Elijah burst through the gate, eliciting an ear-splitting screech as the pivot points were ripped free. The gate itself flew inward, crashing to the ground with a heavy clatter that echoed through the corridor beyond. A second later, the shield associated with Bestial Charge winked out, and Elijah let out a deep but satisfied breath.

After resuming his human form, he turned to the others and said, “Told you I could get through it.”

“Literally no one claimed you couldn’t,” Sadie pointed out. “We just said that you shouldn’t.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked with a grin.

“Bro.”

“Seriously, Elijah,” said Ron.

“I thought it was cool,” Kurik said. “I did use that word right, didn’t I? Cool used to describe somethin’ good doesn’t sound right.”

“Your flawed judgement aside, you used the term correctly,” Sadie said, stepping past Elijah to take her position at the front of their established formation. “Hopefully, we’re not swarmed by hobgoblins that have been alerted to our presence.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Elijah pleaded. “We looked for another way to get them open, but –”

“For less than five minutes,” she pointed out.

Elijah replied, “I was bored.”

“You need to learn some patience, bro. I can teach you some meditative techniques if you want,” Dat offered.

“My daughter was the same way,” Ron added. “But once she found her calling as a Tailor, she settled down. Now, her biggest issue is that she tends to hyperfocus. I have a therapist friend who could help –”

“I don’t have a problem,” Elijah muttered. “Can we just go? I feel like everyone’s ganging up on me.”

“I didn’t say nothin’.”

“Except Kurik. My only true friend.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the dwarf said. “I only barely tolerate you, and that’s mostly ‘cause you get me levels and might kill everyone in my city if I offend you.”

“What? I wouldn’t do that!”

“You literally threatened it nine times when you first came to Ironshore,” the dwarf said. Then, he adopted what he probably thought was an approximation of Elijah’s voice, raising his fist as he said, “’Don’t mess with me, or I’ll murder everyone in their sleep. Even the kids.’ That’s basically what you said. Nine times. I counted.”

“I didn’t…you know what? I’m done with this conversation. Let’s just go,” Elijah said before letting out a long-suffering sigh. Then, under his breath, he said, “So unfair.”

Sure, he had threatened the people of Ironshore, but that had been entirely justified at the time. After all, they’d just sent a fifty-person force to kill him and take his grove. Then, that Rogue – Elijah had forgotten the goblin’s name – had tried to ambush him in the tower. By all accounts, his actions had been completely understandable.

“He’s right,” Sadie said. Then, she gave a slight, barely noticeable smirk of her own before adding, “This time.”

Elijah rolled his eyes, but as annoyed he was, he was even more grateful that they were moving on. So, in a combined attempt to establish the nature of his surroundings and ignore the unfair criticism leveled in his direction, he focused on the corridor. The gate led to a fairly simple hall whose defining characteristic was that it was made entirely of polished black stone.

“Is this onyx?” he asked, resting his hand on one of the square pillars carved into the wall. “Or obsidian?”

“What’s the difference?” asked Dat.

“Obsidian is volcanic glass,” Elijah said. “Onyx is a variety of quartz. And saying that, I realize how unnecessary my question was. Given the environment, it’s obviously obsidian. But it’s usually too brittle to use for building material.”

“Magic, bro.”

“Touche.”

The hall itself was mostly unadorned, save for the squared columns. It gave the design aesthetic a brutalist cast that was accentuated by the all-black décor. When Elijah looked up, he gave a slight start upon seeing that the ceiling seemed to have been made of slowly flowing lava. Upon further inspection, he saw that it was all contained by ethera.

“Definitely magic.”

Once they’d wrapped their heads around their surroundings, the group set off down the corridor. After only a few steps, Elijah saw a notification flash before his inner eye:

You have reached Emberstone Keep. To conquer the Challenge of Ignis, overcome the invader known as Cinderath.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Reward: Seed of the Ash Lotus

“Emberstone Keep. It fits,” Sadie said. “And the target is an invader. What do we think that means?”

“There’s no telling,” Ron said. “For all we know, it means that this boss is an invader from a different country. I know we’ve been functioning under the assumption that these people were monolithic, but –”

“They’re not. The natives, I mean. There’s evidence of three different factions. Obviously, there’s the ta’alaki and the ka’alaki, and I think they were at odds. Like, the ta’alaki were part of a lower caste, probably because they were seen as more bestial in nature. Then there are the wraiths. I’m not sure how they fit into the hierarchy. Maybe they don’t. It’s possible that they are to the ka’alaki as apes are to humans. But I think there’s more to it,” Elijah explained. Then, he saw the expressions on everyone else’s faces. “What?”

“How do you know that?” Ron asked.

“I pay attention. And I explore. There’s a ton of information out there for anyone who wants to find it,” he pointed out. “Not that I’ve found anything that can help us. Except for that guide that mentioned some sort of bane weapon for the Lightning Emperor, but just knowing about it isn’t that helpful, especially when the person who made the thing already died.

“My point is that we know there were multiple factions on this world. Probably dozens at the very least,” Elijah added. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t at least as many countries as on Earth. Likely far more, considering that this planet is much larger than our planet. And that’s not even considering historical factions. I mean, I know we’re looking at this as a manufactured and curated set of challenges, and it’s definitely that. But it’s more, too. This is a living, breathing world populated by civilizations with history longer than humanity’s entire existence. Forgetting that seems like a good way to end up dead. Or with inferior gains.”

That definitely didn’t wipe the expressions of surprise from his friends’ faces, and Sadie seemed particularly shocked. That was somewhat gratifying, but it was extremely annoying as well. While he knew he didn’t always take every situation as seriously as he probably should have, the idea that his companions were shocked that he knew things was more than a little disheartening.

“I see,” Sadie said after a moment. “Anything else you’d like to add?”

Elijah shook his head. “No. Not right now. But I can’t be the only person who finds the idea that this world was excised from the World Tree interesting. And relevant. I don’t know what happened here, but I do know that I want Earth to avoid this world’s fate.”

“That is remarkably well put,” Ron said.

“It is, but for now, we need to focus on surviving this challenge. I don’t think any of us believes it will be easy,” Sadie added. Then, to Elijah, she said, “Just let us know if you find anything that’s relevant to the current situation.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” he said with a rakish grin and a crisp salute. At that, Sadie rolled her eyes.

After that brief discussion, the group continued on. The hall itself was hundreds of yards long and completely without off-shoots, so they didn’t linger. When they reached the end of the corridor a few minutes later, they found themselves facing another gate. Elijah let everyone search for a way inside, but in the end, he was forced to repeat his actions and break through it.

Secretly, he loved that. Or given his obvious eagerness, perhaps not so secretly.

Regardless, he broke through the gate, revealing a sizable chamber that looked a lot like a lobby. The room was perhaps fifty yards wide, with a multitude of exits. The architecture was similar to what they’d seen in the hall, though with a few extra flourishes that said it was meant to be functional as well as attractive. The most noticeable of those features was the floor, which was covered in patterned tiles that formed a huge, orange flame that seemed to shimmer in the light emanating from the magma that flowed through the ceiling.

In the center of that flame was a statue, though none of them could see precisely what it was intended to depict, because it had been so thoroughly melted that the details had been entirely lost.

“What do you think it was?” asked Ron, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.

“Looks humanoid,” Elijah said.

“Maybe the owner of the keep?” suggested Dat.

“Ain’t no tellin’,” Kurik pointed out. “Best to move on.”

That seemed like a good course of action, but the question remained regarding which way they were intended to go. There were nine exits, and after a cursory inspection, it wasn’t obvious what differentiated between them. As far as they could tell, one direction was as good as any other.

So, they picked one at random, then proceeded down the corresponding hall. It looked similar to the one leading into the Emberstone keep, though it was much narrower. After about an hour, the hall opened up into another chamber, though this one had clearly been the site of a battle. The walls looked wet, though when Elijah inspected them more closely, he saw that the obsidian had actually been melted at some point. As a result, the surface bore ripples where the semi-liquid result had flowed down the walls, then hardened as it cooled.

But they were all much more concerned with the bodies.

There were dozens of them, all grouped into two clumps. When Elijah reached out to touch one, it crumbled in on itself, starting a chain reaction that filled the air with ash. He coughed, covering his mouth, and when he regained his composure, he said, “They were ta’alaki.”

“Some ka’alaki over here,” Dat said from the other group. He hadn’t touched them, but the movement of his passage had elicited a similar reaction. They crumbled as well, and after a few seconds, nothing remained but piles of grey ash.

“What could do something like that?” asked Ron.

“I don’t know,” Elijah admitted, but one thing he knew was that it definitely didn’t bode well. Suddenly, their flippant attitudes from before felt entirely out of place. “This is as much a tomb as the last challenge.”

That statement proved to be true when they moved on, finding more natives who’d been turned to ash along the way. Elijah lost count of the number of people who’d died, but it had progressed into the hundreds. So, he was more than relieved when they reached the end of the path. Instead of being confronted with another gate, they found a pair of double doors that were more than thirty feet tall and made of dense stone engraved with more depictions of the same flame design that had decorated the lobby’s floor.

When Elijah tried the door, it swung open effortlessly.

“That’s troubling,” he muttered to himself as a blast of intense heat billowed out from the opening. That wasn’t unsurprising. The entire area was hot enough that it would have killed a normal person from Earth within minutes. But with Ward of the Seasons, he didn’t have to worry about heat exhaustion or, as the intensity of that wave of heat suggested was possible, combustion.

Still, it wasn’t comfortable.

In any case, the heat was only a secondary concern, because Elijah’s full attention was occupied by two things. First, the doors opened into an enormous cavern – it was miles wide, and he suspected many times deeper than that – crisscrossed with glittering black bridges. At various intersections, webworks of crystal lattice enclosed large, castle-sized platforms.

By anyone’s measure, it was a beautiful – if imposing – sight.

However, in terms of garnering Elijah’s attention, it fell far short of the area’s other feature.

“Are those giants?” asked Dat in a whisper.

“I think so,” Elijah answered.