The meeting with the precursors and the other guard captains had dragged on for hours as they tossed ideas around between them. It felt like they hadn't managed to achieve a great deal other than gaining the support of the precursors and the confirmation that the guards would step up their patrols while still keeping the knowledge that Lewis had been captured amongst those of them who had been gathered in the office.

Emily sighed. 'What do we do now?' she asked the handful of them that remained after the precursors and guards had been dismissed.

'I'm starving for one,' Arthur said with a yawn. She couldn't help but roll her eyes. He would probably eat in his sleep if he got the chance.

'We still need to wait a few days for Robyn to get to work with the alchemical supplies, but we should keep a close eye on what is happening across the ocean,' Thomas said. He sounded almost as exhausted as he looked. Despite all that they had been through in the time they had known him, he was now starting to look his age, Emily thought.

Before they could discuss their options any further, the door to the office banged open, Robyn running in. 'Emily, it's Matron Henare. She needs you in the dungeon quickly.'

'What?' She barely managed to say, confused.

'One of the guards came and got her; they said Anthony was getting very agitated. He was demanding to speak to Lewis, screaming the place down,' she said, almost doubling over as she tried to catch her breath.

'Lewis isn't here though,' Emily said.

'Matron Henare thought you would be the best person to get. You and Thomas are probably the best people to deal with this,' she said.

Emily and Thomas exchanged a glance. 'Anthony has barely said a word since he was locked up in his cell.'

On many occasions, Lewis had gone down to the dungeons to try and speak to him and get information about George's plans. According to Thomas, he had also been down there after Edmund had fled with the crown but hadn't been able to get anywhere. Why was he suddenly demanding to speak to Lewis after all these weeks?

'Well, there goes lunch,' Arthur muttered to himself.

'There's no point in all of us going,' Emily said. 'If he wants to talk to Lewis, he might not even say anything when he finds out he isn't here. The rest of you might as well get something to eat; me and Thomas will go and see what's going on down there.'

'If you say so,' he said, although Emily caught a hint of relief in his voice at being released from yet another errand.

'We'll send for you if we need anything,' she said. With a nod to all of the others, she got to her feet, with Thomas doing likewise and setting off for the dungeons. 'Any ideas?'

'Not one,' he said, running a hand through his hair with a sigh.

'Thomas, is everything alright? You seem absolutely exhausted,' she asked.

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure if he could speak. 'I told you about what we found beneath the castle.'

'The waypoint and the old library,' she said.

He nodded. 'Ever since they left, I've been working down there when I can, trying to understand it all and what it means,' he said. 'There's still so much to figure out, but I've been trying to find other waypoints that could be useful to us, especially if Tristan is back walking this earth once more. If he comes for the city, I don't know how much of a chance we stand. He made Oldiron, supposedly one of the most defensible cities, look like child's play in the first war.'

'You're making plans to run if he comes here?' Emily demanded. 'I thought we were fighting him.'

'We've got a dozen or so precursors at our disposal, and who knows how many or what he might bring with him?' Thomas said. 'I'm not running though; I'm looking for help, and I'm not sure yet, but I think I might be on to something.'

Emily raised her eyebrows. 'Keep talking.'

'Lewis said that in the vision Arden showed him, the streets of Oldiron were filled with people trapped in crystal. What if we had a way to set them free or bring them back to life? I'm not sure exactly what the situation with that is,' he said.

'When I came back from speaking to the captains and the precursors, I found you asleep in the office, so I spoke to the others and let them know about the meeting this morning. I spent the rest of the night trying to map a route through the leyline to Oldiron. From Arden's notes, there should be a waypoint there, but it seems like when the city fell, it was destroyed or barricaded to prevent anyone from travelling through it.'

'I thought if I could find a way through to Oldiron, it might offer us something useful. It probably wouldn't be the first place that Tristan would go looking for anyone or anything, and it could buy us some time—maybe even allies if we can figure out what the crystal thing is.'

'Why didn't you say something? We could have tried to help you,' she said, trying to get her head around what he was proposing. 'Do you think we should abandon the city?'

'No, not yet, at least,' he said quickly. 'I don't even know if it's possible to reach Oldiron through the leylines, and if we wanted to get everyone out of the city that way, it would be chaos until we could reactivate the waypoint at the other end. It's a dangerous place at the best of times, even more so if there is nowhere directly linked to where you're trying to go.'

'Lewis managed it, though; if they managed to find the temple, they must have found a way through the leylines,' she said.

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

'I know; we have no idea what they faced along the way, though,' he said. 'Oria, in the grand scheme of things, was only a stone's throw away from where they thought they needed to be too. There's nothing else anywhere near Oldiron as far as I'm aware, definitely nothing that is mapped at least.'

'I don't know whether you're trying to sell this idea to me or put me off it,' Emily admitted as they descended the staircase into the dungeon. In the distance, they could hear Anthony shouting and Matron Henare trying to calm him.

'I'm sorry, I don't know what happened to him; he just completely flipped all of a sudden,' one of the guards said, seeing them approaching. He couldn't have been much older than Emily herself; his scraggly brown hair was tied back in a short ponytail, but he looked shaken by the experience. She could see him shudder as Antony screamed Lewis' name in the distance.

'It's not your fault,' Thomas said, trying to reassure him. 'He's always been reclusive whenever we've been down here, like he's retreated into a shell.'

'I was on duty yesterday morning. It wasn't until about halfway through my shift that I noticed the difference; he seemed a little more lucid than normal,' he said, gesturing for them to follow him down the corridor between the mostly empty cells.

Emily felt a lump in her throat as she saw that the cell she had once been locked in was now empty. She was sure that the memory of George taunting her through the bars would stay with her for as long as she lived. 'Has he said anything else other than demanding to speak with Lewis, Wendyl?' She asked, averting her gaze from the cell in the hope the memory would fade away once more.

'Nothing that we could make any sense of; it's usually just mindless rambling,' he said.

As soon as Anthony saw Emily and Thomas, he leapt up from the bed in his cell, where Matron Henare had been trying to calm him. 'Where is he? She said she was sending for him. Why are you here?'

'Lewis isn't here right now; he's away for a few days,' Thomas said, stretching the truth.

'Bullshit!' he spat. 'I need to speak to him.'

'He's not here,' Emily repeated. 'If you tell us what's going on, then we can get a message to him if it needs dealing with before he gets back.'

'They're planning on bringing Tristan back, George and Edmund,' he said. 'I didn't want to be part of it, but they made me, forced me,' he said. 'I tried to fight it, but Edmund had control over me. They killed my son; they killed Vincent.'

Emily and Thomas exchanged a glance. 'You're saying that Edmund was making you act against your will?' Thomas asked.

'Yes! I tried to fight it, but it was like constantly being in a haze. I didn't have control over myself, at least not when I was around other people. They kept me shut away as much as they could but I had no way of escaping or telling anyone.'

'Anthony, will you sit down? Let Matron Henare tend to you; we need you to tell us everything, and we'll fill in what we can. Before you start, though, you should know that Tristan has indeed returned. We're not certain what's happened to Edmund but if he was the one whose control you were under, then there might be reason to believe that he is dead and that is why you're now free of that.'

'He's already back?' Anthony said, paling visibly as he slumped onto the bed beside Matron Henare.

Thomas nodded. 'Lewis went with some of the people he trusted to try and stop them; I think Captain Caldwell was probably the only one you knew.'

'He was okay; you need to be careful though; he has people in the city guard, people at the top,' Anthony said.

'Do you know who was on his side? We just had a meeting with a lot of the captains and other high-ranking guards about the situation,' Emily said worriedly.

'There was Commander Redmond, Captain Douglas, Captain Riley and Commander General Sulyard,' Anthony said. 'I don't know if there was anyone else but those were the ones who were around most of the time.'

Thomas looked at her. She could almost see him breaking before her eyes; the exhaustion had magnified tenfold in a matter of seconds. 'Go, do whatever is necessary,' she insisted. 'I'll fill you in on the rest.'

With a nod, Thomas turned, rushing off back down the corridor in the direction they had come, shouting to the other two guards that were still stationed at the entrance to the dungeon. 'They were part of your meeting, weren't they?'

'Captain Riley and Commander General Sulyard were both there,' Emily nodded.

'Lewis is in trouble, isn't he?' Matron Henare asked. Emily nodded again.

'He was captured by Tristan. As far as we know, they're in Oria trying to get something from the emperor. Both of them were there for the discussion we were having about trying to formulate a rescue operation,' she said. 'I need you to tell me everything you know, please. It could save a lot of lives.'

'Their original plan went wrong. No one here at the castle knew Lewis existed; they assumed that by killing Dominic, the crown would come to me, but they both knew I had no interest in being king and would abdicate. Vincent was next in line, and they knew he would never bend to their will, so they had him killed as well before they went after Sebastian.'

'George saw you leaving the castle just after Sebastian would have died; that was when they sent bounty hunters after you to try and stop you. I don't know how, but word of another heir to the throne got out, and they started looking into it. They captured an old alchemist by the name of Charles Hargrove, intending to have him make a truth serum so they could interrogate you when they caught you and any possible heir.'

'In the end, it was more of an inconvenience for them to find out about Lewis. They hatched another plan after they caught the pair of you. Edmund would play the part of helping you and feeding you the information that you needed in order to find and recover the crown; that was what they needed after all. Without that, they wouldn't be able to bring Tristan back to life. You know all the rest—how they tried and failed to use the Orb of Embers.'

'Edmund was playing us the entire time,' Emily sighed.

'He played everyone, right up until the moment he left the castle with the crown. I should have tried harder to break free, to warn someone,' Anthony said. 'Don't beat yourself up over it; you need to focus on what you can do now to get Lewis back. They might not have believed much in prophecy but I know there was enough in it about Lewis to worry them.'

'Did they say anything about their plans if they were successful in bringing Tristan back?' Emily asked.

'They didn't really discuss it, at least not in front of me. I don't know if they were worried I would break out of Edmund's grasp one day and tell someone what I had heard,' he said. 'All I know is that the last time Tristan was alive, he was hell-bent on finding a way to beat death, not only in finding a way that he couldn't die but also in finding a way to defeat Ilborh, the goddess of death. What's going to happen to me?'

'I don't know; that's not my decision to make,' she said. 'I know what these cells are like, and you would much rather be out of them, and I'll see what I can do. For now, though, I'll have the guards make it as comfortable as possible and get some proper meals down here for you.'

Anthony considered the ground at his feet for a moment. 'I appreciate it. The same goes for Lewis for not having my head at the first possible moment. George, and probably Edmund, wouldn't have been so kind.'

'That could all change still. I hope, for your sake as much as ours, that you won't follow in their footsteps or those of the guards you mentioned.'

'You have my word, whatever that might mean to you,' Anthony said, looking up at her gratefully. 'When you rescue Lewis, tell him what I told you. Once he's back, if he'll come and see me, I think he would like to know what happened to his father and where his remains are.'

'He would,' Emily said. With a nod, she left Matron Henare to care for him, her mind racing at a mile per minute. It seemed as though hardly an hour could go by without the entire landscape around them shifting dramatically. Should she go and track down Thomas? Did she even want to after seeing the look on his face as he ran from the dungeons?