All day the party stayed quiet. It was not a particularly vicious argument between them last night—no one was vaporized—but it tore away at the scab of all the worst triangular tensions between Eris, Rook, and Aletheia. Or, between Eris, and Rook and Aletheia. Now they were uneasy together. The girl hated the gift of magic and longed for a different life; she loathed Eris for appreciating who she was. Eris likewise loathed her back for being so stupid. Meanwhile Rook’s admission had revealed their carnal indiscretions for a lie and brought to the forefront the unavoidable reality that they wanted very different things from each other. It was not as if they needed to share a bed to travel together, or indeed needed to like each other at all, but she was not certain their relationship could survive much longer on these terms. It was a treaty respected by only one partner.

Last night she had been resolute that she would be able to use Rook and nothing would need change. Yet after her dream she felt a strange anxiety when she looked upon him. Different from lust. She did not recognize the feeling. She wanted to be rid of it at once.

This was to say that she found herself in the rain of Telmos, herself against both of her companions while they formed a single faction.

Aside from a stray word here or there, then, this reality, which they all knew, was what everyone contemplated in silence while they walked. Soon they scaled a rocky formation that jutted out from the floor, found right at the place where the Petrified Jungle met with the continuance of the oversized natural wilds of the highlands, where the trees once again blew in the wind and the air bristled with the noise of life, and because of such a long silence it was striking indeed when Rook pointed over the canopy and toward a distant tower that breached the bottom of the misty, wispy, low-hanging clouds.

“That must be the Keep,” he said.

Eris gazed yonder. From such a distance it looked like one of the pessiyanun pillars, covered in green moss and vines, yet it was clearly man-made. A rounded exterior and windows and a twist to the architecture that was not so unlike the tower at Pyrthos, only solitary and in much worse repair and not half so enormous. In the way it narrowed as it extended it was almost like an Oldwall Spire, but it was not made of metal, and it was not black.

“It’s like Antigone’s tower,” Aletheia said. “Why is it called a keep?”

“The tower is visible before the rest of the premises,” Eris said. “There will be more. Though it has been abandoned so long that I cannot say for certain how much will be left intact.”

“How far off do you guess?” Rook said.

She considered. “Several days.”

“We won’t be safe,” Aletheia said.

“Adventurers rarely are.”

“Then we’d better not waste daylight,” Rook said. They continued then, setting off in their now-certain direction.

In the course of their travels, as apprehension toward each other thawed, Eris explained what little she knew about their destination: that it was built in the early years of the dark age that followed the Fall of the Old Kingdom, that it was one of many such keeps erected by surviving Magisters throughout Esenia in an attempt to preserve traditions of magic in the new and sundered world, and that it had been uninhabited for centuries.

A mosquito the size of an apple landed on Aletheia’s arm. She chased it away with her sword.

“They should have built it someplace else,” she said. “Like the beach.”

“The world has changed much since that time. The borders of Telmos would not have been navigable when this academy was formed, and many power people still lived in the ruins of Akkan and other villages which now lie abandoned. The story I have read is that the Magister Prince ruled Telmos for centuries before the Hepaz became navigable. He created his own academy at this keep, training magicians and keeping the jungle and its threats at bay. His successors grew tired of their humid throne, however, and fled to Pyrthos; there they rejoined their tradition of magic with that of the Tower.”

“Why didn’t they teleport out?” Aletheia said.

“What?”

“If they wanted to leave, and they had magicians, why didn’t they make portals to Pyrthos?”

“Teleportation is not so easy,” Eris said. “It requires great power. Manastone will not suffice.”

“Or perhaps they liked ruling, just like the Old Kingdom,” Rook said. “They must have taken everything valuable with them when they went.”

“Not all is easy to transport.”

“Except with portals,” Aletheia said quietly.

“Have you ever used a portal?” Eris said. She stopped and turned to glare at the girl.

Aletheia hung her head. “No,” she admitted.

“I have. They are an esoteric expression of magic liable to turn the transported inside out. I have seen it happen; the poor student lived for three days with his intestinal lining in place of his skin.”

“That’s horrible,” Rook said.

“It really was. That is common when teleportation spells are miscast. There are transportational devices left behind from the Old Kingdom, but they are complicated and rare and with few exceptions they have been lost to us today. So you may forget about portals.”

Aletheia didn’t say anything to acknowledge her synthesizing of this lesson, but Eris accounted it successfully imparted never-the-less. Perhaps she could be a teacher after all.

“It may be we will find the ruins ransacked,” she continued, “but I suspect machinery, if nothing else, was left behind. If their facilities are even a tenth of what Pyrthos has then we may be able to reverse Pyraz’s transformation.”

Pyraz barked. The idea still unnerved Eris. She didn’t want to admit it but she did rather like this dog. He was loyal and obedient and never talked back, unlike the rest of her companions. Still, sating her curiosity, both in the manner of his transformation and in who he was before—that was worth the sacrifice. If both Robur and the writing on the stasis chamber in which the dog was found were to be believed, then Pyraz was certain to be a warrior, a spellblade of some kind, from before the time of the Fall. He would have been forgotten at the top of the Spire for at least a thousand years and perhaps much longer before Eris accidently set him free. The things he would know—the magic he might be able to teach her…

Yes, that all was quite worth the loss of their pet dog.

Something cracked through the trees late at night. Eris smothered their fire and they sat in silence listening as its enormous footsteps crushed through fallen logs and snapped branches, passing them by. There was a groan from deep in the darkness like the bubbling of a volcano underwater; Aletheia opened her eyes wide and watched like a terrified cat in the direction of the noise, waiting for anything at all to break the calm.

She clutched her bow.

“I don’t like it here,” she said.

They were being rained on once more. At dusk they had made camp near the banks of one of this place’s countless rivers, concealed within the greenery, but after just a few hours the current swelled feet upward and they found themselves sitting in water. They were forced to retreat inland in the dark while things alive and unseen roared in all directions.

“I can’t remember what it feels like to be dry,” Rook said.

“Be grateful,” Eris said, “the rain keeps the insects away.”

“I’d rather have my blood sucked,” Aletheia said.

Another tree fell in the distance. Wet lumber collapsing to muddy earth, wood crushed beneath gigantic feet. Even Eris had to admit she felt keenly the sensation of being prey.

“The walls of the keep will do something to protect us when we arrive,” Eris said. “Until we depart once more.”

“If we arrive,” Aletheia said.

“Tomorrow,” Rook said. “Try to get some sleep. Pyraz won’t let anything sneak up on us.”

“I doubt any of us will sleep tonight,” Eris said. Somehow they had all come very near each other over recent minutes, and even worse she found herself in the middle. Yet if she wasn’t going to sleep—an idea.

She projected an arc over them. From the tree at their backs to the top of Rook’s head; all four party members were slowly covered by an expanding green forcefield. Magic to keep the rain away.

Rook tapped it with his knuckles. Solid. Water from the canopy dripped down onto them still, but it was deflected harmlessly to the side.

Eris filed the spell away into the recesses of her mind. This was a simple use of mana, a basic exertion of energy, but to sustain it without concentration required far more discipline. She had been at practice with their fires, cast on wet sticks; now something more complicated was in order.

Rook put a hand on her shoulder. This time there was nowhere to cringe away to except Aletheia’s lap. She glared at him, but it was a friendly gesture, a charismatic touch, and she relaxed somewhat to see his face.

“You need rest too,” he said.

“I will be fine,” she said. “‘Tis time one of us did something about this rain.”

“Can we start the fire again?” Aletheia said. Whatever creature had passed their camp by was gone now.

“I am distracted. You may do what you like.”

So the girl tried to support a fire of her own which burned nothing but mana. After a few tries she managed to provide some warmth, but not for long before exhaustion overcame her. The flame went out.

“I can’t,” she said.

“It’s all right,” Rook said. “I like the darkness anyway. It’s atmospheric.”

“How enchanting, the atmosphere of jungle swamps,” Eris said.

Maintaining the shield while conversing was something like reading a book while listening to a conversation. Not impossible, yet not easy. But she was soaked through and the forest was alive with noises and she was certain she would get no sleep, so she kept it up anyway.

As they sat together, no doubt all thinking back to the other night once again, Rook grabbed his backpack. “I somehow forgot.”

“What?” Aletheia said.

He pulled something from the pack that was nothing but shadow in the dark night. “Do you remember the first thing you bought when we came back from the Spire?”

At first Eris didn’t realize he was speaking to her. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I believe there was a gown and two fur pillows.”

“And a hand mirror.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“You carried it with us everywhere for months.”

“We are homeless vagrants, where else was I to put it?”

He shrugged. “What ever happened to it?”

“The first was gold and stolen by the bandits, outside Kaimas. The second was silver, and there have been others since.”

“I remember,” Aletheia said. She sighed. “You looked so beautiful with that silver mirror.”

“I know,” Eris sighed at the memory. “Once we have put this business with Pyraz to rest I shall acquire another.”

“You won’t,” Rook said. “Not silver, anyway, for I found this in Patiyali.” He presented whatever it was that had been in his backpack to her. She took it, and at once she felt the dense weight and cool wetness of the metal grip, and she flicked a flame onto her finger—and saw her reflection staring back.

She hardly recognized herself. So much older, she thought. Her hair was black when wet. She looked quite disheveled. But the mirror—the mirror was just like the first one she found in Vandens. Beautiful, golden, outrageously expensive. There had been so much focus on adventure since before she took the manashunt: the Wyrm, the Vampire, the Seekers, the Arktids, the Infernal, her broken leg, hardly a moment to rest, so that she’d nearly forgotten how much she adored fine things. How many months since she last wore a dress?

The light went out. She clutched the mirror to her breast. She looked to Rook. “Why did you buy this?”

“For you,” he said simply.

She shook her head. “Why?”

“I found it before I became sick. I only remembered last night, but—the opportunity passed by for some reason or another. But when I saw it I couldn’t think of anything except you in Rytus by the fire, so I bought it. As a gift.”

“A gift?” Eris frowned. “I have never—you must want some share of my treasure in return, in compensation.”

“No, that would be a trade. A gift is free.”

She looked at the mirror again. Very strange feelings erupted in her chest. “I do not understand.”

“I wanted you to have it, that’s all.”

Some sliver of logic could be found in that. A mirror could be used to upkeep her appearance, Rook took pleasure in her appearance, ergo…yet such thinking left her still feeling empty. “You truly want nothing for it?”

“Nothing but to see you smile.”

“I—am not certain what to say. It is beautiful and…no one has ever given me such a thing before. A ‘gift.’”

“Say ‘thank you,’” Aletheia said.

She might have snapped at the girl any other day, but in that moment she did not feel malicious enough for it. That was when the epiphany came down upon her, when she noticed he used the word ‘smile’ which itself came very close to the dangerous territory of happiness: a gift was a ploy to bypass her defenses. It was a trick to deceive her into reciprocating his more intimate advances. He did desire something in return, and it was something she was not prepared to give. Herself.

Yet it was thoughtful all the same. And it was a very beautiful mirror. Could it be that he truly wanted nothing from her? That would be so like him. So revoltingly selfless.

She wanted to be angry, but instead she felt quite vulnerable. She held the mirror like a child’s favorite toy.

“Thank you,” she said at length, and awkwardly, and she expected at any moment now he would reach out to molest her again, just like last night—

But he didn’t. He smiled at her, and he retreated to his wet bedroll. “Goodnight, Eris,” he said. “Don’t keep that shield up too long.”

Like that she was left to herself, though her three companions were all inches away. She spent the rest of the night in deep contemplation. Was this the relationship she wanted? The giving of gifts? Of course not. Yet she could hardly pretend not to be grateful. She felt a tinge of guilt which kept her awake, a feeling like she had done nothing to earn gift-giving or friendly magnanimity from anyone. She hated all these thoughts; they were uncertainty, and uncertainty reflected weakness. Her internal monologue waffled and floundered like a grounded fish, like a dying insect, like—like Aletheia.

That was a long and miserable night. She was forced to let the shield drop some hours later, but even though she was exhausted she still didn’t fall asleep. Instead she stared at Rook and continued to think.

Rook. And Aletheia. The two of them crawled together in a huddle to keep each other warm. More cuddling. Yet for the first time, Eris did not feel contempt to look upon them so. Out there in the rain, cold, alone, she realized she was envious. She could be beside Rook and it would be warm and marvelous and her mind would be tingling like it did after they shared a bed; instead she was freezing by herself. And for what reason?

Last night it seemed so clear. Dignity, independence, pride, warding off the scourge of romance and love. She still felt such, in some abstract way, in an intellectual sense. These were things she knew, like that the Earth was round. Yet now she stood on a vast steppe, and for her life the horizon looked very, very flat. She would have done anything to embrace him.

But she did nothing instead. Nothing all the way until dawn, except hold her mirror and freeze.

A crumbled line of white appeared in the distance. Shrouded by green, covered in vines, like weathered rocks in slightly the wrong shade, only just too blocky to be natural in formation. They were low and uneven and framed everywhere by trees. Some sections were fallen, some altogether absent; these fortifications would stop no one now.

The tower jutted out behind, barely visible high above them through the branches.

The walls encircled an area around a cliff which framed the tower, a backdrop of porous brown. The perimeter used the mountains as its back third. Closer still and they stepped into one section long since collapsed, and they looked inward, and thus they saw the Magister’s Keep.

Or, more jungle. The keep which once stood here was long since consumed by nature. The base of the tower was impossible to miss, even covered as it was by tall trees, yet the other buildings, nothing but ruins now, looked like little more than stray rocks strewn by the natural forces throughout a normal highland Telmos rainforest.

The keep itself did still stand. It was a tall, square, crumbling fortress, like any that might be found in cities and settlements built in the eons since the Fall. The walls were thick and formidable. A gatehouse stood collapsed, but a similarly decrepit guardhouse led inside. It, too, was collapsed, yet someone more recently had cleared away the rubble, thus creating a small pathway inside. Only the tower remained intact. Up close it was tall and grand, although nothing compared to most others made by the Magisters.

“For the keep of a Magister,” Eris mused, “‘tis remarkably humble.”

“It was probably more impressive before it became a ruin,” Rook said.

“Even so, they did not build with the style of the Old Kingdom, and for one who ruled as a prince over all Telmos I had expected something—more impressive.”

“We had better find something worth taking here,” he said, stepping forward. He looked to her with a smile. “If we don’t I’ll take your mirror away.”

She stepped backward, frowning reflexively, before she realized he was joking. Still somewhat uncertain she replied, “You may try.”

Aletheia held her hand near one of the bricks in the keep’s masonry.

“Do you feel that?” she said.

Eris’ attention shifted. She stepped toward the girl and did the same. At fist she sensed nothing. But then…

Taint in the air. Like drinking bad water, the mana here was befouled. She shuddered as she closed herself off to the taste.

“I think we shall find something worth our time after all,” she said. “You had best be on your guard.”

“What is it?” Rook said. “A demon?”

Aletheia retreated to his side. Eris shook her head. “I do not know for certain, but I do not think so. ‘Tis something different.”

“Like what?” Aletheia said.

“There is only one way to be certain. But let us search the premises ere we proceed. We may find something in these ruins worth taking—or lying in ambush.”