Wayne 54321: This is the last chapter of the Tower arc!

Black Cat: I can't give you answers about that right now. You'll have to wait and see. :)

Annie Camp: I'm going to admit that one reason I did that floor so fast was because I couldn't decide who everyone would be spying for...

17: Yes! Other familiar ghosts will be seen. It's true that they've mostly only had cameos so far, but they will slowly start to show up.

DJTimmer: I can't answer your first two questions. Clockwork's advocate is Oleander, she's been seen briefly before. The reason Jazz and the others haven't called anyone out, is because they have more important things to worry about at present. It's like that fable about the kid who's fallen into the water and the old man. You lecture the kid about safety after you pull him out, not before. Does that make sense?

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Chapter 152: Speak Silent

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Danny was still too tired and hurt to skip, but he was pretty happy. The floor had made his sister and friends much more fluent than usual, not to mention the rest of the class. He was so excited his words were blurring together. Many of his classmates were a bit more reticent, but they started to open up.

The Elysians kept their attention outward, keeping an eye out for threats, and Danny gathered that, rather than having some kind of defect, they all were cursed. Or had a frailty. Danny was not as well-versed in their version of sign-language as he would like to be.

He understood why they were so alert. This floor was designed as a maze, and there were a lot of blind corners. They went through starting, stopping, and then starting again. He was glad he wasn't the one who had to think about that anymore. He could take the time to talk to his classmates, and look at the geometric, ceramic tile murals on the walls, and argue with Tucker about whether or not the patterns were more Greek, Egyptian, or Japanese.

He was also, in ghost sign language, having a conversation with Ellie, Vlad, and Prunella about the amulet in his stomach. Ellie was worried she'd accidentally grab his spine instead of the amulet. Prunella wasn't sure if she wanted to try removing a ghostly artifact from a half-ghost, especially considering the relative proximity of the artifact to said half-ghost's (probably oversensitive) core.

Vlad was all for trying it. But he was worried about whether or not the amulet could be phased out, and whether or not it had any special 'rules,' being, as it was, an old and powerful artifact, and if it was just ghostly, or if it contained non-ectoplasmic substances. Vlad claimed that all those things could affect whether or not it could be phased out, especially given Danny's own oddities. Danny didn't know the answer to those questions. He wasn't sure how he could find out, with it in his stomach.

Vlad broke off the conversation, clearly deep in thought. Danny rolled his eyes. He thought Vlad should just try it, and then it would either work or not. It wasn't as if it could hurt.

Could it?

He returned his attention to his classmates. This really was nice, and, well, if he really was deaf, in the real world, he wanted to enjoy this moment of communication.

The Elysians peered around the corner. Then one of them let out a laugh. Voiceless, of course. They pulled back, with another, new Elysian in tow.

'This is the beta team,' signed the Elysian captain, as other Elysian ghosts approached.

Danny sighed in relief. The appearance of a new person had startled him somewhat. He started to sign a translation to his classmates.

The Elysians started to sign an explanation to each other of what they were doing and how they had gotten here. Danny tuned most of it out, until the leader of the new Elysians turned to him, grinned, and signed, 'Let's get you out of here.'

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The humans (and Danny) had to be carried. They consented to this with various degrees of grace. Thankfully, however, there were no arguments. At this point, everyone was very much aware of their limitations.

(It was good that most of the Elysians had four arms, in the usual manner of the Greek ghosts. That way they could hold their charges and their weapons both.)

Danny was a little put out that no one considered 'I can just ride Cujo' an appropriate plan for him. He understood why, of course. Similarly, Vlad was sulking about not being allowed to carry Danny. So, here he was, in the arms of an Elysian soldier he knew only in passing, bracing for a signal to charge out the door, and into what was almost certainly a battlefield.

And, yes, he had explained to the man that he might randomly turn into a dragon at any moment. It was the kind of thing you stated up-front, when someone was carrying you. It was a courtesy thing.

Prunella was standing nearby, watching the proceedings with disapproval. She was disappointed that they were leaving, he'd caught her signing to herself about lost research opportunities, but she wasn't trying to stop them, so that was good. He gave Prunella one last wave, by way of farewell. She returned it desultorily.

He turned his attention to the doors. They were large double-doors, the largest they could find on the floor. The left hand door had a simple, almost rustic floral pattern carved into it. The right hand one was flat, and marked only by an ugly smear of black paint. The handles were matched, but at different heights. It didn't really matter what the doors looked like, though. The important thing was that they were wide enough for four Elysians to go out at once (five if they squeezed), provided they went out with their bodies perpendicular to the plane of the door, rather than parallel to it, like people bound by the laws gravity would have to.

The plan was that about half of the Beta team would go out first, and make a start of securing the area, and locate the Elysian ship. Then, they would signal to the Elysians carrying the humans to follow them. Finally, once all the humans were out, the remainder of the Beta team would form a rearguard. They would then go to the ship, and hopefully go home.

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The Infinite Realms were infinitely full of monsters. Chimera, griffons, hydras, unicorns, kappa, kirin, manticores, nekomata, barghests, and stranger things still. Some of these monsters were weak. Some of them were strong.

In the common manner of the Realms, some of these creatures were sapient. They were, in other words, people. Others were not. Some of them were merely sentient.

Unlike even the most idiotic of sapient ghosts, few of them could be reasoned with on any level. They possessed only animal intelligence, nothing more.

This was why Issitoq was so hesitant to use them. There was no way to keep them from attacking his mercenaries.

But there were so very many of them. An infinite number, or nearly that, and that was without even counting coreless 'ghosts,' non-sentient spirits, non-entities which were mere eddies in the varied energy currents of the Realms.

Issitoq used his powers to watch the battlefield. There weren't many of his mercenaries left. Those that remained wouldn't be enough to destroy the abomination when it finally emerged. If it got to Pandora's ship-

Issitoq twitched. As soon as it came out of the Tower, he would unleash his beasts. He would wait until then.

He would wait until then.

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Sound came back to Danny instantly. Too instantly. He cringed at the assault on his suddenly-sensitive ears. Battles were always loud. How had he forgotten? A few of the Elysians seemed to be having similar trouble, but thankfully not many. The ship Sam, Tucker, Jazz and the Elysians had described was there, as well as an Egyptian sun-barge.

Both ships were farther away than Danny would have liked. Yes, he or Ellie could have, at full strength, flown to the Elysian ship in a matter of minutes, provided they didn't get sucked into one of the many battles happening between them and there, but they weren't at full strength. Danny wasn't even flying under his own power. Over twenty of the Elysians were weighed down by human loads (and it would be inappropriate to refer to them as 'dead weight,' wouldn't it?). It would be difficult at points, Danny thought, but not impossible.

The air tore itself apart with portals. Long, ugly, horribly unstable things. Unnatural, even in this landscape; too large, too well-ordered- Portals generally did not form almost-enclosed bubbles!

The portals began to pour out swarms of ghosts.

Danny hissed under his breath. Whoever was doing this was powerful, to form the portals, and wealthy, to afford the mercenaries. Offhand, Danny could think of a small number of enemies who might barely possess that level of power, and that level of wealth, if they pushed themselves hugely on both counts, but they would all come to face him themselves. They would be here, after him, not skulking behind all these mercenaries and animals, endangering his friends and all these people... But this person, or these people, whoever they were... They could have moved against him directly, put a portal in his path, dropped him into the Burning Lands, or a GIW research facility, or a thousand years ago, or, goodness, into the sun, if they could create portals at a distance! They didn't have to involve all these people! Cowards!

Too late, Danny noticed the white-hot filament of anger running through his thoughts, anger fed on and fed by the amulet in his stomach, which, itself, was growing hot.

He knew he should have insisted Vlad take it out...

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The monster's appetite knew no bounds. Issitoq had known that for years, ever since he had discovered its future in the ruins of two worlds, but he had not thought the sentiment to be so literal. He had not expected the abomination to eat one of the Amulets of Mattingly. He had not seen it until just now.

His portals faltered, the sands of the hourglass stilled.

It was feeding on the magics and energies of the amulet. His eye, so sharp, so piercing, could see that plain as day. To what end? To what horrific end? This was one of the ways that thing in captivity back in the Panopticon had augmented and grown its already considerable powers.

His clairvoyant gaze turned to Pandora, who was preparing one of her boxes. He would have sneered, if he had lips. She couldn't hope to contain all the creatures he had unleashed- Or maybe she could. That was her purview, after all. She wouldn't be able to do it, in any case. Not with all the varieties he had sent her way, and her own allies out in the mess.

True, that would only delay her victory. Issitoq twitched at the thought.

If he could just-

Enticing images danced in his mind's eye. The abomination sliced in two by a portal. Its body pierced by a mighty ghost ray. Its throat slit. All done by Issitoq himself. Direct action. Change made by his own two hands. But he was sworn against it. Most of his order was.

In any case, none of those things was likely to kill the creature outright. It had been created by a bisecting portal, after all.

No. Issitoq could do none of those things. It was time for him to retreat. To gather his forces. To plan.

To make a way to finish this.