Aleytha hadn’t been this fascinated in decades. When one of Hosjin’s old markers activated, she had expected to discover an Ascended that had stumbled upon it, or perhaps a ward that had failed; even the Tyrant’s workings were known to unravel after millennia.

The last culprit she expected to find was a young human male. He even looked around her age, though even the prodigies among their cultivators physically matured much faster than drows.

He had been deep in meditation when she first discovered him hiding within the palace. His presence had gone unnoticed until she performed a full sweep of the building. Usually, she would have killed the djinn that had taken residence and moved on. She had stayed her hand after noticing some discordant notes within the spirit.

Closer investigation of the building had revealed a bizarre metal sphere as large as a dragon’s egg. A couple days later, it hatched the human. Ever since, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was fascinating, like a pretty knife, or a venomous flower. Intense. Tall. She wanted to display him in one of her towers like a butterfly skewered to a spreading board.

Aleytha clung to the ceiling of the cavern, her long white hair cascading downward like a waterfall. In a real hunt, she would have bound it in darkness, but there was something scandalous about letting it flow freely, like a beacon even an infant drow would have noticed with their darkvision. Once, the human had scoured the ceiling with pale light, and she had great fun evading his poor attempt at scouting. It had also made her paranoid he had somehow noticed her, and that was half of the fun.

Right now, the human was obliterating a small herd of shadowmounts. Such a sloppy, brazen combat style he had. Aleytha shook her head.

In the days since she had begun tracking him, his control had improved by a few degrees, but he still wasted energy like a child that had just come into their powers.

He had learned to make metal spikes erupt from the ground beneath his targets. Aleytha couldn’t help but giggle to herself at the sight. Less than a quarter of them landed. Shadowmounts were quite nimble, and he kept attempting to skewer them where they stood instead of predicting where they would be next. She would have hated to see his archery.

His use of Sun qi was more refined, sending blazings orbs of pale flame to flank and torment his foes, but still limited. Unimaginative. She picked apart every facet of his style, formulated a deep analysis of his behavior based on his typical patterns. Still, there might be more. She couldn’t miss out on any of his secrets. She--

A hand forged from shadow sprouted from the ceiling and grasped the nape of her neck. Aleytha held back a yelp as she was yanked up through a pool of rippling darkness in the ceiling.

She blinked, finding herself, unsurprisingly, back in the cave with her Spirit Guardian. He dropped her unceremoniously onto the ground.

Soren Heartless, confirmed to be deep into the Sixth Sphere and rumored to be deeper, shook his head down at her. With his sharp, aristocratic features and transcendent aura, he had quite the gravitas to his disappointment. Not quite as poignant as that of her parents, but comparing those two to anyone else under the heavens in that regard seemed rather unfair. Their haughtiness reigned supreme even among the ancient drow families.

Usually, she alone would have proven sufficient to investigate the anomaly, but given the significance of the ruins, Soren had been sent as her shadow. She had to admit her godfather struck an imposing figure, and it was one that she resented.

“You’re being weird, Ley,” he said.

Aleytha stood and brushed off the front of her silk garments. A habit, she distantly noted, she had picked up from observing the mark. “We should dissect him. He has too many secrets.”

Soren walked away and sat down on the floor beside the destroyed cairn bearing Hosjin’s now-inert mark. He was infuriatingly unconcerned with exposing his back to her. His liver was wide open.

“That’s why we need to hold back,” said Soren. “Who knows what old monster tossed him down here? Something’s off. I checked the palace again. The spirit inside has emerged from its hibernation and spread its vines throughout the entire atrium. It is…transforming into something else. Merging with the gardens.”

Aleytha hummed in mild interest.

Soren nodded. “You were right. Its mental faculties are still crippled but it appears to be regenerating. More importantly, it lacks the typical impurities any spirit in its situation would possess. Nothing under the heavens is without flaw, but for a broken djinn, its foundations are impeccable. I'm not sure what it will become. Perhaps a new ifrit will be born.”

Aleytha returned his nod, as if they had both arrived at an inevitable conclusion. “We should capture the human.”

Soren exhaled through his nose in amusement. “The boy’s lapped up enough death energy in the past few days to fill a Third Sphere, but he still isn’t attempting a breakthrough. It’s possible that his master will pick him up and bring him to a better cultivation environment to consolidate his gains. We’ll act depending on who we discover created this young monster.”

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Aleytha smirked, upturning one corner of her lips in the way she knew greatly annoyed him. It had been the precursor to many of her mischievous deeds as a child. “Still can’t read his spirit, old man? You’re losing your touch. After I saw that djinn, I started to notice similar degradation in your own mental pathways. Retirement beckons.”

“Very amusing, girl.” Soren pursed his lips, a childish expression altogether bizarre on his distinguished visage. “I still contend he’s bonded with some marid that’s been sleeping beneath a volcano for a million years. He can’t be more than Peak Condensation, yet his qi output is absurd.”

Aleytha laughed into her hand. “Tell me, are you frightened? Great Uncle Hosjin marked the boy. Aren’t the edicts clear? He must be captured or killed.”

“When you are wise enough, you may ignore the edicts as well. In order to reach that point, you must understand and respect why they exist. All of your family--myself included--have failed to teach you any humility.” Soren tapped the long, jagged scar carved from the right corner of his mouth to his temple. “For every soul in this world, there is another that can kill it. Only cowards have the opportunity to reach the heavens alive. That’s why our people still hide underground even though we don’t remember why. That, and the consistent weather.”

Aleytha shook her head. No point indulging the man. They’d had variations of this same conversation a dozen times since they’d first investigated Beljeza. The sentiment, they had covered a thousand times before that. “Funny how much you know about the human, but you say I’m creepy for observing him?”

“It’s a matter of dignity,” said Soren. He patted the ground beside him. “Assassins are all about appearances.”

Aleytha sat down next to him, smiling. She rested her head on his broad shoulder. “I still think the human’s one of the surviving young scions of Fissure. The timeline works out.”

“Definitely not,” said Soren. “He handles Earth qi like I handled my first visit to a brothel. His control is far too sloppy.”

“That’s foul.” Aleytha leaned away from him and slapped his shoulder. “So, what, you’re still going with ‘orphan who stumbled upon a volcano marid and was adopted by a forgotten saint?’ That’s more likely?”

Soren leaned back onto both hands, head tilted back, his midnight=black hair spilling around his shoulders. It was the only hint about his true age. With all his false modesty and slinking about, it was easy to forget he was welcome company to old monsters. “Maybe. Or, perhaps he’s actually an Ascended Ruby that fused with the corpse of a Sun god?”

“Oh! How about--”

* * *

Cyril sneezed. So annoying. The palace was the only place that he felt any reprieve from the constant dust particles lately. The Underdark had long since grown stifling.

He flicked the blood off of the head of his spear. The weapon had long since been transmuted into rotten wood and rusted iron, and nothing in this region could stand up to it. Slaughtering monsters had turned unrewarding fast, despite the plethora of death energy they provided. They posed no real challenge for him to learn from at this point, despite how awkward it was to use with only one real hand.

Cyril had spent a good portion of the last four days scourging the area of monsters. Less of them remained in the area than he thought. Perhaps his presence had scared off many of the survivors, the same way Hunger-Made-Alive and the gardener-djinn had cleaned out the palace grounds. He had to actively hunt them down at this point instead of stumbling across several at any given corner.

The herd of dark horses had been the last obvious group of monsters in the city. Maybe he could find some straggling wyrmlings if he crawled into some of the deep tunnels, but he had resigned himself to the fact many had escaped. He lacked the strength to corral all of them together for now without one burrowing beyond his reach.

Ultimately, the Underdark was a distraction. An obstacle. He had culled the wyrmhorde a reasonable amount, but he had other matters to attend to.

His family was waiting on him.

After learning how long he had spent in his breakthrough to the Third Sphere of Earth, he had decided to fill most of Gravity and Sun to the brim, with some room to meditate on his Dominions without having to suppress a premature breakthrough. After all of his studying, his Dominion of Knowledge wasn’t far behind.

Still, he restrained himself. His next vision may last a year or more if he acquired another weird, esoteric concept for his mind to chew on.

He told himself he could always come back. His research in the Library had generated a significant reservoir that would allow the building to maintain its current functions. It could last for months, perhaps years if Barnabas restrained itself from pushing beyond the boundaries--something he had accepted as near-impossible.

Cyril had even invested an entire core’s worth of qi into the Library’s crystal orb in order to place a marker on the location. After he had informed the imps about his resolve to venture outside of the Underdark, they had insisted he utilize the function.

With a relatively small expenditure of Knowledge qi, he could summon a compass that would point him in the direction of the marker. Strangely, reading his soul revealed it was considered a Blessing known as A Beacon Home instead of a Cantrip. He supposed it must have been less resource intensive to bestow in that manner.

Cyril found it surprisingly difficult to restrain the gluttonous urge to dissect the building for its deepest secrets. There was so much he didn’t know.

He looked around the ruins. The corpses of the monsters littered the streets, mangled and incinerated and skewered upon metal stalagmites. Their leader, an albino brute with six legs, had made him sweat. It had been so swift it looked like it barely felt the effects of his domain. Cyril had finally resorted to a wide-scale Pressure that shattered half of the street before skewering the monster on a palisade of bronze spears.

He wiped off his forehead with one of his tattered sleeves, trying not to think of how his precious tunic outfit had been reduced to a few scraps of cloth. At least his bronze armor protected his modesty, though he wasn’t sure from what. A virtuous man retained their dignity even when no one was around to see.

The sight of the devastated streets almost made him feel…regretful? He almost didn’t want to leave, but in the heat of battle, of all things, he had been struck by a reverie: the perfect new name for Lanazael.

He looked up in the direction of the tunnel in the wall that lead back to Hosjin’s iron room and, beyond that, the cavern containing Lanazael's temple.

He was due for another conversation with the celestial ifrit. This time, he was much better prepared.