“What was that?” I ask Dovik, nodding at his hand.

Dovik crumples the last ashes of the paper before tossing them away. “A secret,” he says.

“So, you won’t tell me?”

“No.” He shakes his head and turns back to the pedestals. “You should come look at this.”

There is something in his voice that sets me on edge, but I walk over anyway. Approaching the three pedestals, I see that the center one is not as empty as I initially determined. Carved into the face of the stone is an incredibly well-detailed map.

“This is the Passage,” I say after studying it for a moment.

“Finding this might be the best treasure we could have asked for,” Dovik says.

The map carved into the stone is long and narrow. The parade ground where we began the Passage is absent, the Southernmost part of the map marked by the jagged line of the slope where we fought the Armors on the first day. Just barely away from the bottom edge of the map is a circle with “Dungeon of Beginnings and Endings” labeled next to it. Staggered across the bottom of the map are five similar circles, all labeled as dungeons, but the one nearest the bottom is different, painted blue. It would seem that just a few miles away from where the map truly begins, there were six dungeons that we might have possibly entered, and we just so happened to select the one that was furthest south.

The map continues north, a vast forest stretching for a hundred or so miles before a line of mountains cuts across from east to west, another dungeon marked at the peaks of one of the mountains. Following the line of mountains is a desert that stretches as far as the previous forest, a few tributaries branching off a central river the only landmarks. The desert transitions back into a forest that continues on for the rest of the map until it reaches its terminus in the north. There are more than twenty dungeons marked upon the map, though none of them are nearly as clustered together as the initial six.

“Galea,” I say in my head, summoning the spirit. “Can you memorize this?”

“Easily,” the dragon spirit nods to me. An instant later, a window appears in front of me that is a perfect replica of the map I stare down at. “Storing and recalling data is one of my key functions after all.”

“Thank you,” I say, dismissing the spirit.

Dovik snorts next to me, still looking down at the map. “It really makes it seem like we haven’t managed to go anywhere,” he says, covering the distance between the start of the competition and the dungeon we are in with his pointer finger and thumb. He holds up his hand, showing a gap between his fingers that could barely fit a few playing cards.

“That is some progress at least,” I say. “It does look like this contest really will takes months to accomplish.”

“Unless you can sprint the whole way,” he says. “I am sure that there will be a few who try that. Who knows, maybe that will be a successful tactic.”

“Who knows.”

We lapse into silence for a long moment, both of us looking back to the entrance to the room occasionally, waiting for Macille and Adrius to join us. I remove a chest from my inventory and find a good spot to sit and recuperate from the fights for a time. The dent in my armor is still annoying, but when I remove the steel to inspect my leg, I find that the wound has already healed over. I suppose that breaking the Recovery threshold really does bring some good benefits.

“How was fighting the bird?” I ask Dovik. I may be much stronger now than I was, maybe as strong as an average workman back home, but it becomes readily apparent that isn’t strong enough to bend the metal of my dented armor back into shape.

“A little disappointing actually,” Dovik admits, moving to the side of the room and inspecting the scenes stenciled into the walls. “It only took one attack to finish it off. Though, I suppose birds aren’t known for their hardiness. I was a bad matchup for it. How was the monkey?”

“A little harder than your fight I am guessing,” I say, giving up on fixing my armor for now. “I had to set the whole room on fire.”

Dovik turns back to me. “I hope Macille doesn’t go that way then.”

“Me too,” I say, though I am guessing that out of the two of us, Macille would follow after me. I look to the door again with a sigh before turning to watch Dovik study the scenes on the walls. The man seems deeply engrossed in what it is depicting. “So, what does it say?”

“Sorry?”

“The walls. You can read what it says right.”

“Ah.” Dovik studies me for a long moment, obviously trying to determine whether he should tell me or not. He turns back to the wall. “It depicts Humanity’s Crusade.” He points to the far end of the room where the wall depicts people kneeling and pleading towards the heavens. “There, we can see the aftermath of the War of Seven Words, the economic collapse that befell the Alucreans following their loss in that war. They beg the heavens to send to them aid, but they will not receive any.”

Dovik’s hand moves towards the next scene depicted, a man in black armor standing above thousands that kneel before him. “Then comes the fall of Parfillio, the son of Exeter who descended to take mortal form and to lead his children out of their exile and turmoil. The crusade begins, the masses of humanity making their migration towards the sea.” As Dovik moves his hand along the wall, the depiction changes to one of war.

Armies of men and women in black armor charge against the forces of the United Races in one battle after another, each depiction meticulously carved so that the gore and death of the crusade are rendered in extraordinary detail. I cannot pull my eyes away from the scenes of glory and death, both sides grinding against each other as the armies of humanity continue their push towards the sea.

“The crusade endures until they reach the sea,” Dovik continues. He gestures towards the last depiction on the left wall, a shining city of metal and magic positioned on the shores of a huge bay with the sun setting behind it. The representation of Parfillio stands over the city, casting a light down upon it. Dovik turns, pointing at the far end of the right wall behind me, and I turn to follow. “Then comes the return and the betrayal.”

The scene he points towards shows the same city in ruin, fire and smoke billowing from the tall towers that once constituted a beautiful skyline. In the waters surrounding the city, hundreds of ships are launched into the water, some being torn apart in waves hundreds of feet high, while others are dragged down into the depths by the reaching hands of monsters beneath the water. “Here, the diaspora begins. Much of humanity flees into the sea, escaping the fall of Aluxus in any way that they know how, their ships carrying thousands of souls out into the wider world. Most retreat back along the Path of Triumph, trying to escape back towards the homeland of their ancestors.”

The depictions of the retreating flow of humanity is far more brutal than the battles on the opposite wall had ever been. The scenes of fleeing civilians running for their lives with barely any belongings to their names, sheltering from an army of shadowy figures while their own army does their best to fend off the pursuers, almost breaks my heart. Most of the wall is given over to the depiction of retreat, hundreds of bodies lying all along the trail as mankind is whittled down bit by bit from the constant attack of the shadow army.

“Finally,” Dovik continues, pointing towards the last set of images on the wall. “We have the sacrifice of Parfillio.” The last scene on the wall shows the same huge man in his black armor, his face revealed for the first time, blood and tears marring what would otherwise be the greatest depiction of beauty I have ever seen. The man in the black armor is ramming two long swords into his own chest as a huge wall of stone sails up from the ground behind him to hold back the tide of the shadow army.

In the last image, Parfillio lays in a black coffin beneath the walls as the people he sheltered begin to build once more, their houses climbing further and further up along the surface of the wall. “Until we end with the establishment of Grim.”

“What?” I say, unable to stay sitting. I feel a wetness on my face and am surprised to find tears on my fingers when I pull my hand away. The images touch something deep inside of me that I don’t have the words to articulate. My eyes keep drifting back towards the fallen along the trail of people fleeing the shadow army; the death masks of betrayal on the faces of slain women and children is like a dagger into my heart. “That isn’t what happened.”

“No?” Dovik says, turning to me.

“Parfillio led the shadow army,” I say, pointing back along the wall. “He aimed to wipe out the world with his forces. He wanted to eradicate all the other races of the world so that only humanity remained.”

Dovik looks back along the images and sighs. “All of this happened almost a thousand years ago. Who is to say what really happened.”

“No,” I repeat, shaking my head. “You are trying to say that Grim was founded by Parfillio? Are these murals some attempt by the Willian guild to rewrite history?”

“And how do you know that the history you were taught is true?” Dovik shoots back at me, an anger in his voice that I haven’t heard before. It catches me so off-guard that I take a step away from the man. “You were taught the history of your people by a church that venerates the Goddess of the Elves, a curriculum approved of by your elven overlords who treat your fellow humans like serfs. Where you come from, humans are allowed to toil for their entire lives for the scraps that their rulers throw them, allowed the barest hints of freedom so long as they do not step out of line. Humans where you come from are slaves to the land they are born upon, beaten or executed if they fail to break their bodies cultivating that same land.”

He covers his face with his hand and shakes his head. “Why does it always surprise me? You would think that someone from such a place who managed to break out of that cycle would understand the degradation of their lot in life, but every time that I speak to someone about it, they always try to defend it. Do you plan to tell me that it is natural for humans to be ruled over by the fairer races? Next you will defend their governance of you, claiming that the way they oppress our kind lends stability to us that we could never manage with our short lifespans.”

The words of my rebuttal die on my lips. I stare at this man, confusion and fear warring inside my head. His words bring bad memories to my mind, memories that I would rather leave far away.

“Of course you were,” Dovik continues, taking my silence as confirmation that he was right. I see the anger continue to build on his face, his fist shaking at his side. Dovik suddenly turns, planting his fist into the wall with enough force to shake the room. He pulls away, the tension gone from his shoulders, a bloody smear left over the depiction of Parfillio in his coffin from his broken knuckles. “Forget it. I don’t want to talk about it anyway.”

I am stuck, scenes out of picture books from my childhood as clear in my mind as the scenes on the walls. I try to reconcile the painted scenes from the picture books of my childhood, pictures of Parfillio leading a bloody army of mankind out across the seas to land upon and butcher unprotected villages on the water. I see them, the eyes of crazed men and women, orbs of red, as they march out of their ships with knives and hooks to rip children from their mothers, all at the command of the God of Humanity. The Human Crusade sweeps over the world, and when Parfillio is finally felled by the forces of the United Races, mercy is shown to the armies of humanity that were under the control of Parfillio. They are allowed to settle on new lands, given homes and purpose.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. The scenes don’t reconcile. I see them like a superimposed mess, the butchers marching out from the sea from the books of my childhood and the faces of the dying men, women, and children on the wall in front of me. Dovik has to be lying to me; the wall has to be lying to me, but all I can see on the man’s face is a tired and resigned honesty. “I--”

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“Why are you here, Charlene?” Dovik asks, cutting me off.

“What?”

“This Passage,” he says, gesturing around the room. “You are powerful, but from what I was able to find out, you didn’t even have a full set of essentia when Arabella picked you out from among the masses. What made you so special that she would invest that much in you? How did she know that you would become this strong after such a short amount of time as an essentia magician, and why did you even agree to it?”

I stutter, surprised that I cannot immediately answer his question. I know the answer, but it seems so hollow here and now, in this room painted with terrible depictions of war and carnage. I wanted power: no, I still want power. But why do I want it; so that I can be beautiful? That answer is just too shallow to give voice. I have killed over a hundred monsters and beasts at this point to increase my power. Something as simple as wanting to be beautiful and to live for hundreds of years seems vapid in the face of that. To cultivate my burgeoning power, I have seen people die, people that I was growing to like, and in the near future I might even be forced into a situation where I will have to turn my fire on someone else. Is beauty worth all of that?

My brother’s words echo in my mind, “What is it that you want to do with yourself, Charlene? Can you answer that?”

“I don’t know,” I say, flinching at my own words. An ache squeezes my heart.

“Well--”

Whatever Dovik is about to say is cut off as Macille walks out of the doorway at the end of the room. Adrius walks alongside Macille, his arm slung over the taller man’s shoulder. They both stop as they step into the room, looking between Dovik and me, sensing the tension in the room.

“You made it,” Dovik says, a smile on his face. “I was wondering when you would join us.”

“Someone set a room on fire,” Macille says, shooting a playful frown in my direction. “We had to wait for the smoke to dissipate before we could make it through.”

“I…I had to kill that monkey somehow,” I say, my voice cracking before I find my words. “It was hiding up in the ceiling.”

“You are a smart one,” Dovik says to me, as if our conversation from earlier never happened. “Both of you, come take a look at this.” He motions for Macille and Adrius to come join him at the pedestals, showing them the map.

“This would have been nice to have earlier,” Adrius comments, his words weak. With an effort, he pulls away from Macille to stand on his own. He looks back to me. “You have paper, right? We can use that to record this map.”

“Sure,” I say. I pull an empty notebook from my inventory and toss it to him, feeling a little embarrassed as Adrius fails to catch the notebook. Macille picks it up off the floor and hands it the injured man, giving him time to make a crude copy of the map on the pedestal.

I feel a hollowness in my chest. The sudden change of scene in the last few seconds wars with the ache that still squeezes my heart. I wipe my face, rubbing away any trace of tears that might have remained. Out of the corner of his eye, Macille looks at me in a complicated way, but doesn’t say anything.

“Have you two already figured out what these are?” Macille asks, gesturing to the two magical items on the neighboring pedestals.

I blink, realizing that somehow, I had forgotten the treasures on display.

Rune of Attunement(Very Rare):

When an essentia magician utilizes this runestone, they are able to place a permanent affix onto one of their abilities granted to them by an Essentia. This rune contains the affix for Multiplicity.

Agar’s Chew(Rare):

A natural treasure mined from the remains of a Gordibala Hive. Imbibing this treasure grants an increase to one’s natural vitality and has a small chance of further empowering those that have a special affinity for these kinds of treasures.

I read the window displaying the information for the two items a few times before relaying the information to the other three. A brief conversation about how to split the final treasures of the dungeons breaks out, all of us immediately in consensus to give the Agar’s Chew to Adrius. Hopefully, the boost to vitality can help the man get back on his feet. Still, there is a paleness in his face that seems a bit dangerous.

“You should take the Rune of Attunement,” Dovik says to me.

“I agree,” says Macille.

I look at the rune, temptation running through me. Looking back at Dovik, confusion races through me. Just a moment ago the man was yelling at me, and now he is all smiles and gifts. “Why should I be the one to take it?”

“I was only really after the Soul Cage,” Dovik admits with a shrug. He looks around the room. “Either we weren’t lucky enough to come upon it, or some other group beat us here.”

“I already used a rune,” Macille says. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking two.”

When I look to Adrius, he simply holds up the Agar. “I am satisfied.”

Reaching forward, I pick up the rune and feel the magic inside of it race through my fingers. It feels as if with a simple command I can pull that magic into my being. The temptation to do so right away is powerful, but something makes me pause. The sting of Dovik’s words from earlier still rattle around in my brain, leaving me feeling ungrounded. I stow away the rune without trying to use it.

“I suppose that is everything then,” Macille says. He looks around the room, eyes scanning over the depictions on the walls. There is a clear lack of curiosity in his eyes. “Let’s get going then. This is a race after all.”

“Well, it’s not really a race,” Adrius says, tucking the Agar into his robes. When Macille offers the man his arm, Adrius demurely declines, opting to walk on his own two feet.

Macille steps onto the ramp, ready to make his way towards the shining doorway ahead of us. I am about to follow when Dovik says something, making me turn.

“Charlene,” Dovik says, his words quiet. “Can you leave Rohinda’s body with me?”

I almost trip over the lip of the ramp. Turning, I see sadness on Dovik’s face.

“This is where we part ways,” he says.

“You aren’t coming with us?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I will stay behind here. You three go on ahead.”

“Are you leaving the competition?” Adrius asks, stepping up to his friend. “I understand that you might not wish to continue, but I think that you will regret it if you do not.”

Dovik looks at his friend, patting him on the shoulder. “Charlene,” he says gently, looking past his friend. “Please.”

With all the care I can muster, I set Rohinda’s body on the floor next to the pedestals. Seeing her again brings back the emotions of that day on the slopes. Her body doesn’t look like it has aged a minute since I stowed it away. Dovik kneels next to his cousin, setting his hand on her cold one. “I promised that I would keep her safe,” he whispers.

“Dovik…” I search for something to say, some platitude that will make this moment easier to remember, but I have nothing. I feel inferior in front of this man. He is carrying an invisible weight on his shoulders that I hadn’t noticed until just now.

“Thank you,” he says, looking up at me, wetness in his eyes. “Thank all of you. You have been great companions, even if it has only been a few days. If everything works out, we will see each other again.”

We say our goodbyes in the quiet of the final room. A part of me wants to linger, but Macille was right; we are racing against time. Macille, Adrius, and I climb the ramp leading to the screen of sunlight in the shape of a door. I spare a last look down to where Dovik kneels on the floor, a slight trembling in his powerful shoulders. Macille brings my attention back when he takes my hand in his own.

“Let’s go,” he says.

I nod, and the three of us step out into the light.

----------------------------------------

A strange twisting sensation grinds through my bones as I step into the sunlight. I am blind and deaf for a bare moment before an explosion of thunder nearly knocks me off my feet. Macille’s hand around my own grounds me to the spot where we stand between two towering trees that cast us in shadow. I blink, the forest slowly coming into focus around me while the echoes of a thunderclap continue to bounce through the trees before slowly dying away.

Macille is saying something to me, but I cannot hear his words. I look around, seeing that we are standing in a barren patch of the woods, leaves and detritus blown away from us in a circle. The dungeon is gone, there is nothing to see in any direction other than the trees. Adrius is gone as well, vanished just as neatly as the dungeon has.

A popping in the center of my brain brings sound back to the world.

“...more booms,” Macille has just finished saying.

I look around the forest, still blinking as the colors continue to settle into normalcy. After three more seconds, I hear what he is talking about. Another boom somewhere nearby echoes through the forest, like the sound of a meteor colliding with the ground.

“Where is Adrius?” I ask. It is just then that I realize Macille is still holding my hand. I look down, a flush rushing to my face.

“I don’t know,” Macille says. He steps away from me, stalking up the slight incline towards the nearest tree. He inspects the massive trunk of the tree, looking for something that I cannot begin to wonder about. “It looks like we are back in the same forest,” he says, motioning at some minute detail of the tree he expects me to notice. “Perhaps the dungeon teleported us a short distance when we exited.”

“It can do that?” I ask, walking up next to him.

“I don’t really know,” he says. We both look west as another boom bounces off of the trees from that direction. “Maybe it was designed to split everyone up at the end of the dungeon for some reason.”

“That would make us really lucky,” I say. I am about to reach for his hand again when a shriek pierces the air, a woman’s scream. We both turn towards the sound, catching the barest hint of a girl running between the trees, crying out for help.

Macille pulls his sword from its scabbard and takes a step in the direction without hesitation, but I grab his arm and press him against the tree before he can make it two steps. He looks at me, a question on his lips, but I hush him before any words can come out. He can’t see what I do.

The girl is moving in our direction, running full tilt through the trees, crying out for help, but racing faster through the trees behind her is an insidious blue wave of soul presence. She is less than a hundred feet from us when the soul presence overtakes her. The magic in the blue wave lifts her from her feet like she was a marionette. Her body is stretched spread-eagle in the air, the force of the soul presence holding her mouth shut as her screams try to tear out of her throat.

Blue waves of magic gather around her like a fist, growing more opaque as the source of the soul presence walks through the trees in her direction. The source of the magic is an elven man with onyx hair the same color and luster as Coriander’s, wearing black robes that shine where his armor beneath peaks through. The man snickers to himself as he approaches the girl he holds suspended in the air. Her body quakes, the concentrated soul presence around her not allowing even an inch of resistance.

Forsin Al’Ruino(Rank Two), Son of Duke Berlin Al’Ruino of the Ruino Dutchy

Puppeteer Conflux

“It is rude to run,” he says as he walks towards her. “After issuing such a kind offer to you, I expected gratitude. Look what I got instead.” With a wave of his hand, the girl’s body turns in the air to face him. “You made yourself my enemy.”

Something unintelligible gurgles in the girl’s throat. With a quick look I can see that she is barely level thirty. She has no chance against this man.

“We need to stop this,” Macille growls next to me.

“We can’t beat him,” I whisper, my hand tightening on his arm. “He is rank two.”

“It is wrong,” Macille says, but I can hear the fight dying in his voice. “We are just going to watch?”

“What else can we do?” It isn’t as if I want to abandon this girl to this man, but something in my gut tells me that even a full-force Dragonfire Bolt wouldn’t leave a scratch on this man. All trying to help would do is put us in the same situation as her.

“What is that?” the man in black asks. With a wave of his hand, the force over the girl’s mouth disappears.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice cracking.

“It is a good thing to apologize,” the man in black says. “You see now that you are in my power, and so you wish to abase yourself. Shameless, but I can allow it. Do you see now that I have you defeated?”

“Ye…Yes,” she says, tears spilling down her face. “Yes, you have defeated me.”

“Perfect,” Forsin says, “thank you for fulfilling that requirement.”

The magic of Forsin’s soul presence ignites, washing over her in a sudden flash. Horror fills me as I watch the girl’s body begin to shrink, the pain of the transformation forcing pained shrieks out of her throat as her torturer looks on with a sadistic gleam in his eye. She writhes, suspended in the air, as the man dominates her with his magic. After just a few seconds, the transformation is over, the girl along with all of her possessions reduced to the size of a doll.

My grip on Macille’s arm loosens. Disgust with myself for stopping him from interfering washes over me.

Forsin steps forward, roughly grabbing the doll-sized girl out of the air with his hand, a crazed look on his face as he pets her head with his free hand. “You can join the others,” he says. He turns, starting to walk away from us. “I am sure--”

It happens in a flash too fast for me to follow. One second, the sadist nobleman is walking away, and the next, his body is slumping to the ground. I blink, realizing after a second that someone else is standing in the woods near the body of the collapsed nobleman. My eyes widen as I recognize the figure.

Jor’Mari(Rank One), Son of Duke Cla’Mari of the Mari Dutchy

Demon Conflux

Jor’Mari stands alone in the center of the forest, a clawed hand clutching the head of Forsin Al’Ruino. The man is covered in a myriad of cuts and dried blood, his once pristine robes frayed and torn. An uncontrollable shaking runs through him.

On the ground behind Jor’Mari, the girl starts to scramble away, her body slowly growing back towards its normal proportions as she crawls through the leaves and dirt. I begin to move from behind the tree, but this time Macille is the one to stop me. There is something deeply wrong with Jor’Mari.

The man brings the disembodied head that he holds in front of him, squeezing the skull with two clawed hands until it explodes in a bloody mess. The scream of the girl behind him causes Jor’Mari to whip his head around, and I get my first real look at his face. Black veins run through the surface of Jor’Mari’s face, almost completely covering the left side. His eye nearest to the taint of the black veins is a solid white, blind, while his other moves frantically, looking about the forest but unable to settle on any one thing. Drool drips from Jor’Mari’s lips.

“We need to go,” Macille says to me.

With terror, and despite the distance between us, Jor’Mari’s head turns in our direction, his one good eye coming to settle on Macille.