Carmine dug her hands deep into Kathir's fur and held for dear life. Horses couldn't compare. In her panther skin, Kathir leapt up the mountainside, certain of her steps no matter how small the foothold. Carmine lacked the same confidence. She slammed her eyes shut, heart beating in her throat as she felt momentary weightlessness with every jump. Kathir cared for speed, not safety, and each time Carmine let out a frightened whine, it went utterly ignored. When they finally reached the sanctuary’s base, Carmine could barely stand on her shaking legs. Kathir transformed back into her humanoid shape, though not fully; black fur coated her skin while her fangs and claws remained pronounced.

"We are not far behind." She announced, pulling the cloak back over herself. She started towards the entrance. "You will follow a short distance behind me and avoid danger."

"Why?" Carmine retorted. "You saw, I can fight."

"You can lash out." Kathir glanced inside the silver sanctuary. "You are inexperienced and unfocused; a liability in combat."

"Wrong, you can't cast spells if you're not focused on them," Carmine countered. "And I showed them-"

"You failed to heal the Riven." Kathir turned back, her face frustratingly neutral. Carmine grit her teeth and crossed her arms. "Your proficiency for combat is irrelevant, and you are useless to me war-locked. Collect yourself and avoid danger." Without waiting for any confirmation, Kathir rushed through the entrance without a sound.

Carmine remained still for a moment, recalling what Aaron explained of war-lock. Her urge to punish the lying brigands still seared her mind, but in the time it took for Kathir to catch up, the haze over her other thoughts thinned.

She conjured a simple illusion of a horse in her hand. It trotted around her palm, discernible but distorted, as if she watched through frosted glass.

Carmine shook her head, grumbling curses at everything in sight. Something that simple should have been easy, yet she could barely hold the image in mind. Perhaps Kathir was right, but impaired or no, she didn't come all this way to sit out. She lightened her steps and crossed the threshold .

The sanctuary's presence eased Carmine nerves as she caught herself humming an unfamiliar tune. Shaking her head free, she cast a ward over herself. No way she could be that calm right now. The sanctuary wasn't so majestic, sorcery ran through its song. Listening hard, Carmine heard different pitches and tones depending on how the wind entered and left the building. Alone, disjointed notes, but together they formed loose words in the ancient tongue.

Carmine knew objects ancient structures could cast sorcery, but to have the entire structure be part of the incantation surpassed her knowledge. She strained her ears, trying to discern what words made up the incantation, but another conversation echoed louder.

"Oscar, where the hell are we going? If that thing comes back," the brigand's question carried through the windswept halls.

"I'm thinking!" Oscar's familiar tone snapped back. "That ponce Laurence was supposed to know what to do, now all we got is this fucking thing."

"Is it moving?"

"Keep watch! I doubt we're out of trouble yet."

"We can take the rest of this stuff, right boss?" Their third asked. "We'll need the coin now-"

"Grab what you want. So long as we deliver what was asked, we can still come out ahead."

Thieves on top of everything else. Carmine clenched her fists, feeling her urge to lash out bubble and brew.

No.

She breathed deep, held to her senses. She had to. If nothing else, she couldn't prove Kathir right. That crazy cat woman didn't appear capable of smugness, but Carmine could imagine it on her face all the same. She would not be a liability again.

Carmine followed the voices, a test which proved easier said than done. The ancients built the damned sanctuary like a giant instrument, its halls twisting and winding back on themselves, making what seemed the most direct route long and confusing. She could only trust the mud. Oscar and his men wanted speed, and none cleared the gunk from their boots. That, if nothing else, stuck out on the silver floors like rot in a wound. Kathir, on the other hand, left no trace. The moments she moved ahead of Carmine were enough for her to vanish, not a single hair left behind.

Unfortunately, that meant Carmine found the brigands on her own. They lumbered through one chamber after another, taking anything with the slightest shine. Crystal tablets, silver statuettes, if it wasn't nailed down, they tossed into over-stretched burlap sacks, jagged with stolen loot. While his last two men plundered, Oscar focused on his hands. No, not his; a severed hand. Its fingers had bent out of shape, pulled apart beyond what a normal body could allow. Carmine flinched, her face twisting in disgust. It reminded her of the undead wretches she'd seen years ago; gray skin pulled taut over bone, fingers elongated, nails long and sharp as they moved by an unseen force.

Its middle finger wretched forward, pointing Oscar deeper inside.

That was their guide?

Carmine waited for him and his lackeys to move for the next corridor when a brief movement caught her eye. In an opening dangerously high above the room, barely lit by the wall's leylines, Kathir waited for the men below. When they'd taken everything they could, and began moving towards the next room, she dropped.

She landed knee first on Oscar's rear guard. His armor screeched beneath the blow, his bones breaking the fall. Only Kathir rose. She should have been a puddle on the floor. What was she made of?

The last of Oscar's men had no time to react. Sparks flew from his breastplate as he recoiled from Kathir's claws. Before he could gain his footing, she lunged again. To save his own skin, Oscar pushed his last trooper into Kathir and ran. Tightening her fingers together, Kathir jabbed a hole through the brigand’s breastplate, piercing through his chest up to her elbow. Of all things Oscar and his men threw at her, she only slowed because her arm became stuck in the body. Carmine grimaced at the carnage, averting her eyes to the ground. She walked into the room, her steps loud and clear. Alarming that woman seemed a quick way to end up dead. Besides, Carmine doubted she could sneak up on the furred murder machine.

"You found your way," Kathir said, wrenching her arm free with a spray of viscera. "Good."

Carmine covered her mouth. Don't puke. Don't puke. Don't puke. She swallowed her disgust.

"Where did you go?' Carmine asked, throwing her arms wide with frustrated confusion. "You went in first. How did I find them before you?"

"All paths in this place lead to one central chamber," Kathir replied, wiping her arm on her pilfered cloak. "I moved to cut them off by taking a different route. It took longer than expected. Regardless, one remains."

"Oscar," Carmine frowned. "He had a weird mummified hand leading him around." She tried to bend her own fingers to mimic what she saw, stopping before they snapped.

"Did he?" Kathir turned down the tunnel. "Follow as you can." without waiting for a reply, she ran off faster than Carmine could manage. Not that she would complain. Seeing Kathir do her dirty work once is enough.

Carmine turned away from the dead. She had followed them far in, likely only the central chamber remained.

"Don't come any closer!" Carmine heard Oscar just as she rounded the corner. He hid on the far side of a sarcophagus as Kathir approached. Like the case in the archive, a layer of translucent crystal covered the sarcophagus' top. Inside, Carmine saw a Riven skeleton made of pure arcanite shining with prismatic brilliance under the sanctuary's leylines. The mummified hand had escaped Oscar's grasp. It crawled along the sarcophagus, breaking its nails against the case.

"Tell me who gave you that hand and you will keep your life," Kathir stopped on one side of the sarcophagus.

"I don't think so." Oscar unsheathed his sword. "I get paid extra for discretion."

"Your coin will mean nothing when you are dead."

"Maybe. Though, you don't seem likely to keep your word either." Oscar grabbed the moving hand and tossed it at Kathir. "Let's find out."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Kathir swatted it aside, but in the moment's distraction, Oscar smashed his pommel into the crystal glass. The lid shattered into thousands of tiny pieces, and he wrenched the arcanite skull free of the entombed body with a smirk on his face. He made it one step before Kathir's claws swiped his throat, and she knocked the relic from his hand. The wind fell still. The skull clattered to the ground at Carmine's feet. The only sound left was the choking sputter of a dying man. Kathir stalked over to the sarcophagus' side to finish what she started.

Carmine stopped herself from turning away. She made herself watch. She needed to know it was over.

With the second strike, Oscar gave a short groan, and breathed no more. Carmine expected relief. That man wronged her; nearly killed someone she called friend and threatened more, but the sounds…the sounds echoed in her head. Wet, bubbling hacks growing weaker by the second. Unease quickly overshadowed what relief she might have felt, as she remembered how fragile life was.

Her gaze fell to her feet. The arcanite skull stared back, flecks of blood on its surface. Why'd they come so far for this? Inflict such harm, even die, for this? She lifted it in her hands, heavier than she imagined, looking at it as if it held any answer. Before she found any, the disembodied hand leapt onto the skull.

"What the-" Carmine tried to shake it off, but its grip held firm. Even without a body, its strength nearly pulled the skull from her hands. "Let go!"

Its grip tightened in defiance. Elongated nails dragging through Oscar's blood. With a crimson glow, the hand carved a spell into the air between them.

"Do not let go!" Kathir warned, just as the skull lurched in Carmine's grip. The hand lifted midair, tugged back. Black blood spilled from its stump, gathering into a hanging sludge behind the hand itself. The sanctuary's ley lines went dark. Under what little light remained, bits of sinew emerged from the miasmic gunk. Flesh knit into the severed hand and its strength grew by the second. Still, Carmine held on, her feet sliding across the floor towards whatever hell appeared.

A whisper reached her thoughts. Something unheard by ear, but the message resonated from the tips of her fingers to the depths of her mind.

We have been found.

A second monstrous hand emerged, tearing at the seam of its sludgy confines. With a terrible screech, it tore a portal open in space. What lurked on the other side came from a land Carmine had never seen. A bleak world, covered in ashen sand as far as the eye could see. No sun, no moons, yet millions of tiny lights speckled the blackened sky.

Before she could comprehend the view, a shadow loomed in her sight. Its eyes held no light.

It lunged.

Carmine tried to pull back, but felt herself shoved to the ground. Kathir intercepted the attack, and the creature eagerly accepted the bait. It stood half-again the shape-shifter's height and twice as wide, though not from muscle. Two furred torsos haphazardly fused together, their builds misshapen and bulbous. The lopsided monster's arms curved around Kathir's body, excess joints grinding against each other. Its bones snapped and reformed with each movement. The severed hand reconnected to one arm, while the other split into three at the elbow, all wriggling in uneven length. It tore at Kathir as she held it half inside its rift. Carmine lingered on its face for longest; it was Riven. The fur had fallen out, and tumorous growths covered its sunken skin, but its shape resembled the skull in her grasp. Each tooth in its mouth, torn further open than possible, had mutated into incisors long enough to pierce through its own cheeks, even as it clamped through Kathir's left arm.

It gnawed and gnawed and gnawed. The deep gashes Kathir carved through its face deterred nothing. She roared in a mix of pain and fury before tearing the monster from its portal and throwing it to the ground. For a moment the creature reeled, thrashing and wailing as it chewed on something left in its mouth.

An arm.

Kathir’s arm. Carmine looked up at her guardian and saw her missing a limb. She covered her mouth, holding in her scream. It ripped through Kathir like she was nothing. If even she couldn’t stop it…

"That thing's going to kill us," Carmine edged back from the rising monster. "We have to get out-"

"Hold." Kathir held her in place. Blood drained from her stump like a faucet, but she paid it no mind. How long could she even stay standing? No one could ignore a wound like that. No one. "I brought you here for a purpose and you will fulfill it."

"But that thing-"

"I will handle it." Kathir pushed the skull into Carmine's chest. "Put it back. Get the wind blowing again.

"How would I even-?"

"Figure it out." Kathir turned back to the creature and pounced on it before it could counter. Despite her promises, Kathir's movements slowed. Her claws dug shallow wounds, while the monster tried to swat her aside. She kept its attention, but for how long?

Carmine glared at the skull, disembodied and to blame. She hurried over to the coffin, trying to ignore the sound of flesh tearing while she climbed inside. No safer place at the moment.

The skull fit snugly back into its own recess and the body was whole once more. Of course, it was too much to hope for that to solve everything. 'Get the winds moving?' Easier said than done, though Carmine doubted that Kathir cared. All she had to start were a few half-heard words amidst a gale. She might be able to call the wind back, then maybe the temple would do the rest, but to get anything more than a disappointing puff, she needed more energy. Much more than she had ever summoned before, and certainly more than she had at her disposal. The sanctuary had the power, and if the skull's removal was any indication, the skeleton powered the sanctuary. How was irrelevant; She needed it all now.

Carmine extended her arcane sense to the skeleton. More than any lodestone or arcanite battery she'd touched before, Carmine felt as though she fell into an ocean and saw nothing but a bottomless sea. So vast and empty, she almost lost herself. She tried to withdraw, but couldn't find the way back. All awareness outside her body faded to black, yet with her vision dark, and ears deaf, she knew something stirred around her. She felt potential. A coiled spring, a taut wire, a wealth of energy waiting for a form to fill.

And something more. Something old.

A presence.

It dragged Carmine in a current, rushing back to her body. She gasped for air, panicking as her senses returned. A tingle started in her fingertips, a subtle itch as the corpse's energy connected to her body. In a second, that small tingle became a swarm of needles, stinging up her arms.

Carmine cried out, lurching back from the coffin with the skull still in her grip. She tried to throw it away, but her hands refused to move. She couldn't even lift a finger! The needles crawled up higher, foreign intent superseding Carmine's own.

The bones weren't as dead as they pretended. They waited. They watched. The presence lurking inside flooded Carmine's mind, acting on single minded instinct, devoid of intelligence.

Needles pierced through her brain as Carmine tried to call for help, but her voice no longer answered to her.

Her hands released the skull; its luster gone. Carmine's arm raised above her head unbidden, and her legs stood beneath her. She could only watch; an observer in her own body.

"Nekilim's sky." Ancient words passed her lips. The presence possessing her cast a spell as she understood it, but instead of intent, Carmine sensed nostalgia. A memory of porous mountain spires, tunneled by windy canals spanning far across the land.

In an instant, the deafening winds returned. Carmine’s robe whipped around her, yet the entity in control merely opened her arms to feel the passing rush.

Carmine saw the Riven creature turn its attention at her. Kathir rested on a knee, swaying, barely upright. She couldn't stop it as it lurched Carmine's way. Its jaws opened wide. No matter how she wanted to run, the being in control refused. It merely raised her hand in the creature's path.

"Lost kith, lost kin," Carmine's mouth sang a spell, echoed on the wind. "Lay thy anguish to rest." Carmine's hand on the monster's snout. All its motion stalled with one contact. The creature lowered its claws, looming over Carmine, awaiting the next words.

"Here thy home will ever remain," the entity continued using Carmine's voice. "A home of beauty. A home of safety. A home under mountain stone."

The words joined the last on the winds, and in them Carmine recognized traces of the song she heard from afar. The entity continued to sing, adding a verse she hadn't heard before.

"But yee cannot remain to see it. Lay thy anguish to rest, and part with thy pain." Bits of the Riven's body flaked off in specks of dust, joining the melodic wind. Its size dwindled. Claws shrank. Fangs blunted. Carmine saw now a withered husk of a Riven, starved and piteous. Glazed eyes focused on Carmine. They lacked the faintest hint of life, and still they focused everything on her words.

"Forget what you have seen, but hold peace in thy heart, and flee. Here thy home will ever lie."

Carmine's hand pulled away from the Riven. It backed away, steps slow, reluctant. It retreated back through its portal, never looking away from the sanctuary as the rift slowly closed. Deep regret pained Carmine's chest before she reminded herself it was not her own.

The entity lurched her body back to its own corpse and rested her hands clumsily onto its cheeks.

Carmine felt the presence leave her body as the bones regained their light. The moment she had control of herself again threw herself from the coffin.

She landed hard on the silver floor, scrambling back on weak hands and knees. She cradled her throat, coughing and hacking speck of blood onto the ground.

Everything hurt, but her voice more than anything. As she wiped her face, she found blood leaking from her nose and eyes. She tasted it in her mouth, and saw more lining her nails on each finger.

What was that thing? What did that thing do to her?

On the verge of screaming, she felt a hand touch her back.

"Can you move?" Carmine jumped as Kathir was suddenly behind her.

"W-wh-what was that-?" She stammered.

"Later. I am surprised you survived."

"Surprised I-did you think I wouldn't?" Carmine frowned. "Did you know what that thing would do!?"

"It prevented that creature from escaping. It also saved both our lives. My master would call that a 'pleasant surprise.'" Kathir hoisted Carmine to her feet. "I deemed your survival unlikely."

"Fuck you," Carmine yanked her arm from Kathir's grip. "You look no better. If you're going to keel over, you better say something now."

"I will survive. I am not like you. My wounds heal quickly."

"And…" Carmine looked at Kathir's stump. The bleeding already stopped, and some parts began healing over the gash. "Your, uh, arm?"

"I will survive without it." Kathir grabbed Carmine under the arm. "Come."

"Wait, what was that monster? Was it a person-?"

"I am aware you have questions. For your aid, I will answer what I can. Elsewhere.”