Olivia studied the pages of drawings Morgan had created the night before, simply amazed at their precision and complexity. “All seven pages are the same spell?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t write small enough to put all the details on one page. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be; do you think I’d want to strain to read microscopic print?” She laughed. Olivia and Morgan were resting for lunch, and Bronwyn had run ahead to scout out the foothills they were fast approaching. She’d proven to be able to run nearly twice as fast as Morgan and maybe three times as quickly as Olivia when she went all out. At first, Morgan had been bewildered, trying to figure it out; he was taller than Bronwyn, and his agility score was tremendous in comparison, but then Bronwyn had told them about her “Blessing of the Herd,” and he’d let it drop.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

“Surprisingly, yes. I’m able to make out what parts of the pattern do. Like here, where this weave starts, I can see that it’s specifying your attuned Energy—void, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I think this branch on the third page is indicating your sightline. You know what would help? Could you try to draw the pattern for your vision spell?”

“Alright, I’ll work on that when we camp tonight.” He stood and stretched, and Olivia went back to studying the pattern he’d drawn. Its complexity was on par with her Elemental Form spell, and parts of it were utterly foreign to her, but she thought she recognized some portions of the pattern from what she’d read in her text. She pulled out the thick little book, thumbed through some of the example diagrams, and was pleased to find a match.

“Morgan, this pattern tree on the second page indicates a spatial fold!”

“Oh? You really are good at that stuff. How far have you read into that little dictionary?”

“I’m still reading the primer on terms and concepts. I’m hoping to get into the novice applications tonight.”

“You think my spell patterns will help you understand?”

“Definitely! With any luck, I can help you modify your spell, too. Testing it might be a bit risky, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Hah, right.” Morgan looked at the sky, scanning in all directions and Olivia also felt compelled to look around. So far, they hadn’t seen any other signs of the dragon or whatever it had been, but they were ever watchful. “Man, I hope that thing wasn’t a dragon, but its Core was flaring like a supernova in my Void Vision. I can see your Core, and it’s very bright, brighter than Bronwyn’s, but it’s like a candle next to a five-alarm fire compared to whatever was flying through the sky last night.”

“That sounds about right. When I met that dragon in the dungeon, I felt like a flea being regarded by a lion.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I just feel like an idiot not spending more time talking to Tiladia. Imagine! She was one of those things! I had an elder being’s spirit acting like my butler, and I never really spent much time getting to know her or about her kind.”

“Well, be a little reasonable; how many nights total would you say you’ve spent in your tower?”

“I don’t know. Ten? A dozen?”

“Right, and all those times, you’ve had plenty to worry about. It’s not like you spent months sipping brandy in your library and ignoring Tiladia.” Olivia smiled, and Morgan chuckled when he heard her words.

“Thanks, Olivia.” He stood up and pointed, “Here she comes.” A few moments later, Bronwyn came charging over the grass, her cheeks flushed with exertion and a big smile on her face.

“There’s a city up there!” she announced, gesturing behind her.

“Up where? In the mountains?” Olivia asked, looking to the tall, snow-covered, jagged peaks.

“Yeah, like, literally in the mountains; I saw buildings all over one of the bigger peaks; you’ll see it when we get over these hills and turn up into a canyon. The mountain's base has a huge wall around it, and I could see a road leading into an enormous cavern.”

“What about people?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing. Nothing was moving on the road, nothing on the wall, no smoke, no noise. Nothing.” Bronwyn shrugged.

“Alright, I don’t think it takes a genius to see the writing on the wall here,” Morgan said. “We see a dragon flying toward the mountains; Bronwyn sees an abandoned city in said mountains. You see what I’m getting at?”

“Yeah, it seems like too big a coincidence. Did the dragon kill them all? Did they flee? Did the dragon just move into an abandoned city? Is the dragon not there but just passing by? We can’t know until we do some more exploring.” Olivia started walking as she spoke; she didn’t want to spend another night out on the plains.

“Well, we haven’t seen another living thing since we got here, so, yeah, I’d say that’s a little ominous,” Bronwyn added, walking along with Olivia.

“Mmhmm, so keep your eyes peeled,” Morgan said, his long legs carrying him past the two of them. He had a naked sword in his hand—the bright, silvery one with the wolf’s heads carved into the guards he usually kept hooked to his belt. Olivia glanced at Bronwyn, and she grinned, shrugging; leave it to the man to try to be all serious, her wink said.

They progressed quickly through the foothills, entering the canyon that Bronwyn had scouted, and there, laid out before them, was the massive mountain with its strange, silent city adorning its foothills and slopes like a stony infestation of walls, roads, soaring towers, and squat buildings. On both sides of the canyon, sheer cliff walls guided the travelers toward the city, and Olivia saw the remnants of a cobbled road beneath the snow and overgrown scrub and grass. “No one’s lived here for a long time,” she said, gesturing to the old road.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same,” Morgan said over his shoulder. “Looks like this old road led right up the slope to that wall.” He stared for a moment, and Olivia felt a surge of Energy emanate from him. “There’s a huge iron gate in that wall. It’s closed.”

“You can see that from here? It’s gotta be ten miles!” Bronwyn sounded more impressed than disbelieving. Morgan tapped his temple just behind his eye and winked at her.

“Tricks of the trade. Speaking of which, any tracks?”

“Nope; I’d say something if I saw some tracks, knucklehead.”

“Hah! Nice to hear an old phrase from Earth. Don’t get me wrong, I love Issa to death, but her vocabulary is so serious!”

“Well, you should be teaching her some colorful vocabulary—that’s on you!” Olivia said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it.” He strode forward, and the two women followed, content to let him take the lead, at least for the moment. They advanced rapidly, soon closing the distance with the tall, gray wall, enough so that Olivia could make out the black gate at the center. They’d just crested a gentle rise and were on a very slight downward slope when a cracking, rumbling sound brought them to a halt. “Where’s it coming from?” Morgan asked, whirling around, his sword at the ready.

“There!” Bronwyn yelled, pointing to a spot on the canyon wall to their right where a wide fissure had begun to form. Chunks of rock and dirt fell in a shower of dust as the fissure opened, and the three adventurers backed away, watching it warily. As soon as the rumbling started, it stopped, and then a long, black limb with a massive, hooked claw extended from the crack in the canyon wall. The hook scrabbled on the rocky ground and then seemed to pull forth a long, segmented body composed of hooked arms, gnashing mandibles, and razored spines.

The creature had to be twenty feet long, and if someone asked Olivia to describe it, she’d have said it was something like a mix between a centipede, an ant, and a scorpion. The thing had a nest of beady black eyes mounted above its largest mandibles, and when they zeroed in on the trio, the mandibles spread wide, and a loud hissing trumpet of a cry burst forth. Then, it launched itself at them faster than it seemed possible for something so enormous to move.

Suddenly a black rift in space erupted around Morgan, a terrible anti-sound accompanying it, and with a shudder of reality, he was gone, only to reappear beside the charging creature, his sword hacking madly at its passing limbs. It shrieked and tried to turn on him, but its size and momentum kept it from nimbly confronting him. Meanwhile, Morgan racked up a dozen hacking blows at its limbs and side. Olivia, stunned into inaction at first, snapped out of it and pointed her hand at the creature's rear as it finally made the turn toward Morgan. She strode forward, closing the distance, and then fired off an Arcfrost Cascade.

She knew insects rarely thrived in the cold, and if that didn’t work, she knew the electric charge in the spell would have a powerful effect. Her assumptions proved correct; as the wave of frosty, electrically charged air showered the back end of the monstrosity, it writhed and trumpeted again, falling flat for a moment. Morgan leaped to take advantage of the stunned creature, driving forward with a lightning thrust of his sword toward the area beneath the massive head and mandibles.

Olivia could barely track his movement, he moved so fast, but the sword, his gleaming, beautiful sword, skidded along the thick plating of the creature’s “neck,” and Morgan seemed surprised, taking an extra step closer. That’s when the monstrosity proved to be quite resilient to Olivia’s stun attempt, and it snapped its huge, sharp mandibles closed on Morgan’s right arm. He screamed and thrashed for a moment, caught by surprise.

Olivia began to ready another spell, but then a beam of brilliant light, ten feet wide, erupted out of the ground beneath the creature, dissolving its carapace and causing the softer innards to smoke and combust. The monster screeched again, opening its mandibles, and then Morgan disappeared as a globe of nothing, of utter non-existence, billowed out of him. Olivia heard something like the end of the world as that wave of annihilating force rolled out, capturing half of the writhing, screeching giant insect in its grasp. As it thrashed in one last, mighty convulsion, the bubble of what Olivia assumed was void Energy winked out, and Morgan stood there, hands on knees, panting. His arm was still in one piece but bloody.

Bronwyn jumped down from the boulder she’d climbed at some point, a strange, smoking hammer in her hand, and yelled, “Morgan! Is your arm alright?”

“Yeah, thanks. I guess my bones are a hell of a lot tougher since I upgraded my race.” He stood up, and a stream of golden Energy motes began to flow out of the corpse toward the three of them. As the Energy surged into her, Olivia noticed a faint purple tinge to the motes, and she wondered what that meant.

“Holy shit! I just hit level twenty!” Bronwyn crowed.

“Yeah, I’d say you got most of the credit for that kill. That sun spell is amazing!”

“Thanks, but I can only do it once in a while, and it takes most of my Energy.”

“Let’s get moving; I should find a place to put on my armor. Damn, that thing’s bite hurt!” Morgan rubbed his arm and started walking. Olivia took a step to follow but then cracking, rumbling sounds echoed up and down the canyon. She looked to the left and right and saw dozens more fissures opening up on the rocky walls.

“Run!” Bronwyn yelled. “Get to that wall!”