Chasing A Spectre (War for Dominance Book 0) Read Online Free Page A

closer, so they could see what he was doing.
    The door slid open, and several humans and an elf walked out of a small room. The Spectre walked in. “Let’s follow him,” Ghorza urged.
    “No,” Dantes disagreed. “We need to catch him with the crown, and it doesn’t look like he has it. Let’s wait and see if he comes back out. Maybe he’s just going into another outhouse.”
    The door shut. A light above the door moved from left to right, illuminating various squiggles, some of which corresponded to the numbers they had seen previously. On the fifth squiggle the light paused, and then it went back to the left, pausing again on one of the others. When the light reached the left end, the door opened, and a number of people walked out. The Spectre wasn’t one of them.
    “You’ve lost him again!” hissed Milos.
    A thought occurred to Dantes, and he ran back out into the open area. Looking up, a smile brightened his face for the first time that day. He motioned for the other two to join him, his face glowing.
    “I take it that you had an idea,” Ghorza said as she approached him. “Careful, you are about to catch fire.”
    Dantes went through a mental calming ritual, and his face lost its glow. Happily, he hadn’t broken into full flame; that would have been difficult to explain.
    “That is a magic room,” Dantes said, pointing at the door that had closed again. “It has been enchanted with air magic to take people up to different levels and bring them back down. The button the Spectre pushed must have activated it. I saw him going into a room on the fifth level above us.”
    “Should we follow him up?” asked Ghorza. “He may have the crown in the room up there.”
    “Can you show me which room?” asked Milos. “I can try to find a bird or squirrel to look into it.”
    Dantes pointed to one of the rooms. Milos’ eyes went blank as he searched the area for wildlife to use. Finally he nodded once and then seemed to sway back and forth as if gliding through the air. With a jolt, the swaying stopped. After a couple of seconds he started nodding as if lifting something with his mouth. Without warning, he jumped backward, and the light came back into his eyes.
    “I found it!” Milos exclaimed. “He is the Spectre. The crown is on some sort of balcony in the back of his room, covered by a rag.”
    “Let’s go get it back,” said Dantes, fires raging in his eyes.
    “I can probably use an air current to get up to his level,” Ghorza said, gazing up at the Spectre’s level, “but I can’t get you up there, too.”
    “We’ll take the magic room,” Dantes said. He walked over to the door and pushed the same button the Spectre had pushed. The lights on top of the door moved from right to left. When the one on the left illuminated, the door opened.
    The group walked into the room. After a pause, the door shut.
    “Umm...now what?” asked Ghorza.
    “We need to figure out the command words,” said Dantes. “Go up!” Nothing happened.
    “Rise!” tried Ghorza.
    “Lift!” ordered Dantes.
    “Maybe you have to say the command word in their language,” guessed Ghorza.
    “Can you use a Translate spell to translate our words into their language?” Dantes asked. “Maybe that would work.”
    “Maybe these buttons would work, too,” said Milos, pointing to a row of buttons on the wall to the right of the door. “There are about as many buttons as the number of levels; each probably equates to a level.”
    “That actually makes sense,” agreed Dantes with an approving nod. “The bottom one is probably our level. We want to go up five levels, so we need the button that is five above it.” He counted up and said, “This one.” He pushed the button, and the room started vibrating.
    “I think we are going up,” Dantes judged; “it feels like we are being pushed down toward the floor.”
    Just like on the outside, lights above the door illuminated as the magic room traveled up. With a small bump,