Tay fell so far into darkness that he had enough time to reorient himself. He also had enough time to realize that he wasn’t going to survive this fall.

He couldn’t see anything as wind whipped past his face. He had long since lost his ability to make out anything in the darkness. If this was still a part of Duskborough, Tay didn’t want to meet whoever made their homes down this far. Not that he was going to get the chance to. Any way Tay looked at his current situation, he was dead.

A coldness gripped his ears and Tay could hear the faint whisper of a familiar and raspy voice. You have wings. Use them to fly.

For a minute, Tay thought that Garudigas was referring to themselves, but the Rune Wyrm had no wings to speak of. Tay wracked his brain and could not think of any of his revenants that had wings.

Then he felt his back pocket, where he had stowed the card he’d found just shortly after transforming into a partial revenant. He pulled it out and beheld the four-legged eagle that had saved him on his first night in Duskborough. It was an Order card though, and he’d never tried attuning to Order before.

The first thing that Tay did was unattuned from Chaos 3. Nothing seemed to change around him but he felt the departure of his attunement like pulling a coat off of his arms. Everything seemed a whole lot colder now and the threat of smashing into the ground soon seemed all the more real.

The ground could have been anywhere. Tay could’ve been falling hundreds of feet toward it, or it could turn out to be just another couple seconds away. He had no way of knowing in this sort of darkness.

Which was why he needed to attune himself. He held the card—Skywing Lord—between his two fingers. He could hear something, on the wind. It wasn’t the voice of Garudigas. It was still familiar to him though, and this wasn’t the first time these words had come back to him.

Who are you, Taygion Ardwella?

He could make out the voice. Deep. Not mean or harsh. But curious. Sincere. Whoever had said it had actually cared to know Tay’s answer. It was the sort of question designed to connect two hearts together—to sew two fates into a single sleeve of life.

The sort of question that, once posed, could not be forgotten by either party. Except, Tay had forgotten the other party. Which meant he knew exactly who had asked this question and why the question still meant so much to him.

Who was he?

Someone who would put his life on the line for his friends. That didn’t seem right. He’d never been that before. But that’s what he’d done, and well, he was proud of it. For once, no matter what happened, he hadn’t chosen to run away. He hadn’t just accepted the fact that the world hated him and everyone he talked to.

Maybe he could push back against every cruel turn of fortune?

Against the natural darkness of the world, white light plumed out from his body and pushed back. He couldn’t see the ground, but he could make out rock and stone that he plummeted against.

Something felt like it was burning against his right hand, and he held it up to see that while the rest of his body was beginning to glow with the snowy energies of Order, his transformed hand wasn’t. Each time his skin gave off more illumination, his hand throbbed, as if it wanted to be separated from his body and take refuge in the dark.

So, his transformation wouldn’t allow him to stay in Order for very long. That was fine though, because he only needed it for a moment. He was Taygion Ardwella, and he wasn’t about to let himself die before making sure his friends were safe.

Like a radiant beacon in the night, the darkness shied away as Tay attuned into Order 1. The shroud of snowy white made his hand ache, but he pushed back the pain to hold up a single card from his deck. He didn’t even check—it didn’t matter what card he absorbed.

His white aura grew, until he could very well see the bottom of the pit he was falling into, far below him. But not so far that Tay didn’t feel rushed.

He threw out the only Order card that he owned and watched it sail off into the darkness. The only thoughts on Tay’s mind were just that it needed to come forth. It needed to become the four-legged eagle that saved him when he’d first arrived in Duskborough. It needed to be there for him, just like the man known as Mond had been there for him.

Tay blinked, and the card sailed off further into the void, until darkness swallowed it.

No, he needed it. He needed it to come and help him. Tay looked down at the ground to see it rapidly approaching. He started flailing his arms and legs, trying desperately to swim upward in the wind, as if the earth didn’t have a hold over his body.

He wasn’t even ten seconds up now, and all Tay could do was watch the earth as he prepared to make his grave upon it. There were three stones, a small boulder, and a little rift at the bottom of the pit. Those would be his company for eternity. Nobody would find him down here, at the bottom of the world, below the slums of a great city—a great city that was too great for him to ever call home, anyway.

Finally, Tay crossed his arms in front of his face, inhaled, and waited. Then his whole body lurched forward, and he felt the tips of his toes graze against the ground beneath him as something clutched onto his back.

Two mighty gusts of wind slammed into his face as a majestic pair of snowy white wings lifted him aloft again. The Skywing Lord let forth a mighty cry. It seemed a blizzard incarnate—powerful, crystalline, and, most-importantly, dedicated to seeing him to safety.

The Skywing Lord pulled him up and up through the darkness, only for them to come across just how lucky Tay had been in his fall. Perhaps a thousand feet above where Tay would’ve met his end, there was a cinching in the stone that the Skywing Lord was most-certainly too large to fit through.

The four-legged eagle tried to force its way through the narrow gorge, but unless Tay was willing to make the climb, and resummon the revenant, it was going to be trapped on this side of the stone. Which meant that Tay was also trapped down here too.

While he could be happy that he hadn’t become a puddle in the lowest tier of Duskborough, or wherever he’d ended up, how in the name of the Fourteen Above was he supposed to make it back up to the city. He could see some lights flickering up through the narrow gorge, which wasn’t so large that he couldn’t reach out in both directions and feel the stone walls. Duskborough ended just right there.

So, where had he ended up?

Eventually, the Skywing Lord brought him back down the bottom of his pit again. Thankfully, there was enough space down at the bottom of the both of them, and Tay’s four rocks.

Between his illumination from being attuned to Order 2 and the Skywing Lord’s light, he could pretty clearly make out the bottom of the pit that he’d fallen into. It was fairly unremarkable. There were a couple colonies of fungi around that made due in the darkness, and some bugs trying to hide from the sudden departure of darkness, but not much else.

Just three rocks. A boulder. And then that rift that was just barely as wide as Tay’s body. It was off to one side of the pit. Out of sheer desperation and a bit of boredom, Tay walked over to it and saw that it wasn’t just a crack in the ground. It was another gorge.

The rift went down into darkness. It would be a challenge to slip on through it, but he could manage it if he really wanted. Of course, if he did that, he probably needed to unattuned from Order 2. His hand was already aching and he’d need its strength back if he was to climb down.

He looked at the Skywing Lord. “Should I go further down?” he asked.

The Skywing Lord bowed its head, and even though it didn’t say anything—or, at least, Tay couldn’t hear it if it did—he knew that if he needed it, it would answer his calls.

Tay unsummoned the revenant and recollected all of his cards. He unattuned himself from Order 2, and once his hand started hurting, carefully made his way into the rift feet first. He made sure to keep full pressure of the rock against his back, and went as slowly as he could.

Which was why it was surprising when he swore his sight was returning. It was a gradual return, but soon enough, it was like there were lights at the bottom of whatever gorge he was entering. Was it possible that Duskborough ran even deeper than he’d fallen? But he’d fallen so far.

As he kept climbing deeper and deeper, the light became brighter and soon it was apparent that he was descending into the snowy white glow of Order. And he could hear the scurrying of feet not so far below him.

Shadows made their way around a cavern at the bottom of the gorge. It didn’t take Tay long to realize, from his perch high above them, that these were Jawens like the revenant that Sally had named Scamper.

These nimble rat-men ran along the ground on all fours and out of the cavern, bringing the light their bodies left off with them. Tay hurried down the ground and proceeded to follow after them, if only for the hope that Scamper had been in the sewers and so these Jawens might be able to lead him back to Stormwall.

But as the cavern angled down, Tay feared that he was only getting farther away from ever getting back to the city. Without any other way to go though, he still hurried after the white light, rushing through caverns and tunnels all in an effort to keep up with the revenants.

He thought he was losing them ahead of him, so he picked up his pace. When he came into the next cavern, he almost ran right into the back of one of the revenants. All four of them stared at him for a long moment.

Tay raised up his right hand and tried to give them a wave to say hello. The closest one sniffed at his hand, shied back, and then they all hopped away. Tay tried racing after them, but they were too quick now that they knew he was on their tail. They were gone before he could even round the next tunnel.

So, Tay continued onward in darkness. He actually attuned himself to Chaos 1 shortly after. Although it wasn’t bright as Order 1, the shadowlight drifting up from his body still fought against the natural darkness of the world and worked to show him a safe path through the rock tunnels.

It occurred to Tay that it was strange to have so many places to walk this deep in the world. These weren’t smuggler tunnels, like the one he’d entered from. These were something different—paths, made by some knowing hand. Not by revenant’s either. Parts of the path he walked on had stones placed in deliberate manners. And he even came across some small stretches of tiled road more than once.

Tay did not have a direction in which he traveled, and instead found it more appropriate to keep his feet moving in the darkness. If there was a way back up to the surface, he would find it.

Every now and again, he could hear the scampering of paws as the Jawens ran around in the tunnels. Their light-giving bodies flashed behind him sometimes, but he could never turn about fast enough to fully make them out again, so he only continued. And continued. And walked until his legs began to hurt.

Then the caves all started getting wider. And the rocky outcroppings fell away, to reveal a huge basin that was so massive that Tay couldn’t necessarily find the end of it. And that wasn’t for a lack of light either.

A great wall of white light, snowy like that of Order revenants, ran along the length of the city-sized chamber. It flowed down like a waterfall, and strange characters the likes of which Tay had never seen before all but seemingly swam within the light. Tay could still see through it though, and there was what seemed to be a city on the other side.

Partly on the other side of the wall of light, and partly on the side he was on, were ruins of a what looked to be a deserted city. Rocky ruins stood lonely and decrepit, with nothing but the shadows calling them their home. Tay could make out the slight illuminations of Order revenants in the far distance, running alongside the outside of the white wall, but he couldn’t tell if they were the Jawens from this distance.

“What is this place?” Tay asked.

A coldness swept into his ear, and part of Tay wished it wasn’t there. But a greater part of him needed to know what he’d stumbled into. Was this part of Duskborough.

You mean, you don’t know? And here I thought you were no longer a fool. Perhaps you’re as simple as I originally took you for, after all.

Tay reached into his pocket and pulled out the rainbow-wreathed card that read Garudigas, Eternal Devourer on the top. Garudigas’s art seemed a lot more detailed than it had ever been previously. Tay could make out spikes along his body and the dagger-like pupils of the Rune Wyrm’s eyes. Those seemed to be looking right at him.

“You know this place?” Tay asked.

I thought all of your kind knew places like this. These places are old. Very old.

“Places? What is this?”

Some of the lights in the distance began to break away from the rest and started heading in Tay’s direction. He didn’t suspect the Jawens to be hostile, Scamper hadn’t instilled a sense of diplomacy into Tay about the Jawen race. So, Tay crept back and fled behind an outcropping from which he could continue studying the wall of flowing white energies and the city that it surrounded almost entirely.

A prison, Garudigas stuffed into his mind. Not meant for your kind.

“Meant for yours then?” Tay asked.

A fool. You’ll always be a fool. That’s why your friend had to die.

Tay held Garudigas out in front of him at arm’s length. “What did you say?”

You’re a weakling, even if you have the power to wield me. You won’t admit to your own strength—you rely on the service of others to get what you need.

“I’ve lived by the deftness of my own fingers for as long as I could walk,” Tay said. “Don’t mention Mond again.”

Garudigas said no more. But while Tay stared into it, he noticed that there was an opening toward one side of the cavern, away from where the wall of white energy flowed. Parts of the ruined city ran as pathways up to the hole in the cavern that Tay had found, and he followed these until once again, he was in darkness. This time, he used the light of Garudigas to guide his path.

The Rune Wyrm made no objection to this, and soon, they’d left the ruined city behind them. In the near darkness, Tay couldn’t make out much, even with Garudigas guiding his path.

The darkness was so thick that Tay managed to snag his shoes on a couple of sharp rocks. These tore fairly deep into the soles of his shoes, to the point where his toes could feel the coldness of the stone. He continued to walk in the darkness for what felt like a whole day. It was when his stomach started collapsing in on itself that he made out the faint red glow of something ahead of him.

Tay all but stumbled into a field of giant red crystals that were just about as tall as buildings. These jutted out from the ground and glowed with a vibrant hue that made them seem alive. They were very much like the red crystals that illuminated the streets of the Drip.

They were like the crystals that Tay had socketed into his Talisman. And just to confirm that point, when he’d finally collapsed onto the ground, a set of boots fell down right next to his head. Tay turned to see a man in a long, dark blue and gold-trimmed coat with a rather solid-looking cane in his hand.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my old friend?” Lexorious said. “Tell me, Tay, what are you doing among my ley-crystals?”