Farther into the labyrinth they went. As they walked inside their small pool of torchlight, the darkness receded and advanced in front and behind. They saw no more wights – for the moment. They heard nothing but their own footsteps.

Not far past where they had fought, the tunnels branched off again. Heror took the left tunnel first, and Adjaash shouldered her bow, distributing strands of silk. This tunnel snaked left and right sharply, until it came to yet another branch-off point. Heror took this one to the right, but quickly met a dead end. There was a small, low-ceiling room, with an armored skeleton sitting up against the wall – streaks of maroon and claw marks in the stone.

Heror and Adjaash turned around and kept walking ahead through the primary tunnel, but this tunnel eventually reached a dead end as well. And so they went all the way back – Adjaash retrieving the silk as she did so – until they came back to the remnants of the fight. Now Heror took the rightward path from this point, and they carried on.

This tunnel curved to the left – at first gradually, then more and more skewed – until it suddenly diverted right at a near right-angle. The path narrowed at this junction. Heror slowed and let the light linger, while Adjaash let down another strand of silk, glancing over her shoulder.

Turning sideways, Heror snuck through the wall crevice, leading with his torch while his sword readied in his other hand. And when he emerged on the other side, his heart sank.

“Oh no…”

Adjaash made her way through the narrow turn behind Heror, and once she emerged into the torchlight, she saw what he saw.

They were in a dark room. This room was wider, but on every adjacent sandstone wall, there were at least three new passageways snaking off from this nexus, all black as the orange glow failed to reach them.

Heror stepped forward slowly, boots clacking on rough stones and pebbles and grains of dust, until he reached the center of the room. He glanced around, surveying the entrances.

“We must be in the center of the maze,” he theorized.

“So we chose right when we chose the first passage?” Adjaash assumed, stepping up beside him.

“Maybe,” Heror wondered. “But there could have also been more than one path to this point. It’s a good sign that we made it here… but I’d bet there’s only one right path forward.”

He looked to the left, then to the right.

“And some of these might lead back…”

Now he looked at Adjaash in the firelight.

“How much silk do you have left?”

“Enough.”

Heror nodded.

“Alright,” he went on. “We’re going to try each passage. We’ll do what we’ve been doing. There’s only so many paths to take. As long as we keep track, we’ll find the right one.”

And so they began their process of trial and error. They started through the left-most passage. Heror led the way with his torch, while Adjaash let down silk behind them. The passages were eerily quiet as they went. Heror strained his ears in the silence, listening for noise, but he heard no footsteps or sounds – as if all the remaining wights in the labyrinth had vanished.

The left-most passage led nowhere, and so they doubled back and picked up the silk again, before trying the next one. Slowly and carefully they went, through corridors and capillaries – taking measures to ensure they never lost their way. And once each secondary path was explored, they went and retrieved the silk again, following it back to the central room.

The third passage stretched longer. For minutes, Heror and Adjaash followed it straight away. As it went, it curved to the left, and the walls narrowed and narrowed – until Heror had to squeeze through, holding the torch at shoulder height. He inhaled heavily, feeling claustrophobic, but pressed on – and soon passed into another wide tunnel.

For a moment, Heror’s curiosity was piqued. But then he looked down at the ground and saw an old stream of silk, now covered lightly with dust. This was the tunnel Heror and Adjaash had taken from the hidden door to the very first intersection.

“We’ve already been here,” Heror muttered to Adjaash, disappointed. “Let’s head back.”

And so they slid back into the shrunken tunnel and followed the silk stream back to the central room again. In front of each passage they’d explored, Adjaash left a small clump of silk to mark them.

“We can use this one as a shortcut back to the start when we find the Sword,” Adjaash noted as she placed a clump of silk ahead of the third passage.

Once she was finished, Adjaash and Heror turned to the middle wall, across from the entryway. And then they picked up where they left off.

By now, hours had passed – and it felt as though it’d been longer. The next tunnel branched off early, and the right path split off again, and they went on – until they circled into one of their silk strands and realized this passageway was leading them astray. Then they doubled back and returned to the fork in the path, and carried on down the left tunnel. This tunnel snaked left and right, with several dead ends attached – but it kept going – and for the first time, Heror felt as if it was taking them somewhere.

They went further. Adjaash palmed and placed down silk. In the flickering torchlight, more red inscriptions appeared on the wall. Heror and Adjaash stayed silent, listening intently for more enemies. Heror’s sword was ready. Adjaash kept a dagger close. But still, there was nothing. No sound, no smell. Nothing.

The passage swerved left and right, constricting and curving, until another path branched off ahead, while the main passage curved left. Heror took the main passage first – choosing not to take the bait – and it went for a ways before constricting again. The walls narrowed and the turns sharpened – left, right, left, right – until Heror froze, and Adjaash bumped into his back.

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“Ow…” Adjaash muttered, before hissing quietly: “What?”

“Look.”

Now Adjaash looked over Heror’s shoulder, and she saw it: A dim sapphire blue light reflecting off of the corner wall, from the left.

In the low firelight, Adjaash’s eyes focused; her mouth opened in a silent gasp. And then Heror went on. He peeled around the corner to the left – torch in hand – and when he and Adjaash emerged, they were at the foot of a long, straight passageway that led to a lit room at the end. From where they stood, the bright blue light blocked any view of the room itself. But the tunnel was empty. The path was clear.

Heror glanced at Adjaash, then started ahead slowly, while Adjaash walked alongside him. As they walked, the stone floor smoothed out beneath their feet. Adjaash looked left to right, her eyes scanning the walls for any more entryways or secret corridors.

“Where did they go?” she asked Heror of the wights, voice low.

Heror didn’t have an answer.

They approached the room at the end of the hall, steps slow and wary. The light grew brighter as they neared, and soon, both Heror and Adjaash had to lift their arms to shield their eyes. Had he not seen the sunset before delving into the tunnels, Heror would’ve thought this to be daylight.

At last, they reached the room. The walls widened. The ceiling rose, and as his eyes adjusted, a grand spectacle revealed itself to Heror.

They stood in a circular room, with vaulted stone ceilings supported by fluted columns. Twin crystal chandeliers hung on either side of the room between the columns. Each carried a half-dozen flames of keatuu fire, which glowed a bright sapphire blue and emanated from ceiling to floor, casting clambering shadows along the walls. The flames chirped and crackled and echoed quietly, against the smooth stone above.

In the center of the room – between the columns, below the chandelier – there was a massive mountain relief carved out of dark marble that blended out from the back wall, seeming to flow downward from the wall itself as if a frozen waterfall. And at the foot of the carved cliffs, the statue of a warrior stood resolute, towering almost ten feet tall.

The warrior was carved out of dark green marble – which glowed a subtle, ethereal blue-green in the keatuu light. It wore what Heror surmised to be ancient Pylanthean or Cyngoth armor from head to toe. Low-cut boots led to shinguards, and shinguards led to greaves, and greaves led to a brilliant stone cuirass with ribbed tassets over the thighs and great oval pauldrons over the shoulders – each bearing the carved profile of a wolf in a stoic stare. The statue’s face bore this same stoic expression beneath a helmet that shined metallic, with a central crest that ran from brow to back.

“This must be Neutanae,” Heror realized, his voice soft.

“Hello, Neutanae,” Adjaash chimed. “Nice to meet you.”

The statue did not move. Adjaash leaned in toward Heror.

“He’s not much of a chatter,” she whispered.

As Heror observed the statue and looked down, his eyes fell on the statue’s hands. The statue’s right hand held a carved sword around seven feet up. The blade was flat to the statue’s face, and the statue held it upright. But in the statue’s left hand, which was lower and farther out – almost at Heror’s eye level – there was another sword, around the size of a regular longsword. This sword was also positioned with its blade flat to the statue, but it was propped inside the statue’s left hand by its crossguard, facing downward.

Heror quickly realized that this sword – unlike the one above in the statue’s right hand – was real, and not carved. It had a small, flat pommel, and a grooved handle made of dark, glassy obsidian. Attached to the handle – against the top of the statue’s fist – were the guards, that appeared as if the wings of a phoenix, with studs of amber inlaid within dark wave designs. Its blade was long, sharp, and symmetrical, and it was lighter – radiating a magnificent silver-blue hue. On one side of the fuller line down the center of the blade, the silver metal was clear. On the other side, an intricate and textured wing design was forged within beads and strands of obsidian, in a stroke of master metallurgy.

“The Sword of Sparhh,” Heror breathed.

Adjaash’s eyes fell on it, too. And for a moment, they only stared, as the blue flamelight rippled along the walls and the stone and the Sword’s metal faces.

After a few seconds, Adjaash glanced over her shoulder one last time, and Heror did the same. Then Heror’s eyes cast up at the face of the statue, which stared blankly ahead, its stoic expression unchanged.

“Think it could be a trap?” Adjaash asked Heror.

Heror sent a glance of affirmation her way. She nodded, then took her bow off her shoulder.

“You take the Sword,” she told Heror. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

Heror nodded. Adjaash turned toward the hallway and slid an arrow out of her quiver. She lined up the fletchings at the nocking point and set the arrow on the arrow rest. While Adjaash stood at the ready, Heror’s eyes went back to the Sword.

For a moment, in the quiet, he hesitated. And then he reached up slowly with his right hand. His fingers widened and unfurled, and he wrapped around the Sword’s handle. Once his grip was tight, he unsheathed the Sword from its resting place within the statue’s fist. As he lifted the Sword out, he heard a small click, and he froze. But seconds passed. A minute passed. And there was nothing. No movement from the statue. No movement down the hall.

Now Heror lowered the Sword and turned. He set his torch gently on the ground, then held the Sword lengthwise in front of his face, cradling the flat of the blade with his free hand. He watched the blue light of the keatuu fire run across the metal as he tilted it back and forth. The blade was light and cold to the touch.

Heror stared at the Sword for a time longer – his brow lowered – when Adjaash spoke.

“Heror,” she said. “Is everything alright?”

Heror looked up at her. Adjaash could tell something was wrong, but Heror only nodded and said nothing. Gently, she gestured toward the tunnel.

“We should head back then.”

Heror slid the Sword underneath his belt loop, next to Kerit. And then, to the light of Heror’s torch, they followed the silk strands back through the labyrinth, leaving Neutanae in silence. They went through the shortcut they’d mapped out and returned to the hidden wall. The tunnels were empty. The wall was open now. Brocus waited for them there, and at the sight of the Sword in Heror’s possession, he gaped in awe.

“You have it,” he said, astonished.

Heror nodded, and still he said nothing. The scholar held out his hand.

“May I?”

Heror unsheathed the Sword and held it out for Brocus to take. The scholar eagerly wrapped his hand around the handle and cradled the Sword in his grasp, running his hand across the blade.

“Bor’s Light… look at the craftsmanship,” Brocus reveled. “The artistic skill that would have been needed to create this… forged over 6,000 years ago at least. This is a wonder… and we are the ones who found it.”

Brocus let out a scoff of a laugh.

“My friends in Peranon will be very jealous to hear of this,” he mused.

Brocus observed it for a moment longer. Then he grinned at Heror, and held the Sword to return it.

“You should be the one to carry it,” he told Heror, bestowing the honor. “You found it. It’s only right.”

At first, Heror did not take it. But when Brocus insisted, Heror reluctantly accepted the blade. When they ascended back up the steps to the temple of Dyugan, it was dark. The Midan soldiers and the horses were resting. Adjaash stirred them. The group ate and drank. And in the calm, clear air of night, beneath a starry sky, they set off again, using the Peak of the Obelisk in the north to guide them back to camp.