Footsteps entered, more than one person, he thought. Whoever they were, they did not bring a lamp and the room remained dark. He peeked around the edge of the bookcase. Two shadows stood beside the chest. One of them stooped over and the metallic scraping of a key being inserted in the lock followed.

The chest came open and a soft blue glow filled the room. A man had opened the chest, and he still knelt before it dressed in what looked like Seirod’s livery. Peering over the man’s shoulder at the chest was a woman draped in a green cloak. She had full, pouting red lips and—Grevail stifled a gasp.

Azouel’s eyes rose from the chest, narrowed, and crept toward his hiding spot as the smile slid from her face.

Grevail ripped the knife from his coat and darted from behind the bookcase. The crushing pain of Azouel’s attack grappled on his mind, overpowering even the pounding in his head from the relic being so close, but he ignored both and flung himself at the chest. The man in Seirod’s livery moved to intercept him and they collided, falling to the floor in a confusing mass of tangled limbs.

The man did not speak as they wrestled about blindly in the dark, even as he gained the upper hand and climbed atop Grevail. The man’s hand gripped Grevail’s throat, clamping tight around his windpipe and squeezing it closed. Grevail fumbled at the attacker’s arm, breath reduced to a wheeze, but the servant’s fingers ratcheted even tighter. The man snarled as he arched his back, locking his elbows and putting all of his weight on Grevail’s neck. A black vignette encroached upon Grevail’s vision, constricting at an alarming rate.

In desperation at the tingling burn in his face, Grevail hammered at the man’s face and chest with his fists, gasping for air. Just as Grevail thought he would lose consciousness, the servant made an abrupt, loud gasp of his own, his grip mercifully eased, and he toppled forward. Still struggling for breath, Grevail pushed the man’s limp body off himself. I must have knocked him out. His heart rammed against his chest so hard it seemed it was trying to escape and his hands were slick with sweat.

“I’m surprised you had it in you,” Azouel said. She stood over him, dark eyes hard as stones and red lips in flat line.

In a panic, Grevail scrambled to reinforce the room around him in his mind, watching for any change—anything that seemed out of place. The Aelfic’s attacks had stopped for now, but who knew how long the man she controlled would be incapacitated. “The Emberstone is mine!” he said and thrust a finger at the creature as if it would keep her at bay. He froze. Not sweat…blood. It coated his hand in bright red, so much that it dripped away to the floor between his legs. Grevail turned to the servant laying beside him. His knife stood stuck upright in the man’s unmoving chest, just below the collarbone. He’d forgot he had it in his hand. I’ve killed someone. His mind reeled.

Azouel frowned at the dead man as one might a stain on a fine rug, then shifted her eyes to Grevail. Pain gripped his head. The stinging fingers he remembered from the night at the Refuge dug deep into his brain. He flung a desperate hand toward the chest.

“You’ll never get away with that stone,” Azouel said and came to stand over him, nudging his hand away with a foot. “You will not escape me a second time.”

A pair of arms burst out of the floor in the splintering of wood and wrapped around Grevail’s legs. A pair of hands grabbed his shoulders while another set of arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him tight to the ground. Like growing weeds, arms erupted from the floor to claw at his chest, and yet more thrust through the walls until he could see nothing but a sea of hands reaching toward him.

Azouel stood undisturbed in this strange forest of limbs that swung and bent around her as if of one mind, a delighted smile quirking her lips. “That’s it, darling. Come to me.”

Grevail struggled to calm himself as the arm hooked around his throat squeezed ever tighter. It smelled of sweat and grime. He attempted to recall the room as it had been, tried to ground himself in what was really there, but was too terrified to think straight. He snapped his eyes shut, yet the grubby fingers still clawed, pinching his body—nails scraping skin and ripping clothes.

I can’t give up now. I must avenge my friends. I must avenge them! With a desperate yelp he flung an arm toward the chest, grabbing the rim and tipping it over. The cube tumbled out atop a flood of debris, filling the room with pale blue light. Azouel gasped as he slapped his hand down on it.

I walked past the well toward the storehouse. Disgust and anger mixed with determination in my heart, but I didn’t know why, or maybe I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I turned to look at Seirod’s house with a scowl before opening the door.

Picking my way through the storage in the crowded room, I wondered what the young girl had been up to. The place stank of mold and dust. It was no place for a pretty young girl, no. I topped the stairs, then walked the hallway to her door.

“Hello, Arxaro,” she greeted me when I entered.

She reminded me of my daughter, she did. Caran would be thirty years old if she were still alive. As I watched the girl stare glumly at her chains, I reminded myself this was the last time. I should have never left Pictayn, but I signed the contract, and I’d keep my word. If I never had anything else, at least I kept my word. Seirod would let her go, he would. Eventually he’d see she didn’t know anything, no. Just a sweet young girl who got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

When Grevail opened his eyes, the arms that had been holding him to the ground were gone. They were gone from the walls too, and Azouel’s fingers no longer clawed at his mind. The cube, still on the floor under his hand, glowed like a small, blue candle. He remained motionless, immobilized by shock, staring at Azouel’s silhouette looming over him and trying to understand what it was he’d just seen. A memory? Was that what he’d seen with Xylen? His memory? Arxaro didn’t kill them. He saved them. They are alive!

He pushed himself to his feet and stuffed the relic in his pocket, fighting Azouel’s searing fingers as they returned. He concentrated on every detail of the room, fixing it in his mind. A nearby shadow cast from the moonlit window twisted, curling into an unreal shape. He couldn’t say what it was that he did, but he straightened it, smoothed it into what he thought it should look like. The pale blue of the Emberstone’s light shifted color, ever so subtly, and he changed it back. Amma popped into existence at his shoulder, seemingly as real as anything else, and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a word he…dismissed her…and she was gone.

“Impossible!” Azouel hissed as if he’d stabbed her and launched herself at him. He grappled briefly with the Aelfic, then shoved her to the ground and dashed toward the open window.

He tumbled out head first and plunged toward the bushes below. On impact the air flushed from his lungs and a sharp pain erupted in his rump. He spent a moment moving his arms and legs to be sure they worked before rolling out of the foliage and to his feet. Limping toward the storehouse, he spared a glance over his shoulder. Azouel stood at the open window, bathed in Lusin’s purple light.

Not even thinking of Aritane’s keys in his pocket, Grevail ran at the door and lowered his shoulder. It flew open with a crack and he toppled to his knees inside. Rising to his feet in the dark interior, he picked his way through mounds of shadowy shapes covered in sheets. Furniture, barrels, sacks…even parts of a carriage made a maze of the first floor.

Lusin’s purple light glared through a window at the back wall where it illuminated a staircase, the same one Arxaro had used. The cube felt red hot in his pocket. Ash and embers, he thought, what is this thing? He ascended the stairs in the dark, feeling at the walls, but when he came to the second floor, his vision had adjusted enough that he recognized a hallway lined with doors stretching in either direction.

He knew she’d be in the third one. Counting the doors as he went, he arrived at the third and gave it a soft knock. “Raela,” he whispered.

“Hello?” came a voice from inside.

Despite the vision telling him she would be here, he was still surprised to hear her voice. “Raela?”

“Grevail!”

“Stand back.” He kicked the door and it flew open, slamming against the wall.

She sat on a small cot in a dark room, the one boarded up window emitting only streamers of purple moonlight. He stepped toward her in a state of shock, nearly unable to believe she was real. She looked back at him in much the same way, wide eyes unbelieving, as if he were a ghost. He was relieved to see that she looked no worse for wear. Her red hair was neatly combed and her green eyes sparkling, just as he remembered.

They stood staring at each other in silence until she spoke. “How did you find us?”

With a start, he remembered how he came to be there. “There isn’t any time.” He rushed to the bed, pulling her up by the arms. Azouel could arrive at any moment, or Seirod, or several others besides. A ripping panic struck him at the thought someone from the party might have found the servant’s body. Ashes, I’ve killed someone. Luckily, the room was dark enough that Raela did not seem to notice the blood staining his hand. The chains the Sifters had put on her what seemed forever ago remained tight around her wrists and feet. “Where are the others?”

“They are both somewhere down the hall,” she said, and before he could respond, wrapped him in a tight hug. Despite the urgency, he drew a deep breath and responded in kind. He drank the warmth of her body and pressed his face into her hair, delighting in the scent of her.

After a few moments, she pushed him away. “I thought you were dead.”

“Me too.” There were so many things he wanted to say to her. He wanted to apologize for everything he’d done since the tomb…but there would be time for that later. First, they had to find Tessyn and Adellus. “Follow me as best you can.”

With Raela in tow, her chains rattling faintly behind him, he went down the hallway knocking on doors and whispering his friend’s names. It didn’t take long to find Adellus.

“Grevail? Is that you?” came a murmur from behind another door.

“It’s me,” he said and barked a laugh before he could stop himself. “It’s me, Dell!”

“Top of the Elders!” Adellus exclaimed. “I thought you were dead! How did you escape? Oh…tell me later, just get me out of here.”

When Grevail kicked the door open, Adellus was quick to clamber out and snatch up Raela in a hug, then did the same for Grevail. “I knew you’d escape,” Adellus mumbled into his shoulder, curly brown hair falling over his face. “Nobody can ever keep us caught for long.”

“Come on,” Grevail said as he wriggled out of Adellus’ arms and turned to lead them further along, quickened by the knowledge that at any moment the alarm would be raised.

“Tessyn!” Grevail said as loudly as he dared.

A muffled reply squeaked through the walls further down the hall. “Hello? Grevail? Is that you?”

“Yes! I’m here!” He came to the door she was behind and wasted no time putting his foot into it, flinging it open with the sound of cracking wood.

Tessyn closed her gaping mouth from where she sat on the bed and stood. “Well, look who comes crawling back to us,” she said with a wide smile that was bright even in the darkness. Raela and Adellus rushed past him to swamp her, and though the idea that Seirod’s guards could be at this very moment searching the first floor, he joined them. For a few moments they stood in each other’s arms, issuing relieved murmurs and giggling in relief.

Eventually, Grevail untangled himself from his friends. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“What is going on out there? I’ve heard a lot of noise,” Raela asked as they returned to the hallway.

Grevail took the lead, his friends rustling chains and creak of the floorboards all too loud in his ears as they hurried down the hallway to the stairs. He eased down the first steps, feeling his way again. “Seirod is hosting a party—that’s how I got inside, but we’ll need to avoid everyone to get out of here.” Despite all of the planning he’d done, he never expected to find his friends and didn’t know what to do next. “If we can make it to the street, people there will help us.” What will I do if Azouel is waiting for us outside? Would she take control of his friend’s minds? I can fight her.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Who?” Raela asked. “What have you been up to?”

“It’s a long story,” Grevail said, “and one that I will be happy to tell you when we are well away from here.” He leapt off the stairs at the bottom well ahead of his friends, ready to fend off the Aelfic’s attacks, but saw no sign of the creature. Perhaps she had decided better of pursuing him into the storehouse, but still, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be waiting in ambush somewhere else. He hurried toward the door, grateful for the nearby lantern that produced enough light to easily navigate the stacks of junk. He jerked to a stop.

Noz’ massive frame stepped from behind a tarp covered tower leaning against the wall between Grevail and the door, a knife in his hand. The bald man’s lips curdled in a disgusted grimace as if he wanted to spit and his dark eyes narrowed. “You made a fool of me,” he said, the words almost unintelligible due to his thick accent. “Now, you will die.” The giant lunged forward, outstretched hand flashing with the glint of steel.

Grevail arched his body, just enough that Noz’s knife missed his flesh by a finger’s width, and spun, grasping at the man’s hands.

Like a pouncing cat, Raela jumped onto the big man’s back with a vicious snarl and tried to wrap the chain binding her wrists around his neck. Even while wrestling with Grevail to free his weapon, the giant spared a hand to grab Raela’s arm, ripping her from his back as if she weighed nothing at all and flinging her across the room. She collided with the post on which the lantern hung and it tumbled free, landing on a pile of rolled carpets where it exploded in a ball of flame that lit the storeroom with a stunning flash.

“Give me the relic!” Noz growled as he and Grevail spun around each other in a desperate struggle over the knife.

Tessyn hobbled toward Noz, clasping her hands together and raising them as if to club him over the head, but the giant shoved Grevail away—the knife clattering to the floor between them—and snapped a huge hand around her ankle. Yanking Tessyn’s leg into the air, he upended her onto the floorboards with a loud crack.

Noz whirled from Tessyn so quickly it seemed his feet never touched the ground, fist hurtling for Grevail’s head. The giant’s knuckles plowed into his chin and Grevail’s legs folded, dropping him hard onto his rump. Grevail worked his jaw, surprised it was still attached to his face.

Adellus rushed at Noz with a wild shout, lowering his shoulder as if to tackle him. The big man ducked under the charge, picking Adellus up at the waist and tossing him into a nearby heap of stacked dining chairs. Spotting his knife on the floor nearby, the big man moved toward it, but Tessyn launched herself at his feet, wrapping her arms around one of his legs. “The knife, Grevail!” Tessyn said, her voice sharp and wild, cracking with panicked fear.

Grevail dove at the knife and swatted it out of Noz’ reach, sending it sliding across the floor.

“Give me the relic!” Noz howled. Ripping his leg free from Tessyn, he stomped toward Grevail, but Adellus came leaping out of the pile of chairs to grapple with the giant, only to be immediately flung right back into the heap.

Grevail rose to his feet. The pile of carpets the lantern landed on had went up in flames as quickly as if it had been dry hay, and the fire had spread to several other nearby towers of junk in the cluttered storehouse that was filling with smoke. The blaze already brushed at the ceiling, where growing tendrils of flame raced across the beams. Grevail realized they didn’t have much time before the entire building was consumed. Raela was nowhere to be seen.

“Raela!” Grevail called.

“Fire!” shouted another voice on top of him.

Arxaro stood in the open door of the storehouse, staring at them in dumbfounded confusion as smoke poured out of the doorway over his head. The man opened his mouth as if to shout again, but nothing came out. Instead, his blue eyes rolled up into his head and he toppled forward into the room on his face.

As Noz was distracted, staring at Arxaro, Tessyn scrambled to her feet and darted past him toward the door. “Forget that stone, Grevail! We’ve got to get out of here or we’ll burn! Raela! Dell!”

Grevail cast an eye about the room for Raela, but the increasing smoke made seeing anything difficult, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Noz. The man stood only a handful of paces away, as if the building were not being incernerated around them, wide, unbelieving eyes focused on the stone in Grevail’s hand.

Grevail looked down at the relic to see that it was pulsing fitfully with that pale blue light. Swelling and increasing in brightness before dimming, then swelling and brightening even more. He didn’t know what it meant, but it did seem alarming, and though his heart was already racing, he thought it began to thump even faster.

“You can use it?” Noz grunted, the words a mix of sudden realization and disbelief.

Grevail stared at him. Use it?

“What is going on here?” came yet another voice behind Grevail, shouted over the roar of the fire.

Iphik held Tessyn against his chest in the doorway over Arxaro’s unconscious body. The Sifter’s arms were coiled around her slim form like a pair of snakes, yet his eyes remained locked on Grevail and the pulsing relic in his hand.

A flaming plank swung loose from the ceiling between the Sifter and Grevail, thudding to the ground in a cloud of embers and smoke that obscured the doorway. Grevail whirled back to Noz just in time to see him pull Raela to his side. The big man gripped a fistful of her fire red hair in one hand, and held the blade he had dropped earlier in the other, now pressed to her throat. “Give me the relic or she dies,” he said. Raela’s green eyes, wide in terror, rolled down to the knife against her flesh.

Grevail thrust the cube at him. “Here! Take it, then!”

An eager smirk spread across Noz’ lips. Sinister shadows from the wild flames played on his face as the giant took a step forward.

The ceiling above them shifted abruptly downward with a deep groan, tossing flaming splinters to the ground trailing wisps of smoke. Noz froze mid-step, glancing up at the lines of fire racing across the wood. Before either of them could take another a breath, the ceiling gave way in a thunderous roar. Grevail threw himself backward as a torrent of fiery debris crashed to the floor. Where Noz had been standing was now an inferno, and there was no sign of the man, or Raela.

Grevail jumped to his feet, spinning in one direction, then another, but found only solid walls of smoke and fire. He couldn’t remember where the door was, even though it seemed he’d just been looking at it. His skin burned red hot, as if it should be in a puddle at his feet. A boiling anger bubbled over him. He’d been on the verge of having his friends back, and now he was about to die. Molten rage poured into his heart at the thought of it, blazing like the fire around him that swirled in violent wisps atop blackened, malformed shapes. The cube, still in his hand, seemed even hotter than the heat searing his skin. The embers floating on the smoke whirled and swung on the hot air. Vidian slammed into his mind. The fire, the smoke—the whole world shrank until it disappeared, and the strange man’s face completely consumed his senses.

Vidian vanished from his head, and at the same time, a loud bang sounded. A strong gust momentarily pulled the heat from Grevail’s face. He cracked an eye against the stinging heat. In the dark, undulating smoke, he thought he saw the light of an opening. He stumbled toward it, wheezing from lack of breath as he clambered over the flaming objects in his way.

As suddenly as if shades had been drawn, the smoke was gone. Surprised, he turned to see that he had walked out of a gaping hole in the burning building. In a radius around the hole lay smoking debris and a handful of moaning, injured people. One man clutched his head in shaking hands while a woman cast a horrified look at Grevail, a deep gash on her forehead pouring blood down her face. Grevail studied the building, struggling to understand what had happened. An explosion? Had Seirod been keeping something explosive in there? His ears were still ringing and his thoughts plodded along like a stubborn old horse.

As if his thinking of the man had summoned him, Grevail realized Seirod was there, laying on the ground like he’d been flattened by the blast. “Stop him!” the man bellowed, rising to his feet.

An ominous rumble sounded, and behind Grevail, the entire storehouse shuddered. Without a second thought, he dashed from the building as an enormous roar was followed by a bank of hot, dark smoke that swallowed him whole, obscuring everything beyond a handful of paces. The cube was glowing in his hand like a lantern and he shoved it in his pocket, extinguishing the light. He tried to slow his racing mind and make sense of what happened. Were Raela and Noz still inside? His friends could be alive and nearby, but so were all the people after this relic. Shouts and cries drifted through the haze all around him.

He bumped into something, and reaching out, felt the form of another person in the smoke. Mumbling an apology, he shuffled around, keeping his head down.

“Grevail?”

It was Adellus. Soot stained his friend’s cheeks, and his hair was singed in places, but he appeared unharmed otherwise. Grevail motioned for him to follow. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

“What about Raela and Tessyn?”

“I haven’t seen them, have you?”

“No, but they’ve got to be close.”

Grevail swallowed the urge to call their names. Seirod and Arxaro have ears too. The dissipating smoke revealed party goers pouring from Seirod’s mansion ahead and Grevail hurried toward them, tugging Adellus along behind. He slipped into a line of attendees moving toward the front of the building while more people filed out of the mansion, issuing worried murmurs at the burning mound of rubble that had been the storeroom.

“Dell, we—” He glanced over his shoulder to find a white haired elderly man in a blue doublet with a much younger woman on his arm. The man frowned at Grevail, probably at the soot all over his clothes and face.

Grevail broke the man’s gaze and hurriedly turned forward. Follow me, Dell, Grevail hoped. He moved with the knot of patrons as they came to the front of Seirod’s property. The entire party seemed to be here on the front lawn amongst the wispy tendrils filling the night air. Grevail wandered through the milling patrons, raising his eyes from the ground every so often to scan nearby faces for Raela or Tessyn.

“Why am I not surprised to find you here?” Joszi’s chestnut eyes bored into Grevail from under the bulbous maroon hat sitting unevenly on his head. The Arbiter hitched his gold and maroon robes as if preparing to charge. “I saw it in your hand! The filth of the past!”

Grevail leapt into the crowd like a rabbit into underbrush.

“Stop him!” Joszi’s shout rang in the night.

Grevail darted around one clump of nobles, and then another, a cascade of concerned voices following after him.

“Don’t let him get away!” came a cry. “He’s Daryn’s spy!”

Grevail ducked under a hand that reached out to grab him, shoving the owner away and lurching onward. The stockinged leg of a woman slipped from under her dress and swept toward his feet but he hopped over it, righting himself before he fell on his face while evading another set of reaching arms. Zipping through the bewildered patrons, he broke into the open and raced toward the waist-high brick wall along the street. He cast a glance over his shoulder. Ripples in the crowd announced the presence of pursuers. Vaulting over the wall, his feet hit the ground just as Seirod’s guards burst from the throng on the lawn.

A cloaked shadow broke from a building across the street and rushed toward him. “Follow me!”

If Grevail had breath to spare, he would have sighed in relief that the voice was Aritane’s. He fell in behind as the man turned down an adjoining street. Together, they fled from Seirod’s house, feet slapping hard on the pavement, and when the sound of pursuit faded, Aritane slowed to a stop, ducking inside an alleyway. The dark haired man leaned against a wall, catching his breath. “What happened?” he breathed. “There was a fire?”

My friends. Realizing what he had done, that he had left them behind, he stared at Aritane for a moment with an open mouth, unable to think of anything to say. “I have to go back, Aritane,” he said when he finally managed to speak. “My friends are there!”

Aritane looked at Grevail as if he were insane. “Go back? Your friends? I thought you said they were dead?”

“I found them alive! They’re alive!” My friends are alive and I abandoned them! He moved toward the mouth of the alley but Aritane grabbed him by the arm, jerking him to a stop.

“They’re alive? I’m happy for you, Grevail, but you’ll only get yourself caught returning to Seirod’s, especially with that fire. What happened?”

Grevail struggled against Aritane’s grip, pulling the man into the street with him. “I’m not leaving them!” The words sounded foolish after he had done just that, but he didn’t care.

“Grevail! Stop!”

“I have to save them, Aritane. It’s my fault!”

“You’re not thinking straight!” Aritane snapped, pushing him out of the street and against a nearby building. The man pinned him in place with a forearm across his chest. “You can’t!”

“I can! They were just right there! They were…” he began, but the words died in his throat. He couldn’t go back. I’ve lost them again. “I’ve lost them.”

Aritane’s face softened. “Ashes,” he muttered, then turned to look up the street as distant voices echoed in the night. The buildings around them were dark, for now, but the commotion could bring townspeople to their windows and doors at any moment. Aritane returned his eyes to Grevail, then pulled him from the wall, and shoved him into motion. “Come on. Straighten up, lad. We’ll find them! We need to get you out of sight. Remember, Grevail, we have many eyes out here, and if there was anything worth seeing, they would have. What do your friends look like? I’ll make sure everyone knows them. We will find them.”

Grevail cleared his throat, recovering some small portion of his composure at Aritane’s assurances and set about describing them as they walked. Every memory and detail recited was like stabbing himself in the chest, only to pull the knife out and do it again. The only thing that kept him from running back, though he knew it would be futile by now, was Aritane’s hand around his wrist. By the time he finished describing his friends down to the small scar on Tessyn’s chin, they were standing at the gate of Alisia’s house. Aritane clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Grevail. Someone will have seen them.” The man’s eyes hardened in determination, as if he really meant those words, but he did not ease the grip he held on Grevail’s arm.

Aritane all but dragged him inside and to Alisia’s sitting room where they found a thin-faced Delphine woman with a hooked nose and dark eyes reading a book on the red settee where Alisia usually sat. Aritane instructed her to spread the description of Grevail’s friends to those still out in the streets. She spared a wide-eyed look at Grevail’s soot-coated face and clothes, threw on a cloak, and headed for the door.

“I will get Alisia,” Aritane said and moved toward the exit himself, but paused, frowning at Grevail. “Don’t leave here, Grevail. You won’t do your friends any good by getting yourself killed. I’ll tell Usha and the others you are not to leave this house, so don’t try it. She’ll tie you up if she has to.”

After Aritane left, Grevail had little else to do but stare at the wall. Adellus was at least alive, and probably Tessyn too, but the memory of Noz holding his knife against Raela’s throat was enough to throw Grevail into a rage. Not just an anger for Noz, but at his own failure to rescue his friends. He stood and paced the room a dozen times, stomping his feet, then sat again. After some time tapping his fingers and fidgeting, he again rose to walk around the room, a restless energy coursing through him. He could not remain still—not while Raela, Tessyn and Dell were out there. You fool, Grevail. You are such an ashen-headed fool.