The room beyond the door reminded Aj of some sort of Sci-Fi workshop. It was full of metal pipes with no obvious purpose, several of the pipes simply ended in the open air not connecting to anything. The room had shiny metal walls, which were covered in fine engravings similar to the metal vents they’d first come into the stronghold from. Oddly enough the room also had a small assortment of hard furniture including a few dark stone tables, stools, and a couch which looked like it had been formed out of the metal wall itself.

Naturally, after taking a quick scope of the room and finding no immediate danger Aj and Mig went over to the couch and slumped onto it. The couch was just too short for them to both lay comfortably without touching each other, but they were both too exhausted to care. Aj couldn’t help but feel like they’d hit the jackpot. The couch was extremely comfy for being made of metal, it had kind of a liquid springiness to it and more importantly, the room was much warmer than anywhere else they’d been in this underworld. Aj fell asleep almost instantly, pressing the back of his head into the head of the couch behind him. He was exhausted, he never felt truly recovered from their first run-in with the mantises, and making that vine nest had taken what little strength he had left. He slept hard.

He woke up to Kit’s voice in his ear.

“Dude…. He’s got jerky” Kit said.

“Whah?” Aj asked back, completely disoriented his eyes jamming themselves open.

“He’s got some jerky man, you smell that?”

Aj did in fact smell just the tiniest bit of meat in the air and his eyes confirmed it when opened. Mig had pushed himself up and was sitting criss-crossed at the edge of the couch, he was currently nibbling on some sort of dried meat wrapped in paper.

“Sooo….. we’re asking for some right now, right?” Kit asked desperately. Aj was hungry but he could feel that Kit was even hungrier. Aj couldn’t think of a time Kit had gone without food or sunlight for more than a day, and he was guessing that expending so much energy wasn’t doing him any favors.

“I think he’d give us some to get by, but I don’t think he has very much. I don’t even know where he was keeping that thing.” Aj replied mentally. Mig didn’t carry any bag, so Aj figured he must have kept the stick of meat in his pockets or something. “Should we talk about everything?” Aj asked, trying to switch the topic to everything that’s happened to them since they entered this underworld.

“Uhhh… yeah. That’s fine I guess.” Kit said followed by a heavy pause. “I want to say first that I’m sorry, I feel like it’s my fault that we’re in this mess.” Aj could feel the weight Kit was putting on his words and he didn’t like it.

“I wouldn't say tha-”

“IT IS THOUGH!” Kit exclaimed, heatedly speaking over Aj’s mental message “I pushed for us to jump into this underworld! I was overconfident in my ability to protect you! I barely stopped that mantis from taking off your head and instead you got a hole in your FUCKING SHOULDER! Then afterwards I took a snooze and LEFT YOU ALONE TO DIE!”

Aj wasn’t sure how to respond, he was feeling a lot about what Kit had just said, but he couldn’t find the words to express himself. He was just starting to form his thoughts before Kit began again.

“I didn’t think it’d be easy, but I thought that given how unique I am I’d be able to protect us. I thought I was supposed to be stronger.” Kit paused “I thought I was stronger…..”

Aj could feel that Kit was struggling, but still, he could’t find the words to say. He was split because he agreed with some of what Kit was saying. He had wanted Kit to take this all more seriously, but he didn’t want him to be so hard on himself. This was really hard for Aj, he knew that he had to be there for his best friend, but he wasn’t really good with finding the words to say. That was more of a Kit thing, he’d always known what to say.

“It's okay man,” Aj said, deciding against finding the perfect words and simply pouring all of his sincerity into that simple statement. It seemed to work. Kit was quiet, but Aj could feel that his mood was a little lighter, his faceless tense.

“Thanks, man” Kit replied while nodding “Are you sure we’re good?”

“Yeah man, you didn’t force me into anything,” Aj said, relief flooding him. “I think we can both agree we should take a more measured and thoughtful approach from now on though right?”

“Agreed” Kit said, Aj could feel him get a joking grin as he continued. “We are both way too big-brained to make any more blunders”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Aj laughed out loud in response, before mentally nodding to Kit.

“Have a good dream?” Mig asked, his eyebrows only slightly cocked, a small smile on his face.

“Yeah something like that, how long was I out?” Aj asked. Mig took another bite of his dried meat before responding.

“I think only like sevenish hours, I feel great though. Most of my scrapes are healing fine.” Mig replied, examining his arms and abdomen. “How’s your leg and shoulder?”

Aj took a quick second to examine himself. His shoulder actually felt better than it had, but it still felt like someone stuck the end of a javelin in there and left it. He took his shirt off to look at it and saw a golf ball-sized wound just below his shoulder. It looked about half an inch deep and was covered with a bed of black and red scab. With every move, he felt the wound tear away from the scab and reopen. This rest had allowed the wound to close up, but he worried that once they were on the move again it’d just keep tearing and opening up.

“Sorry, the shape and the size of it made it really hard to stitch up and we had a lot going on during the fight,” Kit said. “I could try to now though”

Aj looked down at his leg and saw the stitches Kit had made to close the wound that grub had given him. While it only hurt a little, it did itch really bad. Aj tried his best to not scratch it and move on.

“Maybe later man, just in case we need you at full strength for investigating the rest of the room,” Aj replied, partially because it was logical and partially because he wasn’t sure if sewing up his shoulder with Kit’s power was a great idea right now. He was mostly thinking about the itching.

“My shoulders good enough I think, should be on the mend,” Aj said, finally responding to Mig. “Do bonded and sovereigns heal faster than normal people?”

“A little bit, it depends on their specialty and stuff. Trace did say though that once you get really proficient with your cor control that you can focus it in certain areas to assist healing.” Mig said, scrunching his face before asking another question.

“Do you know what cor is?” Mig said, trying to make it seem like an open question. Aj thought back to his and Kit’s discussion about cor just yesterday. God a lot happened yesterday, Aj thought.

“It’s like magic and it comes from the heart and it lets you summon fire or vines and cut really sharp?” Aj said slowly over time turning his answer into a question.

“You’re kind of right, but not exactly. I don’t know a crazy amount about it either to be honest, but I do know a few things. One, it’s not from the heart, it comes from your blood, your heart just directs it around. Two, if you direct cor somewhere you can enhance certain parts of your body. It can make your muscles stronger or your bones harder etc. Three, the crazy stuff you’ve been doing with the vines and fire is all related to your sovereign heart. Each heart is unique and gives different powers to sovereigns or bonded. You saw Lucian back in the practice yard use like crystals, that’s something special he can do from his bonded heart.” Mig explained

“Okay, then two questions. How does your sword work? And how do you use cor if you don’t have a special heart?” Aj asked genuinely intrigued and trying to figure it all out.

“Okay, I’ll answer your second question first. I still have cor in my blood and I can use my heart to direct it, but I don’t get all the benefits that bonded or sovereign get from their hearts. Like enhanced cor production and power. I also can’t use special abilities like ice or fire unless I’m using a heartstrung item with those powers. My sword is heartstrung, but it’s got a simple heart. If I focused my cor towards it, it’ll get crazy sharper.” Mig said standing up and removing his sword from his sheath. “Trace picked it out for me. Said it’d be a good starting sword because it only had one heart.”

Aj watched for a second and let Mig stare at his sword with a smile on his face. As Mig’s smile turned into a frown he spoke up.

“Thanks, I think that clears up a lot for me actually,” Aj said, restarting the conversation.

“No problem, I should’ve asked earlier too actually but did you get assessed by one of the families? How’d you score?” Mig asked.

“Ehh I did, but I didn’t score too hot,” Aj said trying to be honest but not too honest. Mig just nodded in response and looked towards the rest of the room. He took another long look around before holding out his hand towards Aj.

“You want the rest? It’s all I’ve got, but we both need to be in the best shape we can be” Mig said, holding out the dried meat. Aj immediately felt the stress coming off of Kit in waves, as he tried to hold himself back.

“That would be awesome,” Aj said, trying not to sound too desperate as Mig handed over the meat. He turned and quickly scarfed it down.

“It’s no gas station jerky, but it’ll do,” Kit said, somewhat sated. “Mig definitely just earned some points in my book”.

Mig either didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care at Aj scarfing down his food. He was looking out again, it looked to Aj like he was trying to focus in on one of the tables.

“I keep thinking I saw something move on that table of there,” Mig said, nodding to the closest of the three tables in the room. “You good to check it out?”

Aj nodded in response and followed Mig up to the dark stone table. Upon closer inspection, the table was covered in what looked like purple parchment, with alien writing on it. In the center of the table and writings were two peculiar items.

They were two containers about three feet long and only a couple of inches wide with an opening at the top. It looked to Aj like it was made of some sort of mix of ivory and mercury. They were covered in engravings of multitudes of intersecting shapes and runes. In the leftmost container, there was a long metal rod that was poked out a few inches past its opening

“I think these are sheaths,” Mig said, his voice almost a whisper and full of excitement.

As they watched the metal rod simply disappeared from the left sheath and reappeared in the right. Seemingly teleporting.

“Fuck yes” Mig said.