“This should be it.” Lynx pulled his nose from one of his scrolls, giving the inked map that lay on it an excited tap—nearly knocking it from his hands. Arian put her hand out to steady the scroll, still studying it, unconvinced.

No hint of ancient ruins broke the thick forest—there wasn’t even a promising gap in the trees. The sun yet hung in the sky, but it was hard to reconcile what the map was telling her with the reality her eyes brought. There was simply no space for the massive repository of knowledge they were searching for, much less the many mechanisms that were said to test those who sought it.

The only reason Arian didn’t press the issue further was Delphin. He was already in the process of laying down, contorting his body to avoid collections of roots. The sight wilted any doubts she had. If he had any misgivings about them being in the wrong place, he wouldn’t be resting. His need to help his cousin ran too deep, he would never put anything—even his own well-being before that.

Arian’s continued presence was proof of that. She had put her own second at risk. No matter the reason, that wasn’t acceptable. If Delphin held even the slightest concern for himself, he would have moved on without her. He would have turned his back on her just like everyone she’d grown up with had, and just like them, he would have been right to do so.

Delphin hadn’t cast her aside though. He’d weighed her help in saving his cousin more valuable than any potential danger to himself. So, Arian sat, and she studied from one of the texts Lynx had lugged with him. If she was to be tested, then she had something to prove, and not just to some old ruins.

The moons replaced the sun while Arian pounded images of Mooncraven glyphs into her brain. When Delphin awoke, stretching and pacing to work out kinks, she kept her focus on her study. It was only when a groan broke the peace that Arian stood, stashing away her borrowed tome along with the rest of the gear they planned to leave behind.

A minute later, the groan was followed by a deeper creaking, then a snapping. With a sudden push, marble slabs burst from the ground. Arian was thrown off her feet. Displaced roots and clumps of dirt flew through the air, forcing her to shield her eyes. When she dropped her hands, some of the very glyphs she had been studying were right in front of her. Lynx’s awed translation beat out even her own. “The Library.”

Delphin led the way through the entrance, and Arian followed behind, keeping a close eye on Lynx. It was her responsibility to keep the scholar safe.

The tunnel quickly turned into a steep slope. To navigate it, hands needed to be used almost as much as feet. The darkness made the whole endeavor perilous. The only light they had was a little toral flame Lynx summoned. Arian accumulated a few scrapes sliding down sections where she couldn’t see well, and from the sound of it, the others didn’t fare much better.

For all its steepness, the tunnel was mercifully brief. As it leveled out, pale gray moonlight rose to meet them. That light grew and grew until the descent finally trailed off altogether. Before them was a massive cavern somehow lit brighter by the moons than the forest above—even through a dozen feet of stone. Inside rested a labyrinth of massive scale. Each wall—made of some odd inklike stone—managed to put even the thickest and tallest of castles to shame.

Arian walked out of the tunnel feeling vulnerable. All around them, the labyrinth had been sunk deeper into the ground. To them, the tops of the walls were great bridges. A cursory glance at the unguarded edge showed roaring rivers running between the walls far below.

Before they reached the halfway point along the bridge, a deep bugle shook their footing. Three pairs of eyes went in three different directions. None of them got it right. A sound like a thunderclap rang out directly above their heads and claws dug into Lynx’s shoulder, eliciting a shocked scream of pain. The next moment he was gone.

Before Arian had time to even turn, Delphin was already sprinting full tilt at the edge of the bridge, launching himself into a leap that saw him grab onto the same leg that held Lynx’s bleeding form. Arian was behind them a moment later, hurtling forward with her azure veil.

The winged reptile—a wyvern, she realized with awe—didn’t have the build to handle the weight of both Lynx and Delphin. It flapped its wings, creating whirlwinds of toral beneath itself, but that just set its flight awry. The wyvern and her two companions tumbled forward, wings and limbs brushing against stone walls.

Arian followed, jets launching her forward at top speed. She leaped clear across a gap between the top of her wall and the next. Three jets later, she was flying towards a section where the wall was pockmarked. It looked like some creature the size of her leg had burrowed straight through the stone. She nearly stumbled there, but a carefully released jet pushed into one of the holes, helping her maintain her pace.

Even still, she was falling behind. The wyvern’s flight might have lacked grace, but it had plenty of speed. It was all Arian could do to keep it in sight. Her legs burned, and her torm tried to pump out more toral, faster, but she couldn’t keep up, couldn’t even keep up her current pace.

Arian got lucky. Delphin managed to ground the beast. A sharp hiss broke off as blood splattered from a wing. The trio of scholar, warrior, and lizard smacked into the wall, and tore at each other to reach the top first, the lizard trying to fling the others off.

Arian made it to their position with one last reckless leap. As she did, she blasted the wyvern in its snarling face with one of her largest jets. It tumbled back down.

For a moment, she thought the water below would take it, and the current would break it against a wall on the next turn. A wyvern’s claws though were a highly sought after treasure. Bestiaries claimed they were a snow material, made as much of solidified toral as they were wyvern bone. The claws were one of the precious few items that could be used to forge a connection between a person’s physical body and their torm. The wyvern snapped them into the wall, and they punched through stone albeit with surprising difficulty.

Arian hastily pulled Delphin and the injured Lynx onto the wall. They weren’t safe. The wyvern was climbing again, corded muscles bunching and releasing under scaly skin.

Before they could even catch their breath, it launched itself over the lip. A sword and a jet of water were turned away as a cyclone erupted around the beast, stretching beyond the tips of its wings.

The force, combined with the backlash from her attack threw Arian to the ground. Then it died down. The powerful wind toral dissipated into the air, then seeped back into the beast’s claws as it inhaled it.

Those very same claws met Delphin’s blade, his partially complete enhancement technique speeding him forwards at speed. Arian was hardly a moment behind. She’d had the same thought and was poised to strike the same area. It was actually...less than ideal. She was forced to shoulder Delphin aside with a shouted “Sorry!” to get to the wyvern.

Off-balance from Delphin’s attack, the lizard struck out again. Arian predicted it though. The sight of it attacking her second and her charge on the wall was still fresh in her mind. The beast led with the same left wing it had used then. This time Arian could do something about it. She wrapped around the blow and flung it into a hold. As her technique’s jets swung around her body, they hit the wyvern over and over again. It cried out with pain and tried to squirm away. Arian held fast, force toral aiding her arms.

Finally, the beast’s talons sent wind toral exploding forth, and she was knocked away. The damage was already done though. Delphin was back up, his saber’s edge lined with compressed, focused, force toral. The wyvern almost reacted, but at the last moment something jerked in the thing’s torso. Whether it was a muscle too battered to react in time, or just a spasm of pain from broken scales and skin, it slowed the creature for a crucial moment. Saber met flesh, and the monster stopped moving.

As soon as she confirmed it was dead, Arian couldn’t help but look at its claws. Power. That was what she saw there. They had barely made it through that fight. The quality of snow material used in an ordeal of snow directly impacted the quality and nature of magic a warrior could bring to bear. A wyvern’s claws would be among the highest tiers of snow material she’d ever get her hands on.

Without Delphin’s quick thinking, Lynx would be dead. She couldn’t have caught up by herself. With the wind magic the claws would surely grant her though, that would never be a problem again. Nothing short of a sleetborn would be able to outrun her.

She made to grab a knife from her belt, thinking to cut the claws from the beast. Before she could get it loose though. A dozen bugles broke through the air. This time there was no mistaking the direction. A whole flock of wyverns were heading for them, already using wind magic to drive themselves forward.

Arian made a snap decision. She grabbed Lynx with one arm, Delphin with the other, and leapt from the wall.

…

Del hit the water hard. If it hadn’t been deep, he would have easily broken his legs. As it was, the impact rattled him enough that his senses went dark for a moment.

When the world jumped back into focus, he felt his back scream with protest as the current scraped him across the rough stone bottom. Del inhaled water toral on instinct, using everything he could to push against the unyielding flow. That reaction probably saved his life. A moment later, he slammed into a wall hard. All his breath was knocked out of him, and he coughed, bringing water into his lungs.

Del managed to push himself to the surface before the labyrinth’s next turn, but he couldn’t find a grip on the walls this low. Again and again, he was slammed into turns as the water ran through the maze at breakneck speed. It was all he could to soften the impact by forcefully slowing himself down with water toral and bloodying his fingers with desperate scrabbling at anything within reach.

Before he could properly form even a half-plan, he was miles away. He was spun every which way, so it was hard to get his bearings. All he knew was that he was being swept deeper and deeper into the cavern depths.

The trip ended with a heart-stopping plunge into a stone basin, then he was treading water.

“Delphin!” A voice called out.

Del turned, and he felt a wave of relief when he saw Arian treading water nearby, Lynx unhappily slung over one shoulder, coughing up water. She was using a localized version of her azure veil around her legs to keep them both afloat.

Del took a lap around the basin, but there was no way out, no holds in the circular wall, no exit. Del tried to cut the walls with his saber, but they were of no ordinary stone. His blade bounced off ineffectively.

Heading back to his companions, he found them staring upwards in fascinated horror. Del followed their gaze and his heart leapt into his throat. Dozens of figures stood around the rim of the basin they had been trapped in, staring down in disapproval. Each of them boasted four crossed arms, and an inhuman face. The worst part of them though was the eyes. It was hard to describe. There was a darkness in them that shadows alone couldn’t account for.

It took Del’s heart some time to start working properly again, about the same time it took for him to realize the figures weren’t moving. Statues, but their carver must have been very talented.

“Our hosts?” Arian breathed the question, but it demanded no answer.

The Library had been designed by the Mooncraven to test those who sought its knowledge. What better way to impress that visitors were being judged than to surround them with disapproving statues. These were what the Mooncraven looked like. Del was sure of it.

To everyone’s surprise, it was Lynx who broke the stunned silence. His voice was shaky as much with fear and pain as with profound excitement. “I don’t think any living scholar has ever seen their likeness before.” A moment of admiration passed over the group before Lynx gave another grimace, his attention back on the water around them. “The statues aren’t the only thing odd about this basin.”

Del looked around in confusion not finding what he was referring to.

“The water. Its not rising.” Arian’s voice was horrified.

Del caught the implication immediately. No obvious exits, and water was constantly being dumped in from multiple spots in the labyrinth above. He glanced down in shared horror. The only exit had to be beneath the water. Then Del glanced back up again and found some relief in the statues. “We’re being tested. If it’s a test we just have to endure.”

Arian nodded beside him nervously, her face was pale with fear, but her voice didn’t shake with it. “The basin is deep, with so much water above, the current will be strong.”

It didn’t take long for them to figure out where the drain was. A few dives revealed a current at the very center of the basin. The deeper they went, the more it pulled at them. They all knew it would be a one-way trip.

Waiting was just tiring them out, so, it wasn’t long before Del found himself following Arian down into the depths. She went first, and she carried Lynx with her. Her technique worked even better in the water than on land.

Del had no such advantage, but there was no choice. Arian couldn’t carry them both, at least not without losing a ton of speed.

Del pushed down quickly, reaching out his arms again and again, carrying himself quickly into blindness. It only took him a few seconds to reach the point of no return. The current sucked him in and sent him spinning. He fought to go with it. An enforcement technique wrapped through his body, and he used it to claw his way forward.

He plunged down faster than he had ever moved, and his sight blacked, but he fought on, maintaining control. Ten seconds he counted, and he hadn’t reached the bottom. Thirty and he was still moving, his body already desperate for air.

Del began panicking at forty-five, his concentration slipped, and his enhancement technique nearly fell apart, but Del knew how to keep panic away. He kept his mind sharp, and his technique solidified. Then he was at the bottom and hurtling sideways. Hope filled him even as his body failed.

The wait for his first gasp of air was horrific. The worst thing was the panic, the uncertainty. Then it came, and even though he got as much water as air, it was glorious.

Del’s momentum didn’t stop though. Arian and Lynx had already climbed out, and they shouted to him. Their silhouettes were lit by one of Lynx’s floating balls of flame. It looked like they had found the mouth of some cave. Or rather, Del realized an offshoot of the cave he was already in. The labyrinth from above was long gone, that flat chiseled stone his blade had glanced off replaced with cold, damp rock rough and jagged.

Del pushed toward his companions with everything he had. The water had other plans though. It moved him downstream faster than he could get across its flow. He made a desperate swipe for Arian’s outstretched hand, but his fingertips just brushed past hers. Then he was gone, hurtling into the darkness. Almost. Del whipped his saber from the sheath on his hip, and built a technique on it so fast, his torm screamed in protest.

The saber dug into the stone wall. A normal sword might have snapped, but Del’s sword was made of stronger stuff, and it was stouter than most. Still, it bent under the force.

Arian was in the water swimming toward him, but there was something wrong. She was inhaling toral fiercely and when she shot past him, the jets that usually looped around her body moved sluggishly and were thinner than usual. She was practically out of toral.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Arian made up the difference with raw physical effort, her face going red, and her breath coming fast and heavy. She made it to him, and for a moment they both clung to his sword. Arian’s voice came to his ear, already strained, exhausted. “I’ll find another way. Save your cousin.”

A blast of force sent Del flying upstream. He barely made it far enough to stretch out an arm and grab hold of the cave lip. A glance behind revealed nothing. Arian was gone, blasted off somewhere downstream to face an unknown fate. Something caught in his chest. It’s not your place to balance the weight of another’s life. He’d told her that and now she had taken his place, risking her own life when it should have been his on the line.

Del was about to dive back into the water, to help Arian, or share her fate when a shaky hand grabbed his shoulder. Lynx stumbled then fell. Del barely caught him before he hit the floor. His face was pale, and it wasn’t just water he was soaked with. His clothes were dyed red.

…

Del’s master had been an uncommonly skilled healer, but he had never passed that skill on. It was all Del could do to bandage the deep gouges. Red stains quickly took up the shape of the wyvern’s claws, but Del couldn’t stop the bleeding.

It was some time before Lynx stirred again, enough time for Del to explore the small circle illuminated by Lynx’s little light. There was no grand labyrinth or statues to be seen. Just rough rock and the constant drone of water passing by.

There was no indication that they were still even in the Mooncraven’s Library. For all he knew, they had taken a random drainage tunnel right into some set of caves. For all he knew, their cave could end a dozen feet past where the light did.

When Lynx finally regained his feet, Del leant him his shoulder and they pressed on. The bleak cave stretched on and on, endless. Their wet clothing schemed with the chill air to sap their strength, and Lynx was soon coughing.

The first sign of change was an unwelcome one. From around a turn, a familiar noise that was half snarl and half gnashing teeth broke the stillness. Beastmen, two of them. Del set Lynx down, carefully sitting him against the cold wall.

It had been a long time since Del had fought without a weapon, but with his sword lost all he had was Cas and he refused to use him as a weapon.

Del sprinted around the corner, only half-catching his two opponents by surprise. The first lunged at him on all fours, aiming to dig its teeth into him and drag him down. Del swiveled and pushed out enough raw force toral to bat the creature’s drooling mouth away. The second tried to strike with its green-scaled arm, but again Del deflected the blow. This time though, he countered, striking into the beast’s stomach with a palm strike fueled by toral.

It wasn’t a clean fight, and each blow was horribly inefficient, but Del walked away half a minute later sporting little more than a few bruises. Sometimes fighting with pure power worked. It had been some time since his ordeal of rain, and his torm had grown substantially in that time.

“Beastmen?” Lynx asked as Del walked back to pull him to his feet.

“Yeah. It seems like they’re in every Mooncraven ruin.”

Lynx frowned. The subject of beastmen had been one of contention between them. Every time Del had brought them up, Lynx had insisted he had no reference to their presence in any of his records.

As they stepped back around the corner, Del’s mind went into overdrive. The first thought that struck him was the bodies. They were missing. His eyes went to the shadows looking to see if the creatures had somehow faked death and crawled away to hide in ambush. No sign of them came and he continued scanning. Then his eyes fell on two peculiar stones.

There was nothing immediately odd about the stones. Plenty of loose rock lined the cave floor. With his heightened adrenaline helping him though, the peculiarity did not go unnoticed. The stones were almost perfectly cut. Their sides were flat as could be. On top of that, they were placed right where Del had left the two bodies.

The first instinct was caution. When a monster did something unusual, the first instinct was always to wonder if it was using magic. Magic tended to be far less predictable than any effect that used toral. Del was fairly certain the beastmen he had just fought had been of the rain stage, so they shouldn’t have had access to magic, but something else could be around.

Lynx dropped his arm, and Del watched in shock as the scholar picked up the stones, examining them closer. “They have Mooncraven glyphs!”

Del joined him and they looked at the stones together. They weren’t glyphs that Del could identify, but even with all his tomes abandoned, Lynx was able to recognize them. “They’re craftsman marks.”

“Craftsman marks?” Del repeated dumbly.

“We’ve found plenty of these exact glyphs used to denote parts of…well things, usually things that fit together. Mostly they’ve been found on the legs of tables.”

“Table legs?” Del repeated, working to follow the line of thought.

“Yeah. One of the few documented research expeditions into a Mooncraven ruin found that the tables used in each home were identical. Each of the table legs were denoted with a different glyph, the same ones for every table.” Lynx held up the two stones in glee. “The glyphs on these stones are the same as found on the back-right table legs.”

“Huh.” Del looked at the stones uncertainly. There was something about them that felt somehow familiar. It was something quite subtle, so realization took a moment, but when it came it was like a bolt of lightning. The stones gave off the same feeling that Cas’ sword did. A wave of revulsion rose up, and Del was forced to turn away.

Del felt Lynx’s eyes digging into his back with impatience and then the question came. “What is it?”

“I think those stones hold the beastmen’s spirit. They give off an odd…sensation.” Del couldn’t describe it better, but he felt it all the same, and it was difficult to ignore.

Lynx sat down for a minute and seemed to be thinking. Del took the break himself and focused on inhaling toral. He needed to refill his torm after his fight earlier and he was willing to do anything to ignore the stones that his companion studied closely.

When his torm finished refilling, Lynx didn’t seem anywhere closer to an answer. Del took him by the shoulder again and led them onward. The cave stretched on, endless as ever. They walked until Del thought the sun must have already risen. On three more occasions they encountered beastmen. The fights played out much the same. Each time Del accumulated more bruises, and Lynx added more stones to his collection.

Throughout their journey, Lynx’s face grew gradually paler. Though he didn’t seem to be getting noticeably weaker, Del insisted on changing the bandages frequently.

Just when Del had about given up hope, the pair hobbled around one more turn and they came upon a massive door built of the same stone as the labyrinth above. It seemed out of place after so long spent wandering through the cave.

Eight slots were fitted into the door, each carved with the same glyph as the stones. Keys. Another wave of revulsion came over Del as Lynx inserted their collection. They were certainly in the right place. These stones could easily have been made by the very device that had crushed Cas’ body. There had even been beastmen there.

When the last stone was placed, the door grinded against the stone below it, pulling open of its own accord. Beyond it was a wall, a wall covered with glyphs, the same ones repeated many times over, chaotically circling each other. The whole was unsettling, and Del stopped in his tracks to give Lynx time to decipher the message.

“You have been tested, now you must prove yourself worthy.”

Del looked at the wall in worry. Such a simple message and it looked to have been carved by some kind of crazed fanatic. An image of one of the statues from above carving that message over and over came to mind, and he shuddered. What had the Mooncraven been, what had driven them? The path past the wall waited.

Their steps echoed in the chamber beyond, and Lynx shrugged off Del’s shoulder. For his part, Del appreciated the freedom of movement. The chamber reeked of danger. A purple mist hung in the air, obscuring his natural senses. His toral sense though had no trouble picking up what lay beyond. Power of a dozen types.

The mist began to swirl, twisting in on itself, and the toral that permeated the air followed. Del felt his heartbeat against his chest. His hand went to where the hilt of his sword would normally be in an instinctive ready stance. He had to take a breath when his hand found nothing. On his back, a brief surge of emotion came from Cas, fear, fear for his friend.

When the mist finished consolidating, the chamber was revealed. Three exits were shown. To the right and the left, stairs were carved, leading up and out. Directly across from Del though, a room packed with scrolls and tomes could be seen. Exactly what they were looking for. The only thing that stood in their way was a teenager, probably someone Del’s own age.

The stranger’s body was toned in familiar ways, and their stance was familiar too. It was a swordsman standing in front of him even if no sword rested at their side. Their eyes were closed tight.

Del took a step forward and those eyes opened. Del stopped. From the teenager’s mouth, a mismatched voice came out. It carried with it every scrap of warmth the most loving father could produce.

“Caspian, Delphin I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

That warmth took Del back to a time he had forgotten. Odd memories came to mind. He remembered spending a month studying with a baker, he remembered a Sage wholly outside of his element trying to sell him and his cousin on the wonders of the profession. “A baker’s surrounded by good smells and good eats their whole lives. I’d wager they help more people than most warriors could ever hope to.”

Del had shaken his head obstinately, not wanting to hear any more, he wanted to save people like the Sage had saved him, he had no interest in baking. The Sage’s response had taken on a pleading tone, “It’s safe too.”

Del shook the thoughts from his mind and fought to clear it of the panic that burst forward. His former master couldn’t be here. He was dead, and even if he wasn’t he had never looked like this. Even so, Del knew who he was looking at with certainty.

The Sage of blades looked down at his new body with disinterest before returning his gaze to his surroundings. When he spoke again, there was no trace of warmth. “Delphin. I know where we are, and you will not pass. Take the stairs. Leave and become the warrior I gave you the tools to be.”

Del struggled to keep his feet planted, to keep his hips from turning towards the staircase. The Sage was the embodiment of strength and the definition of authority. Del’s mind screamed. The strong decide the rules of engagement. There is no going against a sage.

Del would have left then and there if he hadn’t lived with Cas on his back for over a year. Every day Del had reached out to his cousin, and every day he got nothing back except the same darkness. “Why? Your legacy.” The words had to be torn from his lips as his body and mind struggled to turn him towards the stairs.

“Legacy!” The Sage gave a chilling laugh. “I don’t want a legacy. I’m a murderer, a thief, and worse. I just want you two to have a chance to get the one thing you’ve always wanted. I won’t allow anyone, even yourselves take that chance away.”

Del didn’t need the answer. He already knew it. The words had just been a way to steel himself and buy some time. He dug his nails into his own palm, and forced his body into a stance, an aggressive stance.

The Sage responded in a fraction. No sword lay in his hands, and Del could feel that the body the sage controlled had little more toral than his own, certainly less than Arian’s. Even still, the Sage’s body cut across the chamber in the time it took for Del to blink. Enwreathed in a technique almost identical to what he had pulled off when dodging the tree, the sage appeared behind him.

Del turned, forcing his own incomplete enhancement technique into place, knowing he wouldn’t be fast enough. When no attack landed, a feeling of unease crept over Del. His former master was always sharp. He would never miss.

When Del’s turn finished, he saw where the attack had landed, not on him, but on Lynx, already helpless from his earlier wound. The young scholar’s coat split, the blade of force the Sage had formed used mere wisps of force toral, wisps pulled from the spirit realm by Del’s rapid turn. So efficient was the use of that toral that the scholar’s coat was cut cleanly along a stitch with no frayed edges. The scholar’s skin even empowered by what toral Lynx had been able to call forth was cut with equal ease.

The Sage was back where he started before Lynx met the ground. “Your ally will bleed out if you stay here. Take him to safety and cauterize the wound.” Del’s former master gestured to the stairway. “I made sure to be precise with my incision. He won’t die if you don’t stay.”

Del looked to the stairs again, every fiber of his being screaming at him to leave, to take Lynx to safety. He would have done it too if not for Lynx.

A fire burned in the young scholar’s hand. Even as Del looked on, he brought it to his chest, examining the wound and then setting his hand with a fierce cry.

Something caught in Del’s throat. He turned to his former master. His voice was rough. “We won’t let you weigh the lives of others.”

Del felt a pulse of agreement from Cas. When the Sage surged forward again, Del matched his speed, and caught his blade of force with one of equal efficiency, one fueled by the understanding of two disciples.

The Sage didn’t bat an eye. The display did nothing to shake him. He followed through with a flurry of strikes calling forth decades of skill and experience that Del had no chance to match. Force toral bit into Del’s arms, drawing shallow cut after shallow cut. The Sage sought to set his disciples fleeing, but Del fought through the pain, fought against the fear that held him, and kept pushing his way forward.

…

Arian woke to the sound of stone grinding against stone. A slight pressure pushed her against the damp floor. Her body was heavy, but her thoughts were light. She had seen her second in danger. Again, for a moment the thought of leaving him had seemed sound—she could get another second; she could never help the people of Lufaria if she died in an ancient ruin. But… “I passed my test.”

And she lived. Arian pulled herself up, an intrepid smile creeping across her face. The last thing she remembered was being helplessly thrown about in the dark, pulled along by water and force, the very tools she’d thought she had mastered. A lump on her head spoke to why she didn’t remember anything after that.

A look around revealed she was in a box of inklike stone, and it was moving, rising. Up was good. Up was the way out, and Arian knew what she wanted to do as soon as she got out. Snow material. She needed to fuse her spirit with her body. She needed the power of magic. Anything else would be putting her life and those she was meant to protect in danger.

As if some unseen entity was listening to her thoughts, the box stopped moving, and one of the walls opened up. What stood before Arian was something out of her very best dreams. A majestic stag stood in a tunnel before her, lit up by its radiant antlers that curled around each other, forming a crown on its head.

A Sun-Monarch, the very creature Arian’s father had hunted for his own snow material. Its antlers didn’t just represent power, they represented a perfect future for her. The opportunity to do every bit of good for Lufaria that she had always dreamed of.

She approached it carefully, slowly, calmly. The stag looked up. Their eyes met, and it took off. Arian started up her azure veil and was in pursuit. To her surprise, the beast wasn’t fast. In fact, she was gaining on it easily. She would be on it in moments.

Arian never should have glanced to the side when they came to a crossroads. She regretted it as soon as she did. What she saw made this dreamlike moment into a choice. Stairs led down into a chamber. In the chamber, Delphin fought against an impossible opponent.

In the fraction of the second she looked over, Arian could tell that Delphin’s opponent was beyond him, beyond her, and beyond both of them together. The reason wasn’t the toral—Arian had more. It was the skill on display. He manifested blades out of mere drifts of toral, and they felt more dangerous than any technique she had ever seen—even more refined than what she had seen from her second. Delphin was somehow catching many of those attacks, but his opponent was clearly toying with him. Blood splattered from numerous shallow wounds.

A shudder ran down Arian’s spine, but she still considered going to help Delphin. There wasn’t anything she could do. Down one path, there was certain success and the ability to improve the lives of countless people. Down the other, only guaranteed doom. It was no choice at all, and Arian had already passed her test. She planted her foot and unleashed a jet sending her forwards. Forwards towards doom.

…

Del wasn’t enough, not even working with Cas. Every time he tried to push forward, the sage would just block his attack and make a shallow cut with his offhand. He couldn’t retreat. If he did, his former master would take Lynx as a hostage to force him to leave. The stalemate was hopeless too. Every moment that passed, Del was burning through his toral. His techniques may have been able to match his opponent’s for strength, but his toral was plummeting and the sage had barely made a dent in his.

The situation changed when Arian came in. The most powerful jet Del had ever seen come from her smacked the sage from point blank range. In the moment, Del had no idea what was going on, but he kept his focus intact and pursued his master before he could recover. He went low, building a technique around Cas.

The sage, totally caught off guard, trapped in an unfamiliar body, and working with a tiny fraction of the toral he would normally have at his disposal still did not give an inch. When Del slashed at him with the best technique he had ever produced, it was deflected to the side. When Arian arrived behind him, delivering another jet from above, that too was blocked by a near-invisible blade of force toral.

Del worked with Arian to try to capitalize something from the surprise attack, but the pair had no hope of matching the skill of a sage. After a few more parries, slashes from force blades forced Arian to launch herself backwards.

“You think friends and companions will help you to overcome my will?” Del’s former master had a face of total calm, the very face he had drilled Del and Cas to master. “I will admit there can be strength in numbers, but Caspian, Delphin, numbers are no crutch for skill or power.” Del attacked, but the sage blocked with one blade. In the other, or rather next to the other, a blade came into being. “There are times in a warrior’s life when everything they have done, everything they are, is not enough. That’s why you two need to be more.” The blade finished forming, and it shot towards Arian, who was rushing forward. The blade broke through the jets she moved to defend herself, they broke through her force toral, and they cut into her, opening a brutal wound from hip to shoulder.

Arian tried to keep moving forward, but Del could see her body didn’t move the way she wanted. She let out an awful shriek and fell to the ground.

Del attacked with everything that he had, but nothing worked. Shallow cuts began appearing all over his body once again. Then something changed. A blast of water took the sage from the side. This time though, it wasn’t a total surprise. The water was cut from the air. The fist that Arian followed with was turned away too. The real surprise for Del’s former master came in the form of a recently unconscious scholar’s ball of fire.

It shouldn’t have been any threat to the sage, and it wasn’t really. Even with all of the restrictions that came with his new body, even being attacked from multiple angles in ways his senses had no right to pick up, the Sage still barely left an opening.

Del took full advantage of the momentary break his friends had chosen to risk their lives for. He linked with Cas for one final technique and into it, they each passed every fraction of insight their former master’s training had ever given them. At the very last moment the sage got a blade of force in front of the attack, but it was only partially complete. Cas’ blade found purchase. The blade was cut, then the thin layer of toral protecting the Sage’s neck was breached.

The moment the technique cut through, their master’s spirit left what they were fighting, and the head of an inanimate stone mannequin went flying.

Del rushed to Arian first, but she was already treating her own wound. She was clearly in pain, but since she was moving, the wound must not have been as bad as it had initially looked. Lynx was unconscious again. He’d probably only regained his senses for a moment before launching that attack. Del smiled. He promised he would make sure the scholar got all the texts he could want.

That led Del to the room in front of him. Scrolls and tomes lined every inch of the walls. As he approached, it was plain to see the room was nothing more than an entryway. Beyond lay the promise of long-abandoned knowledge.

There was only one thing that Del was interested in, and the first half of it, he suspected, lay at his feet. A stone mannequin capable of housing a spirit. Surprisingly, the head Del had cut off was simple to seal back onto the body. It only took a little investigation, and a tiny sip of toral.

…

Arian was hurting, the Sun-Monarch was gone—she had checked—and Lynx was still out and in awful shape. Still, she was alive and her second was too. Nothing stood between them and their original objective.

The entryway to the Mooncraven library already looked to contain more knowledge than Lynx’s whole abode, and likely much more valuable information too. When Delphin opened the door to the main library though, Arian was blown away. She couldn’t see walls or a ceiling, just endless quantities of shelves. Most held books, or scrolls, but one section nearby held a series of ornate wooden boxes, and others held dried herbs and other such oddities.

Arian was lost in the moment when a deep voice brought her back to her senses. “You have been tested and you have proven yourself worthy, but you do not have free reign of our collection.”

From the shadows of one of the bookshelves, a statue sat up from its stone chair. Two of its arms grabbed books from the shelf it sat in front of. As it strolled towards them, a third arm grabbed one of the ornate wooden boxes.

Arian realized with a start that it was not made of stone like she had thought, instead the stonelike appearance was from an incredibly thick coating of dust that fell off the creature as it approached them. “You’re one of the Mooncraven!”

“Yes.” The being spoke, its voice deep and rumbling. “That is what your people call us in your tongue.”

Delphin was tensed as if ready to defend himself. Arian could understand the feeling. The Mooncraven came across less as a human and more as a monster. It towered over them, standing at least double their height, and its eyes. They were alive with swirling darkness. Toral of a kind she had never run into spun through the black irises. And… “I thought you were all dead.”

“Ahh.” The creature mused. “That is the nature of thought. It is usually wrong.”

Arian stayed quiet as the Mooncraven settled itself in front of her and Delphin.

“It has been some time since I have rewarded one who has proven themselves worthy.” One arm held out a book. “For your scholar friend, I think this selection will enlighten him to the questions that currently spin through his mind.”

Arian took the book carefully, doing her best to avoid meeting the thing’s stare. Del looked the creature in the eye though and asked. “Is that all you can give him? I think he would prefer as much knowledge as he could carry.”

The Mooncraven seemed to consider that for a moment then left. When it came back, it carried a small stack of books. “Some knowledge we want humanity to have.” The entity tapped the original book that still lay in Arian’s arms, “I urge you to warn your friend that there is often reason behind incorrect thoughts.”

The creature held out the ornate box next. “The knowledge of books is not well-suited to what you seek princess.”

Arian winced. She had no idea how this thing knew her birth. She took the box anyways. When she opened it, a rolling sound came from it, and she had to try hard to keep her stomach from vacating. There were a pair of eyes in the box, and the toral that ran through them looked almost identical to the Mooncraven that stood before her.

“The eyes of my brethren are not often given out, but the one who donated these requested they be given to someone with lofty goals so that they may have a chance to learn what it means to be a wise and stubborn queen.”

Arian nodded and stepped back. The last book the creature offered with a single word and a knowing look. “Instructions.”

…

Delphin stood staring at the stone mannequin. He had pored over the book he had been given, not sleeping since he’d got his hands on it. He’d followed each and every instruction carefully. Most importantly, he’d modified and enlarged the hollow space in its chest. Inside it now was Cas.

Del sent a thread of toral into the mannequin, and a mist obscured it. Del held his breath, repeatedly trying to check his bond with Cas. Something was blocking him though. For a horrible moment, Del thought he had done something wrong, but then a voice came out of the mist, and then a familiar form.

“Del?”

“Cas!” Del nearly tackled his cousin. “You’re alright?”

“Yeah.” Cas said. “Thanks Del.”

The pair both kept their faces blank, a habit of years, but the moment danced between them.

…

When Arian finally saw the sky again, it was still dark. It seemed impossible, but the moons and stars were in the same position as when they had gone down. It was like they hadn’t even been down there a single night. “Delphin what in the world…”

Delphin looked back at her, his eyes, still partially pulled towards the stars above, had more life in them than she’d ever seen. “I’d like it if you’d call me Del, and yeah I’m seeing it too.”

Caspian grinned up at the heavens as well. He carried Lynx on his back. “In that case, I’ll expect to be called Cas.”