Darkness and frigid cold; Leon and his team found themselves immersed in both for a brief moment as they were teleported away from the hill they had stood upon. The tunnel was short, and a light shining in the darkness showed them which direction to move. Leon, Mbana, and Serena all began moving almost at the same time, while Leon called out over his shoulder to the other three, “Follow us!” Without much hesitation, Mari, Tir, and Nara took off after the tenth-tier mages.

The tunnel was so short that barely even a few seconds passed before the end was reached, letting Leon’s team spill out into a vast chamber—their destination, it seemed.

Leon, Mbana, and Serena, having all been in teleportation tunnels before, took their reappearance well, not even stumbling as they reappeared. Mari’s Ulta suit, meanwhile, crashed to the ground hard enough to shake it, while Tir and Nara barely managed to remain on their feet.

“Fuckin’ shit!” Mari exclaimed as she sprang to her feet, showcasing her suit’s spectacular range of motion.

The chamber they found themselves in was massive and utterly desolate. It was twelve-sided, with a ceiling that stretched so high that Leon thought it made up the entirety of one of the smaller sub-towers adjacent to the main tower. Hugging the wall was a thick border of dirt, with only a few lonely bits of petrified wood sticking out to indicate what had once grown there. What Leon thought might’ve once been a magical river even flowed through the chamber, running around the twelve-sided platform they now stood upon, though the stone riverbed was now dry and covered in black stains.

The walls were likewise stained, while the air was so thick with darkness magic that Leon felt an intense pressure close around his mind. He quickly called upon his light magic and Nestor’s lessons and did his best to inscribe a simple ‘shield’ rune in the air, concentrating fully on repelling the darkness saturating the environment.

Much of the darkness was pushed back, it still leaked through the invisible shield Leon had erected like water through cloth. Still, it was better than nothing, and given how quickly Leon had thrown the ancient rune up, he was surprised it was working at all.

“Clever,” Mbana observed. “You’re quite the enchanter, aren’t you?”

“I have some meager skill in the art,” Leon admitted.

“And humble, too. Well, Leon Raime, if you’ll allow me to indulge my own humility, you have quite shown myself and Serena up! Our labors over these past weeks haven’t availed us at all, and yet you found a way inside in such a short time!”

“We would’ve found a way,” Serena bitterly growled.

“Of course, of course,” Mbana said. “Now, I believe we’re in the reception hall?”

“You know where we are?” Leon asked. Thankfully, the chamber was, aside from the intense concentration of darkness magic, devoid of obvious threats, allowing the group to relax a bit, though Nara, Tir, and Mari all retreated slightly to flank Leon, something Leon took note of.

Given the way Serena glared at them, Leon thought she noticed as well, though no one addressed it aloud.

“Our Grave Wardens gave us maps of Qo Weylekh’s palace,” Mbana freely admitted. “They were incomplete—these Grave Wardens do love their secrets—but what we’ve been given ought to be enough to find what we’re here for.”

“We’re looking for the core of the enchantment loosening the Primal Devil’s seal,” Leon said. “Or more ideally, a way to escape this plane.”

“If it’s the latter, you only need to follow us,” Mbana said. “After we finish our task—which ought to only take a few minutes, assuming nothing else gets in our way—then we’ll head for a private arkyard, where a possible escape ark may be located.”

“How convenient,” Leon drily whispered. “This isn’t going to be that simple.”

Mbana’s omnipresent smile thinned. “No, I fear you may be correct. And yet… we’re here now, and nothing seems to be attacking us. Aside from the air, I mean.” The dark-skinned man waved his hand and the air around him pulsed, pushing much of the darkness away.

‘Wind mage,’ Leon thought, filing the knowledge away just in case Mbana made himself out to be a threat. He just hoped his suspicions turned out to be incorrect.

“I was not given such a map,” Leon said. “Would you be willing to share yours?”

“Of course,” Mbana said as he took out a small crystal from his soul realm. “I hope you don’t mind a cruder method of sharing information—I’m terribly ill-versed in using darkness magic.”

“All who strive for virtue ought to spurn the magic of the devils,” Tir murmured.

“Close-minded fool,” Serena responded, eliciting a glare from Tir, which she reciprocated.

“Behold,” Mbana cut in, drawing everyone’s attention just as Leon was about to step between Tir and Serena. The crystal in his hand then created a projection of light on the ground of the entire tower complex. “With this,” Mbana explained, “I can move the map around and see as much within the tower as we were given.”

To illustrate, he manipulated the crystal a bit and the projection zoomed in on one of the towers in the outermost ‘ring’, revealing the interior to be one massive empty chamber.

“This is where we are now,” Mbana said.

The projection then moved into the adjacent tower and revealed a veritable hive of passageways and more moderately sized chambers.

“Rooms for visiting dignitaries and the like,” Mbana explained. He zoomed out again and back in on a tower in another ‘branch’ of the tower complex, which housed another large chamber just beneath the roof. “The arkpad.” He paused and tossed the map crystal to Leon. “Try it for yourself.”

“Are we going to give a full tour or are we going to get on with this?” Serena interjected as Leon caught the crystal and barely managed to keep himself from immediately examining the intricate enchantment work that had to have gone into such a magical device. “The longer we stay here staring at the map, the less time we have before something comes and tries to stop us.”

An intense burst of darkness magic drew Leon’s attention from just outside the range of his shield rune, and a voice emanated from the shadowy cloak that appeared in the air. At the same time, the entire group drew weapons or conjured magic and turned to face the cloak.

“Ah, Serena, no one will come and try to stop you here. There would be no point.”

The darkness then disappeared, revealing none other than Khaji’Yun.

“I have to admit, all of you getting inside so easily was unexpected, but most fortuitous. Now that you’re here, you six can bear witness to the release of the true gods from the ‘front row’, so to speak.”

The cultist spoke as if he wasn’t faced with some of the most powerful magics that anyone could witness below the level that most considered divine, and Leon supposed that he probably wasn’t facing them currently. To prove his immediate supposition, he launched a tiny lightning bolt through the shield and into Khaji’Yun. The bolt hit the cultist and his body seemed to explode into a cloud of darkness, proving him to only be a projection. A moment later, that cloud of darkness reformed into Khaji’Yun, still standing there smiling as if nothing had happened.

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“We will stop you, monster,” Nara declared as he advanced to confront Khaji’Yun face-to-face.

“My dear Prince,” Khaji’Yun replied, “I want you to know that I hope you see the light before the end. If you do not… then we will see each other again in the life after this one. But know that what has been set in motion cannot be stopped. The true gods will be released—that much is ordained—and thus, inevitable.”

“You speak with the certainty of a man in a cave who has never seen the outside,” Mbana said. “You insist the walls of the cave are all there is to creation and refuse to acknowledge what lies beyond.”

“It is you, I’m afraid, who does not know the world outside,” Khaji’Yun smilingly replied. He then stood aside and held out his hand welcomingly. The darkness in the air, as if heeding his gesture, parted, forming what Leon could only think of as a safe corridor deeper into the tower complex. “But please,” the cultist said, “enlighten yourselves. There is still time enough for that, by the grace of the gods.”

No one moved, all suspecting some kind of trick.

“What are you doing, blasphemer?” Tir demanded.

“My friend,” Khaji’Yun replied, “I hope that in showing all of you the futility of your actions, then you may more easily accept the true gods into your heart. Is that not what you’ve strived for all along?”

“I know my gods,” Tir replied. “They are not gods of shadow and death, but of life and light and love.”

“You do not know the true gods,” Khaji’Yun replied, his tone still unfailingly pleasant. “But you will. Now, please. Go about your business, and I shall await you in the deepest chambers. There shall you bear witness to the salvation of the entire universe. I would invite you to take all the time you need, but… well, I’ve been told that we’re truly low on time. For that, I do apologize, and hope that you’ll come and join me as soon as you can. Goodbye, for now.”

With that, the cultist bowed and vanished, leaving the group standing there, largely perplexed and a little angry, with the corridor through the thick darkness magic pollution still there.

“The arkpad,” Leon sternly stated. “Now. Before everything else. The Grave Wardens can fix this, but only if they’re informed in time. And we may not have much of that left.”

“Perhaps… perhaps that would be best,” Mbana whispered.

“If we retrieve what we’re here for, then we can leave,” Serena shot back. “We go there first.” Without another word, she walked into the corridor, though Leon noted that a thin invisible layer of light magic had formed around her, likely to protect against any darkness magic that may linger in the ‘safe’ corridor.

Mbana gave Leon an apologetic look. “Well, Leon Raime, that’s that. I ought to stick with her, just in case. We have our own way of egress, so if your cowardice demands you abandon this plane, please do not tarry on our account.” His smile turned subtly mocking before turning and following Serena out of the range of Leon’s shield rune.

He hadn’t even gotten close to leaving earshot before Mari said, “Anus licker.”

Leon finally turned to the other three and saw that Nara and Tir had paled considerably, their orange-hued skin turning almost ashen in color.

“We must stop this, whatever it is,” Nara said. “We must!”

“Let’s move and talk,” Leon said. “We’ll find the arkpad and call in our reinforcements! Secure our exit before anything else!”

“Yeah!” Mari agreed as Leon used his magic to grab the shield rune and drag it along with him as he began running after Mbana and Serena, though he wasn’t intending to follow them. Mari fell in beside him, while Tir appeared on his other side. Nara only took a moment to fall in behind.

“I’m not abandoning my people!” the Prince declared.

“And I’m not asking you to!” Leon shouted back. “For now, just move!” As he shouted, he manipulated the map crystal, finding the controls to be surprisingly intuitive. Still, he struggled a bit to control it while running, but he was able to get it back to the adjacent tower just in time to practically fly out of the reception hall.

Though he had little idea of just how much time they had left, Khaji’Yun seemed to be indicating that time was a preciously rare commodity, so Leon did his best to plot out a course on the map through the second tower as quickly as he could, ignoring the sounds of Mbana and Serena getting quieter in the distance as they followed the safe corridor.

Leon did not lead his people through the safe corridor, but instead stopped only long enough to reinforce the shield rune he’d created with another, pushing the darkness back.

“Where are they going?!” Nara shouted as they ran through the corridors, the darkness coating the walls so thickly that the murals beneath could only be seen in tiny bursts of color only opened by the shield runes as they passed. The floors, likewise, were stained completely black.

“For a powerful ancient artifact!” Leon shot back as he barreled through halls both great and small, ignoring everything but his team and the way forward. “We can follow later! Right now, secure an exit!”

His tone brokered no argument, not even from a Prince, and he and his team ran through the halls as fast as Mari’s Ulta suit could manage. Fortunately, the tower was grandiose enough that the halls and doors were all sufficiently large enough for the suit to fit through—at least, for a while. It was in the fourth tower that the halls started turning less monumental and more human-sized, and Leon unhesitatingly began blasting through with lightning magic, heedless of the damage to the tower he may be causing.

The stone around the doors practically disintegrated under the weight of his power, taking him by surprise at how effectively he blasted through. He’d have figured that the tower would’ve been more heavily warded, but he supposed the Primal Devil’s power might’ve eroded those wards.

[Leon,] Xaphan piped up as they blazed through the halls, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake as Leon did all he could to ensure Mari could follow without having to bail out of her suit—and consequently expose herself to the darkness around them with only her sixth-tier power and Leon’s shield runes to protect her.

[Demon! In a hurry!] Leon shouted back.

[As you should be!] Xaphan retorted, his crackling voice sounding strange. [You haven’t much time!]

[How long?!] Leon hurriedly asked.

[I think… maybe three days?] Xaphan responded.

Leon’s jaw fell open as the lightning bolt he was about to launch out of Iron Pride almost fizzled out.

“Three days?’ he asked aloud.

“Three days what?” Nara responded.

“He speaks with the demon within him, may the gods protect his soul,” Tir explained.

“Xaphan knows how long we have,” Leon explained. “Demon, you said we have three days?”

[Yes,] Xaphan confirmed. [That’s my best estimate, anyway.]

[It’s accurate enough,] the voice of the Thunderbird confirmed. [Leon… get off this plane. Heed nothing else. Leave. Immediately. You can feel it here, can’t you? The power of the Primal Devil piercing the walls of its cage?]

Leon strained with his magic senses as he blasted through another door for Mari. [Not really, Ancestor. I’ve been sensing the Devil’s power since I arrived on the plane. What am I specifically looking for?]

[Willpower, direction, intent,] the Thunderbird answered.

[Origin power,] Xaphan added. [There’s a hint of it here, infesting these halls. Magic of a density you’ve never experienced before. Based on how it’s resonating with the enchantment… three days at the most is all you have…]

Leon nodded as the halls began getting so cramped that Mari was really having to squeeze through, slowing their progress down fairly significantly. Fortunately, they were in the seventh tower by now, with only about thirteen to go—including the largest central tower. With this slower pace, Leon could spare enough attention to reach out with his magic senses again and try to feel what was being described.

However, all he could feel was darkness—a deep, unfathomable darkness that threatened to swallow him whole if he didn’t turn away from it. But once he saw it, he couldn’t turn away, and it drew his eyes to the central tower, and then far below it. He barely noticed himself coming to a stop as his eyes widened and his heart began to beat with an intensity he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Darkness filled his vision as he felt something gently scratch against the mental defenses he’d placed upon his helmet… and then slip right past them like they weren’t even there. Nine fingers brushed against the defenses he’d erected in his mind like nails against a chalkboard, and only then did Leon regain his wits and flood his body with the Thunderbird’s lightning, freeing him from whatever had ensnared him. Just as the darkness was banished from his vision, however, a single eye opened in the center of that darkness—an eye the size of the sun that orbited Aeterna, and the light it shed filled Leon with utter terror and a fear of death so complete that he suspected the only reason he hadn’t gone mad was the Thunderbird’s lightning.

“…eon!”

He heard dim shouting and a hand on his chest.

[Rise, boy!] the Thunderbird’s commanding voice roared throughout his soul realm. [GET UP, LEON!]

Leon blinked and found himself lying on the floor of a black corridor in the tower, Nara and Tir standing over him while Mari, hunched over to fit in the hallway, looked on. He thought himself imagining it, but he could almost see a look of worry in the suit’s one blue eye.

“Leon!” Tir shouted. “By the Mothers Above and Below, what happened to you?!”

“How long was I out?” Leon asked as he shot to his feet, grateful that his body was responding without any problems, any lingering effects of that… vision banished by the power he’d inherited from the Thunderbird.

“A few seconds…” Tir answered.

“Ah,” Leon replied. “Use discretion with your magic senses. I looked into the central tower and at what lay beneath. Don’t repeat my mistake. Now, let’s keep moving.”

“Right…” Tir responded, and the old monk shared a look of alarm and worry with Nara. Neither was able to respond to Leon, though, as Leon took off running through the corridors again, with the other three barely managing to keep up.

Through the halls Leon led them, any doubt as to the impending release of the Primal Devil now well and truly quelled. They had three days to stop this ritual or get off the plane and somehow get a message to Ambrose. If they didn’t…

Leon could only hope that three days would be enough time…