“You what?” Lilian asked, taking a step back. “Why? How?”

“I already said why,” Angel said. He shook his head and let out a sigh. “I don’t care who he could have been, Lilian. Even if I had the chance to go back and change it, I wouldn’t. He was an evil man that deserved everything that came to him.”

“But he was one of the strongest members of the Reawakening,” Lilian protested. “With all due respect, you couldn’t even beat me in a fair fight before your upgrades. How did you kill Soul when you were just a kid?

“With a catacomb,” Angel replied. “While we were delving into an area that he was convinced had information about Old World Magic. When we got deep enough, he was so focused on his work that I was able to intentionally set off several traps without him noticing. While he fought the defenses, I was able to seal him inside the room. He should have starved to death.”

“How do you know he didn’t escape?”

“I made sure there was only one exit to the room when I made my move,” Angel said, pressing his lips together. “And I waited outside the doors for two weeks to make sure he didn’t escape. He tried, but after the first week the attacks on the doors stopped. He’s dead, Lilian.”

“I – well, shit,” Lilian finished, slumping back down into the chair and shaking her head. “I thought we had a lead. Now we’re right back to where we started, only I know that you killed Soul.”

“Were you hoping to find him so that he could repair you instead of me?”

“A bit,” Lilian admitted, letting out a bitter laugh. “You can’t blame me. I’ve promised to be on your side, but you’ve got a lot less reason to keep me around if we manage to defeat the rest of the Reawakening.”

“Then I suppose you’ll just have to make yourself useful enough to prove that you don’t deserve to go down with the rest of them,” Angel said. He rubbed his chin. “But I don’t think everything is lost. If Soul was a member of the Reawakening... does this thing have a map?”

Lilian blinked, then nodded. She straightened in the chair and waved her hand to get the computer’s attention. In the back of the room, from the hallway that Lilian had turned the power back on through, steam hissed out of a vent.

“Bring up a map of the Great Desert,” Lilian said.

The screen flickered, turning to the color of the dark sand as a graphic image of the Barren appeared upon it. Angel squinted at it for several moments before putting his finger on a spot near the top left, nestled within a huge valley.

“This is where I killed Soul,” Angel said. “If he starved to death, the relic in him should still be functional. We can replace the temporary one I put in you with that. In addition, if he really did know something about Old World Magic that he didn’t tell me, a clue could be left in this catacomb.”

Lilian’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that. It could work!”

“The only problem is that we’re easily two weeks of travel away,” Angel said, letting out an annoyed sigh. “That’s a lot of time wasted. If we’re wrong…”

“We can’t afford to be,” Lilian said. “But Soul knew more about Old World Magic than anyone. If he thought there was something there, it could have been what he was looking for, or at least a big clue.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to rely on him one last time,” Angel said. He let out a laugh and spun on his heel. His System artifact floated after him as he paced around the room. “We should start moving. Can you get the personal quarters of the other Reawakening members open to check if they have anything of worth?”

“I can’t,” Lilian said with a regretful shake of her head. “The rooms are all bound to us, and I can’t mess with this terminal. Not even Soul could. It’s not Old World Magic, it’s a branch of the System. Not even Soul knew how to mess with that.”

“Fair enough,” Angel admitted. “I don’t either. In that case, I think we’ve gotten everything we can from here. We should leave immediately. Besides, I think our food reserves have to be getting low by now.”

“They are,” Lilian said as she rose to her feet. “This isn’t how I pictured today going in the slightest.”

“Can’t always be in control,” Angel replied with a smirk. “Things might get boring. Is there anything here you need to collect?”

“No. I’ve got what I need.”

“Then lead the way,” Angel said, nodding to the valley on the map. “Icebound Valley. Let’s see what Soul’s grave has to offer us.”

Lilian cast one last glance back at the room before turning and heading towards the exit with Angel close behind her. Both of them felt more than a little reluctance to leave, although it was almost certainly for different reasons.

Angel was in the midst of barely winning a massive fight within himself. With everything he’d learned from the Reawakening’s old hideout, he was confident that the relic’s secrets – both the one in his arm and the broken one – were within grasping distance.

He desperately wanted to lock himself in a room and research them until he knew every bit of how they worked. However, with the Reawakening on the loose, he couldn’t afford such luxuries.

With a defeated sigh, Angel settled for promising himself that he’d spend a few hours each night examining it instead of losing a whole extra week – or more.

Once they emerged back onto the windswept desert, Lilian rolled her shoulders. With a series of cracks, butterfly wings sprouted from her back and she let out a relieved groan.

“You have no idea how frustrating it was using those shoddy skates.”

“They survived the ballista bolt?” Angel asked, raising an eyebrow. He snatched his System artifact from the air and it turned off with a hum before Angel placed it back within his bag.

“The bolt went into my chest at a downward angle, so it just barely avoided them,” Lilian replied as her wings hummed to life and Angel got onto his board. “I’m just lucky it didn’t damage the artifact, or I would have really been dead. I can heal my flesh in a few seconds, but not damage to Magitech.”

They zipped forward through the desert with Lilian at the lead. The rest of the day, luckily, went by without any major event. Whatever monsters might have been in the area had evidently elected to leave the two alone due to what they’d learned.

When night started to fall, Angel could barely contain his excitement. The dread that the Reawakening filled him with paled in comparison with his excitement to finally start cracking the secret of the Relic within him.

He tried to keep himself from calling the camp early but failed and had Lilian stop around an hour before they normally would have. She shot him a look but said nothing as the two laid out their sleeping arrangements.

As soon as everything was laid out, Angel drew the System artifact out of his bag. It hummed to life with a gentle ding.

“I’m Wonderful,” Angel said, too eager to even feel annoyance at his nickname.

“Welcome back, Wonderful,” the artifact said, spinning in the air. “How may I be of assistance?”

“I would like your help with this deciphering how this Relic works,” Angel said, pulling out the broken relic that the catacomb had given him. The metal cylinder was significantly easier to start with than the cube in his arm, as at actually had runes on it. “Can you help by confirming if my theories are correct when I state them so I don’t accidentally blow us all up?”

“Yes,” the artifact said.

“Fantastic,” Angel said, turning the cylinder over and searching for an appropriate place to start. He spotted an rune that was often linked to activation near one of its ends and flipped it to get a better look.

“It’s so complex,” Angel muttered, examining the miniscule rows of drawings that made up the Old World Magic. “But this is an energy converter, right? One that’s meant to emit a certain amount of power at a very steady rate.”

He paused, glancing up at the artifact. It said nothing. Several moments passed. Angel’s eyes narrowed. “Am I wrong?”

“No,” the artifact said cheerfully.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“Your query was if I was capable of assistance, and that was answered with ‘yes’. No further action was necessary,” the artifact replied.

“I swear you choose to be pedantic entirely on a whim,” Angel grumbled. “Fine. Please assist me with determining the function of this relic.”

“Very well, Wonderful.”

Angel repeated his first theory about the artifact.

“That seems to be correct based off the information that we have currently gathered,” the artifact reported. “The System does not have any records here, so please keep that in mind.”

Angel nodded absent-mindedly, already delving deeper into the intricacies of the damaged relic to see what he could glean from it. The cylinder seemed simple, but he was more than aware that any relic was anything but.