Time and time again, people have tried to find their leaders and sought to interrogate their members. The few they managed to capture died before they could be questioned, their life extinguished from one heartbeat to another.

Then, one fateful night, those leading the investigation simply vanished, never to be seen again. In each of the residences, the Conclave’s triangle had been painted on the walls, the message clear. Be it a poor man’s hovel or a rich man’s manor; death does not discriminate.

Excerpt from Collections on the Dark Conclave by Ulfur Tomansson

They left the mortuary with dust on their tongues, their feet dragging along the sandstone. “We need to rest,” Nurana said between breaths.

“Not here. Things could approach us from a hundred directions in this maze, we need to find a house or some place with only one or two entries.”

Zaya nodded. “How much food left?”

“Too little.” They didn’t even have enough rations for the rest of the day. They needed to find something, soon.

For once, however, luck seemed to be on their side. Ahead of them, the maze opened up, revealing a wide hallway with multiple caves carved into either side, a square metal platform at the end. Some kind of panel stood at its right, strange metal buttons and levers of varying length under it.

“Let’s check the caves and see whether we can use one of them to rest in.”

“What be this?” Zaya pointed at the platform at the end of the hallway.

“I don’t know, maybe some ritual circle?” Silas shrugged.

“Doesn’t seem likely. The ancient Drakhonians were a people of innovators and scientists and not known for their piety.”

“Creak,” Gnarly agreed.

“What’s this for, then?”

“Let’s find out,” Nurana said, strides lengthening as she approached the panel.

“I don’t think it be good idea touch that,” Zaya voiced her doubts.

To his own surprise, Silas found himself agreeing with her. The group immediately halted as a repeated tapping came from somewhere behind them, the sound gradually getting louder. Silas took out his bow and nocked an arrow.

“Sounds like whatever we heard before followed us all the way up here. Any idea what it could be?” he asked with a glance towards Nurana, who took up position behind them.

“Could be anything, really.”

Silas grunted. The tapping momentarily stopped before something emerged from the hallways and crawled along the walls with multiple scaled legs. “Don’t lizards normally have four legs instead of six?” Silas asked as he charged his powershot. His Inner Landscape was emptier than he would’ve liked, but he would have to make do.

“They also don’t make any sound while walking, I wonder why this one does.”

“Kill first, study later!” Zaya ordered as she launched a rock at the creature. Letting itself fall down, the Sandcrawler locked eyes with Silas, who was almost done charging his arrow. Red, pulsing veins began to appear between the creature’s scales, reminding him of the scuttlers they had seen in the tunnel.

Focusing on the creature’s torso, Silas released his arrow in an explosion of force, taking out his spear as soon as the arrow left the string. With how fast it had dodged Zaya’s attack, he doubted he’d get the chance to shoot another arrow. He didn’t have many left, either.

The creature stood stock-still for a second before it simply disappeared in a cloud of sand. The arrow collided with the wall uselessly, its wooden shaft breaking.

“Where…,” Silas began, only to stop as he saw the creature appear a couple of feet in front of him, now running over the other side of the wall. Silas inwardly cursed. For the creature to be able to move that fast, it had to have developed some kind of Art.

Mouth opening, the reptile lunged at Silas. Shield swiveling to hit the creature’s head, Silas sidestepped while doing a long thrust at the incoming Sandcrawler. Its fangs narrowly missed his head, its dry tongue licking his cheek as it flew by, his spear grazing off its scales. The moment it touched the ground, attacks rained down on it. Two thick vines held it down from either side while Zaya kept bombarding it with rocks. Its red veins bulged noticeably, the creature straining to free itself from the bonds.

Aiming with one hand, Silas shoved the rest of his energy into his spear before throwing it right at the creature’s head. For a moment, he was afraid his trusty weapon would break, but the metal tip buried itself into its skull, the creature shuddering for a few more moments before going still.

“Good teamwork,” he commented as he pulled his spear back out of the Sandcrawler’s head.

“Creak!” Gnarly held a fist out to Zaya, who bumped it with a rare smile.

Nurana had stayed back the whole time, hands on her knees. “Are you ok?” Silas asked her.

“I’m fine, I just need to rest. The fight earlier took a lot out of me.”

“What be that? Earlier, you say you not can fight,” Zaya squinted her eyes at the Drakh.

“Can we eat something first? I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

“Yeah, about that…” Silas threw a look at the dead lizard, bits of slushy brain flowing out of its crushed skull.

“I help prepare,” Zaya took out a curved knife hanging from her hip.

Nurana stood there, wide eyed, looking with obvious disgust at the carcass. “You seriously want to eat that?”

“Of course. Much hunger. Taste like chicken,” Zaya replied, licking her lips as she knelt down beside the Sandcrawler.

The statement caught Silas completely off-guard. Laughter bubbled in his stomach, forcing its way through his lungs and out of his mouth. His whole chest shook, and he had to wipe his eyes to avoid cutting himself.

“What? Taste good, you will see.”

“Thanks, Zaya, I really needed that.”

“No problem, little boy,” she replied with a smirk, her green eyes shining with mirth.

Silas shook his head with a chuckle as he resumed skinning the animal. Even now, the red veins were still glowing, shining through the creature’s skin. They removed them wherever they could, but there were just too many to cut them all out. The caves turned out to be surprisingly empty, only bits of discarded metal lying scattered around. Settling down in one of them, they collected the few bits of wood they managed to find together with some pieces of dried dung to start a small fire.

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“This isn’t quite how I imagined my first adventure to go,” Nurana grumbled as she scrunched up her nose at the smell coming from the fire.

“Why not?” Zaya asked, visibly confused.

Nurana looked at her with a blank expression. “We are literally using shit to make a fire.”

“Yes, and it burns much good,” Zaya replied, unfazed.

“Thank you,” Silas added, whose idea it had been to collect the pieces of dung. Something Tom had taught him once. “If out of wood, using shit, you should.” Silas still wasn’t sure whether the old man hadn’t just made it up on the spot.

Laying her head back, Nurana let out a long sigh. “You guys are quite the pair, you know that?”

Silas stiffened. Zaya kept her eyes focused on the pieces of meat that fizzled above the fire, the flames giving light to the slight blush in her cheeks.

A moment passed before Zaya raised her head looked at Nurana expectantly. “So, what you do earlier?

Nurana’s eyes flickered between Zaya and Silas. “Before I start, you need to know that I didn’t choose any of this. All I want to do is be a better healer. I have nothing, and let me repeat that, nothing to do with the Dark Arts.”

Silas, Zaya and Gnarly nodded hesitantly, the latter creaking at her to continue. “The servants of Ixchel are very competent healers. At the same time, however, they are absolutely devoted to Ixchel, the goddess of life. This, in turn, brings with it a deep-rooted hatred of anything relating to the Dark Arts.”

“Like what?” Silas asked her.

“Like the Art of shadows, darkness, undeath, deceit, rot, and so on and so forth. When I first got taken in, the healers where overjoyed to discover I had an affinity for flesh, one of the few Arts used by both healers and other Artists. I evolved it into my Art after only three years under their tutelage, pushing me into the realm of a Wielder.”

Silas ripped a chunk of lizard flesh out of the leg sizzling over the flames. Huh. It really did taste like chicken.

“Then why did you leave? And why did the Guild want to kill you?” he asked before remembering to swallow first.

Nurana huffed, head hanging down. “I didn’t leave. I got thrown out like trash. The same people that saved me from the streets, nurtured me, and trained me to become one of their own abandoned me from one moment to the other. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“But why?”

“Because I…” Nurana began, her jaw clenching. “When I started getting trained as healer, I also seemed to have a knack for discovering when people were close to their deaths. I could just… feel it somehow, you know? Nobody quite figured out how I did it, but every time a patient’s status began to deteriorate, I just knew it. Felt it deep in my bones. It wasn’t until I had become a Wielder and began to search for my other affinities when the truth began to emerge.”

The Drakh hesitated for a moment, as if unsure how to continue. “The reason why I know when people are close to their deaths is because I can feel when the grip of death is taking a hold of them. I managed to defend ourselves from the attack of the Ghoul because I have the same affinity it had. Although, as vast as the Art is, it is a wonder I managed to control it at all.”

“So what other affinity do you have?” Silas asked after Nurana didn’t immediately continue.

Nurana’s eyes flickered between both of them, shoulders hunched together. “Death,” she said, barely audible. “I’m a healer with the affinities of flesh and death. A joke, if you ask me.”

“Creak, creak,” Gnarly tried to console her.

“If the Dark Conclave would have found me, who knows what kind of Artist I would have turned into.”

“So what?” Zaya grabbed another steak roasting over the flames before eagerly burying her face in it.

“Not important what affinities or Arts you have,” came her muffled comment. “Be important how you use them,” she said while wiggling her steak in Nurana’s direction. “And you be healer. Good healer. Also, dark Arts can be much useful. Not all need be bad.”

“Sometimes even shit can be used to start a fire,” Silas said, nodding. “What? I was saying something nice,” he defended himself after noticing their stares.

“And how will I use the Art of death for something good without turning into a ghoul or something worse? I’m a healer, not a necromancer. So far, however, all I did was run. If it weren’t for you guys, I would’ve been dead ten times over.”

“And idiot boy be dead ten times without you healing him,” Zaya jabbed a thumb at Silas.

“Silas, Zaya. My name is Silas.”

“Sure, sure,” she waved him off.

Silas struggled to get the twitch in his eye under control before he returned his attention to Nurana. “Besides, you have just discovered your affinity. Death is definitely not a simple concept, so I’d be surprised if you could use it after just a few weeks. Give yourself some time, I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough. And if you want to train, we can always spar a bit,” Silas offered.

“Spar…” Nurana began, “with the affinity of Death.”

“Boy has thick head,” Zaya said through a mouthful of food. “Be fine.”

Nurana smiled, then seemed to remember something. “You have a very unique fighting style as well, Silas. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone move so fast. What Art was that?”

Silas hesitated. Tom had cautioned him not to tell anyone about his training as a Ravuhn. Nobody in Ceraviehl knew about it, after all. Maybe if they weren’t stuck in a tainted ruin of an ancient city where everything wanted to kill them, Silas might have cared to keep his secret. But not here, not now.

“My master taught me how to enhance my body like a Ravuhn. They are a tribe of Adjhin’torian warriors, I believe.” Silas glanced at Zaya for confirmation.

“Yes and no. Ravuhn be special warriors of Hatagin tribe of my people, Adjhin’tor. Ravuhn have much powerful bodies and be fast. But never combine with Arts. Not think be possible.”

“Wait really? But it is possible, I am using the Arts together with this Ravuhn body enhancement, after all.”

Zaya gave him a contemplative look. “I know, just say that normally, not possible. You be different. Not know why.”

Silas smiled, suddenly feeling very good about himself.

“But your master wasn’t Adjhin’torian?” Nurana broke Silas out of his reverie.

“No, he definitely was Ceraviehlian.”

“And you didn’t ask him how he learned their technique? I don’t think you realize how revolutionary this is, Silas,” Nurana said, baffled.

Silas chuckled. “I would have loved to see you ask him. He didn’t take like to be asked questions. Every time I did, he threw something at me, so I eventually stopped. The old man was a menace with his staff, you should have seen him.”

“I don’t know if I would want to be trained by someone like that. It sounds awful.”

Silas grunted in agreement.

“You two make quite the unusual pair. How did you meet, by the way? If I may ask.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Silas said before Zaya could respond. The wounds were still too fresh.

They were silent for a while before Nurana spoke again. “Thank both of you for…everything. I appreciate it.”

Silas shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Not like either of us has much to lose, anyway. So welcome to the team, I guess?”

“Creak!” Gnarly stood up, holding one fist over the fire, looking at each of them expectantly.

Following Gnarly’s example, they all bumped fists, the somber mood dispelled in a heartbeat. With a full belly, they extinguished the fire and decided to use the cavern to rest.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Silas announced. After the others had fallen asleep, he took out his booklet, the brown leather cover tingling his skin. He had long wanted to do a bit of reading up on the different Arts.

Arts and their Tiers

You once asked me regarding the difference between the Art of wood and trees. Arts are categorized into different tiers. At the bottom of the tiers are the elements and the most basic properties of nature, like water, heat, light, earth and air. These lower Arts build the foundation of which higher Arts are made.

The higher the Art, the more sub-Arts it may embody. Your Art of wood, for example, also includes the Arts of earth, water, light and growth, to name a few. Wood, in turn, is part of the Art of trees, which is part of the Art of forest, which is part of the Art of Nature, and so on and so forth. Multiple lower Arts may constitute higher Arts. However, keep in mind that higher Arts are not necessarily stronger since they also tend to be more difficult to control; a well-trained water Artist will beat any poorly trained flood or sea Artist.

That being said, Artists will eventually come to a point where they reach the apex of an Art. At this point, two or more Arts may be fused together to create a higher one that may then be incorporated into their Inner Landscape. A practitioner of steel and iron may try to gain the metal affinity by fusing the two together, enabling them to also gain access to the Arts of iron, copper etc. However, this is not something you need to bother yourself with yet. Focus on not dying, and you’ll do just fine. Probably.

Silas chuckled. He could hear the old man’s grumpy voice in his head as he read it, just looking for an excuse to pat him on the head. What he wouldn’t do for a bowl of rabbit stew by the fire, the warm, evening sun shining down on him, the wind bringing its mouth-watering scent with it. Nothing but untamed forest all around him, the peaceful song of the birds chirping in the trees. Tom might not have been the most patient teacher, but he had been a damn good one. Letting out a slow breath, Silas stood up to wake Zaya for her shift.