> If we are to speak of influential figures, of a golden era, who are somehow lauded, yet within their existence, is a haunting, nay, taunting, suggestion of what could have been, it is impossible not to present the name of Sarah Helena Valta of Jeris very close to the top.

>

> Orphaned at birth, her early life is replete with fantastical rumour and self-aggrandizing myth, of which I will not bother to repeat any here. The first verifiable facts of her life, frustratingly come from the account presented in ‘Lux Nova — Ortum Viri Fortis’ by Karl, Third Duke of Jeris, who in a rare moment of scholastic integrity, actually quotes a source when he discusses her induction into the Schola Magika Urbe of Jeris, as that institute was still known then. He writes that she received a written commendation from her adopted father, Sir Quintus Valta, of the eminent ‘Valta’ family [Appendix 2] who settled in Jeris in the years after the collapse of the Eastern Provinces, in the 3860’s [Anno Imperis]. She was tested for magical potential and in a highly unusual step was accepted directly as a student of Master Aristophus. Of interest here is that she is addressed as Sarah Helena Valta, so we can presume that she was formally adopted into that family, and thus had significant social status within Jeris, contrary to many stories giving her poor or uplifted origins.

>

> I will not bore you with the various tales of her early life. Few are verifiable, and the records of the Schola Magika were largely lost in sack of the city, by Isla Kerrig, that led to the end of the line of Raymond, and the ascension of the dukes of Karl. What can be said, however, because we have Aristophus’s own words on the matter is that ‘Mine disyple beeth the great[est] of students of magik’s I’een known. Nary mean wych toth her do I, but thath sheen master as if borne to it like a bird toth wing.’—namely that she was so talented at magic, as to have taken to it, like a bird to the wing. Given this praise is from his private correspondences to Master Euryphaneus of the Academia at Menacarnus, we can be fairly confident he is not exaggerating overmuch. Of further interest, given the date of this correspondence, is that Sara Helena Valta should have been no older than fifteen, at this point. For her talents in Magika to already be so praised by two eighth circle masters of the esoteric arts could be viewed as an early sign of what was to come, and that it did not arrive quite as unexpectedly as the hagiographers would have us believe.

>

> Indeed we have further record to support this, relating to a contest of theory and methods between the various schools and academia of the Menacarnian Plain a year after this correspondence, at which the Schola at Jeris was a shutout winner. Several accounts we can now say related to this meeting [Appendix 3] also have Prince Edmund Abernathy in attendance, as onlooker, competitor, and even judge, though the latter is highly unlikely as he, himself was only seventeen at the time—This author believes it most probable the Prince was a personal guest of Master Euryphaneus, who clearly harboured ambitions he hoped the prince and those behind him would support. If this was the first time Sarah Helena met with the man who would, it seems, ruin her life, then it might explain a lot, with hindsight. It is around this time that the first mention of ‘Daughter of Mana’ and several similar accolades start to be attributed to her.

~ Excerpt from De Speculum ‘The Mirror’, Chapter 2, by Pseudo Marius (of Jeris)

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~ CORNELIA — SOLANEUM’S DAWN ~

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Passing through the doorway Ianthe had indicated, Cornelia found herself in the side gallery of the temple, where various altars and shrines to minor aspects of Apollo Invictus, and then later influential figures of the new church had resided. Then, it would have been a grand, imposing display of wealth and prestige. Now, however, most of those statues were long looted, and what remained was mostly broken, even the mosaics that had replaced the wall paintings in later years had been ripped out.

“It seems they tried to fortify themselves in here,” Alira mused, as they stepped around one of the fallen statues, behind which several other blocks had been hurriedly tossed in what had to be an impromptu attempt at a barrier.

Everywhere, there were traces of fighting as well. Two of the knights from the atrium lay entombed in malformed coffins of melted duramar, no doubt the work of the magus revenant. Others remained only as haunting shadows on the charred walls.

“Here,” Ianthe waved for her to follow, heading up the gallery before stopping beside a slumped, bearded figure, wearing armour that while badly charred was notably less melted than most of the others.

The wound that had killed them was undoubtedly caused by the snapped Illdrium blade jammed deep into the mail around their neck. The rest of that sword lay in the shallow water beside the Dvari, between it and the dismembered remains of two revenant knights. A third knight was impaled into the far wall, held there by a two-handed axe-mattock-like weapon she recognised as being favoured by that reclusive people. A bit beyond this, the remnants of a second Dvari lay, clutching a half-burned book, their severed, helmeted head lying a few paces away in the shallow water.

Carefully, she picked her way over to the knight impaled in the wall and considered the axe that held it there.

It was a bit short for her to wield as a two-handed weapon, but what stood out was that it wasn’t metallic, but carved from a single piece of dull greyish-black stone.

“It should be Veil Stone, right?” she asked, admiring the weapon, which was objectively beautiful, in a profoundly deadly way.

Amidst the engraved flowing runic patterns that twisted around the handle and blade, and which brought out a faintly blue hue within the stone, she could see symbols relating to binding, time and force.

“Yes, carved by a Master Maker,” Alira affirmed, coming to stand beside her and sighing admiringly. “Weapons such as this are few and far between, even in the vaults of the Hulderkin or Dvarad. It is little wonder these revenants did not rise again.”

“Speaking of valuable,” Ianthe held up a four-foot-long sword that had lain unnoticed in the shallow water beside the decapitated dvari for them to see. In the light of their torches, the parts she had wiped the silt off, held a subtly iridescent hue.

“Is that Earth Silk?” she gasped, admiring the beautiful thing that was as rare as True Orichalcum, and possibly even more valuable in later years.

“It is,” Alira nodded. “So, I think these two definitely can do what you are thinking.”

“Well, whoever owned this blade was called Akrul Erallimul,” Ianthe mused, turning it over in her hands.

“This one should be called Udil,” Alira noted, nodding towards the fallen dvari. “Or at least that is what it says on the blade— ‘Vaultseal, Udil’… I guess the bit that says, ‘created me’ is in the knight,” Alira added.

“Well, it does no harm to check,” she chuckled, leaving the axe where it was and moving back over to the dvari.

Carefully, she removed the helmet, to reveal the face of the dvari beneath, his strong features sunken and wizened somewhat in death, though not truly desiccated. Instead, his flesh had turned to stone and was slowly flaking away.

“Kataskopia.” Placing her fingers to the long dead dvari’s temples, she whispered the word and focused her Intent on their name.

Various flickering images bled into her mind, as the shade of the dvari stirred, drawn back towards its mortal remains.

She saw a young figure arriving with others of their kind at a great fortress cut into a ravine, vast waterfalls thundering down around its hidden entrance. Witnessed, dreamlike, aspects of their life there, working at forges, carving living stone from the depths, saw them seized by a great inspiration, turning all their craft into the axe that was now embedded in the wall opposite, and present it to their king, who commanded them to wield it in their fortress’s name… Beheld their laughter and sadness, those they had loved and lost… saw them fight in the depths against shadowed horror and shrieking hordes of barely seen death… all of it finally coalescing around two whispered words: ‘Udil Ubbulurvad’.

“Yep, it’s his axe,” she confirmed, exhaling, because that had provided her quite a bit more than she expected.

Getting up, she moved over to the other dvari. Collecting their head she placed it on their body and repeated the divination. This time, however, all she got was the barest flicker of association. The dvari’s soul had been so damaged by its demise that the shade was barely coherent after all this time. Little more than a whispering bundle of dissociated scenes from the same fortress, and a profound anguish at the nature of their death, that only after several long seconds had passed, finally resolved to become ‘Akrul Erallimul’.

“Well, the sword belonged to them,” she remarked, getting back to her feet.

Returning to Udil, she spent a moment composing her thoughts and thinking about how she wanted to do this. She had originally not intended to perform a comprehensive ritual just to get some help smashing walls in efficiently, but having seen something of the dvari’s life, a part of her felt it would be a bit of a waste to leave someone like that down here, having suffered such a death.

“Problem?” Ianthe asked, after she had stared, silently at the dvari for some seconds.

“Just thinking things through,” she sighed, producing the jar of ambrosia from her own satchel and decanting a small amount into a drinking cup and then passing it to Alira to hold, along with a lotus fruit.

“I guess we are going to have to do this somewhat properly.”

“Because of course,” Alira chuckled, rolling her eyes.

“Can you get me three bits of column, and arrange them appropriately?” she asked Ianthe, as she carefully checked the point where the Illdrium blade was protruding out of the mail.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be snapped within the wound, so, carefully grasping the exposed end, she exerted some strength and slowly drew it out of the wound, taking care that it didn’t snap further.

By the time she had done that, Ianthe had claimed three bits of marble, arranged them, and was finishing up placing some embers and charcoal from her torch on each one.

“I guess I am by the head,” she decided after a moment’s further thought. After Phiale, she was best placed to be ‘cupbearer’.

“O Goddess,” she declared, once the other two had taken up their spots either side of the Dvari and she had passed her torch to Ianthe. “Golden Kyntheria, Illustrious, kindly Queen and Daughter of Heaven, who stirs up sweet passion for life in all things with thy gentle smile, we call upon thee—!”

The flames on the placed rocks and the torch Ianthe held shimmered.

“I offer thee, the heart of a fire…”

Just as before, Ianthe skilfully placed a handful of embers over the dvari’s heart.

“I offer thee, the water of a life.”

This time she didn’t provide blood, but taking the cup from Alira carefully wetted the lips of the dvari with the ambrosia.

“I offer thee, the food of a god…”

As with Fionnúir, she smoothly anointed the dvari’s brow with a few more drops.

“I offer thee, the promise of a future, never told.”

Accepting the lotus fruit, she smeared the pulpy flesh against the dvari’s lips, again making sure the juice wetted them.

“Accept my gift,” she whispered, carefully drawing the sovereign seal of Aphrodite on the dvari’s brow using the ambrosia.

“Ambologera—”

Focusing once again on those memories she had seen moments before, she spoke the dvari’s name.

“—Udil Ubbulurvad”

For a rather awkward moment, she found herself wondering if she had made some mistake, that somehow dvari could not actually be brought back in this way, because absolutely nothing happened—

“Uuuuuccaaaaat…” the dvari suddenly rasped, his eyes snapping open and his armour creaking as he tried to move his petrified body.

“How typical, that their first word would be beer,” Ianthe sighed, putting a hand to her face.

Slowly, Udil shifted his head to stare at Ianthe, then Alira and finally her.

“Give… me… or… death!” Udil rasped, haltingly.

“He wants more alcohol,” Ianthe supplied helpfully.

“I forgot, they basically live on the stuff,” Alira chuckled.

With a rueful sigh she put the cup of ambrosia to the dvari’s lips and helped him sip from it. After a few moments, the stony texture of his flesh started to fade, replaced by, if not ruddy colour, at least some hue that was more ‘living’.

“Tha… be not like… any alcohol I ever…” Udil rasped, licking his lips as she passed the cup back to Alira.

“I should think not,” Ianthe snorted. “Or do you regularly drink spirits good enough to rouse the dead?”

“I dunnae know,” the dvari grimaced, slowly raising a hand to where the sword had been lodged in his neck. “Am I be dead or living? What manner o’ Necromancer are thee?”

“The kind giving you a once in a lifetime opportunity,” she replied drily. “You understand me well enough, at least?”

“I speak the language of yon humans,” Udil replied in fairly serviceable High Hibric, before lapsing into vaguely passable Isla. “Even them knife-eared savages, if only to spit on the wooden trinkets they peddle. So, what opportunity do you have to tempt me? It better be more o’ that,” he jerked his head slightly at the cup in Alira’s hands.

“If you help us,” Alira chuckled.

“What is it you want,” the dvari growled, his gaze flitting between them before returning to the cup in Alira’s hands “I ain’t livin’ as no thrall!”

“Why did you come here?” she asked, changing tack a little, and slightly focusing on the idea of ‘Peitho’ without actually invoking it openly.

“Tae seek the lost star O’Findabair, what the knife-ear rat bastards stole from us and never paid their dues for,” Udil grunted. “Tae try and use aet fer resisting the Yellow Lord.”

“Wait… the Star Crown is also tied up with this?” Ianthe groaned.

“Kind of…” she sighed, actually knowing something about this, albeit through entirely serendipitous means.

“Are you talking about the inheritance of Findabair mac Mata, or the crown jewels of Evergrove?” she asked Udil, because the way he was referring to it seemed to mix two quite distinct matters, as far as she knew.

The ‘Seven Stars of Findabair’ had been sought by the Church, for Laurentius, until they realised they were not physical treasures, in any real sense, but rather the name given to the chosen of the seven great clans of the Hibric plains who rallied with Findabair to repel the first wave of settlers from the Old Kingdoms, even before the Eternal City set their sights on those lands.

The ‘Star Crown of Findabair’, meanwhile, was a much later thing. First emerging by rumour, likely based on fragmentary records of the aforementioned ‘Seven Stars’, and a growing desire to re-contextualize for nationalistic myth building the events of that earlier time during the first succession crisis, almost a thousand years after Fionnúir had ‘sacrificed herself’ for Edmund Abernathy’s ambitions. Even then, there had been no physical object of that name until the Kingdom of Evergrove presented it as part of their panoply of ruling regalia.

“Uh…” Udil stared at her in a way that made her suddenly wonder if he did actually mean both, and the dvari had come here during the succession crisis.

The thing that was still throwing her off however, was the elvish bit.

“I hate to be that person, but the seven stars and the star crown are related,” Ianthe muttered, not quite meeting her eyes. “Anyway, Master Udil, time has… um… moved on a bit since then. As to the ‘lost star’… our proposal will aid her.”

-Eh? she turned to Ianthe, slightly confused herself now.

“Aid… her?” Udil stared at Ianthe in confusion as well. “You sayin the ‘lost star’ ain’t an artefact bae a person?”

“The Star of Rhuith, right?” Ianthe asked.

“Oh…” She had to fight hard to not face palm as a few things suddenly clicked in her mind, leading her to wonder how she had not previously connected Fionnúir’s talents to the ‘Star of Rhuith’.

-I guess that’s the curse of being stuck here, viewing the changing times through an unchanging window, she reflected wryly. Or is it related to the wish and the influence of the Book of Changes? The more she thought on it, the more likely that seemed, frankly.

“—Aye…” Udil nodded slowly. “The elves sealed…”

“—Oh come on…” she groaned, unable to resist looking heavenward, even as Alira and Ianthe both suddenly fought back snorts of amusement. Is he referring to my sealing? I guess the early stories did feature Laurentius heavily. It makes sense that they would have worked in their historic antipathy to the Isla kingdoms.

“In that case, it’s your lucky day,” Alira informed the now slightly confused looking Udil, patting him on the arm.

“Ah, I guess I been down some time then,” Udil muttered, looking around…

“You… could say that,” Alira agreed, still grinning.

“What of me companions?” Udil asked, after a short pause.

Silently, she moved out of the way so he could see past her to the other dvari.

“Tcch, so Akrul died as well,” Udil muttered sadly. “At least we took some of ‘em fuckers with us, and looks like ae stayed dead. I don’t suppose ye…?”

“It is hard to say,” she replied sadly. “There is not much left. You endured, I think, because of the axe in the wall over there.”

“Ah,” Udil sighed. “She were a good lass, Akrul, bright and always good for a song. Could drink her weight too. Just earned her family name too, volunteered an all.”

“If I tried and failed, she would be little better than a zombie,” she added. “And I do not know what god or goddess you would commend her to.”

“The Mother of the Final Cavern,” Udil sighed, sitting up properly at last, then wincing a little and rotating his shoulder where he had been stabbed. “She were a priestess o’ ’er’s.”

Not being familiar with the Dvari pantheon, she could only look to the nymphs for clarification.

“The Eternal Mother, Mother of the Heavens, from which all things come,” Ianthe clarified, making her way over to Akrul Erallimul.

“Nyx, basically,” Alira added. “Few have temples to her, but the underfolk do, in her capacity as mother of the underworld.”

“I can say the rites, if you cannot,” Ianthe informed Udil, passing the sword to Alira.

“…”

“Aye… say ‘em,” Udil replied after a long pause.

They looked on in silence as Ianthe pulled her palla right up over her head, so even her face was all but obscured, then, standing by Akrul’s head, lifted up her torch in both hands, whispering something under her breath—

In one fluid motion, Ianthe plunged the torch into the water. In the enveloping moment of extinguished light, she almost fancied she heard the faint sound of wings, then her vision recovered. Outwardly, there was no change in the beheaded dvari’s appearance, but the lingering traces of Psychikon she had detected before were gone.

Silently Udil struggled to his knees and bowed deeply to the body, then to Ianthe.

“You have my gratitude,” Udil growled, slowly getting to his feet.

“So, you will help us?” Alira asked, as Ianthe went over to one of the flickering flames still burning on the three stone slabs and rekindled the torch.

“Aye, so long as you can give me some more O’ that rare stuff,” Udil nodded. “An you aren’t askin O’ me the impossible, or sommat.”

“It’s quite straightforward,” she replied. “We need to get back to the surface and do so… fairly quickly.”

“If I could’a done that, d’ye think I’d be dead here?” Udil remarked with a grunt. “Not ta mention this accursed dark water and ‘em feckin shades—as bad as yon Sar-Dread, and I’ll ‘ave ye ken I’ve actually killed ‘em.”

“Shades will ignore you,” she chuckled. “I also know the layout of this place much better than pretty much anyone, probably. We need to go up. There are maintenance galleries for the dome, and from there we can break through into the upper level and take basically any building back to the surface.”

“So, what d’you need me for?” Udil asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s hard to do a ritual and break holes in things,” she explained drily. “Also, the path needs to be ‘done’ before the ritual starts, probably.

“—I see you are about done here…” she turned to find Ianeira standing in the doorway. “Everything is prepared here,” the nymph informed them. “They know what to do, within the limits of what can be instructed.”

“Right, in that case,” she took her torch back from Ianthe and held it up to illuminate the gallery better. “This should take… well, we’ll be as quick as we can.”

Shaking his head, Udil slowly walked over to the knight and his axe and, with a grunt, wrenched the weapon back out of the wall, letting the knight’s corpse slump to the ground.

Without waiting on the others, she headed off deeper into the temple, along the gallery to the door that led to what had been the saint’s shrine and the priestly quarters. Fortunately, the roof here had not collapsed, like it had closer to the front, so there was no difficulty in crossing that hall to the one beyond, where a stone staircase ran up the near wall and into darkness.

“I am surprised yon staircase survived,” Udil remarked, catching up with the others as she spent a moment checking the room itself, which was full of shattered pottery and lined with scroll shelves full of scroll-cases so mouldering and decrepit that nobody had bothered to touch more than a few of them, it seemed.

“We got earthquakes and flooding here,” she shrugged, starting up the stairs. “It’s embarrassing to have temples fall down—bad omens and all that. Also, the foundations were warded, just in case some pagan horde descended and wanted to burn the place down… again.”

“Much good it did them,” Ianthe who had also caught them up, chuckled.

“I can’t argue with that,” she agreed, reaching the top and finding, to her relief, that the upper hall—a private chapel—was also largely intact, bar some collapse at the far end, seemingly caused by the Ill-advised removal of the two ornamental columns that would have flanked the shrine that once held the relics of Saint Maurice.

Turning, she headed straight across it, to a door that was halfway collapsed, and kicking that out of the way, found what she was after, the staircase that led to the maintenance gallery for the dome.

It was here at last that she encountered a real obstacle, in that the door at the top had been banded with duramar for some reason.

“My turn, I guess,” Udil chuckled moving past her.

“Be my guest,” she murmured, stepping back to give the dvari room to swing.

Udil checked his distance twice, before finally fixing his footing and then, with a deep breath, swung the axe at the centre of the door in an arc so fast even she struggled to follow it—

The petrified wood shattered and cracked, duramar reinforcement sundering beneath the blow for half a second, until the hinges gave out and the whole thing collapsed with a crash onto the floor beyond—

The bolt of lightning hit Udil in almost the same instant, skittering off his armour before he could use his axe to scatter the rest—

A golden blur of light roiled along the gallery ahead of them, shifting form as it did to become a ten-foot-tall golden figure with burning eyes—

“Peitho—” without even waiting to see what it intended, she touched her free hand to the broach and spoke directly to the Pneuma within the elemental being.

For the briefest moment she felt some resistance, then the light lost all sense of the imbued Psychikon within it and dissipated, leaving only the desiccated skeleton of a revenant in priestly robes—

A crossbow bolt hit Udil in the helmet and then bounced off the door frame, follow by another and another as two skeletal figures wearing tattered Calder tabards rapidly unloaded their weapons at them.

“Othil!” Udil spat, effortlessly parrying two further bolts with the flat of his axe, before just kicking a portion of the door down the hall—

Both skeletal figures ducked away with expected nimbleness, their fire unabated, but by that point, Udil, who seemed to be recovering some of his mobility, had already covered most of the distance to them, at which point their fate was… as expected.

“He sure can swing that thing,” Ianthe remarked as they watched the dvari smash the first skeleton archer into the wall, then bisect the second with ease before stomping on both their heads.

“Yeah… oh, that’s interesting…” Alira, who had also joined them at this point as they moved into the gallery, paused to look at the remains of the door.

Looking to see what Alira was referring to, she had to stop, because the entire wall around the door they had just entered was… covered in the remains of a ward, a nine-symbol sealing array painted in what looked like blood, focused on the doorway.

“Void stone weapons, ehh,” Ianthe chuckled, as she shook her head.

“Looks like it was done much later as well,” she mused, examining the various symbols and then the spell-annotations, which, tellingly, were in a style of Latin favoured at the heyday of the Imperial Commonwealth.

The magus who had put the array in place had certainly known what they were doing as well, because the style of array only required pneuma to initiate, the blood merely being the catalyst to set the thing down in the first place.

“Anti-divination symbols too,” Ianthe mused, pointing out a second array, subtly layered over the top of the primary one to exploit some of its nodes.

“Someone came later and sealed the place up?” Alira suggested. “The collapse in the chapel below looked much fresher… I guess someone did a smash and grab in the shrine of the Saint?”

“Probably,” she agreed, turning her attention back to the gallery, because Udil had just smashed a third skeletal revenant wearing faded Calder colours—this one carrying a mace— that had rushed out of the doorway at the far end of the gallery.

“Ya gunna admire the graffiti, or help!” the dvari called back to them.

“This might actually speed things up,” Alira chuckled. “If they’ve already dug in, then sealed this entrance…”

“You mean to say we won’t be mining out stone blocks with inadvisable haste?” Ianthe murmured, rolling her eyes as they started off down the gallery towards the waiting dvari.

“My disappointment is immeasurable,” she agreed, shaking her head wryly.

“There be more up ahead,” Udil informed them as they caught up to him. “Not rushing through though. Smart undead, like the ones what killed…” the dvari trailed off, tugging his lank beard grimly. “Got magic too.”

Glancing through the archway, she found the hallway beyond wreathed in an unnatural darkness, within which maybe a dozen armoured revenant soldiers, archers and two priests were silently waiting in an ambush formation at the point where the hall curved around the base of the dome. It wasn’t a significant hinderance to her vision, but something about it was preventing her from pushing her perception beyond what she could see.

“Well, that’s easy to deal with,” she reassured him.

“Oh?” the dvari stared at her.

Placing her right hand to the Harmony broach, she focused on both illuminating the area and providing them a path to quickly and expediently wrap up this fight, then whispered:

“Nikephorus…”

The darkness ahead of them rippled as the pneuma in the hall responded to her command. The wet floor shimmered, and all of the skeletons slowly started to radiate a pale, inner light, their outlines blurring like they were just leaping into motion—

A flickering ghost of a lightning bolt streaked out of the holy symbol the right-hand priest’s blurry outline had just raised up.

Without waiting for it, she ducked back into the shelter of their side of the archway, pulling Udil with her—

A heartbeat later the actual lightning bolt struck the doorway, making the hair on her arms stand up as it scattered harmlessly into the stonework.

“Tha… tha’ is a neat trick,” Udil remarked admiringly.

“Yep, we just go in and smack them,” Alira giggled, twirling the adamantine sword in her hand.

Before Udil could even reply, the nymph was already racing forward, effortlessly avoiding crossbow bolts as they struck the paving and walls moments after their ghostly counterparts. Reaching the front line, she sliced upwards with the sword, splitting a luckless revenant’s shield and decapitating the one next to them, then shoulder checked the third, sending them staggering back.

The dvari stared for a moment, then shook his head and sprinted after her, axe held low to the ground—

A swarm of ghostly firebolts from both priests streaked down the hall towards them. Passing her torch to Ianthe, she held out her free hand and again focused on ‘Peitho’. The pneuma massing around the holy symbols of the priests twisted then dispersed, cancelling their spells before they could cast them—

A blurry afterimage suddenly bounded out of the rear of the undead formation that was rapidly collapsing under Alira’s assault, launching itself directly for her—

Taking half a step forward, she reached out and, just as the leaping revenant flowed through the same motion, caught its sword arm and, stepping to the side, hurled it into the wall beside them. Ianthe stabbed the oleander torch into the lightly armoured figure’s chest, whereupon it burst into incandescent flame.

“AKIM AMUD!”

Udil’s roar rocked the whole gallery as he collided with the remains of the front rank of revenants, crushing first one to the ground, then shattering both weapon and shield of a second, before simply relying on his armour to shoulder past a third to reach the nearest priest. A silvery-golden shield bearing the holy sign of Armont flared around the revenant for a moment, before the rising arc of the dvari’s axe ripped the revenant in two.

After that, the fight lasted mere moments as Alira decapitated the second warrior priest and a second scout, like the one that had tried to target them, while Udil cut down the remaining archers like they were made of rotten wood, their weapons unable to do anything to his armour.

“When you see that, it makes you wonder how they died,” Ianthe sighed, shaking her head wryly.

“The revenants below were a serious step up from these,” she remarked, starting off down the gallery after the other two. “Not to—”

“GLORY TO CALDER!”

A furious bellow rang through the gallery as three more revenants stalked around the bend towards them. The leader wearing full armour much like the old knight had down below, pointed his two-handed sword at the dvari challengingly.

“I should have said nothing,” she sighed, watching as the two knights errant behind him moved to the sides of the corridor, their eyes gaze flitting from Alira and then the two of them.

“Calder, Eh?” Udil just spat on the ground. “How you say in—?”

Even before Udil had finished speaking, the knight’s sword moved in a blur as if trying to catch the ghostly blur that led his movements—

“FUCKING WEAK—!” Udil roared back, swatting the thrusting blade out of the way with the hilt of his axe and simply ramming the head of his weapon straight into the knight’s stomach.

In response, the knight adroitly spun to the side, following the diverted momentum of his blade, the trajectory of which shifted to a rising cut—

Udil swayed out of the path of the sweep and somehow turning in front of the knight, tripped him over his hip, before smashing the hilt of the axe into his gorget.

“Sorry,”—Alira appeared like a ghost beside the right-hand knight errant and cut him in two, his weapon and armour providing about as much protection as damp paper before the earth-silk sword—“we have a schedule!”

“Honestly, we could just leave this to the two of them,” Ianthe remarked drily, watching as Udil trod on the knight’s sword arm and then, with a vicious downward swing, decapitated the knight.

The other knight errant stared, frozen, at the fate of his compatriots for a moment, then looked at the two of them—

Even as the blurry outline of his future movement began to manifest as a lunging strike towards her, Udil shifted his posture and with a singular strike, buried his axe in the knight’s side, sending him crumpling broken to the floor.

“We could,” she conceded staring forward again. “But it’s better to be sure.”

“That’s true,” Ianthe mused with a sigh. “Another Orcus-sent magus like the one below would be… a problem.”

“It would,” she agreed, noting that the magical, perception-hindering darkness had not abated despite all the revenants being taken out. The sealing was still in effect as well, as she had just spotted three dour, glowering shades lurking in the shadows within the shallow water as they made their way forwards.

“I guess this is the backup for dealing with Fionnúir,” Alira commented while she finished stabbing the remaining revenants through their hearts with her sword.

“Do you have any impression of how close to the surface we are?” she asked Udil.

“Mmmm… the air tastes like mud and water, so this be clearly sedimentary,” the dvari declared drily, after taking a deep breath.

“Gee, I feel truly enlightened by that observation,” Alira snickered, scuffing the muddy water with her foot.

Shaking his head, Udil walked over to the wall and put his hand against it, taking a few more long breaths, then thumped the stonework with the flat of his palm.

“Lithified dirt behind here, pretty solid,” Udil muttered. “I guess this place sank some, in the years I were dead?”

“It did, yes,” she conceded.

“There are more coming,” Ianthe remarked, tilting her head slightly.

“Because of course there are,” she sighed, squinting down the gloomy, curving gallery. corridor. In the distance she could also now hear the splash of boots in water and the rustle of mail.

“Sucks to be them,” Alira chuckled, setting off at a brisk trot in that direction.

“That it do,” Udil agreed, jogging after her—

Abruptly, the darkness around them turned stifling, smothering both sound and movement. With it, came a discomforting feeling of tightness, as if her insides were trying to expand and her body contract at the same time. Udil swore and staggered, while Alira also nearly tripped at the sudden change.

Ianthe, beside her, put a hand to the wall to steady herself.

Grimacing, she focused on the idea of disrupting the pneuma within the spell.

“Peitho…” with a grimace she focused on disrupting the pneuma within the spell, only to find the word ringing oddly in her ears, without having any apparent outward effect.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

-Ahhh, of course, she sighed, shaking her head.

“Apotrophia,” This time, she spoke the word explicitly in her own mind, with the intention of expelling the influence of the spell upon her… and found it again did nothing.

“Powerful dark-aligned spell, feeding off chthonic energies,” Ianthe mouthed to her.

“So I see,” she replied silently, as seven more knights and a hooded, red-cloaked mage with the sigil of House Calder featuring prominently on it made their way around the curve of the gallery into her field of view.

Seeing them, the mage raised his hand and a ghostly haze of molten white snapped into focus, targeted at her—

-Oh! Come on! she complained, materializing the Sword of Harmony directly into her hand, shifting its form to a shield as she did so.

The beam of sickly white doomfyre struck the shield, scattering molten droplets everywhere for several seconds before fading—

Twenty-seven ghostly orbs spiralled out from the mage, nine each targeted on her, Ianthe and Alira—

Before any of them could respond, however, Udil hurled his axe at the magus. The lead knight half stepped to the side, swinging the two-handed hammer-axe he wielded to intercept it… yet somehow, the throw axe arrived just a fraction too early, making his strike miss it by a hair’s breadth. Two barriers flashed around the red-robed magus as the axe disrupted them then struck the revenant full in the chest, before he had managed to do more than start to turn his body.

They all stared as the mage staggered backwards, gasping, as the axe thudded to the ground without doing more than cut his outer robe, to expose a faintly iridescent underrobe woven of earth silk.

“Funny enough the first ng short-stacks!” the magus mouthed, putting a hand to his chest and glaring balefully at Udil.

Sighing, she focused on the Sword of Harmony, turning it into a curved throwing knife and slung it underarm at the mage.

The mage somehow managed to avoid the dagger, twisting out of the way with unnatural speed—

Focusing on it, she imagined holding it in her hand at a point when the blade would be facing back at the magus—

Her surroundings shifted and she appeared beside the magus holding it and willed the dagger to return into its original form—impaling him through the neck.

The darkness vanished, as did the block on her perception and the sense that her insides were trying to escape her body as the magus crumpled to the ground, all the pneuma in his body dispersing.

Released from the restraint, Alira darted, eviscerating the knight nearest to her. Udil, cursing in his own tongue, charged forward as well, ignoring the lead knight’s blade and simply tackling him to the ground.

“Die!” the two knights nearest her both turned on her, their hammer-axes already rising—

“Melainis…”

The shadowed shades of the legionnaires who had tormented her in the shrine clawed their way out of the gloom, their blades already stabbing furiously, their faces twisted in rictuses of rage and pain.

The two knights nearest her went down flailing at shadows, followed a moment later by the remaining three, even their cursed undeath no match for her wraiths. Udil had already incapacitated the one he tackled, almost twisting its head right off.

“Go, get rid of any others ahead of us,” she commanded them.

With silent snarls the legionnaires glared at her, but still formed up and headed further along gallery.

“You could have summoned those earlier,” Alira muttered, as Udil got to his feet.

“They make me remember things I don’t like,” she sighed, kneeling down by the magus and starting to pull off his red outer robe. “Even after all these years, some nightmares are just too vivid. Anyway, can you give me a hand with this?”

“We are looting bodies now?” Ianthe quipped, as she knelt down beside the corpse and started to help her.

“Fionnúir will find it useful,” she pointed out, even as the connection she held to the damned legionnaires told her that they had engaged more revenants. “And non-dvari earth-silk robes are treasures worth expending some effort for.”

“True,” Udil nodded, eyeing the garment appraisingly. “’Tis good workmanship as well, though not masterful. Tha given it’s Calder, I bet the goblin-fuckers stole it. About as trustworthy as elves, they are.”

Thankfully, it only took a few moments for the four of them to collaborate to strip the revenant of its outer garments and pull off the knee-length coppery-blue green tunic. In her hands it was so light as to almost feel like she was holding the finest gossamer silk, rather than a piece of armour.

“Apotrophia,” she whispered, focusing on expelling any remaining unwanted Intent or traces of its former owner’s psychikon from it.

The robe seemed to sigh slightly in her hands, and then the aura of the pneuma around it lightened subtly, confirming that it had indeed been bound in some way.

Bundling up the tunic, she passed it to Ianthe who shoved it into her satchel, then they set off again, along the gallery. As they went, they passed several more collapsed revenants, seemingly un-risen, their armour corroded, the desiccated flesh exposed beneath gnarled and petrified. The revenants her shades had just engaged, totalling nine, they found collapsed in and around a metre wide gap in the stonework of the outer wall of the gallery that led to a rising shaft beyond it.

Her shades, she could sense, were already moving up it, searching for more revenants, but her hunch was that these were probably among the last of them. The corpses here, which were not as well preserved, were mostly men at arms and militant monks. Likely they had been tasked to hold the rear line in the original sweep to encircle Fionnúir, and then overwhelmed by shades as those in the streets beyond the flooded plaza had been.

Curious, she knelt beside one and put a hand over its eyes and, invoking ‘Kataskopia’, considered some of those memories. Much like the dvari below, they were broken and chaotic, coloured by emotion as much as recollection, but they did give her an impression of zeal turning to fear, then terror as the consuming darkness of this place whispered into their souls, until they had lost even the recollection of living, without ever truly dying.

“Anything interesting?” Ianthe asked her as she stood up again.

“Shades do what shades do,” she sighed. “They don’t even remember their own deaths, just that they had to deal with her.”

Refocusing on her own shades, she found they had finally reached the top of the cramped, crumbling shaft, which had been crudely shored by looted stonework. What was odd, however, was that they were unwilling or somehow unable to move out of the tunnel itself. She could sense the rough outline of the room beyond, thanks to ‘Nikephorus’ illuminating the wall, columns and ghostly shapes that might be fallen figures, but the shades’ impression was wreathed in a sense of existential foreboding.

“Aiiii…” she sighed, realising that what she was looking at was likely some kind of seal, similar to the one they had broken through before.

Speculatively, she commanded the centurion to push into the barrier. Ignoring the curses she got back, she watched the gloom claw at the shade, and then her awareness of it…

A sense of wrongness rolled back down the tunnel. With it came a sense of… a whispering presence. However, when it encountered her, it abruptly melted away, as if unwilling to let her perceive it.

“Why can’t things be simple?” she complained, standing up.

“Problem?” Ianthe asked. “That was a very odd feeling I just got.”

“Uh-huh,” Alira nodded.

“Another seal,” she grunted. “Maybe by the same group that did the door below.”

“Good thing we have your axe then!” Alira chuckled, slapping Udil on the shoulder.

“Mmmm…” she nodded, hoping it would be that simple. “How long would it take you to enlarge this tunnel?” she asked Udil, gesturing to the opening, thinking of the partially collapsed portion the shades had passed through.

“This crap?” the dvari reached out and gouged out a handful of the lithified dirt in the opening with his mailed hand. “I could dig it with my teeth, though I’d wanna check what the state is further up. Would be awkward to drop a few thousand Alist’s on us.”

“Alist?” she raised an eyebrow. Is that like a litra, or a pound?

“It’s like the imperial kilo,” Ianthe supplied. “About three and a bit Litra.”

“Aye, human kilo is based on the dvari one,” Udil chuckled, shaking his head as he clambered into the hole in the wall.

“There is a section of partial collapse about twenty paces in,” she informed Udil, following after him.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Udil grunted as they clambered warily up the slope. “This sort of shoddy, barely serviceable digging is typical of humans.”

“Praise unto the Great Mother of Earth that it hasn’t collapsed already,” Alira, who was following behind her, joked.

“Ah, this isn’t too bad,” Udil stopped ahead of her and shifted to the side so they could get a better look. “Looks like some of their shoring got displaced by…”

“—A fireball, by the looks of it,” she mused, eyeing the iridescent, glassy texture of the dirt on the ceiling above them.

“Could be,” Udil agreed, crumbling a piece of the glassy, vitrified dirt in his hand and then popping some into his mouth for a few moments before spitting it back out. “—or lightning. In any case, give me some space, I’ll see about clearing this.”

She and Alira backed up a few paces, watching as Udil unslung his axe and after spending several moments poking about at the collapse with his hands, started to carefully probe the top of the slumped earth.

While they waited, she again reaffirmed her command to the shades to keep probing the seal for any weaknesses, because after a few attempts they had again fallen back into apathetic observance of it.

It was at that point, though, that she discovered something odd. Well, an odd thing and a concerning thing. On their way up the channel, the shades had had no issue bypassing the collapse, but now, as they spread out, she found they could no longer move ‘through’ the ground like they had before. Additionally, their sense of opposition and unwillingness to follow her commands had not lessened with her intervention.

In fact, as she oversaw them reluctantly exploring, she found she was getting more and more pushback from them, their hatred of her, for ‘condemning’ them, as they saw it, somehow working against the power that bound them to her. The way they were drawing those grim memories of the horrors they had inflicted on her in the shrine almost made her want to…

Exhaling, she stared into the darkness of the tunnel, fighting the nigh irrational urge to reject that pain. To unsummon the rebellious shades and find another way… and yet, the more she pushed back, the more… unsettled she felt.

It wasn’t the calculated rummaging that those fishing for trouble had perpetuated, but something… more holistic. Like a mirror held up to her own emotional turmoil, and then reflected again, and again… with the ability to cut far deeper than she liked or had experienced in a long time—

“Are you okay?”

Ianthe’s hand on her arm made her flinch. Looking around, she realised Udil was also staring at her.

“I…” she wanted to say ‘Yes’, but somehow, the word refused to form in her mouth. The darkness around them practically sucked it out of her—

Pain shot through her, radiating from her hand like hot spikes, up her arm, making her gasp.

Ianthe, her expression concerned, had placed the burning head of her torch in her open palm, the purple-blue flames searing her flesh. Grimacing, she found that new pain had actually helped, and yet, the lingering sense of trepidation remained, like an unseen watcher, just beyond her view, that no matter how she turned or sought it, flitted away, mockingly, disinterested in being engaged at all.

Taking a deep breath, she gazed into the dark tunnel beyond Udil, tracing the ghostly lines Nikephorus was still revealing to her, mulling over what she had just experienced. Her control over the shades had slipped further, their horrid memories actively pushing back against her… and again she was beset by the desire to just…

“Nope… no, no!” she hissed, putting her hands to her head.

In the darkness, her reflection stared at her, shrouded in gloom, her blonde hair shimmering eerily in the light of Nikephorus.

Blue eyes, so dark as to be like moonless midnight sky, holding her gaze—

As her reflection reached out, though, pointing towards her forehead, small details that ‘Nikephorus’ was illuminating seemed… off. Her hair was too long, her features, veiled in shadow as they were, were too sharp… and her eyes while blue, were not that dark.

“—No.”

Her arm felt like it was made of lead as she raised her own had to match the ‘not’ her, that was reaching out for her.

“—Epaine.”

The word sank into her like a silent shadow, a reiteration of the ‘wrongness’ she had felt moments before, when the shades had first came into contact with the seal. Now, however, it was enunciated with the full strength of… someone like her.

“Apostrophia—!” all she could do was reach for strength of her own, attempting to avert and ward off the fear and the pain and the uncertainty—

The two words collided silently, in the darkness, and she got a third, nasty shock. The resonance of ‘Epaine’ with their surroundings far exceeded her own. She was touched by the stygian powers because of her immortality and the Sempronius Dagger, but this word, and the woman who had spoken it, embodied it as truly as she did the strength of Aphrodite. It called to the stygian strength in a way that made her soul shiver, even if, in the end, Apotrophia was able to shrug off its effects, though it left her sweating as she stared into the swirling darkness of their surroundings, feeling like it was—

“Heretic… whore, you deserve all this, and more…” The Centurion came, grasping for her, his face a twisted rictus of lust, hate and fury—

“Yeah, no—Apotrophia,” she sneered, seizing the outstretched hand and projecting the full strength of her own personal displeasure back at the shade.

The Centurion recoiled, his expression turning to one of horrified clarity as the full weight of his crimes against her, and the understanding of who and what he had offended in the process was forcibly impressed upon him with the temporary expulsion of his dark, twisted desires that had damned him.

She watched coldly as he scrambled back, cowering against the far side of the tunnel, trembling, even as the other shades of the legionnaires arrived, snarling furiously, and then placed both hands against the tunnel wall—

“Oh Stately, Gold-Crowned Queen, whose dominion is the heart and the soul of men and women, grant that I might expel this deceit—Apotrophia!”

Practically spitting out the invocation, she put all of her now quite considerable anger and rising frustrations into it, along with all the feelings of pain and haunting suffering that the shades had dared to push back at her, and projected it directly into their surroundings, leveraging Nikephorus to further augment its reach and momentum as she did so.

Like before, the resonance between what the other woman, who had to be, like her, a chosen soul, and the stygian energies infusing the land left her hands feeling like they had been hit by a hammer. The tunnel shivered, the darkness around her twisting bizarrely like all reality was a pool and she had just smashed the surface with her palm.

The ghostly figure of the other woman met her eyes, the symbol for ‘Midnight’ now reflected within them. Endless dark night and immortal presence no less than her own striving against her. Yet in this, at least, she had a clear advantage, because the woman before her was just the psychikon within the seal, for all that it had steeped for uncounted years in this place, whereas she was actually here. It also felt oddly hollow, the more she strove against it, as if some key part of it was held away, just out of its reach.

Like that, they warred for… it could not have been more than a few heartbeats, though it certainly felt much longer, until, with a faint sigh, the strength imbued into the word restricting the space collapsed. Like a tsunami, it rolled through the entire region surrounding the former church and temple of Apollo Invictus, before finally melting away somewhere beyond the plaza below them. The Midnight Immortal held her gaze for one final, almost unwilling moment, then sighed and faded away, as if she had never been.

To her immense relief, the control she had had over the cursed legionnaires restored itself at pretty much the same time. Still, she didn’t send them away, just in case, because they still could not pass through the walls, like they had been able to before.

“Huh…” Beside her, Ianthe was staring into the middle distance, frowning.

“Sorry, I got a bit annoyed,” she sighed, rubbing her temple and affecting not to notice how Udil was also staring at her, having finally stopped looking at the still shivering shade of the centurion.

“Oh, ah, no, it’s not that,” Ianthe muttered. “It’s just… for a moment I felt something weird there.”

“The person who put the seal in place was like me,” she replied.

“Yeah, no.” Ianthe gave her a look that had strong ‘you don’t say’ vibes. “I get that. It’s just… I am wondering why, if it was her, why she would have come here. Was it to check the seal on you?”

“You… know who that was?” she asked, frowning now as well.

Fellow chosen souls were not a thing unknown to her. At least two had come here in the millennia after her sealing, though they had hidden themselves well and seemingly been unaware of her for the most part. Yet this woman had been neither of them. It was possible, she had to concede, that she had come during one of the times when she, for whatever reason, had next to no awareness of the wider situation within Solaneum—usually due to some backlash or other from various visitors trying to mess with her seal for their own ends. Still, given the similarity in their abilities, and the kind of strength they wielded, she could not help but feel she should have found some trace of them over those years.

“You don’t?” Ianthe blinked. “Did Aphrodite never speak to you of the Eternal City, and its chosen?”

“Ah, Zikath,” Udil spat, cursing in dvari. “It wassnae her, was it? The blonde bitch from o’er shadow sea?”

“We can discuss this later, I think,” she sighed, feeling once again that there were unwanted complications rising up.

“Mmmm… yes,” Ianthe nodded.

“And you—get back up there!” she commanded the centurion, putting every shred of her patrician upbringing into her order. “And make sure the way is clear.”

The Centurion shade and the other legionnaires flinched, then scrambled one after another back up the tunnel.

Interestingly, Udil had to move out of the way of the centurion and another who had made it past him before, and as she watched them carefully, to make sure she wasn’t being tricked in some way, they still had no means to move through the ground.

“Your shades got vivified,” Ianthe observed, watching them go. “That’s definitely the sort of thing that girl could do. Undead are the worst matchup against her; it’s probably why they sent her here.”

“Does it wear off?” she asked, pushing the rest of her question away for later, because they were starting to stack up.

“Maybe?” Ianthe shrugged. “It’s… it’s weird you don’t know, unless hmmm…” the nymph gave her a very strange look, and then just shook her head.

-Has something else messed with my memories? she wondered uneasily.

“Ueuuup, give me some space here,” Udil cut in, waving for them to get back as he started to clear out the remainder of the collapse, carefully funnelling it to the far side of the tunnel.

As that was happening, in the back of her mind, the shades had finally made it back to where the barrier had been… and found slumped dirt with protruding blocks of masonry and the odd floor tile. For a moment, she felt her heart sink, until she noticed that all of the shades were scrupulously avoiding touching or probing the rock fall at all.

“Um, can I get past you, Udil,” she asked the Dvari, who was now carefully re-positioning one of the collapsed supports before clearing further.

Udil gave her a sideways look but did shift so she could slide past him. Carefully crawling upwards, she wormed her way around the second slippage, and eventually reached where the shades had stopped, before the apparent ceiling collapse.

After spending a moment to shake the worst of the dirt off her palla, she made her way up to the collapse and pushed her hands warily into the dirt. The first few inches were indeed ‘real’ dirt as it turned out, but then she was met with a profound, disorientating sense of wrongness that tried to convince her that what was beyond it was indeed just a ceiling collapse—

Grimacing, she withdrew her left hand and placed it on the broach, then focused on ‘Peitho’.

For a few seconds, the pneuma in her surroundings resisted her, then, with a sensation akin to a taut sheet tearing, the barrier she was touching dissolved. The dirt around her shivered then slumped to the ground like a falling curtain, revealing a hole dug through a stone and brick wall. Beyond it, she could make out a broad, columned hall, that had probably been a basement of some later building from the city later above, within which was a battlefield worthy of the one in the entrance of the temple.

What immediately stood out, though, were the two mailed knights slumped against that same wall, wearing green robes with white and gold crosses she recognised as the heraldry of the Knights of the Sacred Maiden—an order founded in Evergrove. Both had died violently, their limbs punctured by crossbow bolts. One had been decapitated, his severed head lying face down by the far wall. Nearby, a broken shield bore imprints of a warhammer.

Moving over to the one that had not been decapitated, she carefully lifted off their helmet, to reveal the pallid, sunken features of a dark-haired young woman, her eyes staring blankly downwards, blood dark on her lips.

Like she had with the Dvari, she placed her fingers to the woman’s temple and, drawing on the power of ‘Kataskopia’, peered into her last moments.

Panic, claustrophia and screams assailed her. Caradar—her companion in arms—barely blocking a hammer blow from an armoured figure she recognised as the knight from below, that Udil had ended. A crossbow bolt struck her, then another… she tried to cut down a mailed figure wearing the symbol of Jeris, that was stabbing at her with his sword, except her limbs were so heavy… and cold. The darkness whispered to her, hands felt like they were grasping at her, tugging her down. Beside her, Caradar collapsed as a grinning shadow appeared beside him, decapitating him with a bloody blade.

With a sigh, she took her hands away as Aefre, for that was the young woman’s name, Aefre Belmor, failed to block a final blow and an Illdrium-tipped crossbow bolt took her through the heart, sending her staggering back into the wall, her life bleeding away. All she could glean from the wider surrounds were screams to retreat, prayers and someone begging for their mother, with no real context beyond that.

Closing Aefre’s eyes, she put the helmet back in her lap, then cautiously stepped through the hole in the wall and into the hall itself.

Everywhere she looked, there were traces of the ferocious battle she had had but a glimpse of from Aefre’s last moments. Scars of flame and lightning covered every surface, while broad swathes of silt beneath the shallow water had the same vitrified iridescence as in the tunnel, and, scattered throughout, she saw the petrified forms of at least twenty revenants—knights, soldiers, priests and even a third mage. Also present, running throughout everything, she could feel resonance of the stygian energies with the same familiar strength that she had clashed with.

Taking it all in, she found the hall also appeared to have been comprehensively looted. Unlike below, none of the petrified revenants had weapons, and some, who had been smashed apart, were also missing easily removed parts of their armour. Quite a few had also been decapitated, post petrification.

-Does that mean the seal came later? she found herself wondering, noting that there were no other corpses wearing Evergrove colours, at least that she could easily pick out. Or was there a second attempt?

With a further sigh, she pushed away those thoughts, because while the spiralling chaos of events was sort of interesting, it was also a distraction in the current circumstances, and set off across the hall, checking there were no further surprises.

Much to her relief, it turned out, however, that there was not, at least in any seeming magical sense, beyond the faint impression that the walls were warded. The immediate problem, though, was that the only exit had been fully blocked by a section of fallen ceiling where someone had brought down the roof-arch by collapsing both columns that supported them.

She had just started to poke about at that, when Ianthe, Alira and Udil joined her.

“Can we proceed up that tunnel?” she asked Ianthe, as the trio took in the battle-scarred hall.

“Probably, it will be single file, but I doubt we have time to dig it wider,” Ianthe replied with a helpless shrug.

“Good news is we don’t have to clear this,” Udil remarked, scuffing the water with his boot and gesturing at the slumped wall of dirt.

“We don’t?” Alira asked.

“Aye, this be surface dirt,” Udil nodded, looking pensively up at the ceiling. “If we collapse tha column on left—” he pointed over at the next column towards the far-left corner of the hall. “That looks like it’ll drop enough to clear a path to the layer above.”

“—And not bury us?” she asked, eyeing the collapse. Whatever had done it had even brought down the roof of the building itself, because there were roof-tiles poking out of the edge of it.

“—or bring down more than just some dirt?” Alira added raising an eyebrow as she eyed the collapsed area.

“Am I a dvari or a knife-eared thief?” Udil huffed. “Surface breaking is something even a novice miner can do, nevermind someone like me, who has cut rock so hot ye can shape it wit your bare hands, and spat in the face o’ the abominations tha’ haunt the dark-roots in search o’ earth-silk. Anyway, yon moisture in ceiling be fresh—crisp even, and the taste of the dirt…”

He paused and taking a shard of tile from nearby, tossed it at the ceiling, dislodging a stream of dirt down, that made all three of them step back quickly.

“…”

Chuckling at their reactions, Udil put some of the dirt in his mouth, then spat it out again after a moment.

“Aye, tha dirt be light. It has no been steeped in the weight o’ age like what be down here,” Udil continued. “If I were t’guess, the roof on the floor above has collapsed, but we’ll be seein’ when ah open ’t up a bit more. The other option is that we check out some o’ the walled-up doors on the other side,” he added, gesturing to the right wall, perhaps feeling something of their scepticism, despite what he was saying, where she could just make out several bricked-up entrances.

In truth, it wasn’t that she doubted him, it was just that, with the way things were going, she fully expected something as ‘simple’ as he pitched, to manifest some kind of further, awkward delay.

“Maybe we put your axe through one of those… first,” Ianthe mused.

Udil gave them a long look, then sighed and nodded, walking over to the nearest of the sealed openings, muttering under his breath about how they lacked style.

The dvari kicked the brickwork a few times with his boot, then with a grunt swung his axe in a vicious arc into the middle—

With a crash of disintegrating masonry, the brickwork in the entrance crumbled—

Her earlier paranoia about wards was vindicated by a flash of teal light that sizzled across the wall, revealing a ghostly mirage of symbols, before it faded away.

“Because of course they warded it,” Ianthe muttered, her sigh echoing her own.

“When we came down here, we tried wall-cracking,” Udil called over. “This place is riddled with rotten, unstable wards and shit. Give me a moment, I’ll see if the door can’t be shifted from other side.”

She watched in silence as Udil vanished into the darkness. There was a further series of echoing crunches of axe overcoming distant rotten brickwork, then some muffled cursing and silence.

They waited for almost three minutes, at which point she was just about to go after the dvari in case he had met some unforeseen problem, when Udil reappeared in the doorway, dusting white lime mortar off of his armour.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Udil grunted. “Figured I’d best check outside. Collapse actually took out most of the entrance area. We can get out to a surface street easy enough though, I broke the wall, and from there, you can smell the surface.”

“Excellent,” she murmured, relieved to hear that.

Chuckling, Udil waved for them to come, then set off back the way he had come. Following after him, they made their way through the side-hall of the warehouse, up a flight of stone stairs and then through a second section of smashed brickwork sealing up an old doorway, that brought them out into the ground floor of the warehouse.

As she expected, it was entirely empty, long since cleared of anything remotely valuable. Off to their right, the entire middle section of the roof had fallen in, fresher dirt, piling over old to block off almost a third of the space and seal the hole.

“Exit t’street is there,” Udil added drily, gesturing to the shattered hold he had broken in the old brickwork, beyond which she could faintly see cleared road surface and ad-hoc shoring typical of the surface delvings around Old Solaneum. “Whoever dug this out spent quite a lot of time at it, which is only to our benefit here. Odd thing be the dark sign, but I guess they dinna want others poking about.”

“Dark sign?” she asked, as Udil led them over to the hold and out into the street, which was dug out much like the ones below, but with significantly more effort put into the shoring, via looted columns and slab-stonework to counter the much softer substrate above.

“Aye, like tha,” Udil pointed to an eye-like symbol with the symbol someone had gouged into an upright section of stone column set like a marker in the middle of the street, opposite the entrance to the warehouse. “Tis the ‘Hiding Dark’, sign to hide misfortune from others, or warn off.”

Looking around, she quickly picked out two others, in both directions carved on column uprights holding the roof in place.

“Sounds about right,” Alira chuckled. “There is nothing but misfortune for mortals below.”

“No argument there,” Udil grunted. “What I mean is odd, is it’s huldrekin sign. Not dvari sign and invoking ‘She who knocks in dark places’. The Hulder would invoke ‘He who guards old bones’, or ‘She who holds the last light’, not the Lady of Dvarad, and certainly not the Hunting Wyrd.”

“For a dvari, you sure know a few things,” Ianthe mused, giving Udil a sideways look.

“Our city has old roots,” the dvari shrugged. “And that sign is odd.”

“Many things in this cursed city are ‘passing odd’, by this stage of its sorry existence,” she reflected with a grimace. “So long as it isn’t going to interfere?”

“Nah, it won’t,” Ianthe shook her head. “The air is fresher to the right, so let’s go that way.”

Nodding, she followed after Ianthe, who set off at a brisk trot now, holding her torch up high to illuminate their path.

In the end, they only had to go about a hundred metres along the excavated street, before the path up revealed itself: a ramp of collapsed, overgrown stonework amid a tangle of subterranean greenery. Beyond it, she could just make out the sky, which was still dark, some stars visible between scattered cloud.

Without going out, which would run the risk of complicating the ritual they were about to perform, she judged they probably had at least half an hour before the sky started to lighten with the first signs of pre-dawn, which was more than she had expected, truth be told.

“So, what now?” Udil asked her as she stepped back from the base of the ramp.

“Now? We go back down and set about what we are actually meant to be doing,” she replied drily, turning on her heel and heading back the way they had come.

Compared to the trip up, the descent, which they made at a brisk jog, except for the narrow tunnel, only took about five minutes. Arriving back in the hall of the temple-turned-church, she found Ianeira and Phiale waiting with Fionnúir and the shades of her family clan.

“I take it we are good to go?” Ianeira asked as she walked over and reclaimed one of the other torches from where they still sat.

“We are. The ascent should take about fifteen minutes,” she replied. “There were a few complications on the way.”

“Yes, I felt the collapse of that word of power,” Ianeira nodded.

“—though I guess it makes sense their eyes would have turned towards this place at least once,” Phiale added with a grimace.

“Mmmm,” Ianthe agreed, not meeting her eyes.

-Yep, we definitely have to have a chat about this afterwards, she mused.

“You understand the principles of this ritual yes?” Phiale asked her and Fionnúir.

“Yes,” Fionnúir affirmed.

“I believe so,” she agreed. “I have to lead Fionnúir out, and she leads her family out. You escort us?”

“That’s… pretty much it,” Phiale nodded. “Nobody can look back, and it helps if you can keep a clear heart while doing it. There may be fuckery. If there is, ignore it. Don’t look back until the rising sun has touched you, though that holds mainly for Fionnúir, not you, she has a body already.”

“Ideally, don’t look back until those you are leading have passed you,” Ianeira added, as much to Fionnúir as to her.

“An’ what about me?” Udil asked, from where he had been standing off to the side.

“Follow Cornelia and don’t look back,” Ianeira instructed him. “There is no downside to you performing the ritual as well, so long as you partake properly.”

Udil stared at her for a long moment, then nodded.

“So, ready for this?” Phiale asked Fionnúir.

“Y-yes,” Fionnúir nodded, though there was a flicker of apprehension in her eyes now.

“Don’t worry, you can do this…” her mother murmured, putting a supporting hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Indeed, have faith,” her father agreed, as the other shades all nodded encouragingly.

“In that case…” Holding up her torch, she pulled her palla fully over her head and then took Fionnúir’s right hand in hers.

“Okay, look back from any point after Cornelia starts moving, and you are officially an Orpheus-touched moron,” Phiale declared as Ianeira and Alira took up their own torches and made sure their own palla were fully pulled up over their heads.

“Great Daughter, Bearer of the Mysteries, Pure Maiden of the Untouched World,” Ianeira whispered, holding up her own torch.

“Golden Queen, Light of Life, Love and Courage, Daughter of Sky and Sea…” she whispered.

“Mistress, Arbiter of the Path, who crowned Grace, who blessed Charity, who bestowed Nature and Good Order…” Phiale added.

“Brightest Daughter, First and Eldest, who Leads our Dance…” Alira murmured.

“First Daughter, Strife-bringer, Friend to all Mortals, Delighter in Endeavour…” Ianthe whispered, holding her torch up as well now.

“—Lead us on, guide our steps and bless our passing,” all of them declared at the same time, as Phiale started forward, her steps measured, flanked by Ianeira and Ianthe.

“Watch over us, keep our hearts true…” they all continued as she stepped forward after them, leading Fionnúir, with Udil falling in behind—

As soon as she took the first step, the murmuring of the shades behind her vanished. Her awareness of Fionnúir’s hand in hers also vanished, leaving only a haunting, cavernous absence behind her that practically screamed to be filled amidst the stygian ambiance of the buried temple-church.

Matching her steps with Phiale’s, she kept up the refrain of the hymn, praising each of the goddesses evoked in turn as they processed out of the hall, back into the gallery and with measured care continued up to the second floor of the church.

With each step, the sense of the space behind her desiring, demanding, entreating to be filled became ever stronger.

By the time they reached the gallery, it was like a chain on each of her limbs, tugging at her.

In the tunnel it whispered, coaxed, cajoled, as she led Fionnúir on, following Phiale. It told her that she had let go, that Fionnúir could not keep up, that the others were already falling behind, that she needed to turn back, to help them…

In the hall of the warehouse, amidst the petrified statues, it threatened and taunted her, warned her that there were things she had failed to grasp, that she needed to turn back and save those behind her, or be called a failure.

In the street beyond, though, there was just… silence. It was as if everything behind her was just no longer there, eaten up by the sound of dripping water, the rustle of distant vegetation and tiny shifts in the ruins around them. It made her want to step in the water again, rather than upon it, just so she had some measure of her own progress, rather than silence, and through it all, slowly, insidiously, as she followed Phiale onwards, the feeling that something was not right.

By the time they reached the exit, that wrongness was like a hand at the back of her neck, begging her to look back—to confirm that the ritual had not failed, that the powers that governed it were not cheating her in some way, that she had not made some mistake, maybe with the dark-signs, or some final, hidden ward…

Letting it all wash past her, she continued her softly spoken hymn to Aphrodite and simply walked up the crude ramp of collapsed stone and dirt after Phiale, and back out into the cool, damp pre-dawn darkness.

The opening led into what had probably once been an inner courtyard in some later era building, now preserved as a hollow between two amorphous hillocks, overgrown with shrubs and tangled, spikey weeds. Here and there, rock walls jutted out, and ahead of her, as she walked into the centre, picking her way through the swampy pool that dominated it, were several old, exposed openings, leading into dark voids, between piles of overgrown spoil from ancient excavations.

Ahead of her, Phiale, still not turning, simply stood there, torch raised. A moment later, to her left and right, Ianthe and Ianeira stepped into view also taking up positions facing outwards, towards the edge of the courtyard, still softly singing their own hymns.

“I never thought I would see this again…” Fionnúir’s words, as she stepped past her, the feeling of her hand in hers returning as she did so, were tinged with wonder as she stared up at the starry, still just about dark, pre-dawn sky.

“Unom-anriz, Takuth… Akim…” Udil sighed, taking off his own helmet as he also stepped into view on her other side, which to her very limited grasp of dvari was something like ‘The sky chasm is brilliant’.

“—And what of me?”

The voice, tantalizing, commanding, and slightly sad, send a cold shiver down her spine.

-Ah, of course there would be a final sting in the tail of forces conspiring to keep her down, she sighed, recognising the voice of Edmund Abernathy.

The presence that came with the voice was stifling—demanding her attention, as if the mere act of not looking at the Prince of the Golden Dawn was somehow an affront to the natural order of the world.

“Do the things we did together… mean nothing to you, Sarah?”

Fionnúir paused, not turning, to her immense relief, but instead just staring at the horizon ahead of them, where the first rays of dawn were not quite peeking over the hills.

“Does the future of our land means so little to you?” Edmund’s voice whispered, sadly.

“Our Land?” Fionnúir sounded… tired, rather than angry at what he was saying. “I can hardly say it was my land.”

“All those people you helped, all the good you did… does it mean so little to you?” Edmund continued, more forcefully. “That you would consign all of that… for some momentary promise of…?”

“What land?” Fionnúir sighed, watching the sun as it slowly started to appear, its light chasing away the cold half-light on the tops of some of the distant hills.

“What—?”

“—If what I… what you… we wrought was so ephemeral as to be washed away by a mere sunrise,” Fionnúir cut off him off with a wave of her hand, that became a gesture that took in the river plain that now covered much of Old Solaneum, “as if it were no more than a dream to fade upon my waking? Then is it really worth placing so much attachment in it, fair prince?”

“Does what we shared… mean so little you, that you will not even look at me?” Edmund whispered, softly.

She could practically feel his presence, like a patch of the first rays of sun on her skin, calling to her to turn around, to embrace it—and yet, to her at least, something about it felt hollow, false even…

“—We shared so much together, Sarah…”

“And yet, in the end, it turns out you gave me nothing,” Fionnúir sighed.

“—You know that is—” Edmund’s voice turned hurt, accusatory.

“—And took everything…” Fionnúir added, sounding sad, rather than angry. “—Or will you say that my death was a necessary sacrifice, for that dream. Can you swear, on this rising sun, that there was no other way?”

“Because of what you did… your generosity…”

“Echoed through the ages?” Fionnúir chuckled, mirthlessly, still watching the rays of sun creep ever closer down the tumbled buildings ahead of them. “A heroic sacrifice… I had a long time to think about it, in the darkness, you know. It took me hours and hours to ‘die’, accompanied only by the screams and the cursing and the pleading of those sent to ‘make sure’.

“So, forgive me, ‘fair prince’ of the ‘Radiant Dawn’, if I choose to awaken from this cruel dream, and leave you where you belong, in the nightmares of a life I have little desire to remember.”

“But…” Edmund’s voice turned haunted.

“If you must lament,” Fionnúir continued. “Lament that those around you did not do the best they could, only what they wanted.”

The presence behind her intensified.

“Sarah…”

“You can have your dream,” Fionnúir whispered, as the first rays of sun finally found them, pinkish-golden light kissing overgrown paving and tumbled, half buried stonework.

“Don’t…” Edmund’s voice, his presence, that of a ‘hero’ in all his pomp and allure, sang in her ears, tugged at her heart…

“—and I…” Fionnúir trailed off, as the light washed over them.

Laughing, a young, fair-haired girl danced into their field of view and physically threw herself into a patch of mud.

“It’s real!” she shrieked.

“I… m-mother…” the dark-haired young woman was hugging an older, grey-haired woman, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Sister! —Brother!” the siblings who had spoken before clung to each other, falling to their knees.

The old man just knelt down and slowly lifted up a handful of dirt and smeared it all over his face, his expression turning from shock to joy. Fionnúir’s grandmother silently scooped up some water and let it run through her hands, as crying, laughing, dancing or just staring in shock, the various shades of clan Rhuith all appeared, one after another before them.

“I… will take my happiness,” Fionnúir sighed, lowering her hands as her mother and father embraced her from behind.

“Then—” Edmund Abernathy’s voice turned cold, as, almost at the same instant Fionnúir turned to look behind them.

Turning as well, she found herself face to face with the speaker.

He stood, in the entrance, his golden hair tied back in the elaborate style favoured by noble scions of that ancient era. His clothing was as she remembered it, from when he, and those others, had stood in the hall before her seal, a coat of shining mail, a blue tabard with the sigil of House Abernathy—a golden eagle clasping seven stars—prominent on the front, bright sword half-drawn.

Fionnúir watched, expressionless, as the shadows around the phantasmal form of the second ‘Hero of Light’ deepened.

With a soundless howl, something tried to reach out of the darkness and physically push Edmund Abernathy across the threshold, but all it did was pass through him, like he was a mirage, which slowly scattered into nothing, leaving only the over-dark delving into the buried street.

“Wishes are just the worst,” Alira muttered, eyeing the dark opening.

“If only all ills could be so easily blamed,” Ianeira murmured, shaking her head.

“What… would have happened had he come out?” the dark-haired woman muttered, not quite looking at her, or Fionnúir.

That was a good question, actually. Her hunch was that right now she would either be talking very fast, or trying very hard to stab the aforementioned ‘Second Hero of Light’ in the face with the Sword of Harmony. Certainly, Edmund Abernathy would have been a far more dangerous foe than Laurentius, if only because of his upbringing and family.

“He would not,” Fionnúir stated decisively, before anyone else could speak up. “And he is best forgotten, assuming he isn’t…”

“—He is long dead,” she reassured Fionnúir.

In fact, his appearance here like that was somewhat disconcerting. As a High King, who had, for a while, ruled over much of this part of the continent, backed by one of its greatest families, she would have expected him to be largely proof against being implicated in things like this. Though, equally, those around him having tied some sort of hidden contingency against his death into a place like this was not impossible.

“Looooooong dead,” Alira agreed, rolling her eyes.

“—And not lamented overmuch in his passing, even before the era we now find ourselves in,” Ianeira added.

“Even in my day, his reputation were flakin’…” Udil chuckled darkly. “Killing lotta folks and seizing their land to give to your mates does that for you.”

“—And taxes, don’t forget the taxes,” Ianthe added.

“Oh, yeah,” Udil nodded, stroking his beard. “Nothing gets people’s asses up like taxes on shit like bread, or the size of your windows. His ambassador to Amudtakuth eventually had an… accident.”

“Hah! Did it involve a bridge?” Ianthe asked, rolling her eyes.

“Aye, it were very tragic. We sent them back his hat,” Udil nodded, grinning toothily through his beard. “The statue of him we put up by the bridge, holding it, was very famous.”

“His… hat?” she found herself asking.

“Aye, he wasnae wearing it at the time,” Udil nodded sagely. “Was nothing else left after bridge fell on him.”

“Funny, it always seems to be taxes and theft that do for people,” the grey-bearded old man chuckled.

“Indeed,” Ianthe agreed with a smirk.

“—Ahem.” Phiale’s cough cut through their chatter, drawing their attention back to her. “As amusing as it is to be reminded of how the Dvari deal with useless nobles, we are not quite done.”

“Indeed, we are not,” she agreed, recollecting herself.

The hard work was, indeed, complete, but the actual ritual did need to be properly ‘concluded’, lest it be deemed improper in the eyes of the great powers they had invoked while undertaking it.

“Oh, right, um… what do we do?” Fionnúir asked, glancing at Ianeira.

“Oh, uh… stand in the middle, beside Cornelia. The rest gather in a circle, facing inwards. You don’t have to kneel or anything, just hold hands and repeat what we say,” Ianeira replied as she, Ianthe and Alira took up positions at the three auspicious directions around the courtyard. “Udil as well.”

Nodding, she walked over to the slightly more open space and gestured to Fionnúir and Udil to stand beside her, facing the rising sun. Once the others had gathered around, joining hands as Ianeira instructed, Phiale also came to stand on her other side, but facing the opening they had come from.

“First Daughter, Friend to all Mortals, Strife-bringer and Delighter in Endeavour!” Ianthe called out, raising her torch to the dawn sky.

“Brightest Daughter, First and Eldest, who has led our dance!” Alira declared, raising her torch.

“Great Daughter, Pure Maiden of the Untouched World!” Ianeira called out next, holding up her torch.

“Mistress, Arbiter of the Path, who governs Charity, Grace and Good Order!” Phiale exclaimed, raising her torch as well.

“Golden Queen, Light of Life, Love and Courage, Daughter of Sea and Sky!” she cried out, raising her own torch to the now almost fully risen sun.

“For the mysteries you have revealed to us, for the succour you have provided to us!” all of them declared, their words echoed a fraction later by Fionnúir, Udil and assembled members of Clan Rhuith.

“For your blessings, by which we have overcome. For your guidance, by which we have endured. We offer our thanks to thee!”

Silently, the torches each of them held up shimmered, their sparks and flames transforming into a multitude of flowers—pomegranate, amaranth, poppy, apple blossom and myrtle, in the first rays of the sun.

They drifted in the air, forming spectral wreaths of flowers that settled upon the heads of each of those present. As they did so, some gasped, others stared around in wonder, or just closed their eyes, shedding silent tears, as in that moment, she felt something within their natures… shift, in a subtle yet truly profound manner. Their mortality quite literally melting away like the first dew on the morning grass around them.

As marvellous, in its own way, at least to her, was how immediate and gentle the change was.

There was no great manifestation of heavenly splendour or… fury.

No great cries from on high, or celestial chorus to ring in the moment.

No furious crash of thunder, nor vengeful flare of lightning.

No fearful shuddering of the dark earth below them.

Just the gentle warmth of those first rays of sun, on those who had been blessed.

The only exclamations, beyond their own, were the chirp of birdsong and the faint rustle of the breeze, and the rather rapid blooming of every flowering plant and shrub within the hollow.

In fact, it seemed to throw a few of Clan Rhuith off their stride, as they reflexively looked up at the dawn-streaked sky, or at her and the nymphs, as if expecting… more, somehow.

In truth, she suspected there would be wider ramifications for this. Despite what had just occurred here appearing to be… ‘just’ this, the whole moment of dawn had, in fact, been momentarily transformed. It was no ‘mere’ thing to just walk out of the underworld, correctly and properly. It was just not the style of those old powers, as she understood it, to herald such events as those in later eras might have expected, or anticipated. Their power was the power of legacy and lineage, with little to prove to anyone. Its workings as mysterious as they were profound, more often than not.

“I… so this is the majesty of the powers of old…” Fionnúir’s grandmother sighed at last, looking around wistfully at the blooming flowers. “It is somehow… even more marvellous, yet incomprehensibly more mysterious than any story would have one believe.”

“Heh…” Ianthe just rolled her eyes at the old woman’s words.

“Still, this is no miracle or marvel, bestowed on whim,” Phiale murmured.

“The living cannot return from the dead, only be elevated to the ranks of the blessed,” Ianeira declared drily. “Having conquered death, you are now blessed, and can be numbered among the peoples of the chosen land.”

“…”

The others all stared to look at the nymph, even Udil.

“Here—” taking out the earth-silk robe they had claimed earlier, she passed it to Fionnúir.

“This… isn’t it…?” the grey-bearded old man gasped, staring at the garment.

“Ah—Earth-silk?” Fionnúir’s grandmother whispered in awe, as the material caught the sunlight. Fionnúir accepted the robe with a slightly stunned expression on her face and just stared at it.

“Put that on, before you catch a chill,” Ianthe instructed her with a slightly mischievous smile.

Fionnúir gave the nymph a long look at being reminded of her nudity, until her mother took the robe out of her hands and just started to pull it over her daughter’s head.

It was such a… motherly thing to do, that she couldn’t help but smile as Fionnúir could only accept the help.

“It does look much better on her than on that mage,” Alira observed as Fionnúir straightened the short sleeves and let it settle on her body.

“No arguments there,” she agreed.

“So… what happens now?” Fionnúir’s grandmother asked, turning to her.

“Well, first—Ah…” Alira trailed off with a soft sigh, turning to look off to their right, towards Caeracht.

A moment later, she also felt the ‘gaze’, attempting to be subtle, but still clearly covetous, slip over them.

“It seems no good deed goes entirely unnoticed,” Ianthe agreed with a sigh of her own.