There was sand against Rook’s nostrils and a rock in his eye, cool and hard and tetrahedral. He felt it when he blinked like early-morning rheum beside the nose. It irritated him endlessly. Tickled the tear ducts. Imprinted its shape in the black field of his vision. All he wanted to do was lift upward and rub it away, but whenever he stirred the mulch of his mind splashed against his skull. For seconds his body lost track of itself. Everything tipping and spilling around him. He was too dizzy to lift himself. So instead, for a long while, he breathed in the dust through his nose. He tolerated the rock in his eye. He let his mind calm. He gave his brain time to solidify.
He rolled onto his back.
When his eyes at last opened he was blinded by the white sun. Its rays were hot against his skin but the ground was cold beneath him, like he was a piece of meat on a slab of winter stone being cooked by fire from above.
Pulling to a sit took more effort than killing Lord Arqa. When he was at last upright he picked the stone from his eye and flicked it, and for a moment of sobriety he looked about himself.
He was in a vast desert. Green and red and teal plants everywhere. Tall cactuses with arms like golems loomed over him. There were thorny things in all directions. Shrubs like pincushions and racks for pollarms.
He was lodged between a saguaro and something that looked like the end of a pitchfork. Most of his legs and half of his torso had landed in a field of barrel cactus; he had rolled into the sand through some good fortune. Fortunately he still had his armor on, and while the cloth that covered its exterior was damaged, the elven mail beneath kept him safe with only a few cuts to the shins.
He tried to take it all in, but his mind refused to think: it was all too much. He couldn’t remember what had happened or how he came to this place. He didn’t know what this place was. All he knew was that he needed desperately to throw up.
He leaned forward and threw up.
In the moments that followed his grasp on the situation sharpened. His stomach, which was as upset as he’d known from any flu, calmed. He pushed an overhanging bush aside and climbed to his feet.
A brief wobbling. And then…
He heard a noise nearby of sickness and pain. He stumbled through the brush and not seconds later found a dirt trail, and there, on the ground, was Aletheia, her arrows all spilled from her quiver, Antigone’s staff on the ground beside her, and her hair frazzled like she had just woken up after a century of unrestful sleep.
She leaned forward and threw up.
Rook grabbed her by the shoulders. She gagged, choking, tears in her eyes, but stilled after a moment of embrace.
“Where’s Pyraz?” she coughed.
Rook glanced up and down the trail. For a moment he wondered if he could find his own voice, and he was surprised when he called out, “Pyraz! Come!”
He blanched to hear his own word. It was a force of habit. A slip of the tongue. Aletheia hadn’t noticed, and for a moment he hoped Pyraz hadn’t heard, either.
“Pyraz!” Rook called again.
“I’m here,” came the Hypaspist’s voice distantly.
Rook tugged Aletheia to her feet. He helped gather her arrows. He was mostly sober by then, but a migraine slipped through his ears, the bright light and the warm sun setting off some reaction behind his eyes. He did his best to ignore the pain. Aletheia was worse off than him; she still choked, ill, feverish. He led her down the trail toward Pyraz’s voice.
He stood with his helmet in his hand. Shoulders relaxed. Staring upward at the sun. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“What went wrong?” Rook said. A wave of pressure was building up behind his forehead, worse by the second. He grunted and squared the pain away. “Where are we?”
“The Great Atrium.” Pyraz looked over his shoulder. “You look terrible.”
Aletheia fell back to the ground. “I feel sick.”
“Long distance teleportation is unpleasant,” he agreed.
“You seem fine,” Rook said. Here he grew nauseous himself. He threw up again. It did something to relieve the pain.
“I don’t show it.” A moment to consider their surroundings. “This was the Great Atrium of Pyrthos.”
“This is a desert,” Rook said, wiping spit away. He cleared his throat.
“No.”
“Pyraz—there’s no Tower here, or for miles.” Rook pointed to the horizon, at which the desert seemed to stretch infinitely. No mountains in sight. Only blue skies and green plants.
“I remembered it clearly…” Pyraz said.
Rook felt the onset of despair. They were stranded. “Your spell went wrong. No wonder why we ended up so far apart.” He couched his face in his palms.
“This is it.”
“Where? Where is it?”
“The air,” Aletheia said. She sniffled, running a hand across the staff. “Can’t you smell it?”
“Smell what?” Rook said.
“Mana,” Pyraz said.
These damn magicians were going to give him an aneurysm. He nearly screamed at Pyraz—when a better thought occurred to him. The compass. He pulled it and held it at his chest level.
The ring around the half-sphere turned rapidly when exposed to the air, like it had been waiting for human touch. It spun and spun until its notch pointed downward.
Directly downward.
“She’s here,” he said. He looked up at the sky, then down again at the compass, then to his sides—every sense told him he was really outside, really in a desert, but Eris was underfoot.
That was when he saw her. Around the concave shape of the compass were the crows, and the cat, yet in the very center, in that small dip, there was nothing—only darkness, too shallow to hold anything, just a spot of a mirror.
Yet in it there was Eris. A reflection. Unconscious on the stone floor of an iron cell. Imprisoned. He saw her for just a moment before she vanished, the compass’ sheen gone black again.
“Underground! In a dungeon! She’s here! We’re—” He looked to Pyraz. “Where are we?”
“The Great Atrium,” Pyraz said.
“The gardens,” Aletheia said.
Pyraz started down the trail. He walked without any delay, with total confidence, while the others limped to their feet and came slowly after him. Eventually they reached a trickling stream, a small stone bridge over its top; then more desert, a rocky uphill climb, a field of green trees, benches and tables, and…
A free-standing archway that led into darkness. To its sides stretched more desert.
Aletheia handed Rook the staff. She nocked an arrow and shot it off at the area beside the column; it whistled through the air—
And bounced off the projection of blue desert at the column’s side. The arrow’s head snapped from the shaft in a collision with nothing.
“An illusion,” Pyraz said. “Everywhere here is illusions. I should have known.”
“Keep this,” Rook said. He handed Pyraz the staff, who looked at it with some confusion. “I can see Eris in my compass; she’s in a cell, in a dark prison lit by fires. They have her still jailed.”
“The Dungeons,” he said. “A place where spells can’t be cast. Where magicians are held prisoner. I visited there once, to interrogate a hostage. In my time we kept demons and traitors jailed in the Dungeons of Pyrthos. The Magisters…experimented on them.”
“You’ve been there? Can you Recall us?”
“…there would be no way to escape,” Pyraz said. “It would be suicide.”
“Damn it! Then stay behind and send me! We’ve lost days already!”
Pyraz was lost in thought as they stared through the dark archway. Rook needed to calm himself. There was more than just Eris to look after now—he had to keep Aletheia safe, too. He stepped forward to glance into the darkness—
And he saw a woman on approach.
She walked with no emotion. Her features were blank. Her gait even and disciplined. She wore a yellow robe, and as she came closer Rook saw glowing blue brand of the letter T across her face.
“We’re found out already!” Rook swore. “There’s no choice, Pyraz!”
He nodded. “Not enough mana here. I need to go higher.”
“Up the tower?”
Another nod.
“Then let’s go.” Rook put a hand on his sword as the woman drew nearer—but she made no reaction to him. Behind her there floated a cart of gardening supplies, fertilizer and trowels and shears, and even Pyraz hesitated to see her press past them.
Aletheia grabbed Rook’s arm. “She’s a Servitor,” she whispered.
“Can she see us?” Rook whispered back. “Will she tell a guard?”
“No. She’s…dead.”
He stared at the woman in yellow. He knew by now what it meant, to make someone a Servitor. Seeing it himself made him sick. Even a slave would have run to see these three intruders, would have gone to tell a guard. To stay silent and ignore them was inhuman. They had turned this woman into a machine.
“This is what they want to do to Eris,” he said.
He wanted to kill her and put her out of this misery. It would have been merciful. No crime deserved this punishment. But there was so much more at stake. He wouldn’t risk Eris for her sake.
They ducked into the darkness of the archway.
----------------------------------------
From a domed room they found a side passage, a hallway with a gentle curve through an easily-opened hatch. All around was darkness. About them thrummed machinery that fed on magic. It was like nothing Rook had ever seen. There was an opening into someplace brighter, but Pyraz led them the other way, opting for darkness, then to a door. A mundane door, for maintenance, locked with only a metal key.
He ripped it open.
They followed it upstairs. Past a green glowing furnace. Over a set of railings and narrow steps. Everything was made of black steel. The air was frigid beyond the garden. There was a trapdoor over them and Pyraz used the staff to melt it open, then punching it away, and they emerged…
In a Telmos swamp. Rain fell. The air was humid. The sun hidden behind thick clouds and a canopy that seemed impenetrable. Fog hung in the air. Frogs croaked like war drums. There was no path here but a shallow river swimming with fish, and they waded upstream until they found land, then at last there was another archway.
Through it they found themselves in a domed room as before. In one direction, light. In another—a dark archway.
“Where are we going?” Rook said.
“Nowhere,” Pyraz said. “Just up.”
Four figures conversing in Regal appeared in the distant light, coming this way. They wore robes and spoke in whispers like monks at the monastery of Kaimas, where Rook had spent a month three years ago. Pyraz hesitated, so now Rook took the lead, guiding them into cover through the opposite arch.
Red trees surrounded them. Colossal red trees with leaves the color of viscera, a canopy a hundred feet high.
Here the air was cold. Snow fell from the sky.
An owl hooted nearby.
They waited.
The voices came nearer…
They chose the other garden, before disappearing entirely.
The party ducked back out into the open. Aletheia found another side passage, this one with a lock that was magically sealed, but Pyraz dispelled it and melted it away, and once again they paraded through the darkness. Curving around the gardens.
“We might be going the wrong way,” Rook said, moving quickly.
“Circuitry is hidden inside the walls. I can feel it. Piping mana from the upper reaches.”
“I feel it too,” Aletheia said.
“Great. Everyone is a magician,” Rook said.
The course was just like the first. Around. Up flights of stairs. Past machines. To a hatch…yet this led to a place where, beyond, they heard voices. They would be seen the moment they emerged.
“There will be guards,” Pyraz said, “but we can ignore the rest. We need only to move with haste.”
“What if we get trapped?”
“Then we fight.” He looked the staff over. “This makes it easier. In an emergency I can use Recall before I have access to all the aether. But only in an emergency.”
“Then there’s no choice. Run and don’t stop,” Rook said.
“Wait!” Aletheia said. They looked to her. “I know a spell. A spell I…just know I know.”
Rook waited for a moment, but then he remembered. Astera on the ice. Her evasion of the Arktid sentries. “Invisibility,” he said.
“She told me about it once. It’s called Shadow Meld. I can use it on us, and so long as we stop moving, we can’t be seen.”
“Can you do it?” Rook asked her, a hand on her shoulder.
She nodded.
“Then we try that first,” Pyraz said. “My plan second.”
He unlocked the hatch like the others, but opened it more slowly. Aletheia took the lead in peeking to see if the way was clear. She grabbed the staff in Pyraz’s hands and her eyes flashed golden—more golden—as she stood very still on the steps upward.
A long silence without any breath.
She gestured them upward. They all piled onto the level above. Rook found himself staring at a library, surrounded by ancient books and desks covered with papers and writing utensils. The ceiling was immensely high and domed and led out in an open floor toward a cavernous central chamber.
There were three young men making rowdy sounds from one of the tables. Aletheia stopped and so did the two men behind her, and just then the men—boys—looked their way.
“D’you hear that?” one said.
“Hear what? I’d bet it was Linos again,” another said.
They laughed, but the first stood with a frown. He looked straight at Pyraz, then to the hatch—it had been closed behind them, they had that foresight at least—and shrugged.
“I swear it was something,” the first boy said. He returned to his work. “Like Magister K going after you with the chain again. Metal, just like that.”
Their banter continued, but the moment their heads were turned away, Aletheia rushed forward. They made it around the corner—
And an arcane protector stared down at them. They were inches away from it. It looked just like the machine from the manaforge, only scaled down, and the managem in its heart glowed with the radiance of a purple sun.
Aletheia’s breath quivered, but she didn’t move. Pyraz made ready to strike. Rook gripped Aletheia’s wrist.
It stopped right before her. Staring in its dumb, mechanical silence. Then it turned, and it walked away from them on its patrol, toward another set of shelves and workbenches in this vast library.
The ceiling overhead was painted with stylized clouds that drifted in an absent breeze.
There were elevators leading up and down to either side. Pyraz guided them toward the nearest opened gate, and at the elevator’s entrance they all took a deep breath. He ran his hand over a panel of black obsidian. And…
A levitating sheet of stone appeared in the shaft. There were no controls inside the elevator, but Pyraz understood, for he issued the simple command, “Up,” and the stone underfoot obeyed.
Everywhere was glowing manacrystal. Rook had never seen anywhere like this. It seemed a place from a dream. The shaft of the elevator opened presently, so they saw everything as they traveled, libraries and more atriums which passed them by, then the sun beyond huge windows and skylights, and then for a brief moment they traveled up the spine of the Tower, and from their view they saw Pyrthos beneath them.
A model city. Clouds between it and them. Skyscrapers like Katharos’ ancient Mage District, except none crumbled and nothing in ruins.
Pyraz stared off the elevator’s edge with terror in his eyes. His breathing became heavy. When the elevator came to a stop he leaped out of it, onto solid ground. He looked like he had just seen a spider.
“Where are we?” Rook said. They were in a wide open room, naturally lit, and at its center was the statue of a human in great pauldrons and a flowing cloak. Far across from them was the ingress for another elevator. “Is this the top?”
Pyraz shook his head. Still catching his breath he said, “As high as visitors are allowed to go.”
“But high enough, right?” Aletheia said.
He went to respond, when they heard footsteps from just out of sight. Aletheia grabbed the staff and used her spell again, shepherding them into cover near the statue, and they all held perfectly still.
Three men in Cult Custodian armor stepped out from a distant hallway. Their captain wore no helmet, but his armor was heavy, gilt, ornate, and clearly enchanted. Rook closed his eyes…
The footsteps slowed.
He remembered Lukon’s words. ‘Immune to mana.’
“Who the blaze are you?” the captain said. Clinking metal followed after his voice. “How did you get weapons up here? Where—put that staff down!”
Rook drew his sword. Aletheia ran to his side, drawing her sword, so that they both stood in front of Pyraz. “Cast the spell,” he whispered.
“Fetch Tomos,” the captain said to the nearest Custodian, “tell him to send the protectors to each elevator.” At once he departed. “Stay put. More guards are on their way. Put that staff down!”
Pyraz did not put the staff down. His grip tightened. He closed his eyes. Before the casting of Mass Recall had seemed instantaneous, but now with these Custodians inches away it seemed to take an eternity.
A curtain of white mana drew itself around their heads. Very, very slowly.
“Back away!” Rook shouted.
“It’s a teleportation spell!” the other Custodian shouted.
The captain jolted when he realized; he glanced between the party. “Go! Now!”
The both of them pulled out swords and charged. Aletheia tried to slow one with a gust of cold, but his enchanted armor absorbed the mana and dispelled it as a Spellward. She met his blade head-on as the Recall fell around them, cloaking them in light, forced backward to avoid being overcome, but she twisted around Pyraz and stayed within the circle.
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The captain tackled Rook to the ground. They wrestled but this Custodian’s armor was heavy and he managed to pin Rook. A heavy punch dazed him, then he jumped forward to grab the staff from Pyraz’s hands, but Rook grabbed him again, and the two of them rolled beyond Mass Recall’s curtain.
The noise was so much louder this time. Rook screamed in pain as both his ears rang with the screeching of ten million crickets. His vision was replaced by white, and when it faded, he saw only black.
The man in his grasp was gone. He was on frigid stone. The air was colder than Chionos, but very still. His sword was at his side on the ground. He coughed and wretched for a moment before he saw the flickering of an open flame on a sconce against his hand.
His vision adjusted. He blinked time and time again. When he finally looked, he saw a dungeon’s corridor before him. The spell had worked, even as he left the circle—but Aletheia and Pyraz were nowhere to be seen.
----------------------------------------
The circle around his compass spun slowly in all directions. The notch could not find Eris. Rook glanced upward and stared ahead, thinking hard. Mana suppressant dungeons. He was still wearing her jade ward—he lowered his sword’s blade to his hand and dragged it across.
The ward did nothing.
He hissed in pain as he drew blood, though he had been careful and the cut was small. Yet he was heartened, too, because for the first time since he left Katharos, and maybe for the first time in all his life, the next fight he found would be a fair one. Steel against steel. No magic.
Heavy iron doors lined the walls on both sides of the corridor, placed between the sconces. Portholes of glass at stomach level were the only way to glance inside, and at first Rook saw nothing in each but darkness, like a shrouded menagerie for nocturnal animals in the day. He checked each down the line. He knew he wouldn’t find Eris here, she was somewhere far less secure, but he found himself desperate to know where he was—to have some notion of where he had found himself.
Behind one door a shadow stirred. A moving mass of nothingness, a shifting in the dark, until…two dark eyes materialized on the other side of the glass. They flickered like burning blackness. Around them was the shape of a tarry skull—and a mouth lined with black teeth.
It looked just like the true form of Lord Arqa, yet suppressed, subdued, defanged. All it did was stare.
Rook kept his composure. He needed confidence now more than ever. He found it. This demon was trapped in its cell; it was not cause for any concern.
He continued down the line. Before long he saw other familiar creatures imprisoned here, a gray ooze on a wall and a sandspider. He didn’t dwell on that latter for long. Then came the ones he’d never seen before: the being of molten lava given human shape, a miasma of red mist which roamed its cell like oikofugic fog, a creature like an elf with long claws and sunken eyes that screamed silently when it spotted him through the glass.
Experimentation. That was what these creatures were here for. But who was the experimenter?
There were no guards here, yet someone kept the sconces lit. Rook navigated the corridors up and down, never certain where to go, sometimes moving backward and only stopping himself by the recognition of some familiar creature in a cell and so doubling back. This went on for what felt to him like hours, when every second was so precious. No sign of Aletheia. No sign of Pyraz.
He reached a door. An enormous circular stone like the entrance to an ancient vault. He kicked it to no avail. There was no way to open it. No mechanism at all, but two glistening blue crystals imbedded in the stone, buried beneath glass, to its sides. He closed his eyes, thinking hard, but he was so far beyond his knowledge—so far outside the depths of his experience—that he could only scream in frustration. So he did scream, he opened his mouth to yell, when…
He heard the echo of a whistle in the distance. The tune was unfamiliar and the noise bounced off the hard walls, hard to pin down, but still he readied his sword and darted down the hall.
The whistling stopped. A man’s voice pursued, a gruff baritone:
“Yer stirred up well now,” he said. “What’s the matter?” He shushed a cell door—and Rook saw him in the distance. It was a dwarf. He wore a tunic, a tabard with the Tower’s sigil, and he gazed through the glass. “Don’t ye worry. I’ll keep it bright.”
The sconce nearest to him had gone out. He reached up and re-lit it with a striker. After two tries it caught, fire glowing.
Rook saw no other choice but to engage. “Dwarf!” he yelled.
The dwarf did not jump. He turned slowly, and his eyes went wide. “Dear Stormrobes,” he said. “Did ye break free?”
This creature had a gleam of madness in his eye. He was clearly old, yet his beard was entirely shaven off—while his hair was wild and braided. Rook had been ready for a fight, or coercion of some degree, yet he was relieved to see that the Magisters left the depths of these dungeons to a jailer whose mind was well suited for the task of keeping the monstrous company. Rook decided to play to madness before jumping to threats.
“Not yet. I’m looking for a woman named Eris.”
“Eris,” he repeated. “Human? There’s no women here. None except Merelda, but she’s an elf, ye understand? Yer lookin’ for women, ye’d better try low security.”
With that the dwarf departed down the corridor, whistling once again.
“It appears I’m stuck,” Rook said, growing more agitated, “why don’t you show me the way?”
“Up the lift, the porter’ll take ye.”
“The door’s locked.”
“If the door’s locked, how’d ye get in?”
That was a question he couldn’t well answer without sounding mad himself. “What’s your name?”
“I’m the warden of this level. Call me Kassuom.” He stopped at another cell. “I’ll bet yer hungry today, Miss Blackclaw. They’ve got somethin’ nice and special for ye from floor one.”
Rook walked to him and looked over his shoulder, kneeling down at the low porthole. On the other side he saw a huge tarantula that hung from the ceiling of its cell.
“Warden Kassuom,” Rook said. “I need you to let me out.”
“Ain’t nothin’ ever wanted to leave my company, human, food’s too good.”
“Damn it!” Rook’s anger was returning, “I’ll kill you if you don’t let me out, dwarf! Get back here!”
This got Kassuom’s attention, for he turned back to Rook now and stormed his direction. “Ye think yer threats scare me? Yer nothin’ but a hallucination. No human’s ever made it to Level Four. Now bog off!”
Rook pressed his sword’s tip to the dwarf’s tunic and gave some pressure. “Does this feel like a hallucination?”
Kassuom wasn’t certain, or so it seemed, and he regarded the blade curiously. Then he said, “Did Antinaz put you up to this?”
“Yes,” Rook said, and although he didn’t have any clue who Antinaz was, it sounded Elven. He started to lie: “We were testing a new spell. It was a miscast, and I don’t know how I ended up here, but so I am. Don’t make me tell him we need to find a new warden.”
A long consideration. “Damn magicians. Someday we’ll lock ‘em all up in these cages. Fine. I’ll let ye out.”
A wave of relief. Rook withdrew his sword, but he didn’t put it away. He followed Kassuom to the vault door. There he performed some ritual: he took a knife from a nearby shelf and used it to cut his hand, then drained his own blood into a small bronze basin and said words in Regal which Rook couldn’t understand.
Then the door slid open.
“Pull this string here to let Korsos know yer down here. And tell Antinaz I hate his guts when ye get back,” Kassuom said.
“I will, most certainly.”
----------------------------------------
A shaft led down into a dark infinity below him. The same above. There was a simple cord of some woven fabric hanging down the shaft and Rook tugged it, as instructed. Then he waited. And it was a long wait. That kind of never-ending wait where the mind is free to roam and construct entire fantasies of despair. First was to find his companions, but where could they possibly be? How might he locate them? And without his compass, how to find Eris?
Low security. That’s what the warden said.
He tried to calm himself, until finally the elevator arrived.
A Servitor stood at a switch. Like the other he was branded across the face with a blue T. Rook stepped inside, but he was met with the coolly spoken words, “I’m sorry, I don’t know you. Please state your qualifications.”
He clenched his jaw. Something he could prove. “I’m a companion of Lukon, Seeker. My name is Rook Korakos.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t informed of your visitation,” the Servitor said.
“An accident saw me delivered to this place. I have an urgent message for him. But first I need to visit low security, can you take me there?”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“Wait!” Rook said. He slid the jade ward from his hand and showed it to the Servitor. “This is his ward, don’t you recognize it? I got it from him.”
“I’m sorry, I will escort you to the surface for clarification with my directors—”
Rook glanced at the controls behind him. They were by touch, like the others. This Servitor had a magician’s eyes—no doubt only someone with magic could use them, but they were simple enough, surely, up for up, down for down…
He grabbed the Servitor by the neck, grappling with him into a tight hold. The lifeless marionette of a man fought back but not hard, he had no spirit or will in him, only mechanical movements of muscles, and Rook easily restrained his hands. Then he forced the Servitor to tap ‘up’ on the elevator.
Manastone underfoot lit up. They started to move. Faster and faster, until going very fast. Another vault door passed them by in the blink of an eye. Rook had no idea where they were going—up or down, where was low security? And which floor of low security?
Then he had an idea. He twisted the Servitor’s left arm until it broke and, still keeping him steady, pulled out his compass once again. And sure enough—there was magic here. The elevator was powered by magic. His compass worked. It pointed up, and by its guide he stopped the elevator when it came to be precisely level with himself, when he was certain he was on the same floor as Eris.
He let the Servitor go. It flailed its arms wildly, reaching for the controls. “You have molested a Servitor of Magister Spartos and will be subject to neutralization under—"
Rook drove his sword through its chest. It showed no pain, and neither resisted nor protested. A drop of blood appeared in its mouth, and then it died. Like something asleep that was still awake.
For a moment Rook felt a tingle of excitement, then guilt, in his mind. This thing hadn’t done anything to him. But it wasn’t really alive. It was a machine. Whoever this Servitor had been, he hoped he now found rest on the Pride’s Banks. No doubt they would have some other way to recall the elevator, but it might slow anyone else coming down to them somewhat.
As the elevator came to a stop, he turned, and he saw two dwarves in heavy armor waiting for him on the other side.
----------------------------------------
Never a fair fight. Always two against one. That showed him for trying to take on the most guarded fortress in the world. Except both of the dwarves were watching the other direction—when they looked at the arrived elevator and saw Rook there, they startled, and that was his one chance. He jumped on one of them and knocked its partisan spear from its grip, then drove his sword straight through the gap in its visor.
The other recoiled. It fled some distance back, its morale shattered, clearly not expecting a fight, where it lowered its spear in his direction. It said something in Dwarfish, then charged his way, trying to skewer him on the bladed tip.
Rook ducked backward into the elevator—where he knew his jade ward would work. He let the dwarf land its strike, and sure enough its blade was deflected, and it ran unsuspecting into the far wall.
He wrapped his arms around its neck and choked it. This was a creature with more fight in it, kicking against him all the while, but Rook was big and very strong and even a hard thing like a dwarf didn’t have the muscle to resist him. He let his sword fall from his grip, and when the dwarf was well-restrained he pulled out his dagger and, like before, slid it through the open slit of a visor in the Custodian helmet.
The second dwarf went limp. Rook pulled out his dagger and rushed into the corridor. The moment he did, the vault door, behind which the dwarves were both waiting, which barred entrance back into the elevator shaft, closed behind him. One of the bodies was caught in its way and crushed as it shut.
That was a problem for the future.
Low security sounded like a menagerie in a hurricane. There were cells filled with demihumans and chimeras from across the continent and more magicians than Rook had seen in his entire life, all waiting, locked in prison, and they howled to see a fight breaking out beyond the confines of their cells. But Rook paid them no attention, not yet, for it was clear that a battle had taken place in these halls. Two dwarves were dead on the ground, and then a third; one had been beaten to death with its own helmet; one had had a sword driven through its mail; and the last bled torrents from its visor.
Rook continued on. He followed a trail of blood. There was so much noise that he didn’t know which path to take when he reached a fork, but then he saw, at the end of a hallway, the black-blue shape of Pyraz with a spear in his hands. He fended off five dwarves who had him cornered—they were in a stand-off—but behind him Aletheia had her bow, and she pulled back arrows at close range.
One shot tore a hole clean through a dwarf’s hauberk of mail. That caused another two to advance on Pyraz, but a heavy, downward thrust on the second’s mail tore clean through it and blood spurted from the wound. While he was distracted the first dwarf landed hits up Pyraz’s arms and along his sides, but the armor was too thick, and Pyraz stepped to the side—
Another arrow, this through the dwarf’s neck. The Elven bow was extremely powerful.
The remaining dwarves turned and ran. They fled down the corridor—and bumped into Rook. He kicked one back and took his sword to the other, and with Aletheia’s help there were soon two more corpses on the field.
Aletheia rushed to Rook. “You’re okay!” she cried, grabbing him.
He embraced her, but looked straight to Pyraz. He did not seem okay. He moved very slowly. “Are you hurt?”
“My armor,” he said. “I have to move it on my own.”
Only then Rook noticed that all its blue lights had gone out. The spell suppressant field worked on that, too. “How many more of them were there?”
“Just two that ran for reinforcements,” Aletheia said, panting.
“I stopped them,” Rook said.
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“We need to find Eris before we worry about that. I know she’s here.”
Pyraz nodded. He walked slowly to the fork, where he picked up a new spear from a fallen Custodian. “They buy the dwarves for mercenaries,” he said. “Some traditions never change.”
“In case the true Custodians are loyal to a Magister who finds himself imprisoned,” Rook said. He looked over the field of battle. Ten dwarves, killed, all in armor. But they’d had the element of surprise with them. If more were to show up, the fights would be much tougher. “Who has the key?”
Pyraz shook his head and shrugged. “Look over the bodies,” he said. So they did, and presently they found a collection of keys, real keys, one on each dwarf, ten in total, each with different indentations—but no markings.
“They must be for different blocks,” Rook said. “Let’s hope we’ve found all of them.” He began checking cells down the line. The prisoners within called out, begging for rescue, demanding to be released, pledging their support to whatever cause it was Rook fought for. He continued, “What happened with you?”
“Miscast,” Pyraz said. He walked backward. “You stepped outside the circle. I almost lost track of you in transit. You’re lucky you didn’t end up inside a stone.”
“We thought you did,” Aletheia said.
“I made a friend in a high security ward.” Another fork. Cells up and down. “Eris!” he called out, but no response came. He was certain this was the place he saw in his compass. She had to be here, surely. If only…
They were reaching the end of this block. The hallway terminated. There was nowhere left to go. He called out for Eris’ name again, and expecting to see nothing when he received no response he almost turned around prematurely, but then—
Through the bars, he saw her. In a fetal position against a wall. Her hair messy and matted. Dirty and covered in dust. And still impossibly radiant. “Give me the keys!” he said to Aletheia, and at once they tried each, one at a time, on the cell’s lock. “Eris. Eris! Are you all right? What did they do to you?”
She was awake. Her eyes were open. They were still golden, even despite the field around them, and yet she glared at him. She said nothing.
At last he found the right key. He slipped it into the slot and turned it around and the door popped open with a creak.
“Come on!” he said. But she did not move. “What’s wrong?”
“Eris?” Aletheia said. She went pale. “We’re too late. They already—she’s already—”
Rook dropped the keys. He jumped inside the cell. Shaking his head. It couldn’t be that they were too late. That was impossible. They had come as quickly as they could, surely—
His hands brushed hers and she recoiled, pulling herself away, quite animated. “Do not touch me!” she snapped.
The relief was strong enough to make Rook throw up. He retreated from her. “Eris—”
“Yes,” she said, “you have demonstrated that you know my name already.”
They all stared at her in silence. “We don’t have time for this,” Pyraz said.
“We are in a prison. There is nothing but time.”
“We can fight later, Eris! Please—” Rook started.
“You have tried enough tricks already! I will not fall for them!” Eris said. “You had better kill me now than—tempt me with fantasies of rescue!”
“Eris—it’s really us,” Rook said.
“I do not know you, blond ape, and you will not seduce me in this manner.”
Aletheia grabbed Rook’s wrist. “They took her memory,” she whispered.
“My memory has never been more intact!”
Rook backed off from the cell. Even disheveled and without her magic Eris had a gravitas to rival a storm giant. He needed to be diplomatic. “We came to get you from Chionos, Eris. We’re your friends. We’ve killed the guards.”
He gestured down the hall, where one body was visible.
Eris peeked around the corner. Sure enough she saw the blood. That gave her some pause.
“Friends?” she said cautiously.
“How do you think you came to be here?” Rook said.
“…I do not remember,” she admitted.
“We do. You were with us, in Rytus, when the Seekers came for you. You were taken through a portal but the rest of us got away.”
“I have never been to Rytus.”
“Stubborn fool,” Pyraz said. He lumbered back down the hall. “What manner of person acts like this in a time of crisis?”
Eris seemed hurt by those words, for just a brief second—she cringed in fear and confusion. But her pride came quickly back to the surface. “What manner of man wears a suit of powered armor where there is no magic?”
“One desperately seeking after an idiot child,” he glanced over his shoulder. “With no time to change.”
“Here,” Rook said. “I can prove it to you. I have a compass enchanted to find you. You…you gave it to me, in case anything like this ever happened.” Easier than the truth, for now. “I can show it to you, the moment we find someplace where this damn field no longer holds.”
She looked him over closely. “I gave this to you? You say we are friends?”
“And lovers.”
She frowned. “I cannot see that.”
“Flirt later, please!” Aletheia said. She tugged Rook’s arm. “Please!”
“There is a room nearby,” Eris said, “which…they took me to, once, earlier today. A place for operations.” She pulled her hair down around her ear. “Magic flows there.”
“Could you teleport us out?” Aletheia said.
“Not before we restore her memory,” Rook said.
“You seem convinced I am coming with you,” Eris said.
“Are you staying here?” Pyraz said.
She started to reply, but fell silent with a frown. “I would appreciate my memories returned,” she said, “if you speak the truth.”
“Take us to this operating room,” Pyraz said. So Eris led them down through the corridors, down one without any cells, until soon they came to a room with another blue crystal outside the door.
The door, which was locked shut by a mechanical device. It was solid metal and heavy. Pyraz used his spear and battered off the lock on the outside, slicing it away bit-by-bit, and when the spear’s head broke Rook used his sword. He managed to pry the lock off with the forte of his blade. Then they used the spear’s haft, and they pried the door up and open.
They stepped inside. Aletheia kept watch, eyes on the elevator. Eris hesitated when she saw the operating table. Rook handed her his compass.
“There. Is that proof enough?” He looked to Pyraz, then around the room. There was a vault on the floor, a collection of manaserum on a counter, and beside it a set of auritium shackles with a single key—left over from some operation. “Can you teleport us from here?”
“There isn’t enough mana,” Pyraz said.
“What about the stone from Antigone’s tower?”
“Still not enough.”
“This compass,” Eris said, “does not point to me.”
Rook grabbed it from her. “What are you talking about?” he said. He let the circle adjust as the sphere moved in his grip, and it quickly came to a stop—pointing at a nearby safe.
He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that his luck was so good; for if it were any worse, he would be dead. So long as he was alive, it would continue to be good, and when the good luck stopped, he wouldn’t much notice it anymore.
Pyraz noticed this and went to open the vault. It was sealed with a spell, but he pulled out a small piece of Manastone and used its power through Antigone's staff to crack the door open with Arcane Abrogation. The crystal turned to ash in his hands. He pulled the door open.
A row of small vials were arrayed inside. He withdrew them into the open. They were unmarked, uncolored, and each glistened in the dim manalight. Their contents weren’t liquid, but dust which seemed to billow in a whirlwind—pink and green and teal and yellow, all…
Blowing, within their vials, toward Eris.
She came closer.
“Distilled memories,” Pyraz said.
“Distilled memories,” she repeated. She glanced between Rook and Pyraz. “How…”
“How do we return them?” Rook said.
“They seem inclined to return on their own,” Pyraz said, watching the dust follow Eris like she was a magnet and they were ferrous scrapings drawn ever toward her.
“When I awoke…uncertain of where I was,” she said, “I was unharmed. I do not expect that I allowed them to perform the extraction willingly; thus it must not be a violent procedure.”
Rook gave this a moment’s thought. “Yes,” he agreed. “But how…”
There were two more vials, one in red and another in dark emerald, which lied dormant. “And which ones,” Pyraz said. “Misusing any could lead to memory loss.”
They all nodded, still thinking. Eris opened her mouth, when—
“Rook!” Aletheia shouted down the hall. “Rook!” She appeared in the doorway. Panting. Terror in her eyes. “Lukon is here!”
----------------------------------------
He wore his suit of full plate. A new sword was in his hands. Rook saw the vault door close behind him as he stepped off the elevator, over the body of a dwarf.
He was alone. There were still the shouts and yells of the prisoners all throughout the dungeon, but here there were fewer of them, and Rook heard his voice clearly.
“When I heard a blond man, a little girl, and a powered fiend were spotted at the Cult of the Aether, it was little wonder who had come,” he said. “I never thought you would make it to this place. The guards along the way never saw you.”
“Pyraz is full of tricks,” Rook said.
“So it would seem.”
Pyraz stood in the operating room’s doorway. “I can’t fight,” he said. “Not out there, while my armor is silenced.”
He had been moving his entire suit manually for far too long. One battle had exhausted him. “Rest,” Rook said. “Focus on Eris.”
Aletheia drew her sword—Lukon’s old sword—and rushed to Rook’s side. Lukon smiled through the thin slit of his visor.
“So you found the girl already,” he said. “The rumors say Snaiga is buried under ten feet of snow, but one never knows for certain.”
Rook put his hand in front of her. She was a great markswoman, but not a good fencer—and her armor wasn’t heavy. “Let me,” he said.
“No! I’m fighting with you!”
“The corridor is too narrow. I can take him.”
“He beat you already!”
“No,” Rook looked back to Lukon. “This time he has no magic. I’ll win.”
“Brave words for a naked man.”
“It’s time for a fair fight,” Rook said. “I haven’t had a fair fight in ages. Something honorable. Go!” He pushed Aletheia into a side corridor.
And he stepped forward.
They assumed fencing positions.
“Brave of you to come alone,” Rook said.
“Your escapades have cost me my reputation,” Lukon said with a sneer. “I will earn it back.”
A man making rash decisions for his ego. That was always an advantage. Rook steadied his breathing and advanced closer. He looked for any gaps in Lukon’s armor. The armpits. The visor. The groin. Behind the knees. All still protected by mail, but there was nothing else to be done.
And this, after so long, was finally what he had trained for. A martial duel. A test of prowess. A fight he could win, even under-protected.
Lukon lashed out at him with a cut. Rook parried, getting a sense of the Seeker’s speed, and stepping backward down the corridor. A thrust to the gut, deflected; already he was getting frustrated. Lukon yelled and slashed at his neck, but he was slow and Rook ducked and thrusted upward into his armpit. The blade bit a few inches into the mail but did little else. Lukon hardly reacted except to kick Rook away.
He jumped back.
Lukon kept advancing. That was his advantage. Rook could have hit him in the arms, slicing his fingers, cutting his biceps, but there was no point in trying when plate was in the way. And soon his back would be against the wall, and he would be stuck with that sword one way or another. The two traded blows high and low, Rook always getting the better of the engagement, but it was for nothing when every slash was deflected by steel.
“There’s no point,” Lukon shouted. “The door is shut behind you. You will not escape this dungeon. Give up already!”
Rook caught a heavy cut against his quillons. He pushed Lukon back several feet; the Seeker yelled something else, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of frenzied gnolls snarling for blood. They reached through their cell door and grabbed his arm. With a slice from his sword they let him go, but it was just the moment Rook needed to charge forward.
That was what his mentors always said. Fighting in armor was wrestling. Don’t fight against the armor, fight around it. He collided with Lukon and they both tumbled to the ground—
But not before Lukon raised his sword. The blade caught against Rook’s torso, but as he fell he lowered it and found an unprotected slot around his legs, slicing open a thigh. Rook hissed in pain but ignored it even as blood poured down his pants. He pinned the Seeker—the third time, and now it would be the last. He used the pommel of his own sword, the crow’s head, to batter the underside of Lukon’s right-hand gauntlet again and again and again, breaking his hand and pushing his sword to the side.
That was when Aletheia rushed to join the battle. She darted from cover and ran to help pin the Seeker down. He had almost drawn a dagger from its sheath when she piled all her weight—not much, but enough—onto his arm to hold him still, and that was what Rook needed to unfasten his helmet.
Then Lukon’s face was revealed. Snarling, furious, swearing in the cacophony, and Rook could have killed him—but he had a better idea. He punched him, then hit him with his own helmet. Lukon’s eyes closed and his resistance dimmed.
“The shackles,” Rook said. “Grab the shackles from the operating room!”
Aletheia nodded and did as instructed, and soon she returned with the auritium handcuffs in tow. Rook hit Lukon in the head again, then turned him over, and he put the shackles on as tightly as he could. Next, with his dagger, he cut the Seeker’s plate off his body, peeling it away as best he could to reveal the mail hauberk underneath. That could stay on.
“Come on,” Rook said. He pulled the Seeker to his feet.
“You miserable bastard! Let me go!”
“I don’t think I will, but maybe we can make a deal.”
Lukon was brought to the operating chamber. There Eris sat in the chair, waiting expectantly, and Pyraz tapped mana from a stone. She rose when they entered.
“You must be proud,” Lukon said, “to have your whole family together already. Yet you shan’t escape this place. There is no way out without the passcode.” He began to cackle.
Rook put a dagger to Lukon’s neck. “You’ll let us out.”
“You’ve killed me already,” he was still laughing. “You killed me atop that Spire.”
“I never took you for a brave man, Lukon,” Rook said. “And I’m not a murderer. But we’ll deal with the door second. First: tell us how to give Eris back her memories.”
“No,” he said. He sounded like a drunk man. “Funny how easy those words are when a man has nothing to lose. ‘No.’ Now slit my throat.”
Rook pressed the dagger into his skin. Lukon’s laughing stopped. “Not as funny when the pain is real. Now tell us and you’ll live.”
Rook dragged the blade an inch. The swell of blood was torrential. Lukon screamed. At first he resisted, but then he said, “You tap them, damn you! Tap them like Manastone! It’s that simple! Any memory, any distillation! Now let me go!”
“I said we’ll let you live, not that we’ll let you go,” Rook said. He looked to Eris.
She turned toward the vials still on the counter. Six of them in total, yet only four which reacted to her. She traced each with her fingers. Examining the glass. Then, with a gesture of her hand like a rapid beckoning, she tapped them. One at a time.
The pink dust turned black and fell inert to the bottom of the vial. Then followed green, and yellow, and teal. Until…
She tilted her head downward. She closed her eyes. Then her fingers found the two other vials, dark emerald and red, and she tapped both of these, too.
She turned back to Lukon—and Rook saw Eris in her eyes.
“Place him in the chair,” she said. She reached for a metal rod at the side of the counter—a branding iron in the shape of a T. She ran her finger along it, then clenched a fist; the iron ignited with blue fire. “We will make him open the door for us one way or another.”