Rook felt the vial rumble in his pocket. At first he thought he was shivering—he had been—but soon he realized, and he withdrew it, and he stared at the glowing red liquid as it jumped between his fingers.

They were deep in the frosted-over woods. The manaserum took them off the road before long, and without knowing the land well they had no choice but to abandon that narrow strip clear of trees and delve into thickets, brushing past branches, buried by the white downpour from the canopy that shook loose as they walked by. They were miles from civilization now. Rook couldn’t escape feeling like he was more like a fifth wheel than ever. All he did was hold the vials. Astera did the real work.

But the manaserum shook.

Pyraz noticed first. His nose dropped to the snow and he darted across a bank, sniffing all the way. When he found what he was looking for he let out a shrill yap and looked Rook’s way. Astera sprinted over first. She knelt down by his side.

“Pawprints,” she whispered.

Rook was by far the slowest member of their team. His lungs burned from over-exertion by the time he made it to the deep bank atop which the dog and elf both seemed to levitate. There, sure enough, he saw pawprints.

“Wolves?” he said. His abilities as a hunter were less than impressive.

Pyraz whined, then growled, lowering himself. His tail stopped wagging.

“No,” Astera said. “This print has five toes, like a bear, not four, but it is much too long across to be either. See how the feet are spaced apart? This creature walks on two legs. Here, another set of tracks…let me see the vial.”

She took it from him. Pointed in the direction which the tracks led, the red liquid glowed brighter still.

“Bears that walk upright?” Rook said.

“I do not know what else.”

“You think they have our magician accomplice captured?”

“That would be reasonable to assume,” Astera said.

Pyraz barked. His tail wagged again. He did a small jump over himself in the snow—and sniffed along the tracks.

“He wants us to follow,” Rook said.

Astera nodded. “Be alert.”

Rook fastened the Seeker’s jade ward around his wrist. Astera drew the Seeker’s sword. Both had been recovered after the encounter the other night.

Pyraz led them through several groves, following the tracks even after they disappeared. Then, suddenly, he stopped. His tail fell to the ground, he crouched on his forelegs, and he stared into the shadowed forest ahead, past a huge, dead tree.

A dead tree. Rook gave it only a quick glance, but followed with another. Carved into the trunk was a totem. At its very top, the head of an owl gazed down at the forest floor. The tree’s branches all remained so that it looked like a creature sprouting countless mangled arms in every direction, but between everything the bark was still detailed, whittled away, depicting the stylized body of what could only be described as a bear.

Astera grabbed Rook by the shoulder and pulled him into cover. Snow crunched as he fell onto his side by another trunk, and the two, now joined by Pyraz, watched as a pair of creatures trudged distantly through the snow.

They were bears. Their coats were brown. They were slightly taller than man-sized, for they walked upright, and in each of their hands they carried primitive spears fashioned from sharpened wooden shafts.

Clothes fashioned from rabbit furs and deer skins clung across their bodies. They glanced in the party’s direction, then in another.

“Follow,” Astera said. With the alacrity of a puppy she leapt from their place in cover and rushed forward. Pyraz followed well before Rook did; his joints were frozen shut. By the time he made it to her he panted, swearing for all the snow shoveled into his boots, but she was already off again.

Under the elf’s guidance they evaded the first patrol, and Astera led them farther toward the source of the manaserum’s glow. And glow it did. Brighter every step. Another duo of bear-men nearly spotted them as they crossed an open clearing between two thickets, but Astera instructed Rook to hold still.

“We’ll be seen,” he whispered. He gazed down a row of trees—by all measures it was too late. They already had been seen.

“Do not move,” she said again. She made a brief gesture with her hands. Her eyes flashed blue, then looked at the ground.

The bear-men approached—

They whispered something, too far away to hear. Glanced around. Even from a distance Rook saw intelligence in their eyes. Then…they turned.

“Move,” Astera commanded.

Thus they continued. After fifteen more minutes of skirting sentries through tall leafless trees they found a wide gully, and at its egress up a snowbank stood palisades of trunks anchored into the ground.

Astera pointed the vial in that direction. In that direction its light was brightest.

Though there was no gate, the palisades broke to create an entrance into whatever compound was on the other side. Rook made note of the burns on one side of the wall, and of one ancient tree that seemed incinerated, only a charred trunk still standing—yet no others were damaged nearby.

More sentries patrolled this area. Some carried bows. The front entrance was tightly guarded. The perimeter of the walls couldn’t be seen from the vantage point they currently possessed; the forest grew thick, almost to impenetrability, around the palisades. The canopy from their branches extended over much of whatever rested beyond the walls.

Astera had an idea. “Can you climb?” she said.

Rook’s attention lingered on the sentries. Demihumans roamed Esenia, of course, and a bear with the intellect of a man—or at least the capacity to use tools—was not so different from a goblin or bugbear. Yet all the same, some sights were hard to grow accustomed to. He didn’t look forward to tumbling through snow in melee against creatures of that size, with jaws and claws like those.

Her voice called his attention. “Climb what? Bridges?”

“Trees.” She gestured at the woods surrounding the palisades.

The woods surrounding the palisades. He saw now that it would be possible to scale one of the trees, clamber out on a branch, and drop down over the walls. They were no more than twelve feet tall.

“Only if we find no other way,” he said.

“There is a clear other way,” she said, “but you still may find climbing easier.”

They approached the palisades, taking cover in their shade. The trunks that formed each link in the wall were uneven, ancient, and not well protected from the overgrowth of nature. Rook and Astera skirted along the edge. It enclosed a large area which ran to a cliff cloaked in barren branches. No other way in.

So they climbed. Pyraz waited for them at the base of the trunk.

Astera chose the tree and led the way. Rook had climbed a wall or two in his time, but as he scaled the branches he realized that he never once in his life had made it more than four or five feet up the side of a tree before feeling content to return down.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, if not for the snow. Even with each layer of white cleared away his hands froze and his own breath clouded his eyes.

Hardly a quarter of the way up the tree was enough to surmount the wall, and the two looked out at the settlement on the other side.

A settlement, and a ruin. A few huts of thatch and wood surrounded an area cleared of snow around a firepit. Skins dried on racks and meat sat out in preparation to be cooked. A half-dozen more bear-men, and perhaps bear-women too (Rook couldn’t tell the difference), went about their business in the cold.

And littered everywhere, between everything, were tumbled columns; and nestled against the cliff behind the settlement was a stone dome buried within the earth. It reminded Rook of the shell off a petrified turtle, scaled up ten thousand times. Where its neck might have been was a recessed entrance into some underground complex.

Astera balanced herself on the outstretched branch. Without any hesitation she jumped, waiting for the way to be clear, and landed on the roof of one of the wooden structures. It gave slightly under her weight, but she rolled off it quickly and found her footing on the ground.

Rook swore. “Astera! How do you intend to get out—”

A sound like a bear’s roar off toward the direction from which they came. Rook looked over his shoulder. He saw one of the sentries they had passed—or a similar one—come rushing toward the palisades. He snarled in some language that had no vowels and pointed off at the snow, then toward the woods, and toward the walls of the village—

Their footprints. They had left footprints in the snow, doomed to be found eventually. He swore again. Seeing no choice now, he jumped after Astera.

His landing was not so graceful. A support beam on the building’s roof splintered and the covering fell, but if anyone was inside no noise was made. Rook was winded as he slid down to the ground, his back aching, but he landed on solid ground and made his way to Astera.

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She hid by a fallen column. In her arm outstretched, the vial, pointed toward the entrance to the ruin complex, glowing so brightly blue it looked ablaze.

Her hand raised into the air. Holding. Then, she gestured forward. Together they darted behind the buildings, staying near the walls, following the circular pattern of the palisades until reaching the cliff, then the staircase leading into the sunken turtle’s shell.

Fire within, the light off sconces. Rook wondered why they couldn’t have waited until night. As they waited by the steps, peering inside the complex, Rook grabbed Astera’s shoulder.

“They’ve seen our tracks. If they trace us to the tree—”

Shouting from behind. Rook watched as a sentry with a spear charged through the entry in the palisades, shouting, clearly raising an alarm. As the villagers outside came to alert and those inside their huts scuttled, perhaps a dozen more, Astera seized the initiative once more and led them inside the turtle’s neck.

----------------------------------------

The ‘shell’ was a dome striated in intricate decorative patterns. No doubt once above ground, time had seen it sink into the earth. Hallways branched off in three directions, each uneven and twisted but lit with torches on the walls.

At the dome’s center stood a pedestal with nothing on it.

The vial led them down the leftmost hall.

Past roots burst through stone ceiling.

Left again at a fork, where to the right they heard more ursine voices echoing in the distance.

Right again—

At the hallway’s end they reached a room that swelled out into a dungeon. A single torch burned on the wall, and within stood a bear-man with a cut of meat in its paws. A knife—human—was sheathed on a rope belt.

Cells here lined each wall. Four to either side. They were empty: most damaged beyond use, one buried beneath the rubble from a collapsed ceiling. Grated shadows slid across the walls as Astera moved the vial, drawing her sword.

At the room’s back, one cell was not empty. A small, skinny, messy-haired boy sat with his hands bound behind his back and his legs fastened together with rusted chains.

“Stand down!” Astera said.

The bear dropped the meat and drew its dagger. It took a step back against the wall and roared. She jumped forward—

“Wait!” Rook said.

But he was too slow. Astera lunged for the creature. It tried to defend itself, but it was much too slow against an elf, and for its trouble received the point of the Seeker’s blade through its gut. It swatted at her with a claw, groaning as it died, and she pushed it away, slashing it again on its way down.

Rook fumed. All his pent-up anger at Astera since the release of Lord Arqa flooded back into him. They didn’t know who this was in the cell, nor why he was here, and yet as always her first instinct was to resort to murder. He stared at her as she pulled away from the bloody scene. He wanted nothing more than to lash out.

But he needed her. He knew he needed her. He had to control himself. So he turned instead to the cell.

The boy inside looked no older than sixteen. He wore rags and, despite the bitter cold of the complex—which wasn’t so cold as outside, at least—had no blankets. The smell was awful, and all his skin was covered with bruises and cuts. His clothes looked sticky with blood.

His eyes opened. They looked up at Rook. They were an intense emerald green. They showed pain.

“Who are you?” Rook said. He kept his voice soft.

The boy shook his head. He grimaced, clenching his eyes and jaw and looking away.

“Move,” Astera said. She pushed Rook to the side and placed her hands against the rusted lock of the cell door.

Her fingers went white. The air grew colder. Frost flaked onto the ground. Then, with a focused gust of wind, she blasted it open, and pulled the door ajar.

“What’s your name?” she commanded. She had her sword pointed at him now, and the manaserum vial soon followed. It shook so strongly that even in a closed fist her arm seemed to vibrate—

Blue hives appeared on the boy’s arm. He let out a yelp of pain, then a groan. Rook had seen this before. He grabbed the vial from Astera, and without any thought he threw it against the opposite cell’s wall.

It shattered. There was a flash of light—

The boy gasped. Screaming stopped. Rook grabbed Astera with force.

“Watch the corridor,” he said.

Their eyes met. He watched her tongue roll across her mouth. “Very well,” she spat at him.

She left them.

Rook dropped at once to his level. “Are you all right?”

The boy was clearly not all right, but he responded with a simple, “Yes.”

“Stay still. I’ll set you loose.” The bindings for his arms were a thick, waxed rope, which Rook managed to cut given time. The chains around his feet had been fastened to the door, so that when it was opened most of his mobility was restored and they merely needed to be pulled away. “Tell me your name, friend.” Rook helped him to his feet.

“If you have my phylactery,” he said slowly, “perhaps you know me already.”

“We inherited that vial from a mutual friend. He happened to misplace it in his saddlebags. Can you walk? Now, let me know what to call you. My name is Rook. That’s Astera.”

“Water,” the boy said. Rook handed him his waterskin and he drank deeply, and only once done did he reply, “Robur.”

“You’re a magician.”

He nodded. “The Arktids have kept me imprisoned here. They needed me to translate for my partner, but I fear—”

“Your partner!” Rook interrupted. “Is she here?”

“You know Eris?”

They were nearing the hallway now. Astera stood not far off.

“To speak honestly,” Rook continued, “we came here after her, not you, but her vial was dark. Where is she?”

“One of the ruin’s vaults. They have taken me there to see her.”

“She’s alive?”

Robur nodded cautiously. “I can’t say, but I believe so,” he managed.

Rook let out a gasp, like his lungs were emptied for the first time all week. Terrible as this news was it still managed to be so much better than what he anticipated. Eris was alive. There was some hope.

“Lead us,” Rook said.

“The door—it will be challenging to open—”

“We will manage the door,” Astera interrupted. “Lead us.”

The boy paused for a moment, but with a shoulderless shrug he pointed out the direction. They proceeded down the corridors. Astera scouted each way before motioning them forward.

“Why were you kept in this dungeon while she’s in a vault?” Rook said.

“I am not certain,” Robur said. “It has been—it seems some time since we last saw each other.”

“You speak their language,” Astera observed.

“No—I used a spell.”

“The Wisdom of the Sages,” Rook said. “Eris knows it. Why does she need you to cast it for her?”

Robur didn’t respond for a time. “Perhaps…she should explain it herself.”

“You might at least tell us why they’re keeping her in a vault.”

“My impression was that they needed her to find something,” Robur said. He flinched in pain, grasping his side. “A book. They were very angry over its loss. They were willing to do anything to find it. When last I saw her she was terribly beaten. They hadn’t fed her in several days. I did what I could, but…”

Rook looked the boy over. He had a stoic mannerism to his speech, but he was clearly in distress.

“They’re torturing her,” Astera said. “I shudder to think what these vile creatures are doing to her now.”

Though Rook wanted to avoid bloodshed, he felt his conviction waning. “They’re killing her,” he said softly. “Move quickly!”

At Robur’s direction they snaked again through the complex’s narrow tunnels. Soon they arrived back in the atrium with the pedestal, where Rook glanced up through the entrance toward the village outside. There he saw a large creature—an Arktid, Robur called it—giving instruction to half a dozen others. It was gray, with white peppered down its snout. Its nose tilted in the air and turned toward the ruins, toward Rook, but he ducked downward into cover, and under Robur’s instruction crawled down the central hallway out of that room.

“They know we’re here,” Rook whispered as they rose back to their feet, “they spotted our tracks. It’s a miracle we haven’t been caught yet.”

“It is not far ahead,” Robur said. “There may be—"

They rounded another corner then and emerged into a larger room. Two bright sconces were lit on the other side, and standing beside either were more Arktid guards. Behind them, a large door. These guards dressed in better attire: leathers draped across their torsos, with spears tipped with sharpened flint. On their heads were dresses made of bright feathers.

Both startled to see the human intruders, but in seeing Robur they knew at once what was happening. One barked orders in his snarling language.

“Tell them to stand down!” Rook said.

Robur attempted to do something with a spell, closing his eyes and focusing, but it was much too slow. One each came for Rook and Astera. In these narrow confines the spear had an advantage, and both swordbearers were forced to step away, dodging strikes. Rook landed a slash against his opponent’s torso but the hide around his chest deflected the blade’s edge; he was nearly skewered in the moment after, but he thought fast and grabbed hold of the spear’s haft. The Arktid pulled him into close range. The spear’s tip was now past Rook’s torso, the weapon too long to strike, but the Arktid’s other hand was free—it brought it to bear, showing razor-sharp claws, and swiped down to maul him. Rook didn’t flinch. His jade ward would keep him protected, he felt certain, so instead he focused on aligning his blade—

His jacket was pulled apart in the middle, the chain avoided, and his shirt was torn in four from his sternum to his stomach. He immediately felt blood, before any pain, trickling down his chest. The jade ward did nothing to stop claws. But by now he was right up against the Arktid, and the swipe had given him enough time to prepare the edge of his blade against the creature’s own stomach. He gave a long upward cut, and from this close, with the strength of this angle, his edge wasn’t deterred.

The bear’s intestines spilled onto the ground. Its arms flew into the air in rage, swiping furiously, but Rook ducked backward, rolling into Robur. Robur pulled him to the side: his hands extended toward the ground where the enraged, mortally wounded Arktid approached, stumbling in their direction, and frost shot from his fingertips, forming on the ground. The Arktid slipped, tumbling downward—and it wasn’t going to get up.

Meanwhile Astera dispatched her foe more elegantly. The Seeker’s blade split the thin encroaching spear in two; a touch of fire lowered the Arktid’s attempt to guard with its claws, and a sword’s point silenced it.

Rook gasped in pain. A moment to reconvene his senses. This time his mind wasn’t on their victims. He put his sword away and stumbled to the door behind—a vault. Large. Made of black steel, just like the entrance to Dakru Spire so many months ago. There was a handle, but when he tugged at it, nothing moved an inch.

He thought back to the Spire. A keystone. That was what they had needed to open the doors. Special stones attuned to runes keeping the doors locked. He swore and stepped backward.

“It won’t open,” he said.

“As I was saying—” Robur started.

“Why not?” Astera said. “I can disable the lock.”

“There is no lock,” Rook said. “An enchantment holds it shut.”

“The Chieftain has the key,” Robur said.

“Is there no other way through?” Rook said.

“I may be able to open it using Arcane Abrogation—”

“Do it!” Rook said. “And quickly, before we have to fend off an entire army in these halls.”

“At least with Eris we may have better odds,” Astera said.

“She may not be so helpful—” Robur attempted.

“Cast your spell!” Astera said, “we will keep you secure!”

They did as they promised, turning away and watching the corridor, the one point of entrance into this place. Distant growlings echoed, though if they came from within the complex or the village itself Rook didn’t know.

The hot blood on his now-partially bare torso turned very cold. He gritted his teeth. Glancing, tense. Each second felt an hour. Until…

Robur gasped. Rook turned and saw him shake his head. He grabbed him by the shoulder to keep him upright.

“Try,” Robur said.

Astera grabbed the door’s handle. She tugged it—

It didn’t move easily. Before, in the Spire, Rook remembered a gliding motion, as if the door itself levitated off its hinges. Here it screeched. But it did move. He stepped up to her and helped her tug it open, and they did tug, and inch by inch it the vault’s door was pulled ajar, until soon Robur helped too, and they managed to tear it aside.

On the other side was a luxuriously accoutered room, at least for a dungeon. Silks and blankets. A large basin for washing. A bed made with pillows. A blue light that seemed to burn nothing for fuel. Everywhere, strewn about the floor, were writing implements—human implements, no doubt raided from caravans, bottles of ink and quills. Papers, too, and books of all various manners, as well as a plate with a cooked cut of meat.

And standing stunned there was a woman.

It had been so long that Rook saw her as if for the first time. She was young, but not a girl—as old as eighteen. She had long brown hair and pale white skin. Her eyes were tilted, like a glaring cat, on either side of nose that rested at a perfect right angle. Her cheekbones were high and her jawline was very strong. She stood at least 5’10” tall, yet despite her height she was slender, narrow-waisted, full-chested and wide-hipped.

She was unbelievably beautiful—and Rook noticed.

And she wasn’t beaten, nor starved. She wore furs and a cloak around her shoulder. Rings clung to her fingers. She didn’t looked half so abused as her companion.

“Eris,” he said softly.

But still her mouth hung open.