Nathariel led the way through the Night Vale Chambers. With a flick of his hand, he could blast aside magmaspawn—he conjured a pillar of flame and Arcara and swatted them with it, flinging them into the wall. They struck with an impact such that their bodies shattered.

Vayra had to clean up the remains, sometimes. One, in particular, kept writhing and snapping at them, and reaching for them with outstretched fingers.

She didn’t have any techniques that didn’t revolve around starlight, but she did have her pistol, and it worked well enough against a beaten, mostly defeated magmaspawn.

When she wasn’t cleaning up in the wake of Nathariel, she tried cycling. She didn’t have any free Arcara in her body after advancing, and she figured she’d need some eventually. Mana, however, she had plenty of.

Using the mana she had acquired while resting in the basin, she used the Burnished Flame Loop. She couldn’t hold it for long while walking, and it left her panting, but there was plenty of time to practice. And with Nathariel, there was no real danger.

This time, when she cycled, her Arcara channels seemed more…real. Not just a parallel system of blood vessels, but a true part of her body. They didn’t bulge when she pushed mana through them, and there seemed to be less blockages or resistance. Almost like it had felt when she had used the Mediator Form.

Nathariel seemed to know his way to the surface. He led them a little deeper, but then found a set of tunnels that began a steep ascent towards the surface. After a few minutes of climbing, they passed beneath the first vent of fresh air she’d seen in days. The sun was either rising or setting, and there were a few stars in the sky. She pulled her seer-core down into her hand.

Not that they needed light. Nathariel had plenty of fire to light the way. She just wanted to practice.

Throughout the rest of the day, she practiced imbuing parts of her body—parts of her inside—with starlight from the core. It still sucked lots and lots of mana, and she figured she was also losing (or using) a little Arcara when she did it, too. But when she envisioned her channels, they felt completely clean afterwards. No blockages, no charred remains.

‘And no enhanced strength,’ Phasoné lamented. ‘I’ll have to be careful when you give me control of a limb, still, or I might hurt you—without an enhanced body.’

Vayra chuckled. “If you need strength, we’ll just use that…what did you call it? Bracing technique, and you can have an arm that’s strong.”

‘Temporarily.’

“But it’ll work, and now…there are pretty much no downsides to using the Bracing technique.”

‘I suppose…’

Vayra looked forwards at Nathariel, recalling what he had said. She would never be able to overwhelm equal opponents with sheer strength, either. That meant she’d have to outwit them.

‘Or be more skilled,’ Phasoné pointed out. ‘Not that you’ve neglected combat training, but it wouldn’t hurt to turn scythework into a second nature. And your hand-to-hand? Well, that you have neglected.’

“It wouldn’t hurt, no…”

After another hour of walking at a brisk pace, Nathariel guided them to an exit. It was covered with bricks, just like the entrance had been, but he activated it the same way she had activated the entrance—with a touch of his hand, and a donation of mana.

“There shouldn’t be any restrictions on multiple people leaving the chambers at the same time,” Nathariel said, “but I haven’t tried it before. So you don’t end up stuck inside without me, you go first. If it shuts behind you, just wait until sunrise for me.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “How did you get into the Chambers and reach me? Were you following me the whole time?”

He scoffed. “I was watching from a distance ever since you arrived. When you reached the grove, I figured that it was time to help, so I entered the Chambers—no one else had entered that day.”

“You…reached me that quickly?”

“I can move swiftly if I choose.”

Vayra nodded. She glanced at the door. It showed no sign of starting to reform. “How much mana did you put in?”

Again, he scoffed. “A touch. And a touch of Admiral-stage Arcara.”

Vayra’s eyes widened. “A—Admiral? Admiral?”

“Keep saying that. You might get tired of it soon.”

She chuckled to herself. “I suppose you wouldn’t have stayed at Commodore forever…”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Now that we’ve established how much work you have to do to catch up, are you ready to get out of here?”

She looked down the hallway, through the darkness, and shuddered. She wanted nothing more than to get out of the Night Vale Chambers. “Alright, me first, I guess.”

Leaning forwards, she pushed through the faint barrier and stepped out into open air for the first time in weeks.

‘At least it’s nighttime,’ Phasoné said. ‘So we don’t burn your eyes out with sunlight.’

Vayra glanced around. The doorway deposited them in the base of a mountain valley, on shore of a river, but it wasn’t a water river. Magma flowed down it, barely glowing orange. It was nearly cool already. She suspected it was the result of a recent volcanic eruption in the mountain range.

When she looked back at the doorway, she half expected it to snap shut behind her, but it didn’t. Nathariel snapped his fingers, then said, “See? It lets anyone out whenever they want.” Then, more softly, he added, “When you’re alone, you don’t find these things out. Though, no other disciple would have required me to intervene in the Chambers…”

He stepped through the doorway, then said, “Now, my residence isn’t far. We can rest when we arrive. Unless you’d like to be disintegrated in a lava flow.”

So they walked for a few more miles. The tallest mountains were behind them, and ahead of them, only foothills. On this side of the mountains, it was warmer. When the sun rose, it felt like the middle of a summer day, and when it was at its peak, it felt like she was standing right next to an oven. If it wasn’t for the clouds of ash blotting out most of the sky, it would be unbearable.

Phasone made it very clear that she was feeling the heat worse than Vayra. However, Nathariel walked along ahead, entirely unaffected by the warmth. He hummed a soft, somber tune to himself as he walked, gingerly stepping along the trail of crushed brown rocks. Every so often he would stop to take a puff of smoke out of his pipe, allowing Vayra to catch up.

“You’ll get used to it,” he assured her, though Vayra wasn’t sure.

The trail wound through the forests that clung to the foothills, dipping between scraggly black trees with shrivelled, elongated leaves. It swerved back east, bringing them to the edge of the river—the Rallemflow, the water river—and it was at the shore where Nathariel deviated from the trail.

He stepped down onto the black gravel lining the riverbed, then led her onwards for a mile or two.

Finally, in a deep valley, nestled between two black-robed foothills, was Nathariel’s hovel. It rested on the edge of the valley, a short walk away from the river. Vines clung to the path up to it, but as soon as Nathariel began to walk up the slope, the vines retreated.

“Didn’t expect me back so soon, huh?” he muttered, then kicked one of the vines with annoyance. His hovel’s walls were also plastered with the vines, but they clung to lattices of black wood, and they seemed intentional—red flowers bloomed on them, and they didn’t retreat as he approached.

Both Vayra and Nathariel had to duck to fit under the overhang outside the house. It had a flat, conical roof, like the buildings of the port village, but its walls were more exposed. She could see the cracks between the bricks, and grout crumbled off them.

He pushed the door open and led the way inside. It was dark, but he lit a lantern with a snap of his fingers—without even opening the lantern’s window.

Vayra paused right inside the doorway. The house was tidy, but it wasn’t perfect. A table against the far wall was cluttered with papers, and he had a bookshelf, though all the books were either toppled over or leaning. In the corner was a threadbare hammock, as well as a couple metal pots and a rusting musket.

“I need some sleep,” he told her. “No technique for fire God-heirs to help us stay awake. And you could probably use some, too.”

Vayra nodded, but she didn’t feel too tired. Her new body felt fresh and ready to do something, and she doubted she could have slept even if she did have a hammock.

‘Can I suggest trying to find a hammock?’ Phasoné interjected.

Nathariel clicked his tongue and said, “I don’t believe that nod.”

“No, sir, I’m not tired.”

“Then I have a task for you. It’s simple Go find yourself a hammock; you don’t have to sleep yet. You’ll be here for a while, now, so you’d better have a place to sleep eventually.”

“What…what exactly am I here to learn?” she asked. “You fixed the issue I came here with…”

He raised his eyebrows. “There is always more to learn. I will teach you all the secrets that I know of magic. The secrets my teacher passed to me. And maybe then, you will be strong enough that I can set you free. Or maybe you’ll refuse to listen and get yourself killed. Or run away. Or both. Like every other disciple.”

‘Maybe he’s just a bad teacher,’ Phasoné grumbled.

Or maybe it was that most God-heirs were like Myrrir and Hammontor, or that Wren woman.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Vayra said.

“That’s what they all tell me. Now, go get yourself a hammock. They’ll be in the shed down by the shore, just past the pasture.”

Vayra nodded and backed out of the hovel, then walked down to the shore. She wasn’t in any rush; Nathariel needed his sleep. First, she sat down on the shore and looked north. Glade was somewhere to the north, waiting for her. So was Pels, and the Harmony. And a great many bounty hunters.

Maybe even a few God-heirs.

Hopefully everyone would be alright.

She felt a tinge of remorse seeping into her stomach, but she swatted it down. If she didn’t learn to use her magic better, under a proper instructor, Karmion would be unopposed.

But her friends…

No.

After a few hours of sitting and waiting, she dipped her feet in the river and started to absorb some more mana from the passing wisps of Stream water. She could kept cycling.

When the sun began to set again, she realized that she still didn’t have a hammock yet. She rushed along the shore until she found a small, winding path. It led past a fenced-off pasture, with three horses waiting inside. Normal horses—well, she couldn’t see anything unusual about them, at least. They pranced around, whinnying softly or nibbling at the black shrubs growing beneath them.

The path wound around past the pasture, leading to a small, wooden shed. She pulled its rickety door open. Among the barrels and crates, there were a few tattered nets and pieces of fabric. There had to be a hammock somewhere mixed in.

She pulled out a white sheet from the corner, but it was stuck under a barrel, and the barrel began to wobble. Lunging, she caught it.

But once it had fallen, there was no unseeing what waited behind it.