The darkness enveloped Pirin completely. Immediately, he regretted not searching for a lantern or a torch before leaving. His footsteps thudded against the stone floor, and Gray’s talons clicked behind him.
They descended deeper and deeper down the tunnel.
He looked over at Gray. Her eyes glistened in what little light remained from the doorway. It was enough. He held his other hand out in front of him, and, cycling his Essence, tried a few times to activate the Whisper Hitch.
It glowed softly with a pale light, turning everything monochrome. In the complete darkness, even a single bit of glowing magic felt like a bonfire.
Cobwebs formed meshes and nets along the edges of the walls, and though he couldn’t see any spiders, he heard a distant, insectile chittering.
His breath condensed in the air. It was cooler in here, and a faint pressure weighed on his spirit. There was something powerful nearby, but there was also something powerful about this shrine. He held his hand out towards the wall.
Nothing. He hoped to see runes, or any sign of magical tampering, but the walls were smooth. Maybe if he had better spiritual senses, he could’ve seen something.
Pirin and Gray turned a corner, and all natural light faded. He only maintained his connection with Gray because, in the faint light, he could still see her eyes. But if his magic rebelled and he lost his grip on her mind, it’d be too dark to get it back.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” he whispered. They began walking faster.
There were hundreds of different tunnels he could have taken. This place wasn’t necessarily a labyrinth, but it was a massive underground grid. Organized, with very few cutoffs, but lots of options.
He scoffed. “More like a dungeon than a sacred shrine…”
Holding his hand up, Pirin tried to observe the ceiling, hunting for any clue of where to go. There were only a few hanging, unlit sconces.
They turned down a long, wider, and empty hall. Its walls were crumbling, giving way to miniature landslides of dirt, and Pirin didn’t trust the ceiling to hold. He and Gray ran through it—the less time they spent in it, the better.
When they reached the end of the hallway, the tug on Pirin’s core felt weaker. They’d gotten further away from where they needed to be. He turned another corner, and the tug strengthened.
He might not have the spiritual sight or senses of the higher-stage wizards, but he could still pay attention to how his core felt.
Pirin and Gray didn’t stop running. His limbs heated up unnaturally; his Essence channels were starting to rebel. He wouldn’t have much time.
They turned twice more. Pirin’s channels ached, and the tug on his core wasn’t nearly as strong. He turned around and backtracked. His heart pounded faster. Soon, the misty orb would explode in his hand, and he’d be left in the complete dark.
Gray trilled nervously. With a sharp inhale, Pirin whispered, “Just stick with me a little longer.” Hopefully, the reassurance would filter through his thoughts and bleed into her mind as well.
They ducked under an archway, pushing through the translucent white curtains of cobwebs. Pirin slashed through them with his sword. Gray emerged just behind him, but she hadn’t been lucky enough to avoid the cobwebs. She shook her head and coughed with a set of fast chirps.
As they kept running, Pirin’s limbs quivered. Needles of pain shot into his hand, and his mind whirled. An image flashed through his mind as he cycled. Then another, and another. Memories pushed into his mind, and they weren’t his. He wasn’t an elderly elven queen holding a scepter, nor was he a middle-aged elven king commanding a vast army.
Pirin clenched his eyes shut, but the memories didn’t stop until he held his breath and clenched his fist shut. He fell to his knees. His mind went blank for a few seconds, and the memories stopped entirely.
He sighed, then stood up and opened his eyes. Nothing changed when he opened them. Everything was still dark, and no matter what, he couldn’t see Gray’s eyes. He couldn’t even conjure a little sphere of gray light to see the ground a few feet ahead of him.
He sighed. They weren’t completely lost; he still had the tug on his core to listen to. Sucking air through his nose, he tasted the musty hallways and reassured himself. “Concentrate,” he whispered. He took a step forward. The tug on his core strengthened slightly. Then, he stepped to the side. It weakened.
He pushed his consciousness down through his body until it reached his core. The cracked, faintly-glowing marble of embers at his gut seemed infinitely more luminous than ever before.
The core was a mental image only, but along with the tug, he visualized orange tendrils of aura seeping off it. They spiralled away in the direction of the tug. He stopped cycling Essence.
The energetic blue Essence stopped flowing. His core was all that mattered at the moment.
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He used it as a compass, keeping the mental image in his mind and following it. With his arms outstretched, he mapped the corners of the hallway, and he tapped the ground ahead of him with the tip of his sword to make sure he didn’t tumble into a pit.
He turned left, then right, then left again. When he rounded the last corner, a flash of pale light glinted on the edge of his sword. There was light coming from somewhere.
Straining his eyes, he peered down to the very end of the tunnel. A faint white glow slithered around the next corner. Pirin ran towards it. “Come on, Gray! We’re almost there!”
As he drew closer, his eyes adjusted to the new light. It began to pour into the hallway with the saturated colour of the outside.
He gripped the columns beside the door to help himself swing around the corner without breaking his stride, but his fingers slipped on the dust, and his shoulder rammed into the wall on the other side. He winced. Worse than the mild inconvenience, the bricks began to crumble. This place was barely holding together…
He shook his head and stepped into the room beyond. Natural light filtered in from four small skylights in the ceiling, each a circle of glass so dusty and mud-covered that light could only trickle through.
The trickle was just enough to illuminate a vast hall. It was taller than the even royal palace of Sirdia, and it proceeded along through the earth much, much further. Pirin doubted he could even call it a hall anymore. It was more so a long hallway.
Pillars lined the edge of this new hall, draping with vines and creepers, and some even bloomed with red flowers. Moisture—water, not ice—dripped from the ceiling.
Pirin took another step, another breath, and suddenly, his lungs constricted. This room was warmer, as if locked in a mild summer. He took another step, but Gray didn’t. She squawked. The walls shifted.
The bricks weren’t moving, nor was the dirt…but the vines, they began to squirm and writhe.
At first, Pirin thought the vines were racing towards him. He stopped and held up his sword. The vines changed course. They crawled down the pillars, then onto the floor, and began to swirl upwards into a tornado-like shape.
Holding his sword in front of him, Pirin approached. The vines wound together, knotting into legs and limbs, then wings and a body. By the time he was a few steps away from it, he heard the wind whispering. He couldn’t tell where it came from.
No, instead of blowing, something was pulling the wind towards it—and that something was the vines.
An orb of glowing blue light hovered in the center of the tornado. It was a swirling, fist-sized core of condensed Essence.
Pirin and Gray walked cautiously around the side of the hall. Pirin didn’t ever turn his back on the forming creature; instead, he continued onward, walking backwards. The vines outlined the empty air, forming into bulky, sinewy muscles. Then, they tied themselves together into a reptilian head. Scarlet flowers blossomed along the back of the creature’s long neck, then flowed down its spine to its tail.
So this was what a powerful guardian wraith looked like? A green, leafy dragon?
Pirin looked down at his sword. Suddenly, it felt rather useless…
But he didn’t have to defeat the wraith entirely. He just had to bind it to Gray.
The dragon opened its mouth and pranced in a circle, turning to face Pirin. It spoke in a breathy, deep voice, with the timbre of a man. “Who dares enter my shrine?”
image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_5e221995337243e6a7d4250b55d3aeea~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_280,h_232,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/embercore%20sigil.png]
The Red Hand dismounted in front of the shrine entrance.
He didn’t expect to be perfectly on time, but the black-haired elf had much further to travel than he did. Either he made it before the elf, or slightly after.
Without a glance back or a wasted moment, he marched forward into the tunnel. He dropped his hand to his sword and stroked the pommel, ready to draw it on whatever pitiful, irritating thing might pop out of the walls.
His two disciples both dismounted as well, and, rushing to catch up, entered the tunnel behind him. The horses wouldn’t go anywhere; they were well trained and didn’t need to be tied up to stay put. Their Familiars followed obediently.
“Light,” the Hand commanded.
Khara snapped her fingers. One of her techniques, called the Father’s Tusk, created a glowing orb of crimson Essence. It was bent to Boars, with aspects of force and raw strength, and if she attacked with the technique, she could cave in an opponent’s ribs. But for now, it was perfect for creating light.
They navigated through the hallways. If the Hand had judged correctly, the shrine had two sections. The first grid of hallways functioned as a winding, extended vestibule, for the purposes of defense.
For centuries ago, the elves had used these, but even they didn’t know who built them. Every year, they would’ve brought their youth to the shrines and tested them for spiritual potential. But ever since the Sundering of of the Elven Continent, the temples had been abandoned, their guardians set loose.
A curse settled on the land. Less Reyads formed, and those who did were more prone to Embercores. Their strength dwindled.
And that was for the best.
The three intruders passed through the vestibule grid quickly, following the dusty bootprints left by their quarry.
When they reached the entrance of the larger main hall, the Hand stopped. It might have been larger, but it would be considered barely a catacomb beneath the Emperor’s palace if it had been built on the Mainland.
The Hand itched to draw his sword. The heir was here. The Hand just had to—
“Who dares enter my temple?” boomed a distant voice, echoing through the hall.
The shrine guardian had awoken already. The Hand narrowed his eyes and stared down the hall, watching analytically. A green wraith, maybe twenty or so feet tall, towered over an elf. The elf called, “I am Pirin! Pirin…of Sirdia.”
Raising his red-gloved fingers, the Hand ordered his disciples to wait behind him. They would judge the outcome before endangering themselves to an enormous, powerful wraith such as this.
The elf would stand no chance.