The old turtle beastwoman went flying into the air with an exaggerated cry. In fact, her cry was so loud and so exaggerated that it reverberated through the hallways and carried through to everybody for miles. Soon, the other ten and nine star beastmen and demons would rush over to fight Kelser. Kelser realized this and didn’t let the turtle grandma recover. He flew after her and shot a burst earth magic towards her wrinkly old skull.

The ball of hard earth crashed into the turtle beastwoman’s head and shattered into dust. The beastwoman gave out another exaggerated cry and fell even further back until she finally hit the wall and slid down to the floor. Kelser did not relent. He ran towards her with more spells, and even took out the metal sword I had made for him along the way. Kol and Taoc had metal swords too, but they would only take it out if they were forced to fight in close quarters. Stuck in a hallway with reinforcements on the way, Kelser knew he had to give this fight everything he had right from the start. Especially because, despite everything he had hit her with so far, the ten star turtle granny hadn’t shed a single drop of blood.

I waited a moment just in case Kelser needed my help. Kelser slashed at the turtle beastwoman, but she turned on her back and his sword was deflected by her shell. Kelser followed that up by lifting her up with magic hands and aiming for her soft underbelly. The beastwoman hugged her body and Kelser was forced to jump back.

The ten moon beastwoman had created a giant bubble around herself. Kelser tossed a pebble at the bubble, which made it disappear, but the beastwoman was able to land on her feet and face him with an angry look in her eyes. Kelser made a pose with his sword and slowly nodded his head.

I took that to mean he could handle it. I decided to trust him, especially because the sooner I started fighting the Ikons, the sooner Kelser, Kol and Taoc could start using my new magic system. I had told them not to use those spells until the sun was almost about to set or if they had no choice but to use them because of pressure from their enemies.

I raced down the hallway, the sounds of Kelser’s fight echoing behind me. Soon, even those sounds faded away and the hallway became dark. There were no candles, no lights, and no rooms for what felt like miles. I used magic to speed myself up. The ceremony could begin at any moment. I had to hurry!

A tiny speck of light appeared in the distance. The light was strange, like a mix of violent red and tranquil silver. Even from a distance, I could tell the light was overwhelmingly bright. As I got closer, the speck became larger and larger until it filled my vision with its strange colors. Colors that mixed and melded with each other yet somehow managed to stay distinct. Their boundaries were gradients that flashed into pastel colors that made no sense and would have had a dizzying effect if not for the mind and emotional resistance magic that I had mastered.

As I approached the light, I began feeling slow. As if I was wading through some awful viscous muck. I cut across the tangible light with magic but it slowed me down considerably. The tangible light began rising up my legs, eventually reaching my hips and finally my shoulders. I held my breath as the light filled the hallway up to my head.

With the tangible light in front of my eyes, the hallway began to swim in hues of red and silver. If you haven’t ever seen red and silver together, you might not realize how nauseating those colors look together. As if the metal taste of red blood and the metallic tinge of silver got together to make the world in front of me look fake and unreal. A futuristic simulation that was barely believable.

I closed my eyes, readied my energy, and raised my hands quickly through the muck. I felt the hallway shake as an unimaginable amount of earth and air pushed aside the tangible parts of the light while my own light magic flooded the area. My light magic was usually a shade of white, but to better counter the silver light, I set off something closer to warm daylight.

I opened my eyes and kept running. By now, whoever was maintaining this light knew that I was here. There was no point in keeping up the invisibility magic so I let it wash off my body and focused everything I had on flying through the hallway like a bullet. I was going so fast, in fact, that I didn’t even notice when I had followed the red and silver light so far that I appeared inside a large empty room.

I blinked.

The room disappeared.

I was in a valley. Wide open with two mountains on either side. One mountain was red, the other silver. Atop one peak was a red star, and behind another stood a full silver moon. The light I had been seeing inside the hallway seemed to be coming from those two symbols on top of the mountains. I looked over my shoulder and the hallway was still there, except it was a path leading down into the ground.

The valley was strange. It fit too neatly with the other mountains, almost as if the valley was an inverted mountain. A perfect ‘V’ or something a child might have drawn when told to draw a valley between two mountains. There was no truly flat land to stand on in this valley, and even I was flying above the middle of a valley.

There was no hallway, no single direction to follow anymore. I looked around for signs of the Ikons or another temple. Anything that would tell me where to go. But I couldn’t find it. Would I have to go to each symbol on top of the mountain? No, the Immortals could have split their forces in two, but they could not split the Book of Annihilation.

Thankfully, the question of the sunset was answered by what I could see in front of me. The sun was descending perfectly between the two mountains, still well above the horizon that was defined by the sharply cut valley. I had enough time to check both mountains.

I flew over to the mountain with the moon on it, since Noel had been the one who had taken the Book of Annihilation. Madness seemed stronger than the Evil Eye, anyway. I didn’t think he’d give the Book to anyone else.

But as I approached the mountain, I squinted my eyes. There was nothing on the peak. No building, no secret pathway, not even a simple altar upon which the book might be placed. I knew there was supposed to be a ceremony here. If there was a ceremony, that suggested there would be a ritual of some sort. Thinking back to the ceremonies that took place at the human temple of Bek Tepe, I knew an empty mountain peak wasn’t good enough. I touched down on the mountain peak just to make sure, but even with a full sweep off the place with my magic, there was no sign of anything suspicious. Even the symbol of the moon seemed like a strange glass-like object, impervious to my magic but otherwise harmless.

I bit my lips. The sun was getting closer to the horizon. The book must be on the other mountain! I rushed over with my flight magic, cutting through the air as fast as I could. Yet, when I landed upon the second mountain, I found nothing. No Ikon, no Book, no sign of anything except a glass-like red star emitting angry red light on this side of the mountain.

What was going on? The sun was about to set. Where was the ceremony? Noel, Alek, heck, I’d take anything, any clue about what was going on.

I bent my knees, faced the sky, and jumped. With wind whipping past my face, I quickly estimated how much time I had left. I went as high up as I could and stopped. I turned around suddenly, making my stomach lurch and making pain shoot through my head.

To my right, I saw Mount Smoke. It was on the very edge of my vision, but I could still make out a few flashes from the peak, probably from the fight between Kol, Taoc, Paris and the followers of the Immortals. Somewhere underground, Kelser was fighting for his life, trying to buy me enough time to deal with this ceremony and retrieve the Book of Annihilation. I even felt like I could feel the eyes of the Immortal of Desire, the Simurgh, burning into my back, telling me to hurry up and find the Book But there was no sign of it. No sign of the Book, the ceremony, the Ikons.

I realized as I overlooked the two mountains and the sharp V-shaped valley, that this valley looked familiar. Two sides, sharp and of equal height, facing down into an unnaturally smooth valley. It almost reminded me of the very thing I had come to look for: a book, held open by its middle.

The sun kissed the horizon. Time was up.