The path of night wound deep into the rock. Deep enough that I was sure I had passed below the bottom of the spirits’ basin and possibly past the edges of the plateau, so that I was deep in the bowels of some mountain. Despite that the air remained as fresh as it had outside.

I could feel it moving past me. Brushing lightly back to the chamber where I had made my choice before it was swept up into the chaotic hustle and bustle of the basin. There was no escaping it as the tunnel drew in close so that it was only a foot or taller than my head and barely a foot to either side.

I waited for my dread of small spaces to well up as it always did. To make my skin feel tight and my chest constrict, like my own body was shrinking down into a space too small to fit me, as the memories threatened to overwhelm me. And that dread did come, but it wasn’t as pressing as I was used to dealing with in similar spaces.

The reason for that was simple: as the tunnel narrowed, it also became more expansive. I had already seen two night skies where they didn’t belong underground: a minor miracle of the goddess in Flickermark and the carved representation in the Night Cave. Now I got to experience a third version but, instead of walking beneath an impossible night, it as if I was walking through it, among the campfires of stars.

Little glowing specks filled the air and clustered on the wall, though their light was so minuscule that rather than relieve the surrounding darkness, they only enhanced it. The specks swirled and danced in the light flow of air as well as my movements. They didn’t burn. Didn’t feel like much of anything, though the ground transitioned from hard stone to something spongier, like sheep’s wool if it could support a person’s weight. I had crouched down, trying to figure out what it was, but even with dark sight the most I could determine was that it was pockmarked with a thousand and more holes, some as small as a needles, others as wide as a finger. If I ignored the oddity of it, which wasn’t nearly as difficult as it would have been before I had traveled across giant floating leaves and wind slides, it felt like I imagined walking on a cloud would.

I could still sense the tunnel’s walls around me, but with how the glowing specks were suspended they created an illusion that made my eyes think I was staring into a vast night sky that expanded all around me. I did my best not to disturb the illusion since it made my passage easier. I had no desire to encourage any more memories of her, especially when I was so close to finally earning my boon.

The path wound slowly onward. Never at a steep incline, but with enough gradual twists and turns that even I eventually lost my sense of direction. Between the lack of landmarks and the unchanging surroundings, the only thing that assured me I was moving forward and not stuck in place was when I glanced and saw the disturbs glowing motes behind me. That was also how I knew when the path turned even though I felt like I was just marching ahead in a straight line. Still, the light flow of air was quick to smooth out any hints of my passage.

It felt like walking in a timeless bubble. Like when I emerged, if I did, only a minute could have gone by outside or decades. But I refused to turn back. Either way I wanted to see what was at the tunnel.

Eventually, my persistence was rewarded. The path I was on split into two. I could either continue following the night speckled path forward or I could turn off onto a new one.

The new path lost the motes of light, the deep darkness between them. Instead it filtered into an opaque grayness, that I wasn’t sure was the result from the dark sight boon or if that was really the color of the path. The spongy ground sank back into hard stone and there didn’t seem to be much to recommend it over the mystical path I was following. It was drab, boring, and wholly uninteresting.

But there wasn’t any wind.

As soon as I took more than a couple steps onto that path I couldn’t feel the slight breath that had been sweeping past me the entire time since I had set foot onto the path of night. Perhaps, to others, that would indicate that this wasn’t the right path, that they really should keep following the path that wholly embodied what it might be like to walk through the night sky.

For me, the gray path piqued my curiosity. I had already seen my unfortunate share of miracles and impossible things, so the sheer lack of anything remotely interesting in this passage drew my attention. It was like it was trying to be ignored. More than that, the quiet, still air called to what I had been practicing throughout my trial. Finding the spaces that the wind missed, making my own path through the dead air.

I left the path full of the night sky behind me without looking back.

Only one wind spirit followed me.

The tunnel was still tight around me and without the false expanse of stars the dread rose and threatened to distract me. To pull me into memory after memory with nothing in the dullness around me to draw me back out, but this wasn’t the first time I traveled down a narrow path nor was it as cramped as the crack leading to the Dawn Crawler’s cavern. I shoved the fear down deep and narrowed my focus down to a single goal: reach the wellspring that must lie at the end of the tunnel.

I strode on and quickly learned that my new path had none of the ease of the original. When it widened there were drop offs to climb down or small cliffs to climb up, like the bluffs around Gabbler Shore. There were pebbles to slip on if I wasn’t paying attention, given how they blended into everything else, and the air tasted stale with dust.

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

I wasn’t sure how the path worked into the theme of ‘night’ unless it had something to do with forging ahead into a bland unknown, but the more difficult it became the more I became determined to reach its end. I didn’t like the sense that it seemed created to give whoever decided to follow it excuse after excuse to turn back.

I wanted to know what was being hidden behind boring stone and inconvenient climbs. What I might find at the end of all the decisions the wind spirits had put before me in their home and what boon they thought I was best suited for. Each difficulty only fanned the flames of my curiosity and stubbornness.

At the very end of the path was the one section that nearly made me turn back. It a crack in the wall, a narrow chute, with barely enough space for me to wriggle through. I’d have to lay flat on my stomach, head to the side, and pull myself forward into the narrow darkness with no way to know how far I had to go. The other end wasn’t in sight, though I could hear a great rushing of wind in the distance.

My final trial. Prevna wasn’t here to coax me forward, but neither was there anyone to see me break, if it came to that. No one to block me in or judge my progress. Nothing but a dark passage of stone that couldn’t hurt me or anyone else.

Well, I could be disciplined. If the tunnel wasn’t playing tricks on my hearing the wellspring I was looking for was likely just beyond the awful, tiny passageway.

I got down on my hands and knees, then flat on my stomach and squeezed in. Immediately, I could hear my breath, loud in the small space, and feel my pulse pick up under my skin. Prevna had told me ten steps before. I couldn’t take steps here, so instead I forced myself to slowly count to ten and keep moving forward while I did so. Then I’d stop, force a long, calming breath in my nose and out my mouth, and then count and move forward again.

And again.

It was an awful eternity compared to the peaceful nonexistent of the night path. Here I was all too aware of my body and the cramped space around me. The memories of being trapped and frozen boiling up in my mind until I found myself flitting back and forth from one nightmare to the next. A nightmare of the past and then the nightmare of the present.

Over and over.

To add to the misery, there was one terrible moment when the crawl space narrowed even further unexpectedly and I found my arm pinned against my side. I tried to twist and shift, but the space was so small that I couldn’t adjust enough to get free. Finally, when I couldn’t take the thought of staring at the same patch of stone until the rest of the world withered away, I exhaled all the air in my lungs and that gave me just enough room to pull my arm free and keep moving.

I came out of the other end of the crawl space gasping and unable to focus on anything but the sense that I couldn’t feel any stone walls around me. The air felt cavernous. I laid on the ground longer than I will ever admit, legs balled up so they wouldn’t be in the tiny tunnel, until I calmed down enough to think again.

When I gained enough presence of mind to pay attention, I dragged myself up into a sitting position and focused on the loud rushing of wind. It didn’t take me long to locate it as it was directly in my line of sight.

A geyser of wind burst from the ceiling, filled with the little motes of light, only for the wind and tiny specks to funnel into a wider hole offset to the right. The hole that sucked in the wind was worn smooth from the force of the moving air, but nothing else in the wide cavern so much as stirred. Not a single bit of wind was allowed to escape.

The wind spirit that had followed me the entire way here drifted into my line of sight as it drew in dust and gave me the name for what I was seeing.

The Twin Founts. One to give and one to take away.

The wind spirit cycled the dust from one side of its body to the other, so I could only see half of its vaguely humanoid shape at a time. A head and arms that stretched too long, but no legs as the lower half of its body dissipated to nothing.

Accept your boon at this wellspring and your bounty will be twofold: bolster the air when it is weak and take whispered secrets.

My eyes widened as the spirit’s meaning sank further into my mind. By earning my boon here I’d be able to send messages in areas where the wind was weak more easily, just like I wanted, but I’d also be able to listen in on messages sent by other whisper women rather than hearing nothing when the message wasn’t meant for me. My ability to do both would need practice, and I wasn’t sure I cared enough about other people’s affairs to want to listen in on them, but I also preferred to gather my own information rather than rely on someone else to relay it to me.

And that was ignoring the fact that this wellspring would give me two benefits with the wind whispering boon when the rest of the wellsprings I heard of only provided one. For all that I was still somewhat curious about the Mother Spring, just to know what extra boon it granted, I knew I couldn’t let this opportunity pass.

I rose to my feet and padded down the last gentle incline to the cavern’s main floor. When I stood under where the wellspring bent to the side, where the air went from pouring forth to being swallowed up, I felt the now familiar sensation of being lifted by a wind spirit. It bore me upwards until I was caught right in the middle of the two overwhelming forces and then it impressed upon me what I needed to do.

“Carry my words and I’ll carry you.”

As soon as I finished speaking I felt the wind sprite surge upward, wrapping around me, pushing into my ears, nose, mouth. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, but even as it poured in and the winds from the wellspring buffeted me, I could feel my understanding expand.

Suddenly, I knew how speak my words into the wind and have it carry them to another. I knew how to use the two new aspects of my boon even though my control over them was pathetically weak. I felt my awareness of the winds grow as well as my understanding of the wind spirits’ language, if it could be called that.

Between one moment and the next, my whole perception of the world shifted as the knowledge bloomed in my mind, and then my feet were touching the ground and I couldn’t sense the wind spirit anymore. I patted my ears, face, throat. Did I have a wind spirit inside me now?

I didn’t feel any different. Couldn’t sense another presence skin deep except for a lingering feeling of gratitude to feel all the winds of the world. I—

I couldn’t think about what might have just happened. Not right now, no matter how the questions piled up, because now there were other presences in the cavern. Dozens and dozens of wind spirits all posing the same question:

Do you accept the tempering?

This was another opportunity I couldn’t pass up.