With the enchanted cloth wrapped around his shoulders, crossed over his front, and tucked into his belt, Serenity stepped forward into the fiery-looking stream of mana. The first few steps were shallow, but the level quickly rose. It was more like an upside-down stream with a steep bank than anything else; instead of the corridor dipping to hold water, the mana rose above a flat floor.

It wasn’t hot; in fact, it was cold. Serenity could feel the chill, but everything else split in front of him and went around as though he were in a safe bubble. That was probably accurate; that was what the shield Skill did, after all. This spell seemed the same, so it probably did the same thing.

Other than the temperature, which would be uncomfortable but not dangerous for Ita as long as they weren’t in it for too long, this didn’t seem excessively hazardous. Serenity started to wave for Ita to follow him, then realized she’d already hopped into the stream of mana. Serenity shook his head; he felt a little surprised by that but he knew he shouldn’t. Ita had even less of a sense of self-preservation than he did.

Serenity waded forward. The mana grew deeper but not colder. It wasn’t really like wading through water; while he could feel a slight pressure from the mana hitting the protective bubble, there was no other resistance. There was only the chill where the mana had been moved out of the way.

The middle of the stream was over Serenity’s head, but it wasn’t very wide at that height. Four steps after he was completely submerged, he could see the other side of the stream. It was another corridor, but it wasn’t like the bare corridor of stone he’d left. Instead, the walls were absolutely covered in mana. Serenity had to concentrate to make out the fact that it wasn’t just sheets of mana; it swirl and eddied, following active runes that were clearly designed to handle more mana than anything he’d seen made since he was sent back in time.

A few steps later, when the mana was only up to his thighs instead of his shoulders, it occurred to Serenity to look down. There was nothing magical about the floor of the corridor; like most truly large runic inscriptions, the floor was used as little as possible since it was the most likely to be damaged.

Instead, there was a series of completely nonmagical bumps. They weren’t laid out in any pattern Serenity could figure out, but they came in only two sizes. It could be some kind of equipment or even something left behind by the prisoners, but Serenity doubted it, not with the evidence he’d found in the tunnels on the other side of the mana-river. It was far more likely that this was more petrified bodies, but the smart guess was that this was whatever did it. If he was wrong, all he wasted was time; if he was right, being careful might save Ita’s life.

It was enough to make him wonder. If these really were the things that turned people to stone, could they be the Ones Lost to Time from Phoebe’s prophecy? He’d assumed that the phrase meant the echoes in the Well of Souls, but they weren’t truly in A’Atla, so they wouldn’t “come with it” when A’Atla rose. Amani was definitely both lost to time and came with A’Atla when it rose, but she was singular. It made some sense.

It was one of the reasons Serenity hated prophecy: you didn’t know what it meant without context and the context was usually missing. Even when it was present, it usually wasn’t helpful; the phrase Ones Lost to Time didn’t let him know there were creatures with a petrification ability around.

The prophecy would make sense after the fact but it wasn’t helpful at the time and half the reason it would make sense was that there were several things that could fit. If anything, Phoebe’s prophecy was unusually clear; The Island Beneath the Sea meaning A’Atla was obvious and there were no other dragons involved.

Serenity hated prophecy. It either made people convinced they’d already lost or that they couldn’t lose. Sometimes it triggered the very events it predicted. Half the time, averting the prophecy made people say it was fulfilled by twisting it instead. Mostly, though, it just wasn’t helpful.

Serenity could admit that that might be more in how it was used than in the prophecy itself. He’d seen Rissa’s prophecies on Lyka; he still didn’t know everything about them, but they’d used the prophecies to get information about their options rather than dictating what they had to do. It had worked out rather well.

He didn’t have that option here, however.

Serenity glanced over at his follower. “Ita. Stay in the river.”

Her ears twitched repeatedly at his command. Serenity had no idea what that meant. He knew it was Sterath body language but it was not something he’d ever learned to interpret. He’d better explain. “Those lumps might be the creatures that turned those people to stone.”

“Then we should kill them from here,” Ita suggested. “I will not be left behind. Killing them should not be hard.”

That depended on what they were. Many magical creatures that could hibernate had some sort of protection when they were hibernating. The manastream wouldn’t help, but as long as he kept the spell out of it, it wouldn’t hurt, either.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Serenity knew Ita was correct; the correct decision was to try to kill them without getting close. If it didn’t work, he could try something else. Starting here would give him more time than starting closer.

Serenity remembered the attacks they’d used the last time he worked with Ita; she could use the connections between objects for some really strange attacks. “Do you need me to throw-”

Serenity stopped and stared at the Sterath. Was that a Nerf gun? Yeah, he was pretty sure it was. He didn’t remember her carrying it earlier. “Where did you get that?”

“Rissa got it for me! She didn’t like how difficult it was for me to set up attacks, so she wanted a way for me to get the tokens out there quickly. The hard part was figuring out how to make replacement ammunition without breaking the connections; normal tokens didn’t work. I think Rissa called these dowel rods?” Ita was almost bouncing in place. She was clearly thrilled about surprising Serenity. “If you mean how I got it here, I picked up a weapon storage amulet at the market in Beyrist. Well, actually, I got a bunch of them. Rissa says I should wait until your birthday to tell you about them, though, since I’m going to give one to you then.”

That was … okay, that actually made sense, however weird it sounded.

“I assume you’re set up to do a lot of damage to everything in an area?” That was, oddly enough, a lot easier for Ita than directly attacking a single enemy. When she was attacking indirectly with her connections, her targeting tended to be poor. Serenity suspected the opposite was true if she had a connection to the enemy, but he’d never seen that.

Ita grinned. “Yes. When there is only one, you should handle it. For many, I can assist as long as you stay back.” Her ears flipped forward. Serenity knew that one; it was equivalent to a frown. “I might be able to exclude you but that is difficult with physical manifestations of connections. Don’t make me try.”

Serenity nodded, then debated which of his own Skills to use. The best in many ways would be Spot Nullification because it was the most innately destructive; it would handle stone and the unknown, if at an extreme mana cost. Unfortunately, it simply didn’t have the control to not also destroy Ita’s tokens. Death Field was definitely the better choice for working with someone else.

Serenity felt like he used Death Field too often. It was familiar and comfortable; he knew its limits and how to manage it. Using it didn’t get him better at anything except Death magic, and it didn’t help much there. There simply wasn’t much room to improve when he was handling such small amounts of magic. Despite that, it was still a better choice than Fireball or Cone of Lightning; those might well not do anything at all against a creature that could eat stone, while a Death Field would harm anything that could die.

Serenity knew all the criticisms of Death as an offensive Affinity. Many of them were even fair; it truly wasn’t better at the things the standard elements did. The trick was that those criticisms ignored the advantages of Death magic. The biggest advantage, of course, was that death always wins. Time might not, but even immortals die.

Serenity tossed his Death Field out there. He didn’t even have to say anything before Ita followed by shooting a stream of cut and smoothed dowels glued to a Nerf base all over the area.

There was a mana cost to the spell. It was enough to tell Serenity that he was right; there was something that could die there. He couldn’t localize it, but it was there.

Ita yanked on the connections between her scattered dowels; they jumped, then fell back again. “It’s not cutting through them. Whatever they are.”

Serenity glanced back at Ita. “Can it cut through stone?”

“Eventually. Is that … this is going to take hours, isn’t it?” Ita sounded exasperated.

Serenity shook his head. “No, but there might be a better way. Can you make them bind instead of cut?” He should have asked that before they attacked. It hadn’t occurred to him that her connections wouldn’t just pierce through everything they fought; they’d done that until now. Of course, up until now they’d been fighting things made of flesh, not stone. Flesh got tougher as Tier increased, but it wasn’t stone; they were simply different Affinities.

“Yes.” Ita pulled on the connections again, then growled. “It’ll take some time. It would be faster to drop the spell and start over.”

“If you can, then do that.” Serenity could see some of the larger lumps starting to move. “I think we have their attention, so faster is good.”

All Serenity could do for the moment was hold the Skill. Theoretically, he could throw Death Bolts as well without destabilizing the Death Field, but it wouldn’t accomplish much. If he had a spell ready, he could use that, too, or a Skill that didn’t interfere. Serenity dug for his Slowness wand; it was far more important to slow them down than anything else.

Moments after he Evoked the Slowness spell, one of the lumps turned to face Serenity. He could see it much more clearly now; it had been curled up before, but now it looked like an oversized armadillo more than anything else. The shell seemed to be stone instead of the leathery plates, while the head was entirely wrong, wide and filled with teeth.

It reminded him of a basilisk more than anything else he could think of that had a petrification ability. The worry with basilisks was that their ability could take several forms; one of them was gaze-based, rather than the claws he’d hoped for.

The basilisks’ eyes were obvious and forward-facing. They were especially obvious since one of the creatures stopped and stared directly at Serenity.

He felt it when the gaze hit the shield he’d put up against curses. It didn’t go through, but he could feel the shield strain. He glanced over at Ita; she’d ducked back into the stream while she dug in her bag and loaded more bolts into her Nerf gun. Good.

Another gaze connected to his shield, then another. Serenity felt each as an increased mana cost; this was unfortunate. What was worse was that he couldn’t be certain he could hold the Skill while he was inside the stream. The Slowness spell wasn’t as effective as he expected when all the basilisks had to do was look at him.