Halfway down the spiraling stairs Eris wondered why she was the one holding the light. She handed it to Robur. He did nothing to resist—had he ever in his life?—and for brief moment she regarded him, behind her, sandwiched between the light in his hand and the distant shaded sun beyond the steps overhead, past the statue and the canopy.

He looked unwell. Their eyes met for a moment. She frowned. He was very young. Not much younger than she, but still…

After casualties were sustained, or injuries incurred, there always came the need to press onward. The encroaching resumption of the mundane. The incessant beating at the drum of maintenance. That was the awkward atmosphere of a meal after battle. One second: fear of death, adrenaline pumping. The next: owlbear nuggets. Rook always knew how to soften that schism. He treated it as if it weren’t there at all. A joke to smooth the edges of mortality.

Eris had been at this long enough now she hardly noticed it anymore. But looking at Robur, she did. He looked worse than unwell. He looked horrible and ill. Yet there was nothing to do but continue onward.

Or go home.

So there was nothing to do but continue onward.

“Is anyone home?” Kauom called. His voice returned as the only response.

They continued farther down, footsteps echoing. On the walls about the spirals, following the steps, was a two dimensional painting: a single corkscrewing scene of mounted men waging war. It reminded Eris of pottery she’d seen in Katharos as a child: stylized, painted in black and gold, but there seemed to be no end to the battles depicted—it was a very long way down. One after the next, no breaks, no lines, one conquest after the next, so that it nearly seemed like they were the shore and all the hordes of their adversaries were the waves breaking helplessly against their armor.

“For a people with command of such great power,” Eris said, “the Esenians were quite enamored with their horses.”

“Shows how stupid they were,” Kauom said.

Step-by-step.

“Why?” Robur said.

“Because horses are stupid! Keep up!”

His boots hit level ground. A long hallway stretched out before them. The arbalest panned from left to right.

Eris took a deep breath. The air was miasmatic with dust. Musty, stale, centuries without a touch of fresh wind. It hit her nostrils—

And there was mana with it. She felt the energy around her like humidity, bristling against her blood. Heat in her veins. An aethereal tug forward.

The mural extended into darkness on the right wall. They followed it into a broad corridor which led to a dead end.

Kauom jumped back. “It’s some sort of trap! The walls are about to close in around us—”

Eris held up her hand. There were no tracks on the walls, no spikes, no receivers for a lightning field on either side. This was no trap.

She stepped toward the wall. An arch carved out a gate-shaped silhouette in the black masonry. The bricks within its area were silver and gold. The other mural terminated at this wall’s corner, where the two met. This depicted no great scene, but only the simple paintings of small hieroglyphics on its face:

A lion, an eagle, an elephant, a horse, a spire, a fish, and a droplet of blood.

They sat scattered and jumbled up and down the wall in no particular order. Some tilted on their sides, like a child’s toys left out after play.

“This is a gate,” Eris said. “Not a trap. These pictures are its combination. I have seen another like it before, though this is more complicated.”

“Another locked door past the need for the Orb?” Robur said.

“Can never be too careful,” Kauom said.

“Perhaps…” Eris said. She wondered if there wasn’t more to it.

She touched one of the lions. As her fingertip collided with the cool, damp stone, the silhouette of the animal erupted in blue light. She dragged her hand and the lion moved with it.

The task: arrange the depictions in the correct order.

The last time she attempted a puzzle such as this had been in the Spire, on that first expedition with Rook. So very long ago. An eternity it seemed. And she…got it wrong. The consequences were deadly.

This time she would not make the same mistake. Much of her time had been spent in study of the Old Kingdom these last eighteen months; her refreshed knowledge would serve her well.

If she could recollect it all…

“So? What’s it mean?” Kauom said.

She growled for being asked a question before having a definitive answer, but she did have a guess. “‘Tis clearly a reference to the various peoples of Esenia. The lion, the primitive goddess still worshipped in many places, represents Lehoia; the horse, as I noted in the way in, is clearly the Esenians themselves; the elephant is the symbol of Ganarajya; the eagle is Darom, or as ‘twas known then Erimaz; and the fish…”

She frowned. She did not know of any people of the fish.

“Laksa,” Robur said.

“What?”

“On the sunken islands of Laksa. They were once known by the fish on their heraldry.”

Her frown deepened. Was that right? She had no idea. “Of course. As I was about to say. No doubt the mural along the staircase gives this away: the horse comes first, pursuing the other animals in the order of their conquests.”

“And what order is that?” Kauom said. His tone suggested he didn’t believe she knew.

“I am not a historian, but I suspect we may deduce the answer in time,” she replied sharply. “Again, the murals give us a hint.”

“Then the Spire comes last,” Robur said.

“Indeed.”

“And the blood? What’s the blood for? Spilled blood?”

Eris thought for a moment. She smiled and shook her head. “Do you know what ‘Esenia’ means in Regal, dwarf? The people of the blood—the family. They spread their tongue like flame throughout the continent and forged a new family through conquest. The elephant, the lion, the eagle—all were made sons of Seneria. No, the Spire does not come last—blood comes last. The forging of new kinship. The final effort of the Old Kingdom. Their lasting legacy.”

An ironic stroke, that. The Archon who built this place thought his people’s culture would be a greater legacy than their destruction of the world. But then who sees such things coming?

“Some lock,” Kauom said. “If it’s so simple, everyone who’d been to school might’ve worked the answer out with a bit of thought. Who’d hide their valuables behind a door like that?”

“Not I, and likely no Archon. Thus one must think that this mechanism serves some other purpose. But let us not stand here talking all day; the murals should be examined.”

So they were. They gave only a vague hint. Ganarajyani rode elephants in war, which made them easy to identify—their conquest came third on the walls. Eris knew her history well enough to put Lehoia, the lions, first—they were the ones who first colonized this continent for mankind. The dark-skinned Daromese came second, which left the Laksans for fourth. Then the Spire, and finally the droplet of blood.

All seven icons slid into place in a straight line across the wall. Eris was confident enough in her judgment this time that she bore no tension as they blinked blue, then sunk into place, becoming one with the stone. That she could be wrong again was an impossibility.

Whether or not she was right about that, she was right about the puzzle. The edges of the archway flashed white, then all the gilt silhouette within the wall, the gate-shaped silhouette, glowed: two seconds later its blaze reached a zenith, then vanished in a flash.

When Eris looked again, the archway was gone entirely—and the way forward clear.

Nothing but darkness for a moment, until…a series of lights flickered on, like lanterns ignited by watchmen in a storm, revealing a path. And then…

A roar.

The pained roar of a bear on the rack, distant, echoing, from deep within the complex. Tortured. Primal. Animalistic. Evil.

“What was that!?” Kauom said.

Eris hesitated. “I do not know.”

They stood there waiting for another noise, but none came.

“Perhaps this place was a prison, not a reliquary,” Robur said.

“And you think its prisoner still lives?” Eris said.

He shrugged.

Kauom harrumphed. “See any magic traps, boy?”

Robur shook his head. “I can’t use my spell. I’m too drained. It would—”

“Do you see any or not?”

“Well—no, I can’t—”

“Figures.” He glanced down the corridor, fidgeting with his crossbow. “You go first, witch.”

“If it pleases you,” Eris said. She was no coward. Still, she proceeded cautiously, focused on any hint of magic tugging against her blood, of any sensation of a nearby spell—

Soon that became impossible. There was immense magic in this place. It came from underground, overpowering her senses, like a foul scent of decay that rendered olfaction impotent for all other purposes. But this scent was far from decay. It was just the opposite. It was delicious. Like pure power.

She wanted it for herself.

The lights were large blue stones, stable, not Manastones nor as primitive and draining as the manalights she’d seen in the past, carved into the bricks overhead. They received their power through painted red lines of power. Energy currents, wiring for mana. Eris kept her eyes fixed on those wires: they would lead her to the source.

She snaked around one corner, then another. Presently she came to a room with a parapet. The room’s center was surrounded by a circle, like a cut-out balcony. The wiring led to the point over the circle where it met with a column. The column ran directly down onto the storey below, onto which this balcony had a clear view, and its wiring spiraled about in a helix.

Whatever source of magic powered this place, it was right here.

Eris’ mind swam. Mana came from the aether—from the heavens. In the Old Kingdom there was no other possible source, no way to power magical artifacts or even mages themselves except through wiring such as this affixed to the Spires or condensed Manastone used as batteries. The same did not hold true in the modern age, when mana suffused all the world, but this ancient place could only possibly be powered by one of those two options. And there was no Spire nearby these ruins, and she doubted any Manastone survived so long. That meant only…

Her hands found the parapet. A simple railing. Between each set of bars in the rail were etched glowing runes of warding. Her eyes followed the column, gazing at the mana throbbing like blood through the wiring, tracing it down…

It led a hundred feet below, into a cavernous sublevel. There, in a room with concrete floor and walls obscured by perspective, Eris saw more runes painted in a large circle, somewhat wider than the one down which she now gazed. Their magic still held.

Nothing was within the circle, around the column, except red light. Like bloody mist hanging in the air, flickering gently, moving about the confines set by the runes slowly.

The mist sank to the ground.

Falling…

Suddenly the mist congealed. It gathered itself into a solid mass. Speck by speck the color assembled toward a point, rising up off the ground, toward Eris: first formed arms, then a body, and a head.

The proportions were wrong. No symmetry. The figure, enormous. But it was the shape of a humanoid, reaching up for her with its head. Its back straightened as all the mist finished gathering; its mouth opened, and like a snake it lunged for her, levitating up, rushing at her through the air—

A deafening scream left its mouth. So loud that all the complex shook. She fell to the ground, covering her ears, but still she saw as the open mouth of this thing rushed toward her, and she was so stunned, so amazed, so enraptured by the pure beauty of the mana that it radiated, dazzlingly warm and inviting like the sun on a clear but cold winter day, that she did nothing as it swallowed her hole. She wanted it. There was no way to fight back.

That thought held all the way up until the thing’s head was a bare three feet from hers. That was when it collided with the runes at the bottom of the railing. The moment it tried to cross that threshold, it stopped as if it hit an invisible wall, and its physical form dissipated in an instant back into red mist with a puff.

Eris scrambled backward.

When she gathered enough sense to turn, she saw Robur and Kauom both standing and drooling.

Kauom pulled the arbalest close to his beard.

“What was that?” he said meekly.

She clenched her fists. Of course, now it all made sense. The only source of mana in the Old Kingdom was the aether. A Spire brought the Old Kingdom to the aether. Condensed Manastone brought the aether to the Old Kingdom. Yet there was one other way to bring the aether down to earth: to capture its denizens and tap their Essences of mana.

“A demon,” Eris said. “A true demon. A being of pure magic. It is what powers this place.”

“Down here all this time?” Robur said.

“We heard it when I opened the door. It must have been dormant, in slumber. I do not know how long its mana might last if left being drained, but it had been confined in its cell with no way to expend energy, floating—a demon such as that is like an elf, or a wyrm. ‘Tis immortal so long as it does not expend its Essence healing, or casting spells. And a demon is…far more powerful than any creature of Earth.” She realized. “That is the purpose of the door! Not to keep us out, but to turn on the channelers: a switch for the lights, to begin draining their captive. An assurance their battery is not needlessly drained while not in use.”

“An evil thing to do to a creature,” Robur said. “To keep it imprisoned…”

“Spare your tears,” Eris said, “we are not here to rescue demons. We may find him useful yet. I do not know how long the channeler will remain active; we should seek out whatever requires such power and use it, and take what else we find, before it shuts off again.”

“Yes,” Kauom said. “Finally a good idea. Let’s get what we need and leave quick.”

She gave one last look over the parapet. The fog regathered slowly. The Magisters of old were an extraordinarily devious kind. They desired the location of this place to be secret, yet needed magic to operate its workings—thus no conspicuous Spire, or regular shipments of Manastone, would suffice. So they built it all around a demon captured somehow from the aether. A one-time investment. Brilliant. So brilliant she wished she figured it out sooner.

She turned away. Then—

Free him.

The voice echoed through her mind. Her bones shook in harmonic reverberation. She centered herself and tried to issue a response in silence, through thought.

You are not welcome in my body.

Its body is mine. It shall do my bidding. He is imprisoned unjustly: an immortal gaoled forever. Free him. Destroy the runes.

You are impotent and banished. If you could do anything, you would do it now. I will not listen to you.

I am not banished. It cannot banish me. I saved its allies, and was rewarded by a setback; its treachery was rewarded instead by good luck. Next time it will not get lucky. It will not banish me. We shall be together until its soul is removed and only its body remains as my vessel.

Be gone!

And it forgets. I do not need complete control to compel it to action.

Her fingers tightened around the parapet’s railing involuntarily. Her muscles contracting. She tried to open her palm, but no matter what she did she felt nothing but spasms of pain—her hand clenched down harder.

…it can be made to do foolish things, such as join him in his cell. That would make him happy. He desires company, like I did before I deposited me with this shard.

You flatter yourself through comparisons to a true demon. You are a collection of rocks in a cave surrounded by lizards, given sapience by an act of misfortune. This creature is something far greater.

She focused on her own arm and tried to tap it of mana. Whether this worked or the wyrm simply relented she couldn’t say, but the spasms stopped. She pulled her arm free as the pain dissolved, control returned to her muscles

I simply inform it that it would be wise to listen to my advice. Even when I am tapped, I can make it die.

You have said you need me alive already, and you do. I am not afraid of your theatrics. Now go!

She shook her head. A moment passed—she turned, and the thoughts invading her head were gone. There was no point in asking Robur for assistance now; without Supernal Vision he would be unable to isolate the wyrm’s Essence. She was on her own for now. Her will would have to overcome this creature without assistance.

A reminder why she should not make deals with demons in the future. She doubted the wyrm would truly risk compelling her to anything around this caged demon, but she decided it was better not to give it the opportunity.

Two symmetrical corridors led from this room. The wiring stopped here, leading nowhere but back to the front entrance. No other way to explore.

“Come,” she said.

“A lot of work to keep a beast as the battery just for the lights,” Kauom said. “Considering there aren’t even any lights this way…”

“It does seem we’re missing something…” Robur said.

“Of course we’re missing something! There must be more Lightning Walls here! More statues waiting to come alive! What else could need all that magic?”

The corridor snaked in gently sloping circles downhill, the other mirroring it in the opposite direction on the other side of the room. Once in the spiral proper, a slit in the righthand wall appeared, growing wider, until offering a window into the cavern beneath the balcony from which they just descended—a pristine view of the demon’s cell. From here they saw the red mist shimmering clearly, the form of the demon coalescing in protest before dissipating again as its Essence drained. Its luminescence gave a dim, atmospheric light to the path, enough to forge onward.

“They were proud of their installation,” Eris observed. Kauom’s point was well-noted. Where did all this power go?

The corridor led them underneath the demon’s cell. Here the central pillar extended through the ceiling, mana wiring glowing brightly, leading directly into a rumbling machine. It looked something like a furnace, wherein the fires were gold and green instead of blue and red. The mana pumped through points of ingress at its top, around where the column sealed; she felt each throb of energy, each transfer of magic, as raw energy was stolen from the demon above and converted into usable mana by this device.

This was the channeler.

It wasn’t large, no larger than the furnace it resembled. She placed her hand against it. No heat, but she might have mistaken it for such. And just like a furnace on a chilly day, its embrace warmed her soul.

“I’m getting tired of being dragged around! Where’s the damn treasure?” Kauom said.

Painted on the ground were more mana wires. These were gold, thick and intertwined in a double helix, patterned in a complex thread. They led from this room into darkness. The area around the channeler was lit, but nothing save the glowing of the wiring paved the way from here.

Eris wordlessly followed its trail.

Here the ceiling was arched and rounded, and three hundred paces down the tunnel, following nothing but the gold light underfoot the whole way, they reached a short set of steps; and at their top they reached a platform, a rotunda. The mana wires jumped the stairs before snaking off again toward the rotunda’s middle, where rested a large tombstone-shaped slab of black stone.

Gold lines throbbed about its edges. The wiring branched off before the slab toward the walls and formed a ring of dim lights overhead, the magic ebbing and flowing like torchlight, giving the place an atmosphere of reverence just like some ancient temple on the eve of sacrifice.

“What’s all this?” Kauom said, his voice low.

“I do not know,” Eris replied slowly. She stepped slowly toward the stone. It looked almost like a Magister’s keystone, like the one she kept still in her pocket, but scaled upward fifty thousand times. In its black polished surface she saw her own reflection, barely, and the blood still stained across her torso from the Arktid’s claws. She hadn’t bothered to clean herself after their battle. It hadn’t occurred to her—so used to filth had she grown.

So it was through the mirror sheen of that stone she noticed, first, the movement on her chest, above the loose fitting garments she wore. Her numb skin hadn’t felt it, but it was clear to her eyes: her blood was crawling off her chest and toward her back, her arms, desperately trying to escape the thing before her. Each droplet animated, alive, and in route.

Just like the illusion in the Magister’s Vault.

Raw mana would not have that effect unless fashioned into a spell. This stone bore a powerful enchantment.

“We have no idea what will happen when we trifle with this place,” Robur said. He leaned, exhausted, against a far wall. “I can’t examine the spells.” He glanced down at his arm, and even at a distance Eris saw purple hives swelling against his skin. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Long way to come with nothing to show for it,” Kauom said. “But maybe the boy’s right. We can’t sell this. You don’t have a book. You don’t have any idea what it is, or what it does. And a demon upstairs? I don’t like this place…”

She glanced at him in disbelief. “You would turn now and flee with the end in sight?”

“What if it’s one of those Lightning Walls? Touch it and—poof!”

Eris held her hand near the stone. Some great power was hidden here. It was so much more complicated than she expected, yet if she could master its secrets, as the Magisters did…

“I’ll find something else to take from this place,” he continued. “There’s got to be something. And we’ve got our trophy, the rangers will pay good money for that. I’m not dying for this rock.”

Dying for this. Eris considered. She doubted a Lightning Wall would be hidden in this place. For what purpose? Protecting what?

But the dwarf was right. She didn’t know. There was always a possibility. Thus she faced the question. Would she die for this? Would she risk her life in the pursuit of power? Was her hunger for mana so complete that she would throw herself at the mercy of a hunch, and then that of the Magisters?

The Magisters. Men so great they brought demons, beings of pure mana, from the aether down to earth, and turned them into slaves. Men who built machines that lasted eons. Men who constructed buildings so magnificent they were still beyond compare millennia later. Men so powerful they became gods in their own lifetimes, whose majesty was so apparent that belief in the ancient pantheons died out—for who could worship a lion when confronted with a Spire?

Eris knew. She would stop at nothing to discover their secrets. She would stop at nothing to one day have the power of demoncatchers and godkillers for herself. She would do anything to taste the magic they had. And if she failed, her life would be one of constant despair, to know that before her came others who had accomplished so much while she was left in dirt and mud and ash. Dress her in velvet and surround her with mirrors and she still would never be content in knowing that.

All this meant she valued power more than life itself. Even beauty, at its core, was an expression of power over men: that was its central delight. So she didn’t care what pain or suffering might ensue if she gave into temptation. The warnings of her companions fell on deaf ears. Any price was worth it, so long as the promise was fulfilled.

She reached out and touched the stone—and her hand stopped an inch away.

It was right. I cannot stand to see it die, for its death would mean my end.

Fury overtook her. She spoke aloud. “Do not get in my way!”

Yet it will kill itself with its vanity.

“What?” Kauom said.

Her bicep spasmed. She let out a yelp of pain and doubled over herself. Robur rushed to her side, but she pushed him away.

I will not permit it to experiment with its own body. Has it any sense of preservation?

She clenched her jaw, falling down to the ground. The spams spread throughout her body; to her back, then down to her thighs. The pain was overwhelming.

It must be punished before it and I are both killed. So it comes to its right mind.

“Leave me!” she gagged.

Why does it refuse to listen?

“Did the stone get to her already!?” Kauom said.

Her muscles continued to twist, to contort—a seizure. Tears swelled in her eyes. But this was its tactic: it wanted to cause her pain, to disrupt her ability to conquer its Essence with her own.

Its tactic was working.

“Eris!” Robur said. Now he held her arm, grabbing her hand.

Will it listen to its allies?

She clutched Robur’s fingers. That gave her the moment of grounding she needed. It was just like casting a spell: to reach out with her mind, to mold her willpower into something manifest…boxing the manawyrm from her mind, banishing it out, vanquishing it away. She visualized it shrining from her view: she imagined its voice echoing as it faded into nothingness: she foresaw herself in its cavern again, tapping it of all its energy, empowered by its Essence, and then…

The seizure ceased. She fell to the ground, gasping. The pain draining away slowly from each ligament.

Kauom grabbed her other wrist and dragged her some distance back, like a wounded soldier. “Let’s get out of here! Damn cursed ancient place—”

“No!” Eris coughed. “Do not touch me, dwarf!” She tugged herself free.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She didn’t listen. She was focused on herself. Waiting to hear the wyrm’s voice again. But it didn’t come. She spent a long time waiting for the pain to die. When she turned as she rose she saw her two companions; they both carried horror in their eyes, confusion, complete fear.

“Eris,” Robur said. “Let’s go.”

She sneered. “I am going nowhere,” she said. With that she turned, and with only one moment more of preparation, she laid her hand against the stone.

Chill breeze assailed her. Sticky, humid air. She felt a lurch, then a rush of energy—and all her vision was overcome by darkness. The prickling uneasiness of an onset fever pressed against her mind, but only for a moment, only until she looked upward and she saw.

The nighttime sky.

She stood on the top of a stone tower, a battlement, and stared at awe at the streaking aurora through the stars. Every color of mana in the aether. Twinkling and shining, brighter than she’d ever seen. So low she could touch it. So much magic around her she could do anything…

That was when she looked down.

Stretched out beneath her, a hundred miles off toward the horizon, sprawled the overgrown ruins of a Spire-strewn city. An urban megalith. A concrete jungle bathed in starlight. A metropolis of unbelievable proportions.

There was only one place this could possibly be. The birthplace of the Magisters. The capital of the Old Kingdom. The city where the world ended long, long ago.

Ewsos. The home of the dawn, now bathed in black.