The prison’s main entrance was too visible. With the whole town gathered on the stone in front of Elrick’s tower, it would be too suspicious to lead their party into the burn treatment building. So Stella took them the other way. Tarant opened the rock, being more familiar with the entrance, and they went down the tunnel into the waiting room, then through the doors to the offering room, where they stopped dead.

The tunnel to Elrick’s tower was open, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the room was full of fanatics, each restrained by two skeletons. The Magisters and Ortus stood in the center, stripped of their jewels and wearing panicked expressions. Vatran spotted Stella and seemed nearly to faint with relief. “Stella! Thank Vulcan you’re here! Elrick has gone mad. He says he doesn’t have enough magic, but he took five young men this morning! He’s gone into the prison to get more, but he says we’re next if they’re not enough! Do something, Stella!”

The door to the prison burst open, and Elrick stepped through, a crystal dagger in his hand. His mouth dripped with blood, and Maw waddled at his heels, licking his lips. Elrick surveyed the scene, and some of the skeleton pairs broke up, one keeping its captive still while the other grabbed one of the intruders. In a moment, Stella, Tarant, and the recruits were all restrained. Elrick bent to touch Maw’s pearl. He drew out the glow, leaving it dull, and transferred the energy to the ruby in his staff. The ruby shone with the light of seven suns.

“Not quite,” Elrick said. He walked to Vatran and grabbed him by the shoulder, forcing him to his knees.

“Please, my lord—”

“Silence,” Elrick said, plunging the crystal dagger into Vatran’s chest. Lucinus cried out, but his skeleton captor twisted his arm, keeping him from moving.

Vatran was still very much alive. He watched in horror as the sorcerer maneuvered the knife. When Elrick pulled the blade out, its crystal surface sparkled, absolutely clean. As Vatran stared at it, Elrick stuck his hand into Vatran’s chest and pulled out his heart. It was beating rapidly, but there was no blood. The beating slowed to a more relaxed rhythm as Vatran watched it, half shocked, half relieved.

Vatran laughed nervously. “Thank you, my lord. I thought maybe—”

Elrick took a huge bite out of the heart. Blood sprayed. Vatran seized up, then fell to the floor. Lucinus cried out again, and his captor put a bony hand over his mouth, silencing him. Maw pounced on the body as Elrick finished eating the heart. He gathered the energy into his hand. It was more than Stella had gotten from her first liver, which would have impressed her if she wasn’t so disgusted. Maw swallowed the last of Vatran’s corpse, and the pearl in his forehead began to glow again.

Ladon jumped forward. How did he avoid the skeletons? He pointed at Elrick, and his hand flashed.

CRACK!!! A bolt of lightning struck the sorcerer, and he fell to the ground, lifeless. Stella had only a second to wonder if the mission would be as simple as that before the skeletons burst into action. Most released their captives and moved to make a circle around Elrick, forming a wall between him and the living. A couple of them pulled Maw out of the circle, but three teams of five brought five fanatics to the center of it: one of each rank, including Magister Caleo. In each team, two of the skeletons lifted their struggling fanatic off his feet and pointed his head at the sorcerer. As the fanatic pleaded frantically for his life, the third skeleton in the team took his head in its hands, twisted sharply, and pulled it off. Blood spurted, and the skeletons pointed the body, guiding the blood to create a diagram on the floor, covering Elrick’s body. Upon completion, the blood formed a star inside a concentric circle. The skeletons with the heads placed them on the star’s corners, facing Elrick with their horrified eyes.

One more skeleton took up the crystal dagger, which was still clean. It went up to each body in turn, holding it under the blood flow, which had slowed to a dribble. The blood coated the dagger, and it glowed red. The skeleton turned to Elrick and stabbed him in the chest, right where his heart should have been.

The glow increased, Elrick stirred, and Stella came to her senses. “Run!” she yelled, herding her team back the way they’d come.

They ran out of the tunnel and into the woods, only stopping when the boulder door was well out of sight and earshot. They leaned against boulders and trees, trying to catch their breath as their minds raced to comprehend what they’d seen.

“He’s not dead,” Stella said. “You slowed him down, Ladon, but he’ll be back up soon. He won’t die for good until we find and destroy his heart.”

“Then let us go find it!” Audacio said. “It cannot be so hard.”

“Yeah,” Lucinus said. “What are we waiting for?” He clenched and unclenched his fists, his eyes dark with rage. “All we have to do is find it and squeeze. I hope it’s painful.”

Stella shook her head. “There are way too many skeletons. The minute they know what we’re doing, they’ll overwhelm us, and Elrick will kill us the way he did Vatran.” Lucinus kicked a rock and started pacing, glaring at the ground.

“But you’re his apprentice,” Promitto said. “You’ve got to have an idea where to start.”

Stella shook her head. “It’s not like he’d display it. He’ll have used magic to hide it.”

“Can’t you use magic to find it?” Promitto asked.

“I’ve tried that. It never worked. Besides, I don’t have any magical energy left.” She bowed her head and gripped the diamond. She’d come so far. Was it really going to fall apart now?

“Then we must go looking for it,” Audacio said. “If we stay here, fretting about it, Elrick will find us. His lava will bury us, or his skeletons will scour the forest and bring us back to him. I say it is better to die in glory, after doing all we can to stop him.”

“He’s right,” Tarant said. “If we fail, I’d rather it not be for lack of trying.”

Stella met his eyes, and the knots in her stomach loosened. It was an enormous risk, but they were right. Everyone in the valley was in immediate danger. Elrick planned to kill all of them, and then go on living indefinitely. And with the word of his cult already spread across all of Dracon, there was nothing to stop curious, desperate people from coming to him. If they gave up now, there was no telling how many thousands of people Elrick would kill before anyone managed to put an end to him. Their best and only chance to stop that was that very moment.

She nodded. “We have to act now. Let’s go search the tower. We’ll have some time before he’s finished with the fanatics. If we split up and search quickly, we might have a chance.”

She turned to lead them to the tower, but someone touched her elbow, and she stopped. Ladon was there again, wearing a satisfied smile. “I have something that should help you, lass.”

She watched with confusion as he held out his fist, then opened it to show the brightest gem she’d ever seen. It shone with all the colors of the rainbow and seemed to hold the light of fifty suns without hurting her eyes.

She gaped, her stomach seizing up again. “No. You didn’t. You wouldn’t touch dark magic—”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Ladon shook his head, still smiling. “Don’t worry, lass. It’s nothing like that. It’s my savings from my daily allotment from Thuban. Go on, feel it.”

Stella hesitantly reached out to the gem’s pool of magic and instantly relaxed. The immense storage was more potent and pure than any magic she’d felt in Elrick’s tower. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

He nodded, then guided a fraction of it into Stella’s own diamond. She gaped at it, shocked. The transaction had hardly left a dent in his store, but her gem now held more magic than ever before. “But I—”

“Use it to find the heart,” Ladon said. Stella shut her mouth and nodded. She closed her eyes and drew upon the magic. She imagined Elrick, his heart, and his tower. She held out her arms and spun in a circle, muttering the incantation for the Locate spell. She’d tried that dozens of times before, but those attempts had always been fueled by dark magic. This time, a bright light shone against her eyelids. She looked toward Elrick’s tower and saw a beacon of light shining from a point in the tower.

Stella smiled. “We’ve got a chance. Follow me.” She started toward the tower, tucking the diamond under her chiton out of habit. Then she stopped and pulled it back out, inspecting it. The spell had taken only a sliver of the magic. She was used to spells taking up a surprisingly large amount of magic. This stuff must be more concentrated, she thought. More potent. She turned to Ladon. “You gave me way too much.” She moved to return it, but he stopped her.

“Keep it. You may need it.”

She nodded gratefully and continued toward the tower.

Tarant hurried up to walk beside her, his face grave. “I understand one of the prisoners was your mother,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Elrick was in the prison before he came for Vatran. You heard when Vatran said he was doing in there. We can only assume he’d run out of prisoners…”

Stella’s throat constricted as she realized what he meant. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

She focused on her feet hitting the ground, walking faster. Why did he have to point this out now, when she needed to concentrate on finding Elrick’s heart?

“You probably wish you had saved her this morning instead of me.”

Stella nearly tripped. That’s right. She’d had a chance to free her mother, but she’d chosen Tarant instead. That had only been hours ago, but it felt like years. So much had happened since then. So much had changed. Stella had changed.

She looked over at him. He was staring at the ground, his face a mask of agony. “Would you have preferred that?” she asked.

He hunched his shoulders. “I would have deserved it. I’m a sodden bunch of pond scum. But your mother… she was good.”

Stella looked back to her feet, accelerating again. “Yes, she was.” She searched for words to comfort him. She couldn’t let him beat himself up over something she’d done. “But she would have been fine if this were a normal day. She was supposed to have a few more weeks. You were in immediate danger.”

“Vatran told me I’d have four more weeks after today.”

Stella shook her head. “I doubt he would have let you live that long, especially after… what I said about the two of you. I had to get you out of there. Vatran would have drowned you immediately after we left if I hadn’t.”

“I would have deserved it.”

“Stop saying that,” Stella said, stopping in her tracks.

He stopped, too. “But it’s true. I deserve a gruesome, painful, humiliating death. The Well would have been perfect. I would have denied the sleeping draft and felt every moment of it. I deserve nothing better.”

“I said stop it.”

He glared at her. “Stop acting as if you don’t know what I’ve done. You’ve seen it.”

“But you didn’t know. You didn’t see. You thought you were doing right by those people. You didn’t know any better.”

“I was stupid.”

“You were brainwashed. And as soon as you realized the cult was wrong, you forsook it. You’re trying to fix it.”

“But I can’t fix it.”

“Fix what?” Lucinus asked. The others had caught up. They were nearly out of the woods. The crowd of pleading villagers was visible through the foliage, standing on the stone below Elrick’s tower. “What can’t you fix?”

“My murders,” Tarant said. “I can’t bring those people back.”

A few people exchanged glances, but Lucinus nodded, rubbing his bracelet brand. “You’re right. We can’t bring them back. But we don’t have time for regrets right now. Let’s do what needs doing now, and we can worry about the past later.”

Tarant met Lucinus’s eyes. The latter nodded, and the former relaxed. He nodded. “Right. Enough dallying. Let’s do this.”

Stella led them into the tower and upstairs. The beacon was high up. They ascended past both the potion room and the library, ending on a floor Stella had never seen before. The stairs came up between two pillars, a wall blocking the lower stairs from view of the room. It had a red hue. The ceiling was of thick, clear glass, offering an underside view of the tower’s red roof and the seven obsidian pillars that supported it. Three rings of obsidian pillars supported the ceiling, each only four inches thick, spaced about three feet apart.

Unlike the rest of the tower, the floor of this room was laid with ceramic tiles. The beacon’s light shone from the middle of the floor, leaking out from under the large central tile. “It’s here,” Stella said.

Lucinus squinted around the room. “This place gives me the creeps. I’ll guard the door. When you find it, make sure to give me a squeeze.” He took a position to the side of the stairs, behind a pillar, and Claude joined him.

Stella went to the central tile, gripped the edges, and heaved. It wiggled, but it was too heavy to move on her own. “A little help?” she asked. Tarant joined her, and together they managed to shift the tile from its place with the grinding sound of stone scraping stone. They dropped the tile to the side, but the sound didn’t stop. Every line of grout in the floor came alive. The ones by the door peeled upwards, blocking their exit. Some rose up and wrapped themselves around legs, holding people in place. Whole arrays of grout curled up around the center, trapping Stella and Tarant in a semi-spherical stone cage.

Lucinus and Claude pulled at the stone covering the entrance but to no avail. Promitto, Audacio, and two of Tarant’s recruits struggled to get out of the grout’s stony grip. Ladon and the other two were still free but shaken.

Stella and Tarant met eyes. They’d come too far to waste time trying to escape their cage. They looked into the hole they’d revealed. Inside was a small wooden chest, its seams glowing with the beacon’s light. Elrick’s heart was inside. Stella pulled it out and pulled on the lid. It didn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” Tarant said, pointing to a large iron lock on the side she hadn’t seen.

Stella smiled, then cast an unlocking spell. She frowned and cast another. And another. “It won’t unlock.”

“Let’s try to break it.” Tarant slammed the chest against the corner of the hole, but it bounced back so solidly that it knocked him in the face. Stella took over. She pushed it back into the hole, then shot an ice bolt at it. She tried a fireball, picking up the chest and holding it over the flame, but nothing worked.

“It’s got some kind of magical protection. It won’t budge.”

“That’s the point.” Elrick stood at the top of the stairs. He was covered in blood but otherwise looked as healthy as ever. Bony hands pushed down the grout door, and he stepped in. Eighteen fanatics followed him, including Magister Flagro and Ortu Impes. The rest were of Mediet or below, but Flagro and Impes had their jewels back, and they glowed brightly. A flood of skeletons came next, spreading out along the walls, and two of them pushed the grout door back into place. When the motion stopped, Elrick smiled. “Do you think I’d leave my life where just anyone could reach it?”

Lucinus let out a fierce cry, and the tip of his sword sprouted from Elrick’s chest. Claude followed suit, hacking at Elrick’s side. The sorcerer looked down at the swords in annoyance. Four skeletons seized the two men, pulling them away. As soon as the swords were pulled out, Elrick’s wounds glowed red, then disappeared. He turned to face the offenders. “More assassins? This is getting tedious. What pathetic imbeciles.” His cloak blocked his next actions from Stella’s view, but Lucinus cried out in pain, and Elrick handed a beating heart to another nearby skeleton. “At least you don’t grovel like your father. For that, I’ll save you for later.” He moved on to Claude, handing off another beating heart moments later. Elrick turned back toward the center of the room, the crystal dagger glinting at his hip before the cloak swung in to hide it. Lucinus and Claude were left staring in fear at the slots in their chests where their hearts should have been. Stella gasped. Not at the gore, but the idea that struck her. If she could get a hold of that dagger, she might be able to use it to cut open the chest. She only needed to get a line of sight, and then she could summon it.

Elrick waved his hands impatiently. “Well, what are you waiting for? Capture the rebels!”