Hump felt cold in the darkness. For a long time, that was all he felt. It was good while it lasted.

A red light brought him back to conscious thought. He was on his back, the earth warm beneath him. Even as he opened his eyes, his stomach sank. Jagged rocks surrounded him like walls. Treetops loomed above, illuminated by the same red glow. A red glow he was familiar with.

He was back in Stonebark Forest.

Fear filled him. He knew what he would find when he lifted his head but did so anyway. The dungeon core was nearby, a giant gemstone that swam with a sickly light atop its pedestal. Around it, the soul was dead and grey. And Lucile stood there, grinning down at Hump with the gorger’s ivory fangs. Her eyes gleamed with the red dungeon essence, shimmering like miniature cores.

It was a look that inspired fear in Hump, but he knew the gorger was dead. Whatever this was, it was not the same. He tried to move but his body felt heavy. The most he could do was wriggle his fingers and toes. Panic rose in him as he tried to force himself up, willing his body to react with every fibre of his being. Not even his essence would obey him. He groaned against the effort; fought and clawed at the ground to bring himself up, to escape, or at least put up a fight.

In the end his body relented, exhausted. He lay there gasping, heart hammering in his ears like drums.

“Shush now.” Lucile strode over to his side and squatted down. She tilted her head, studying his face. Her eyes swam with swirls of red power flaked with bronze. “There is nothing left for you to do.”

“What did you do to me?”

She laughed. “You did this to yourself. And now you are stuck here in my world. A world I wish to be free of.”

“No. This is a dream. I can wake up like I did before.”

Her grin widened, the skin of her cheeks stretching back inhumanly, the gorger’s fangs on full display. “This is no dream. Right now, you are a soul attached to your body by a thread. What little of your mind remains will pass once I am done with you.” She placed a hand on his chest. “Do not worry. It will be over soon enough.”

Pain exploded in Hump’s chest. She pressed her fingers through his skin, and Hump screamed. They gouged deeply, but it wasn’t blood that flowed from the wound. It was pure white essence. She pushed deeper, reaching for his core, her fingers like hot knives. His vision flickered and the sound of his screaming grew distant. He struggled to think. Struggled to do anything as the pain soared. He felt the heat surge throughout his body, travelling down his channels, worming its way deeper. He summoned his will and pushed back against her, fighting with everything he had, but it didn’t work as it should. His mind didn’t seem his own. Everything felt sluggish and beyond his control.

He envisioned the River and Waves, sensing his channels. They were filled to the brim with dungeon essence, and it clogged them like sludge. He tried to stir it. To get his power moving, but it resisted his will. It didn’t feel right. Like he was trying to control someone else’s power and their own will was pushing him back. Almost as if it wasn’t his own body.

A tightness gripped his chest and he gasped. Then there was a pulling. Pain exploded—white hot. There was nothing else. The world vanished, and with it went the pain.

Flashes of memory burst in his head. Glimpses of places he’d been, faces he’d met. Dungeons, monsters, the smell of smoke, the sensation of wind against his face. Each moment brief, yet in that brief window, it was as if he were back there. And then they were gone.

It felt wrong, like something was ripping them from his mind. He desperately searched for escape, willing himself to wake up, for Lucile—for the gorger—to have been lying. He delved back into the River and Waves, trying to sense his body. Trying to sense anything.

What he got was something else.

He was falling. He saw green again. Trees, the grass, a distant village. He smelt meat and smoke. And then his momentum came to a stop. The world spun around him and when it settled, he was sitting on a log. Something huffed nearby, and Hump turned to see Prancer stomping at the ground as he grazed. By the campfire, his master paced back and forth before him.

“Let’s try another approach,” the old man said. Seeing him like this, he didn’t look as old as Hump remembered. There were no grey specks in his beard, he still had all his hair, the wrinkles on his brow were little more than lines. Even his cloak looked new.

“Are you listening, Hump?” he snapped.

Hump hadn’t been. He’d just been staring. It had been almost a year since his passing, and Hump didn’t even have a picture to remember him by.

The old man grumbled something under his breath. “Open those ears, lad, or you’ll be mucking out the stables again tonight.”

“I’m listening!” Hump said quickly, the words seeming to come out on their own.

His master scowled. “This will be good for you. Your focus needs work, and the River and Waves technique is the perfect skill for it. Through its mastery, you can achieve a state where you can truly accomplish anything.”

“Anything?” Hump asked. “What about gold? Are you able to make it?”

His master frowned. “No, not exactly. But you could make something appear to be gold or possess properties like it.”

“What about food then? Can you create food?”

“Well… okay, not quite anything. But you could certainly cook it.”

“I can cook it anyway.”

His master glared at him. “Nattering on won’t help you. There’s no getting out of this. We’re going to keep going until you get it or until you’re tired enough that you stop annoying me.”

Hump rolled his eyes and let out a long groan. “How can something that isn’t magic help me use magic?”

“Your ability to manipulate essence does not make you a wizard. Any brute with a bit of talent can do that. With a strong enough will, one can command essence through force, but it will resist you at every step. That’s why we need things like formations to bind it, and why you struggle so much with your shaping skills.”

“Let’s just go back to Essence Blast,” Hump said. “I was really starting to get it.”

“There is more to magic than blowing things up.” He tapped Hump’s forehead. “It’s about controlling this.” He squeezed Hump’s shoulder. “This.” He tapped Hump in the chest, just over his heart. “And this. Only when you master all three can you expect the world to listen to you. Now close your eyes and focus. Envision the river, focus on your breathing, and give me a few minutes of peace.”

Hump sighed but did as he was told. He turned his attention inward once more, envisioning the channels of his body. Immediately, he could sense the stagnant dungeon essence that still filled them. As bad as that was, at least it meant his connection to his body was not entirely lost. It leaked into every part of him, meandering down the wide channels of his arms and legs, leaking into the smaller channels that broke away from them.

Less distinct was his core. It was like a dried-up pool at the centre of him, weak but lingering. Whatever Lucile was trying to do to him, it had to start there. The first thing he needed to do was figure out what exactly that was.

Birds suddenly fluttered above, distracting Hump.

“Calm yourself,” his master said. “What happens in the world is beyond your control. What you can control is the state of your mind, and that is the only thing a wizard needs.”

Hump took a breath and once more delved inward. He felt for the power of his soul; it flickered like a flame at his core, brilliantly vibrant silver essence full of life force and everything that made him up. As he focused on it, he noticed there was more to it. The first thing that drew his attention was a streak of essence where his soul merged with another—the bond to his dragon egg. Seeing it like this renewed his efforts—if his soul was harmed, it might somehow affect the egg too, and that was something he couldn’t allow to happen.

The more he focused, the clearer his image of his soul became. There were two other abnormalities. Growths that flowed against the rest of his essence, faint but definitely there. One was larger than the other, and it was from the smaller of the two that Hump felt something sinister. A foreign essence leaking into him, polluting the very fibre of his being. As small and weak as it seemed in comparison, it was slowly working its way deeper.

The first had to be the dragon imprint, and the second Hump could only assume was an imprint from the gorger. Soul fragments that contaminated his own. Fragments that wanted to corrupt him and bend him to their will.

He could sense the suppressive force of the gorger fragment now, constricting him. Somehow, it had taken that moment when he’d wielded dungeon essence to take control itself, and now that it had it, it wasn’t letting him go. But this was only a fragment, and Hump had resisted the real thing before.

The sensation reminded him of when Vivienne had helped them practice projecting their souls during their training at Fishers Lake, training to suppress the power of each other. It was an exercise Hump was quite good at. He reached for his power with renewed confidence. He’d used it before with White Fire and knew it responded strongly to need and emotion. This was different. It was more purposeful. He used the principles of White Fire and projected the power of his soul outward, pushing back against the gorger’s resistance, stretching it like a piece of elastic.

It was like a weight had lifted. Essence flooded in, and Hump felt like he could finally breathe again. His mind cleared, his essence surged, and his channels once more felt within reach. The moment they did, he cycled his essence, trying to make use of the momentum to move it. It was slow, as if every step of the way the dungeon’s essence fought him, but he got it moving. Vitality flowed back into him. He felt the hot, addictive power of the dungeon flow through him, and he had to resist the urge to use it. Instead, he let it go, spewing it from his body like a choked-up poisonous breath. It went in hot, painful spikes. In its place, ice tore through him so painfully he thought he might black out again.

It was the cold that hit Hump first when he woke. There were few things worse than essence overuse, and right now he felt every bit of it. It ebbed from his core, a persistent icy burn that made Hump gasp. His head ached. His body throbbed as if he’d been beaten all over.

“I’m here, Hump,” came a voice. He felt a hand grip his arm and saw Bud sitting beside him. “Are you with me?”

Hump blinked back the pain in his head and nodded. “I’m with you.” He felt the bump of the wagon beneath him, and his memory returned. The fight with Tanek, Jasper dead on the inn floor, Marcela’s wound, Lucile… “How long was I out?”

“Over a day,” Bud said. “It’s past noon now. We’re on our way to meet the expedition.”

“An entire day...” Hump rubbed his face, still trying to get his thoughts together. His headache and the bumping of the wagon didn’t help. Though looking at it now, it was more like a small coach than a wagon, with a canvas roof overhead and benches on either side. Hump was lying down the middle. “How’s Marcela?”

“Alive, thanks to you.” Fila appeared outside the wagon and climbed inside, the Chosen of the Maiden giving him a smile. Celaine followed behind her. “You, however, were rather touch and go for a while. Wielding dungeon essence is a dangerous thing for any wizard, let alone one forgoing the aid of a formation.”

“I did try to explain that to Tanek,” Hump said. “He was strangely uncooperative.”

She laughed. “Well, it’s good to see you awake. You lost a lot of blood, and the wound to your back was too serious for my blessings to heal entirely. You need rest. I’ll be back each day for a healing session for at least a few more days.”

“Thank you,” Hump said.

“How are you feeling?” Celaine asked.

“Other than an intense case of essence overuse, not too bad actually.” Hump was almost surprised to realise that was the truth. Everything hurt, sure. But he had answers. He’d sensed the soul fragments imprinted on him, and now he could try to do something about them.

And he realised something else—the true potential of River and Waves might still be more than he’d realised. Not just a meditative technique like he’d first thought as a child, nor just an essence circulation enhancement. It had power over the soul. Perhaps, it was even the key to Soul Manifestation. If so, his master truly had been preparing him for this all his life. He’d taught him the techniques of The Book of Infinite Pages, and while secret, Hump had a foundation to build on.