Nico perked up. “Spill.”

According to the Russian, Pullman seemed to know his way about the tower and moved about it pretty confidently. At least, until about a few hours into navigating the tower.

After that, Pullman became less confident and grew more nervous. He brought with him a map, and there were new hallways that he was introduced to that weren’t on the map. And not just hallways, but walls too.

So the map that Pullman had for the tower was either wrong or incomplete. The entire time that Yuri spoke, Nico tried to use measure to divine whether or not Yuri was lying.

Maybe Pullman had a map similar to the treasure hunters, but hadn’t anticipated the tower shifting its own internal structure.

Yuri went back to meditating again. He could finally bend his pinky finger normally again. The color of his skin returned to a healthier flush.

Nico’s gaze hovered over again to the grey bar in his HUD. It did not go away even if he tried to will it away.

He had his suspicions about what it was. When Nico had miraculously survived against the slimes, his MP and stamina bar had recovered slightly, rather than being completely depleted.

The grey had appeared, dwindling down steadily. But as the grey bar depleted, his MP and stamina increased a little as well. At first, he was thankful he hadn’t passed out. Then he immediately worried if the grey bar represented a foreign magical resonance.

If that was the case, it could slowly be poisoning him. There was a reason magicians couldn’t siphon magic from other living sources so easily. Everyone had a specific magical resonance that change and fluxed constantly. Absorbing foreign magic energy would disrupt that balance and could even kill the host. He hadn’t absorbed the slime’s magical power. Something else had happened entirely. But what?

After the swarm of slime incident, he realized he felt fine. No magical poisoning to worry about. Well, not fine. He had been aching everywhere. But he was alive enough to wake Yuri up to find a safer location.

Nico muttered under his breath, “Why does the grey bar not have any assigned numbers?”

His stamina bar and MP bar were measured in numbers. Measure couldn't seem to calculate the specific number to the grey bar. It didn't operate on a one-to-one scale of magic and whatever energy the grey bar was made out of.

He needed to understand what was happening with that. But not here. Not in front of Yuri.

According to Nico's calculations, it would take a couple of hours for Yuri's arm to fully heal and have his magic completely back.

Nico had taken care of their water situation. He was really hungry, but humans could go for days without food, maybe even weeks. Now that his energy was back to full, he could organize his thoughts, isolate his problems, and prioritize solutions. Efficient and clean problem solving. Just the way he liked it.

Pullman wasn't the only obstacle that Nico had, but the warlock seemed to be the most threatening. If there was anything that seemed to be a common thread among magicians, it was that magicians tended to stick to their schools of thought. Pullman's magic was mostly elemental similar to Yuri's. He showcased two spells with earth, and multiple spells with water. On top of that, he seemed to have lots of battle experience against magicians.

There was also the grey knight to deal with. Nico had a couple ideas of how to take that on. His understanding about how the grey dead worked had grown considerably since entering the tower.

Nico needed to get more powerful. But how? He couldn't just gain more power and energy.

Or could he?

The grey bar was fixed in its capacity in his vision with no number and seemingly no cap. He felt excitement run through him.

When his energy and magical power was depleted to zero. The odd light had rushed through him. Nico had learned something at that moment, but he didn’t know exactly what. He needed to test that out.

So, he had a potential alternative power source that he didn’t understand. It could be dangerous. But if there was anything he learned since this all began, maybe more power didn’t equal better.

He thought of the treasure hunters, and how they were astounded by his adaptability with his spell formulae and his seemingly incredible control over his magic. Nico’s real strength wasn’t his magical power, but his years of tying together scraps of magic using design and games as the foundation. And of course, Gallahd.

No. Power wasn’t the answer. He really needed to assess what his abilities were and what they were capable of.

Nico's hand buzzed. Then his entire body. He quickly realized that it wasn't his body that was shaking. It was also the ground.

Except...the walls themselves weren’t moving. Measure didn't pick up any signals of the walls moving either. He could just feel that the tower was shifting.

A quick look at Yuri told him that the Russian had no idea what was happening at all. He seemed to not notice the movement.

Nico frowned. Something was happening with the tower. Why was he the only one who could feel it? Was it because he had divination abilities? That was probably the case.

Either way, Nico needed to assess his magic.

Something else bothered Nico about his power.

He didn't know much about divination magic. He had heard scraps of theories here and there, but it was like reading an article written by somebody else who wrote an article about someone who had heard a rumor from five hundred years ago.

The information he had about divination magic wasn't just secondary or tertiary information, but information that was obviously dubious. Why was that? The fact that he didn't know much about divination magic was something he had dismissed so far. But now that he had an ability based off of that school of thought, if it was a school, made him wonder why that was the case.

Those who wielded magic above the competence of a hedge magician protected and hoarded their secrets well.

The source of divination was knowledge. If information was the ultimate power, then wouldn't those who could want to protect everything that they could about their own abilities? Wouldn't they be the most capable of preventing others from gaining information about them?

That’s what Nico would do. He smiled. Now he had time to think and to breathe to figure things out, his situation was becoming less overwhelming.

Nico stepped out of the safety of spell formations and the protection of the room. He went out to find himself. He said firmly, “If I don’t come back in an hour, come find me.”

Yuri’s only response was to open one eye, nod, and close his eye again to meditate. No expression of concern or how he was possibly going to find Nico. Just a nod.

Nico tried to Measure Yuri one more time. He felt his divination slide off again. Yeah. The Russian was definitely part of another party. So far, Yuri hadn’t acted against him. In fact, he had saved Nico’s life. For the first time since meeting the treasure hunters, Nico let himself hope that he might have an ally.

He left the safety of the room. It was time to figure out what he could really do.