Dellen dodged to the left. Alben’s shoulder hammered into the door, right where Dellen had stood a second before. The door cracked with the impact.

“This seems like an overreaction,” Dellen noted calmly.

“Don’t try and talk your way out of this, fight!” Gilgamesh yelled at him.

Alben turned to him and lunged again.

Dellen sidestepped him and said, “Are beards flammable?”

“What?” Gilgamesh said.

Ball lightning flew from Dellen’s hands at Alben’s face, igniting his beard and his robes. Dellen was assuming that Lady Katherine’s assistant also used Terra Aether, and knew from the exhibition that those with Terra Aether tended to be a bit more sturdy, able to withstand a great deal of punishment, but in the exhibition, they had not been supposed to use lethal attacks. Sturdy did not mean fireproof.

The hallway lit with the light from the spreading blaze on Alben’s clothes.

Alben screamed in shock and in pain, flailing his arms, beating at the flames.

Dellen rained lightning down on him until the flames went out

“I think someone might have heard that,” Gilgamesh observed.

The hallway was dim again, but Alben still stood. His body was blackened, his robes and his beard gone. His skin was covered in soot and ash. He rushed at Dellen, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Your little lightning bolts didn’t work so well, did they?” He screamed. Both of his hands slammed into Dellen’s torso. There was a series of loud cracks. Dellen’s ribs snapped like rotten wood. He looked down in horror at his caved-in chest, where Alben’s hands rested, pulling the fabric of his robe taut over ribs poking out through steelskin.

Pain followed, like thunder after lightning, crashing through him. Dellen screamed until a fist crashed into his face.

“You have seen Thaddeus,” Imogen said, “Can we consider your time here done?”

Miss Thornbrook considered Thaddeus before giving the two women before her a slow nod, “I suppose we can, thank you for accommodating the whims of a curious guest.”

A tendon strained on the side of Imogen’s neck, and her jaw looked tight, but all she said was “Cordelia, please escort our… guests out.”

Dellen looked around and then down feeling at his chest, that had hurt, a lot.

“That was violent,” Gilgamesh said, “He caved in your face.”

Dellen hid a shudder.

“Wait!” Eliza said, “Before we go,” she turned to Thaddeus, “Could you give me the names of everyone in the fleet?”

Thaddeus gave Eliza a quick nod, and listed off names which she recorded.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Thornbrook said, turning and retracing their steps back.

Once they had left the syndicate behind Dellen spoke up, “I think I know what the order wants with the unforged for.” He retraced his steps through the evening, although he skipped the less fruitful part of his search, and waited in the hallway for Alben Tarfen to make his appearance.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Gilgamesh said, “The door is right there, waiting for you.”

“I know, but the way he appeared from nowhere makes me think he came out of one of those hidden stairwells you thought might exist.” Dellen answered, conducting his side of the conversation in whispers.

“And if he did?”

“Maybe there’s something important in that stairwell.”

“I think it’s an unnecessary risk,” Gilgamesh grumbled. “Keep your eyes open, this is right about when he startled us.”

No sooner had Gilgamesh finished his sentence than a section of the wall began the process of pulling back. Dellen’s heart thumped. He darted forward to get close to the opening portal. The stone continued to move, Dellen squinted against the bright light spilling out into the corridor.

A second later, the light dimmed and Alben Tarfen stepped out into the corridor, from the way he moved his head back and forth, Dellen could see that his eyes had not adjusted to the change in brightness. Dellen darted forward through the crack in the wall, feeling his robes scrape against the stone on either side.

The door slid shut leaving Alben and Gilgamesh on the other side. He stopped and stood still, waiting for any sort of an outcry. Hearing nothing beyond the blood surging in his ears, Dellen brought small sparks of lightning out from his fingertips to create a flickering light.

“Dellen!” The faint sound of Gilgamesh yelling from the corridor made its way through to the stairwell. With a grimace, Dellen decided that he could not afford the risk of responding. Instead, he focused on examining his surroundings.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The stairwell spiraled both upward and downward in much tighter turns than the main stairs of the Order. Unlit sconces dotted the walls at even intervals. The steps were worn and weathered, bearing the marks of countless footsteps. Heart still pounding, he spent a moment debating the merits of going up against descending deeper. Descending deeper, he decided, he and Gilgamesh had already decided that anything to do with the unforged was likely to be deeper, mostly likely hidden from anything inconvenient like prying eyes or windows.

Apart from up or down though, he needed to know how to get out. He turned to look at the stone blocking the way he had come. Nothing stood out to his sight, he wanted to feel around every edge with his fingers, looking for any and every latch, but he held himself back, he did not want to open the passage if Alben was still there, even if Gilgamesh would have been a welcome presence. He dropped an iron button on the ground, he hoped it would not be obvious to anyone who saw it, but it would make it a little easier for him to identify the section of wall he had entered through.

With one last look at the way he had come from, Dellen took the first step leading further down, the flickering lightning in his hand played tricks with the shadows, illuminating the details of the stairwell. The walls were adorned with carvings and symbols. In the intermittent light, the engravings seemed to come alive, casting dancing shadows that danced and moved.

Three rotations later, Dellen came to the bottom of the stairwell.

He stood on the landing after the final step and looked at the stone. It was rough and craggy but otherwise looked like the unfinished stone you might see in a cave. He brushed aside the intrusive thought that he did not know when he had ever been in a cave. There had to be something. He did not believe for even a second that it was a stairwell to a dead end. He brightened the sparks over his left hand, looking for anything, a discreet mechanism, a hidden cleft in the stone.

With his free hand, Dellen reached around, looking for anything he could pull or press. After ten minutes of searching, he decided to investigate higher up the stairwell. A last frown at the wall served as his farewell to the disappointing journey.

He retraced his steps on the stairwell and stopped when he heard Gilgamesh still yelling. He spotted the iron button on the floor. He was about to risk yelling ‘Here’ when he realized that there was a chance that his yell would be more audible to anyone a few landings up the stairwell. Instead, he chose to believe that Gilgamesh would not be yelling if there was still someone in the corridor to witness the door opening.

Fingers running over every surface, he paused when his fingertips brushed against cold metal embedded in stone. His mind flickered to Ardentus manipulating the wall in the practice room. If this hidden metal was anything like the central plate in the practice room, there would be a connection between it, and the door. Dellen fed a trickle of Electrical Aether into the metal, and felt it flow along a deeper channel.

The metal that he could just brush with his fingers could drink in a great deal more Aether than a small piece of metal possibly could. He fed more Aether into it, and still more again. Dellen released the flickering lightning over his fingers, throwing the stairwell into darkness, watching for the path to the corridor to crack open.

A split appeared in the wall, Gilgamesh flew in as soon as it was wide enough for him to enter without scraping one of his metal rods. “What have you been doing?” He hissed at Dellen.

Dellen waited for the opening in the wall to close again before answering in a whisper. “I don’t want anyone to hear me. I explored down, didn’t find anything, now I’m headed up, are you coming?”

Gilgamesh made a sound of aggravated discontent that Dellen chose to interpret as irritated acquiescence.

Faint sparks appeared above his left hand, and once again cast the stairwell in flickering shadow.

“This is creepy,” Gilgamesh said.

Dellen had to agree, but satisfied himself with a terse nod. “We’re looking for anything that I might be able to manipulate with Electrical Aether, a small piece of metal, something subtle.” They walked up until Dellen lost track of how many spirals they had completed before Gilgamesh said, “Is that a door and a lever?”

A sigh escaped Dellen’s lips. It was a door and a lever. He put his free hand on the lever, nodded at Gilgamesh, and pulled the lever. The sparking lights on his hand faded to nothing. He did not want to make the same mistake Alben had.

A faint light invaded the dark, coming from the opening door.

Dellen stepped through the door once it was broad enough to accommodate him without touching either of his shoulders. He was halfway through the door before he realized he should have had Gilgamesh scout ahead.

“Back so soon?” It was a woman’s voice, relaxed and unworried, “I didn’t expect you to find it so quickly. Bring it here then.”

Dellen stopped moving, intent on backing up and pulling the door shut behind him, but the woman looked up, a frown forming on her lips. “You,” she said, “Are not Alben. What have you done with my assistant?”

Lady Katherine. Dellen had known it was a possibility that he would find her if he explored the stairwell, given who Alben was, but he had hoped that the lateness of the hour would see her sleeping, especially as Alben had assumed that Tiberius would not be awake and setting Dellen tasks in the dead of the night.

“I… ah, I have not done anything to Alben.”

“Curious, to the best of my knowledge, Alben and I are the only members of The Order with knowledge of this stairwell. I did not teach you its secrets, which means that either you discovered them on your own, or you took them from my assistant.”

Lady Katherine stood, and Dellen felt her presence like a palpable threat, even from across the room.

“I did not see Alben,” Dellen said, cleaving to his lie, though he supposed this time he had not done anything to Alben, he certainly had not set him on fire. Sneaking behind him into the stairwell was civilized, at least by comparison.

“You should run, now,” Gilgamesh said, sharing his opinion for the first time since they had entered the room.

“What kind of Aether do you use?” Lady Katherine asked, “Not Terra, or I’d know. Third Trinity, I should know who you are.” She adjusted a switch on the wall and the room brightened, her voice deepened with malice, “Oh no, not Third Trinity, Second Trinity wearing robes of the Third. What lie will you tell me next?”

Dellen struggled to swallow around a lump in his throat, she had spotted his deception in seconds. Lies were not going to work. “What are you doing with the unforged?”

Lady Katherine’s mouth quirked in a way that made him think her eyebrows had gone up, “What makes you think I did anything with the… unforged?”

“I think you’re using them to try and grant yourself another affinity.”

This time, he was certain that she looked surprised. “Incredible how quickly information takes wing,” she said. “As it happens, I’m looking for test subjects. Would you care to have another affinity?” Her eyes widened, and her smile showed too many teeth.

“No, I,” Dellen tried to back away from her and fell, his ankles stuck to the floor. Cold fingers of panic gripped him. His boots were stuck to the floor. Stone wrapped over his shoulders and around his arms, covering over his hands.

“Not good, not good, not good,” Gilgamesh yelled, “Break free!”

“Ah, Second Trinity, can you do anything with your hands covered and your leverage gone?”

Dellen bent his neck to lift his head as much as his stuck position would allow. He could not quite keep an edge of hysteria from warping his voice, “What are you going to do to me?”