Grey King Gambit 4

Raising my hand for silence, I glanced over my shoulder. “I’d like to hold off on the extra commentary. I need to focus.” Preparing myself for the flood of stimuli, I activated King’s Gambit.

In Oludari’s eyes, I saw the light swell around me, gathering and fusing until a many-pointed crown of pure radiance was hovering just over my hair, turning the pale blond to a bright, glowing white.

The crease of his nostrils whitened as they flared, and his pupils, focused entirely on the glowing crown, dilated a fraction of an inch. The skin around his eyes wrinkled ever so slightly as he squinted against the light.

The air shifted as it pressurized through a gap in the stone somewhere, and a few strands of Oludari’s unkempt hair waved. “There is a leak in the stonework somewhere.” My voice had a hollow quality to my own ears as it was filtered through the mind-enhancing aspects of King’s Gambit both as I spoke the words and again as I listened to them vibrate through the air.

Beneath the smells of dust and stone, and more subtly, the distant flora of the Beast Glades, Oludari had a metallic, ozone burn to his scent, and the faintest trace of nervous sweat. Charon smelled of old leather, blade oil, and the blood of a fresh kill, white Windsom scented himself with some kind of flowery perfume that couldn’t quite hide the distant, earthy fragrance of Mount Geolus.

‘Ugh, why am I suddenly smelling myself? And why do I smell like brimstone and cinnamon rolls?’ Regis projected, shaking his head slightly as my gondrune-amplified thoughts flowed freely between us.

Behind me, I sensed Charon turn to look at Windsom, whose brows furrowed and jaw tensed as he glared at my back.