Flyte knew only five of the fourteen people in the room, and those people were his teammates from Telin's test.

The night before, Telin's second in command returned from their mission, and Telin dumped leadership over Flyte's mission on him. Flyte had been told that the man's name was Tarr.

Tarr headed the room. his face was covered by a white mask with no face holes, but he moved as though his eyes were free of obstacles. Tarr's skin was as dark as the heart Flyte had defeated the day before.

Despite being slightly shorter than Flyte, Tarr was intimidating. When he started walking towards Flyte's group, Flyte had to take a seat.

"I would like to know a little more about your attack tendencies as a group before we go." Tarr didn't phrase it like a question, his voice demanded an answer.

Azalea spoke for them. "Flyte just rushes in, Jim and Lanus go in if no one's going first, Thammeus waits a good amount of time to attack, and me and Hilda hold back, retaining our strength. Hilda heals for actual wounds, not scratches."

"Thank you," Tarr responded. In the blink of an eye, he was gone. "Okay," he began, again in the front of the room. "I'm going to send us a short distance away from Ithiles in a few minutes. prepare yourselves."

Flyte went over his gear again, and noted that he had everything that he needed, so he continued sitting.

"Are you anxious for the mission?" Thammeus asked.

"Not really," Flyte answered.

"Oh," Thammeus said. "I just looked around and everyone seemed so composed, so I felt like asking."

"Don't worry Thammeus, that's fine," Flyte said. "And don't stress about the mission, if anything goes wrong, I'll be right there beside you." Flyte gave him a smile to attempt to reassure him.

Flyte sat thinking about possible facets for the rest of the wait time, but when Tarr stood back up, his attention was given fully to him.

"Okay," Tarr started. "In a few moments, a gate will open up. I want the highest ranked guilders going through first, I'll go in last."

A rift opened up in the middle of the room, showing a grassy plain on the other side. the border of this 'gate' looked like a refracted piece of the room.

Flyte watched as people walked through until only his group was left. He stood up and walked in first, followed shortly by the rest of his friends. The temperature change was astounding. It had been slightly chilly in the guild's rooms, but outside the gate it was warm.

Flyte also noticed a small army of shades, clearly confused about their predicament. As they began to scream Flyte said, "Nelar," aggressively, launching himself backwards several feet, but also firing a spear of light into their ranks. Massive pits dug into the stone, burying the remaining shades in a fashion that made Flyte think the information Azalea gave Tarr was already in use.

"Good job, you all," Tarr said, his mask exuding an ominous feeling. Flyte was glad that his thoughtless attacks weren't criticized for being too wasteful. It told him that he was doing fine.

As the group travelled, Flyte realized that as good as he was with light magic, everyone else around him was just as good with their own respective focuses.

Flyte at first inferred that the shades were coming from the castle, but when the group found no more shades after journeying for the better part of an hour, he changed his theory.

As Ithiles came into view, Flyte was struck by how beautiful it was. It wasn't like the beauty of the wilderness around him, but it seemed majestic, like a mountain range.

Flyte had no clue how they would climb something like this, as the conventional door was locked. The walls each scaled several hundred feet in the air with few breaks.

Tarr didn't even look at the wall for a second before he came up with a plan. Flyte watched intently as Tarr explained his plan, ignoring the sudden biting cold wind coming from the mountains to the east.

Tarr opened a new gate and walked through quickly; however, before anyone could walk through, he closed it.

Flyte looked around for a few moments until he spotted Tarr hanging on the side of the wall. Tarr had cut into an angled part of the wall and supported himself with his two large knives. Out of a small bag at his side, Tarr pulled out a rope and began to tie it to some indiscernible metal structure on the wall. Tarr didn't seem to mind the cold wind blowing as he worked.

The rope happening to be long enough to stretch from the first opening to the ground. How the rope had fit in Tarr's bag, Flyte had no clue.

One by one, the group climbed into the castle. It was a good sign that there were no traces of aggression.

When Flyte reached their entrance of the castle, he took note of the dark lighting and the purple etchings on the walls and floor. The very air around Flyte made him feel distasteful. Something in this castle was just wrong.

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Flyte looked over and saw a discarded set of armor covering a small portion of the runic symbol. He walked over to it and moved it off to the side next to a few burnt swords.

The etching brightened up to the point that Flyte had to squint if he wanted to see at all. A shadowy mass seeped from the ceiling covering the floor. Soon Flyte could hardly move, and the rune was covered by the insidious liquid.

The armor Flyte had moved rose up, its form morphing as it grew in height. When it grew to eight feet tall, it lifted a six foot sword and slowly walked towards Flyte.

Flyte's heart sank, a feeling of dread sinking in. The fiend raised its sword; ready to cleave Flyte in half as quickly as a stick. Its masked face showed off a malicious twinge in its eyes. Flyte had heard it said that terrifying moments seemed to go in slow motion, but everything seemed to move too fast for Flyte to make sense of the events around him.

Though his enemy's blade was moving too quickly to track, and held enough force to shatter living trees, Tarr managed to get in front of Flyte and block the incoming peril with his knives. Before Tarr could counterstrike, the shadow-made giant punched him in the face, obliterating his mask.

The shadows under Tarr's feet writhed and swelled as his face was uncovered. Noting the shadow's attempts to envelop him, the giant grabbed Tarr by the neck, and lifted him up. Before Tarr could be killed, a booming sound, much louder than thunder, interrupted the shadowy soldier.

An eight-foot-tall draconic man knocked the shadow away from Tarr, slicing it apart as he did so. Chunks of unusable armor fell as the shadow dissipated.

The green winged man looked around, visibly confused. His eyes locked on Flyte, and he began to walk over to him.

"Stop!" Tarr shouted, blocking the giant's path in an effort to separate them, his arms spread out to limit the man's options.

"How about, No?" The deep voice came from behind Flyte, who turned to find the man right beside him. He grabbed Flyte and flew him out of the entrance they had been in.

"I was trying to leave, when I realized that I felt someone with a connection to my homeland, and despite your team leader being a distant relative of my race, you were the one who resembled my bloodline the most," the man said, "however, you are too young to have even heard of it though s-"

"Is it Nareal?" Flyte interrupted, remembering Telin use that name recently.

"So, you have heard of it?"

"Only in passing."

"Ah. I suppose it's not very important anymore in any case, so I'll just get to the important part." The man seemed resigned to leave the topic of Nareal, but confident, nonetheless.

"Are you certain?" Flyte said. "I would love to hear more about Nareal."

The man smiled sadly. "Maybe another time. I've been a prisoner for far too long, and I have so many things to check on, but I do have something I need to say to you first." The man grabbed a strange looking stick from a slot on his armor and struck it, drawing a rune in the smoke. "First off, Nareal has been gone since the Aliranic collapse three hundred years ago, so at least one of your parents is a being with a strong tie to Nareal and could also survive for hundreds of years, so you can use this rune, called the 'Seal of Nareal'. Only use it when you are in grave danger." Flyte assumed that the parent that could live for hundreds of years was the one who gave him his elven features, so that gave him new questions to grill Telin over.

"The last thing I have to tell you is that it is possible to bring others into the third plane with you. I hope you trust me when I saw this is completely vital to know." He dropped Flyte over at the entrance to Ithiles and turned to leave.

"Wait," Flyte stopped him. "May I Know your name?"

"Of course!" the giant man said. "My name is Grall." With that, Grall flew away, his speed rendering him untraceable.

Flyte heard Tarr call to him in a muffled voice. "Flyte! are you okay? What did he say to you?" Tarr's face was covered by a shawl taken form an upper rank guilder.

"I'm fine, and that man just spoke to me about my blood's relation to his people, so nothing threatening."

Tarr signed in audible relief. "Good, I'd hate to have been the one to tell Telin that one of his new favorite guilders was dying." Flyte knew he meant well. Tarr seemed too stressed about Flyte's capture for his worry to simply have been about disappointing Telin.

As Flyte walked back to the group, his clique seemed relieved to see his unscathed, and the other guilders seemed relieved to see that they weren't in any more danger than they signed up for.

"Well," Tarr began. "Now that that's out of the way, let's find the source of these shades. Each shade is one dead person, so we can handle it as long as there are multiple summoners. If one person killed all of those humanoids, we'll send for Telin."

Everyone heeded Tarr's words and followed him through the halls. Flyte had seen no other sets of armor lying around, and wouldn't have touched them if he had. Everything was going smoothly.

But then they reached the ground floor.

Shades swarmed the ground floor, all of them trying to squeeze through a single door. Their screams rang out as they noticed the guilders in the castle. As the shades split up to deal with the guilders, Flyte noticed Elliot holding shades off on the other side of the door.

Ducking out of the way, Flyte had to make a decision. His friends were on the other side of a door, but if Telin know Flyte had contact with them, there would be no telling what would happen. 'If I cover my face and only use light magic, I might be able to help Elliot and Ander without making it too obvious that it's me, and then if Telin asks me about it I can plead my case.'

Leaving that as his final decision, Flyte walked to the side of the guilders and summoned Glow.

"Hey Glow," Flyte began, "do you think you can help me cover my face?"

"Yeah, no problem," Glow whistled.

Glow morphed her shape into a mask that clasped onto Flyte's face, and he noticed that his ease of breathing didn't change, nor his sight.

"Thank you Glow." Glow simply hummed in response. Flyte turned back towards the shades engaged in combat with the other guilders.

Tarr yelled a command to Flyte: "Send a spear this way!"

"On it," Flyte said. "Nelar!"

The spear's radiance contrasted with the dark room, as it travelled Flyte could see more and more of the room's details, but he couldn't put it all together. Something was wrong, but what?

Tarr opened several gates to catch Flyte's spear of light, and in the blink of an eye, all the shades were dead.

Tarr looked visibly drained, but he opened a gate to get Telin anyway.

As Tarr left the guilders, Elliot collapsed in exhaustion. Flyte twisted around to find Ander, but as he caught a glimpse of Ander, he could see him getting impaled.

Flyte jumped into action, using Sari to get the metal out of Ander's body. "Elgro," Flyte said, trying to sound as helpful as he possibly could. He walked into the room.

And he saw the man: the man who had killed him, who had tried to end the lives of a whole city.

The one man Flyte would call a monster.

"Nelar," Flyte muttered icily. Rather than a spear, shockwave, or explosion of light, an icy shortsword appeared in Flyte's hand. "Star; Rowlo, can you join me?"

Greeting by the humming of the pair entering his armor, Flyte knew the answer.

He was ready.