He stirred, consciousness rising from the darkness. Somewhere nearby, quiet murmurs were heard. Footsteps. Unable to remain awake, the black encroached again and he heard no more.

---

Kari skipped down the hall, giggling with glee. Guests! It’d been so long since anything new had happened that she’d almost forgotten how exciting new things are. Dad had sent her away when the Walkman brought in four half dead humans, but he was busy in the Sending room. Now was her chance to meet them!

She peeked around the corner of the open doorway, just barely able to make out the shape of the person sleeping under the thick covers of the bed in the middle of the room.

“Hello?”

She waited a moment, breathlessly. There were no sudden sounds, no response to indicate that anyone had heard her quiet query.

She crept into the room, anxious to see one of the fabled humans in person. What did they look like? What language do they speak? Too short to see over the bed easily, she stood on her tippie toes and pulled herself up, looking closely at its face.

Her eyes opened.

She smiled a big, toothy grin. “Hi! I’m Kari, what’s-”

“Aaaahh!”

---

Dorian awakened slowly. It was wonderful, one of those moments of waking sleepfulness that stretch on into forever. A noise broke the silence but he paid it no mind, still shaking off the last of the drowsiness. When his eyes finally fluttered open, however, the remainder of his sleepiness rapidly fled. A demon, maw filled with razor sharp teeth, was about to eat his head! He quickly before a bite could be taken out of him, screaming and flailing wildly. Clearly he was still not fully conscious, as all doing so served to accomplish was tangle him in the sheets as he tried to get up, causing him to fall off the far side of the bed.

Dorian landed on his back, whuffing as the air escaped his lungs. He lay there, stunned momentarily and still tangled within the blankets.

A‌ head, the same as before, poked over the edge of the bed, looking inquisitively at him. It said something.

“…?”

Dorian blinked, not understanding the foreign language. The creature blinked back. He began untangling himself from the sheets, as his brain slowly caught up to his current situation. He wasn’t in his room at the Academy. He also wasn’t in the snow shelter. Where the hell was he?

As Dorian finished untangling himself, he heard rapid pounding footsteps on stone grow louder and another creature, this one presumably an adult, entered his field of view near the base of the bed.

The lizardlike creature spoke, looking expectantly at him. When a response was not forthcoming it began gesturing, hands waving wildly. Not understanding the vague motions, all Dorian could do was shrug helplessly from his seated position on the floor.

It paused momentarily, reptilian head tilting to the side. The green scaled creature then pointed first at him, and then the bed. It then left the room, seemingly in a hurry.

Unsure of what their intentions were, Dorian figured that behaving would probably be the best option for now. The smaller creature continued to stare, although it had backed up so it was no longer right by the bed. After fixing the sheets and sitting on the bed, Dorian realized just how tired he still felt. Still in shock from being woken so suddenly and unable to resist the siren call of slumber, Dorian began to drift off to sleep.

Before he could fully succumb, however, the larger reptile returned with what seemed to be a crystal of some kind. The creature reached up to his head, placing the crystal between a pair of horns. Dorian hadn’t noticed them earlier, presumably due to how they blended in with the dark color of the stone walls of the room.

Dorian straightened up, growing more attentive. Kianan magical tradition thrived on borrowing from that of others, and Dorian was fairly certain that he was about to bear witness to a heretofore undocumented form of spellcraft.

The creature paused. It pointed at itself with one hand, and slowly enunciated. “Bari. B a r i. Bari.”

Dorian nodded. “Bari.” A pause, then he pointed at himself. “Me. Dorian.

D o r i a n. Dorian.”

Bari nodded. “Dorian,” the word getting somewhat butchered by the creature’s alien tongue.

A surge of mana left Bari through his horns and sank into the crystalline cube. The cube lifted from where Bari’s fingers pinched it, snapping into place at the centerpoint between Bari’s antlers. More mana pooled in the crystal, causing it to flare brightly.

A short time later, an unknown mind brushed against Dorian’s. There were no words, only a series of images accompanied by feelings. Dorian saw a lizardman riding in a sleigh, transporting four unconscious humans to the door. He saw the door open, Bari’s surprise. They conversed in an unknown language, Bari taking the humans into his home. Dorian watched as Bari cared for them, making sure they were fed and could heal from whatever ailed them. More than anything, however, Dorian felt a concrete sense that though he may not know where they were, they were safe in Bari’s hands, err, claws.

The flow of semi ordered feelings and images ceased momentarily. Bari tilted his head, seeming to examine Dorian closely, seemingly to make sure he was alright. This made complete sense to Dorian. After all, though he didn’t practice mind magic himself, Dorian knew that poorly performed mental magic could easily serve as an impromptu mental attack instead, disorienting the target. Dorian was no mind mage extraordinaire, and it seemed to him that Bari certainly wasn’t either.

After deeming that Dorian was still conscious, Bari brought out another cube, simply holding it in his hand. The flood of images and foreign senses began anew. It took some time, a frustrating amount of pantomiming, and granted Dorian a raging headache, but Dorian eventually grasped that Bari wanted him to channel his mana into the second crystal and somehow… duplicate his memories of language and store them inside? He wasn’t quite sure how it functioned, but the cube thankfully seemed able to do most of the work itself.

Bari took the cube, gestured for him to rest, and left the room. The child, whom Dorian now knew was named Kari, followed him out the door. He chuckled to himself as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. The whole time they’d been communicating Kari had stood against the wall of the room, fixated on the display of magic. It wasn’t often, he surmised, that four alien creatures landed on your doorstep. It was with this final thought that Dorian’s conscious mind fled, seeking the embrace of sleep.

---

When Dorian next woke up, he found that he was unattended. He sat up and leaned forwards, chin resting on his knees. Deciding to simply wait, Dorian took the opportunity to examine the room he was in.

The room was fairly small. Every face of the room, walls, ceiling, and floor, consisted of a brownish black speckled stone. The room was sparsely furnished, and what furnishings that were present were fairly eclectic. The bed, centerpiece to the room, had a frame made of mismatched types of wood. The bedding wasn’t feather or straw, so Dorian concluded it was probably some kind of magically synthesized down.

Next to the head of the bed was a nightstand made entirely out of the same rock as the walls. Atop it lay a fist sized cube emitting a soft light across the room, and a small pot with a single blooming flower. Dorian located his robe and clothes, neatly folded and resting on a stone bench against the wall by the door, of the same stone as the rest of the room. The last object of note in the room was an ornately carved wardrobe made of what he could only assume was ebony. Dorian was no craftsman, but it seemed to him that the wardrobe was rather out of place, appearing to be something he would expect to find in a House’s treasury, as opposed to his current furnishings.

Examination finished, Dorian returned to his previous position, chin resting on knees and twiddling his thumbs in front of him. Some short period of time later, Bari eventually appeared in the door, looking harried. Dorian noted the crystal anchored between his horns, pulsing with energy.

“Ah, glad to see you’re awake. The wards informed me when you woke, but I’ve unfortunately been rather busy and was delayed in coming here.”

Dorian started. “How...?”

“Am I speaking your language?”

Dorian nodded.

“The answers quite simply, actually. You see, I’m not. You just think I am. One of the big issues with mental communication is that people think in their language, so I couldn’t just use that to get around the language barrier. This crystal.” He pointed to the crystal between his horns. “Is essentially broadcasting a mental illusion to you, interpreting my speech and then feeding it to you in an understandable form using those memories you so kindly provided.”

He was speechless, almost. Such skill! Dorian was fairly certain that most archmages would be unable to perform such a feat, mind magic ban notwithstanding. “That’s incredibly impressive!’

“It is, and it isn’t. Crystals like these are something that we lack the skill to reproduce, merely use. I’m afraid that Vrauden society has fallen rather far from our glory days.” He waved a hand. “Ah, but I prattle on. I’m sure you must be hungry! Come, get dressed and join your friends. Two of them are awake already.”

Bari moved to leave the doorway, but Dorian was able to take the opportunity to examine him while he spoke. The Vrauden, as Dorian now knew Bari to be, was a bipedal lizardlike humanoid. He was covered in scales about the width of a grape, mostly green but speckled with white. They became much smaller on his extremities like his head, hands, and feet. His face was much longer than that of a human, and rather than a nose he possessed two slits for nostrils. His eyes were somewhere between human and lizard, looking mostly normal to a passing glance. He wore no clothes, save for a loincloth around his waist.

Easily Bari’s most immediately recognizable feature was the pair of ebony horns mounted atop his skull. They were beautiful, thick at the base before arcing up and ending with singular points. The horns came out at an angle before curving towards a central point, between which floated the crystal Bari was using to communicate. As Bari turned to leave, Dorian noticed one feature that wasn’t apparent from the front. Bari had a tail. It was slightly shorter than Bari himself, and neared the floor without actually touching.

With Bari gone, Dorian flipped up the rest of the covers and slid out of bed feet first with all the grace of a beached whale. He rested momentarily on the floor before standing woozily. Dorian took steps towards the bench, shakily, and was surprised by how weak he seemed to be.

Despite his remnant weakness of body, Dorian managed to get dressed without incident. The hallway beyond his doorless doorframe consisted of the same stone, and extended in either direction. It was small without being cramped, and Dorian could see five doorways similar to the entry to the room he’d just exited.

Less than ten steps to the left the hallway ended at what looked to be a master bedroom of sorts, so Dorian proceeded down the hall to the right. The next doorway, on the same side of the hallway as the room he had just left, was undoubtedly decorated for a young child. Despite the sparseness of both rooms, this one possessed a personal touch that Dorian’s had lacked. It seemed odd to him that the child’s room would not be the one closest to the master bedroom. Unable to think of the reason himself, Dorian simply shrugged and continued walking, figuring there was probably some story behind it.

The next two rooms looked just the same as his had, save for one detail. The second room still contained someone sleeping. Dorian paused as he passed by the doorway, seeing it was Jørgen.

Having reached the end of the hallway in this direction, Dorian stepped through the last archway and found himself in what appeared to be a fairly spacious common room. The walls were the same as in the bedrooms, brownish black speckled stone. Where the common room differed, however, was that it had actual furnishings.

The far wall contained an inset fireplace with a fire crackling away. The mantel above was made of the same stone and seemed to have a painting, or a family portrait, placed upon it. The centerpiece of the room was a fairly large table made of, again, the same stone as everything else. Upon it was stacked a number of what Dorian presumed were bowls containing foodstuffs. All were already present save Jørgen; Bari, Hilmar, Eira, and the little Vrauden were all seated on stone stools with little padded cushions on top.

They were in the middle of a conversation, but that ceased when Bari waved to him as he stood somewhat awkwardly in the doorway.

He waved self consciously as everyone turned to face him. “Hi, guys. How’ve ya been?”

Eira grinned, Hilmar gave a mock salute. Bari just nodded, and the little Vrauden, presumably his daughter, simply had a giant grin on her face and looked like she could barely contain her excitement.

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Hilmar grimaced. “I’ve been better.” He gestured to Bari. “At least now we know we aren’t completely alone.”

Dorian slid onto one of the remaining empty stools, between Hilmar and Eira. Looking at Bari, he asked, “How long were we out?”

Bari gazed off into the air, staring at nothing. “Time is difficult to track here, you understand. The sun is visible rarely at best, and even the change in the sky’s color is largely blocked by clouds. That aside, I’m fairly certain it has been between three and four days since you ended up on my doorstep.”

“That long, huh?” Dorian took a moment to examine the various bowls on the table. Most of the options were rather exotic; Dorian was unsure of what he should take, until he noticed Hilmar subtly signaling towards a bowl of apples. Selecting an apple, Dorian absently munched as he waited to see what Bari had to say.

“Indeed. Still induced cold takes root quickly and leaves the body slowly. The frostbite you endured actively resisted my attempts to heal it faster with magic, and even after you were brought here your bodies were still cooling almost as fast as I could heat them.”

Dorian inclined his head to Bari, acknowledging the debt. “You have my thanks for saving our lives. What is a Still, exactly?”

Bari began to respond but before he could get a word out he was abruptly interrupted. The little vrauden, who had been vibrating silently in her seat, seemed unable to contain herself any longer. Jumping upright and standing on its stool. It waved frantically with both arms, and spoke with a massive toothy grin. “Hi!‌ I’m Kari!”

Bari chuckled. “Ah I‌ apologize for my daughter. It’s not every day we meet new people, and she’s rather excited currently.”

He nodded to his daughter. “I should thank her for interrupting, however. I got so carried away answering questions that we weren’t even properly introduced!” Standing, Bari held both his hands forwards, palm up. “Hello! I’m Bari, and this is my daughter, Kari.”

Uncertainly, Dorian did the same with his hands. “Hi Bari, hi Kari, I’m Dorian. I assume you’ve already met the others?”

Bari smiled, seating himself once more. “Indeed. We were just getting to know each other; they only woke shortly before you.”

“Speaking of which, how exactly did we end up here?” Asking this, Dorian seated himself while waiting for Bari to respond.

Bari scratched his chin. “While the Walkman was travelling to bring us our weekly shipment of supplies, one of his divination spells picked up a Still travelling beyond its usual migration paths. Deciding to investigate, the Walkman detected several fading lifesigns underground. While they were not at the time within the Still’s field, it had passed by near enough that they were within the edge for a short time.

“He dug up the unfortunate souls, and found you.” Bari straightened in his seat, folding his hands together on the table. “Which brings me to an important question. How, exactly, did four young humans, thought to be extinct within the Sphere, come to be here before me today? Has help from outside finally been able to break in?”

Dorian’s slight smile faltered. He glanced at the others, seeing faces of puzzlement that mirrored his own. “I’m sorry, but what? Stills? Walkman? What’s the Sphere? We’re just students. Assistance for what?”

Bari’s own smile faded as well. “You… don’t know?”

“Like he said, we’re just students.” Hilmar shook his head sadly. “What could you possibly need help with, anyways? Surely a species able to make such sophisticated spellcubes could do more than humanity could?”

Bari was aghast. “Do you mean to tell me that all this time not only has humanity been unable to help us, they haven’t even known of our peril in the first place?”

“What problem are you referring to?” Dorian was beginning to be frustrated by Bari’s lack of clarification.

“Oh, no major issue. Just a spherical barrier three hundred and twelve kilometers in diameter preventing ingress or egress through any means, magical or physical.” Ignoring the stunned looks on their faces, he continued. “If you don’t even know of the barrier, then how did you manage to end up inside?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. We’re just four students who’ve never met before beyond encountering each other in the hallway occasionally. Then we were suddenly transported from our separate morning routines and simultaneously hurled into a snowbank here.” Eira frowned. “But you said that magical transportation is blocked by the barrier.”

Bari hmmmed. “Perhaps it was a divine act, for some reason or other? Maybe they have finally heard our pleas for help.”

“But… the gods are gone. Have been for a long time.” She added in a final thought. “Or dead, I suppose.”

The look on Bari’s face was near enough to break Dorian. “I’m sorry, what? The gods can’t be gone! Surely you’re mistaken.”

Eira put her hands on the table, and looked at Bari gently. “Bari, how long have the Vrauden been trapped inside this barrier?”

He answered, shaking. “About forty generations?”

“And how long is a generation?”

“Oh, about fifty solar cycles?”

More astonishment. Dorian wasn’t sure how many more surprises he could take before he blew. “That’s about in line with just before the Age of Gods ended! But don’t you have priests? Did you not notice the sudden silence?”

Bari shrugged, weakly. “They thought, we thought, that the barrier simply blocked communication, as it does everything else.”

His eyes sharpened and he straightened. In a suddenly firm voice, he spoke. “You must not tell anyone of this. It would shatter the Church at a time where our society needs it most.” He turned so Kari. “You, especially. You heard nothing.”

She nodded, childlike energy subdued for the moment.

Hilmar glanced at the others. “Sure, I suppose. I-” He was interrupted by a low tone filling the room. Bari glanced at something on his wrist.

“I must go, our final guest is waking.” Standing, Bari left the room through the same door that Dorian had entered through.

Dorian looked at the others. “Should we… follow him?”

Hilmar shrugged. “Nah, should be fine.”

Eira looked concerned. “Then again, it is Jørgen.”

There was a moment of silence as life choices were contemplated. Then, without warning, a shout rang out. The three glanced at each other in budding resignation before leaping from their seats and running for the door.

Jørgen’s room was the closest to the main room so it only took moments for the three budding mages to arrive, only to skid to a stop in the doorway. Inside they were greeted with Jørgen standing tensed next to his bed, flame swirling throughout the room.

Bari stood with his arms crossed at the base of the bed, tapping a foot on the floor. Though most of the room and even the air was merrily aflame, a sphere of air at arms’ length around him was utterly still and flameless. In the moment Dorian took this all in, he noticed a glow coming from a crystal embedded in Bari’s chest.

“Die, monster!” Jørgen tensed, preparing to rush Bari.

Several thing happened simultaneously. Hilmar moved to tackle Jørgen, Eira erected a wall of force between Jørgen and Bari, Dorian focused on disrupting Jørgen’s magic, and Bari took a step backwards.

Jørgen slammed into the wall of force, staggering drunkenly away. Hilmar tackled him to the ground, mostly safe from fire thanks to Dorian’s casting disruption.

In between grunts and struggling with Jørgen, Hilmar managed to get a few words out. “Stop! He’s a friend!”

After several moments, Jørgen’s struggling began to slow. He blinked a couple times, the fire winking away to nothing. “Is this a dream? No, it can’t be. It’s all too logical to be a dream.”

Hilmar sighed as he disengaged his limbs from Jørgen’s, straightening his shirt and robes as he did so. “No, I’m afraid it’s all quite real. Unless we’re all trapped within an illusion, which at this point I can safely say is near impossible. Some of the things we’ve seen can’t just be faked.”

Jørgen eyed Hilmar as he stood. “So you say. What if you’re in on it, hmm?” He glanced at the room, and at the others. “I must confess that yesterday I simply assumed this was all an alcohol induced dream. I apologize for my conduct.”

He turned to Bari, bowing. “I must apologize for my conduct. It was unforgivable for I, heir of Noble House Barden, to behave in such a manner towards my host. I assume you are indeed our host?”

Bari nodded, the embedded crystal flickering out. “Indeed. I am Bari, a Vrauden.” He noticed Kari peeking around the corner, and gestured her to come closer. He put an arm on her shoulder. “This is my daughter, Kari.”

She waved shyly. “Hi.”

Jørgen bowed again. “I repeat my apologies. How can I repay for my offense?”

Dorian was somewhat nonplussed. This Jørgen was completely different to the snooty Jørgen of yesterday! He supposed perhaps, being from a noble family, Jørgen’s parents were strict about things like social status. Even so, the difference was startling.

Bari smiled, straightening slightly. “I assure you it was no trouble at all. I hope we can maintain a wonderful working relationship in future, however.”

He clapped his hands. “Right! Well there’s a lot to talk about and I assume you are all still hungry. Shall we move back to the table?”

Some small talk and more thorough introductions passed around the group as they seated themselves at the table. Finishing his apple from previous, Dorian listened intently as Bari continued the original conversation.

“Right, where were we?” He thought for a moment. “Ah yes, we’ve been trapped within the Sphere for forty generations or so. You were asking about Stills and Walkmen, I believe?”

Hilmar nodded. “Indeed. You said a Still was what caused us to freeze?”

“You are correct. Stills is the common term for an unfortunately common beast on the surface, here. You’re familiar with the basics of magic creature anatomy, I take it?”

The group nodded.

“Well unlike most magical creatures, Stills are fairly unique in that their magic scales with the amount of mana present in their environment. Outside the Sphere, a still will generally be similar in size to a common mammoth in adulthood, and project an aura of cold around them that they can focus on a target for self defense.

“The story is a bit different within the Sphere, however. Due to the Sphere, ambient mana is unable to leak upwards once reaching the surface and instead pools here, ripe for absorption by magical creatures. Now you might assume that in such a scenario, stronger catacomb creatures moving up into areas closer to the surface from deeper below might cause a great many issues.

“You would be correct, were it not for one thing. The Stills kill almost all of them as they emerge. Greater cavern toads, warping flynx, even creatures such as the occasional soul eating scrailjaw are completely unprepared for the murderous all pervasive cold that now blankets the surface. They rarely emerge nowadays, choosing instead to live in the upper tunnel layers.

“Of course, this doesn’t mean that the surface is safe for habitation. In some ways, it’s less safe than braving the upper catacombs. The Stills, you see, have grown so gorged on mana that they rival the size of large hills, and their temperature magic is strong enough to nearly freeze the air itself, even unfocused. They travel regular migration paths as they absorb the ambient mana, so one can plan for a route that avoids Still migration paths and be relatively safe, at least.

“The Still you nearly had a fatal encounter with had diverged from its usual paths, which was the reason for a Walkman tailing it.”

Dorian leaned back in his chair, trying to digest the influx of information. And what even were those creatures named? Of the four listed, Dorian had only heard of the toad and the scrailjaw, and the latter only in stories passed around late at night beside a campfire. “And what is a Walkman?”

Bari smiled. “Walkman are the pride of our society. Vrauden or ______, they brave the cold and snow to keep our little piece of civilization connected. They are scouts, mages, and haulers all rolled into one. Rangers, if you will, assuming the translation stone put the concept across appropriately.”

Dorian spoke, yawning inadvertently as he did so. “I see.” Another yawn interrupted him. “So if you guys are trapped inside this seemingly impenetrable barrier, what’s stopping you from just leaving through the underground?”

Bari shook his head. “We tried that. Contrary to what you might expect, the Sphere’s moniker is indeed accurate. The shield is spherical in every direction, including underground. It might cut off at some point, but there is no real way to tell. The Sphere goes much deeper than the few kilometers down that even an arch mage can traverse safely. ”

Hilmar yawned now, this time the action spreading to the other humans at the table.

Bari blinked. “Ah, but I have been a terrible host! Your bodies are still recovering from the chill. Rest, rest! We can continue this discussion tomorrow.”

Had Dorian been standing, he would have staggered and fallen over. As it was, he was sitting, so the wave of exhaustion merely made his eyelids flutter as he slumped over in his seat. With great effort he stood, following the others out of the dining area and back into the hallway. They waved good night to Bari and Kari, before going off to their respective rooms.

Dorian’s last thoughts before sleep claimed his mind were of his family. He wondered if he’d ever be able to see his little sister again; and so he drifted off to sleep, uneasily and uncertain of what the future would bring.

---

Once Bari was sure they had all fallen to sleep, he walked down to the end of the hall. He pressed his palm against the wall opposite Dorian’s room, a crystal embedded in his palm flashing unseen.

Identity confirmed, access to the most valuable room in the complex was granted as a portion of the wall slid backwards, revealing a new hallway.

As Bari walked down the hallway, a crystal in his forehead began to glow, shedding waste energy as light as Bari channeled his mana through the magic focus. Various wards reached out to caress his mind, quietened from their active state by the identification spell he was channeling.

It was a short walk to the end of the hallway, revealing a door unlike the rest of the complex. This door was made of some dark material, seemingly so dark that it actively absorbed light from the mage lamps embedded in the walls of the hallway. Threads of crystal ran throughout the door, the only visible details on an otherwise inkwell colored and textured material.

Bari reached out with his mind, seeking access from the guardian spirit embedded within the entrance.

Recognizing him for who he was, a feeling of admission pressed itself against the upper layers of Bari’s mind as the featureless door swung open to the left.

Six columns of luminescent crystal grew along the six corners of the hexagonal room, a room made of the same black material as the door.

Bari entered the room, door swinging shut behind him automatically; as it did so, the wards in the room entered their active state.

Metaphorical cotton closed around Bari’s mind, him wincing slightly at the feeling of having his consciousness and will shoved entirely back inside his head. The various crystals he usually had active ceaselessly were forcefully shut off. The weakness returned to him as he aged forty years in a moment, and he shivered in the cold of the room, no longer magically heated. His strength left, his vision weakened, and he found it hard to breathe.

Bari took a moment to adjust. When he had recovered somewhat, he stepped forwards to the centerpiece of the fairly small room.

One of those previously countless wonders of ancient Vrauden society, now very much limited in number and fiercely protected.

A crystal, head high and shaped as diamond. In truth the crystal was hollow, the internal space filled with a gel like structure, able to change shape at a moment’s notice.

Crystal was useful as a spell focus, but ultimately not flexible enough for what this artifact needed to do. Unlike crystal, the gel could rewrite the spell formula on the fly.

Bari checked a small line of text displayed on the flat face of the crystal. It was the appointed time, so he touched the surface of the crystal, activating it. The relic roused itself, light leaking in large quantities. It began absorbing large quantities of crystallized mana, stored in slots in the walls of the room for this very purpose.

Gradually an image painted itself across the walls. An interior much like this one, though a hundred kilometers away and even deeper underground. A notable difference, too, was that Bari was no longer the only one present in the room.

Standing behind the crystal, opposite the room from Bari, was now a female vrauden.

A normal vrauden typically possesses two colors of scales, the dominant color being that of the father, with the speckled scales being the main color of the mother’s scales. Bari himself had scales of green, with the occasional white scale. This Vrauden, however, had no unifying color. Her scales shifted through all the colors of the rainbow, a dazzling display that constantly changed as she moved. The only consistent color were those of her horns, massive gnarled things of black.

She held her hands out, a universal sign of greeting for vrauden that the one doing the motion was currently unarmed, both of weapon and crystal. “Good day, Bari. You have news?”

Existence having been now acknowledged by a superior, Bari returned the greeting. “Indeed. Four young adult humans were found in an underground burrow, half dead from a close encounter with a Still.”

She frowned. “Humans? How?”

He bowed again. “I am sorry to say I do not know. The Walkman retraced their steps and attempted to discern their method of arrival, but the skeins of mana were already far too diffuse to learn anything of value.”

Bari relayed to her what he had learned of the students, their lack of knowledge of their arrival, their age and experience, and news from the outside world. Their time to talk was quickly coming to a close, the massively advanced age of the rainbow vrauden beginning to catch up to her as her strengthening crystals remained deactivated.

The last thing he conveyed was news of the gods’ apparent abandonment of the world, and the relative silence of the angels. “I have already taken steps to ensure they don’t spread that particular piece of information too far, though more will need to be done.”

Throughout the whole conversation her frown had grown deeper, though by the same token a glimmer of hope had been kindled. While a great deal of bad news had just been learned, by the same token this was the first time in recorded history of the shield being penetrated through any means.

Bari waited patiently as she tapped a foot, brow furrowed and deep in thought.

At last, she spoke. “I will need to contact you later with further instructions. It is likely, however, that they will need to be retrieved and brought to the capital, and soon. Please prepare them for that.”

She smiled at him. “Your work has been exceptional, and that Walkman too. Please get his name for me, so we can arrange a suitable reward.”

Bari bowed. “You gladden me with your words. It will be done.”

With those final words, the glow faded from the crystal, the illusion linking two rooms together dissipating.

Bari tossed and turned that night, worried for the future. Whether for better or for worse, things were certainly going to change greatly.