“I won’t hurt you,” Amaranthine laughed joyously after Corvusol had set her up perfectly to deliver so much pain to me.

“Why in the abyss not? Make the human bleed!” Corvusol demanded.

“I cannot, Corvie. He’s the immediate family of one of my darling Dustwalkers, and per their pact I am oathbound not to harm him, but he didn’t need to know that did he?” Amaranthine’s smile was cold, but beautiful. I wanted to kiss her again, and slap her, but mostly kiss her. I could still feel the warmth of those dark red lips against mine, the intensity of power and life that lurked within her, and the danger. I never understood how danger might be an aphrodisiac before, but in this moment, I’d learned a valuable lesson about myself.

“Wait. What?” I asked stupidly, the actual implication of what Amaranthine said about my father sinking in. The fey smiled and joked as if she’d played a minor prank on me, not intimidated me to the point of panic attacks, cajoled me into a deal, and taken my reflection from me.

“Your father and uncle work for me, darling. In exchange for doing my tasks and being my informants, I awakened and bound their concepts. The clergy of Mithras don’t like to share their enkindlers with the dirty adventurers, after all. I believe the Mithriites call enkindlers Faithshapers, and concepts Devotions? All the real adventuring groups have a patron beyond the little playground that Mithras calls his True World, although only the Dustwalkers were brash enough to serve me.”

“I am beyond disappointed.” Corvusol whined loudly.

“Oh, don’t be too despondent. Think of the pain the journey he’s about to embark on will take. He tried to offer you his last attribute, Corvie. That means he promised her three.” Amaranthine smiled at me as if I were very, very dumb. “In contrast, I only gave Corvie here two.”

I felt very dumb, since I didn’t understand the context of the conversation in the least, and worst of all, I couldn’t help but fawn after her like a lost puppy who wanted to be pet. IF what Amaranthine said was true, the Dustwalkers were all traitors to Solarias and Mithras. What did that mean for the future? If Mithras exiled me, would I ever see any of my family again?

“We’re done, Maxima, take your new toy. Don’t let him die until he’s ready to trade with me again.” Amaranthine looked at me one last time after those words, then leaned in. Her breath tickled my ear, the tip of her tongue left a single drop of moisture against my earlobe and filled my whole being with anticipation.

“Find a good fourth concept, Emery LeeRoy.” I couldn’t move. Had she paralyzed me? Maybe she had paralytic saliva? No, that didn’t make any sense, my tongue had been in her mouth. My neck, it turned out, could move. I couldn’t stop my neck from turning to follow Amaranthine as she walked towards the distant stones, the sashay of her hips assured me she knew I was watching.

“Enjoy your trip to the abyss, idiot. Or did you forget to ask Maxima where she was, too?” Corvusol couldn’t resist being an asshole.

Amaranthine spun around gracefully, walking backwards as if she did it all the time. My idea that she was a mixture of a mage, and a rogue may have been off, she struck me more and more as a rogue, but perhaps that was just fey grace at work?

"Since my benevolence knows no bounds, and you gave better than you bargained for, I’ll inform your father that our meeting was fruitful. Alas, you forsook my warm embrace for the icy clutches of an ancient hag. Maybe if you polish her dull surfaces, you’ll see me within Maxima." Amaranthine winked and blew me a kiss.

“What? No? Don’t tell him that!” I cried after the leather clad figure, but she wasn’t there any longer, and the black crystal of Corvusol had vanished with her, too.

“Shit!” I swore at the world in frustration, turned and kicked a small rock. I expected it to go flying, maybe into one of the obelisks or into the distant grass. Instead, it nearly broke my foot. Although tiny in appearance, the small rock was a protrusion of a giant boulder.

“I can move? I can move. Now what?” Had it been a spell? A toxin? Had I even been paralyzed at all, or had it just been a trick of my mind? I felt exhausted, unable to keep up with the events of the last day. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and wake up to a world where I only had to deal with Etienne being a dick to me.

A powerful force grasped me while I hopped up and down on one foot. It almost felt like an invisible hand had grasped me, unseen fingers curling around me.

“Time to come to me, enkindler. The trek will be long, and the sights many. Ware what you expose yourself too, for my protection is not all powerful at this distance.”

Arx Maxima did not give me time to respond, or even process the words she spoke into my mind. Instead, I suddenly fell sideways. Rings of mist drifted together to form a Veil, and I soared through it. The hilltop with its obelisks and monuments was gone when I looked back, and when I looked ahead I saw a tower rushing towards me.

An old man, so ancient his skin was nearly see through, his hair the barest of silver wisps, even his beard had thinned, smoked a pipe in a comfortable plush chair atop the tower. He had been enmeshed in the book propped against his leg, before I disturbed him. He took a moment to watch me as I fell past the top of his tower.

“Good day,” he said.

“I can’t fly!” I screamed back.

“Too bad,” the old man said, and resumed reading.

Another ring of mist enveloped me, seconds before I plummeted to the ground near the old man’s tower. Seconds later, I broke through clouds, and below me herds of a horned animal I’d never seen filled a vast plain of rivers and shrubs. One particularly large two horned animal looked up at me and called to me with a great, resonating “Mooooooooo!”

I opened my eyes to find darkness all around me. Occasional will-o’-the-wisps flickered brightly, giving very brief faint testament to the fact a dark river coursed through underground caverns. No signs of life were to be seen. Between the blackness of the waters and the scent of death itself, I suspected even a drop of that water would cause me grievous harm.

“Get out of my caves!” A haunched skeletal figure in black robes, piloting a boat over the water, grumbled at me.

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“I’m trying to!” I yelled back, then screamed as at the very last second the forces pulling me shifted me to the right. A long barb of rock barely missed my eye.

Through caves and plains, skies unending and fields of lava, I flew between Veils. The further we went, the more chaotic and wilder the horizons grew, and the more time I spent within the mists between rings. I was okay with this, since the time within the mists was mostly blind, and didn’t leave me wondering what awful features of an environment might attempt to kill me as I was pulled by. Every time, Arx Maxima protected me, but the margin for error was so thin that I couldn’t help but be terrified.

Time was impossible to judge. There were no constants to my journey. Every time I counted, I lost interest somewhere in the 500’s, or would pierce through a Veil and be exposed to strange sights like a horde of skeletons fighting a battalion of imps, specters gathered in an amphitheater playing boardgames, or explode into the celestial void.

In one of those instances, a creature with purple wrinkled flesh that looked to belong to a sea creature, thousands of orange-yellow eyes, and long tentacles filled with various types of pincers, mandibles, maws, and every type of mouth I could conceive of, opened all of it’s thousands of eyes and stared balefully at me.

I did not like this place, and the thousand-eyed malignant glare pushed me to a state of unconsciousness, my mind unable to cling to my preconceived notions of reality in the face of whatever abomination against order it was.

How long did I float through the wilds of chaos, pulled in by Arx Maxima like a fish across a vast ocean? I couldn’t even begin to guess, but when I finally regained awareness I fell through a place of floating islands, black skies, and harpy-like creatures roosted everywhere I looked. They ignored me at first, but the more I woke up, the more of them seemed to notice. First one, then a dozen, then hundrends, then thousands flew after me. They were, overall, slower than the speed that Maxima pulled me through the world, but a lone outlier caught up to me.

They were not harpies.

The creature that approached me had the face of a woman, the twirly horns of a ram, the wings of a bat, the hooves of goat, and its fingers were the claws of an eagle. I had never seen or imagined such a monstrous fusion of animal and human; its eyes exuded nothing but savageness and malice. It lacked human speech, based on the squeaks and screeches it made at me. It couldn’t quite close the distance no matter how hard it tried, and in the end sent volleys of magical spikes at me.

One of the spikes managed to pierce the barrier around me, fountaining blood into my face from my thigh while I writhed and squirmed in pain. Another ring of mist took me then, and moments later I flew past a crab the size of a house, down passage way after passage way, while my blood leaked from the considerable wound in my thigh.

“You made it. Only slightly wounded, too!” Arx Maxima welcomed me from somewhere ahead in the tunnels. I could almost see a brilliant source of energy that corresponded to her words, approaching me at a very high speed.

“This is more than slightly!” I shouted at the tunnel walls as they flashed by. Despite the fact she’d gotten me here, mostly safely, I felt extremely uncomfortable with the speed, and there was no sign of me being slowed down at all.

“How do I stop?”

“Stop? Why? It will be easier to reinforce your vessel while rebuilding it.”

“What? STOP!” The cracked golden crystal floated in the air, surrounded by stalactites, stalagmites, and other strange rock formations. Strangely, the pain in my leg vanished moments before impact. Arx Maxima did not, however, stop me. I threw my hands up in a desperate attempt to save my face, but it didn’t matter. I crashed right into the crystal faster than man had ever been meant to move.

It didn’t hurt. Why didn’t it hurt? Did I die?

“Am I dead?” I asked in confusion. It would figure I went from a deal with Amaranthine to being tricked to death by a shiny crystal that was too good to be true. My blood, flesh, bones, and whatever else was inside of me was absorbed into the golden cracked crystal that was Arx Maxima, and I appeared in a room I didn’t understand. How did I even know I hit the crystal? It wasn’t as if I could watch myself from outside my body, and yet it seemed like that was exactly what had happened.

“Where am I?” I asked very confused. I stood in a room with plush carpet, a deep teal that must have been incredibly expensive. It felt softer than any carpet I had ever seen, and its vibrant color seemed impossibly consistent. A large bed dominated the room, with masterfully made metal furniture next to it. Empty wooden picture frames sat atop it, and across a number of shelves. Old books filled other shelves. Strange rectangles of glass filled a desk, with even stranger lights within.

“Your quarters. This is replica of a portion of my real body, currently stored within my crystalline subspace. We are utilizing a temporary mental domain while I strengthen your body to contain me.”

“Can you show me what that entails? Or is it going to make me violently ill?” I asked skeptically.

“I am currently rebuilding you on a sub-atomic level. Your culture has lost practically all knowledge of atoms, electrons, and even the most basic of science. For the sake of your mental well-being, it is best I do not restore any of your senses until the procedure is done. Not all knowledge is beneficial.”

“Could you have told me that Amaranthine wouldn’t have hurt me?”

“No. I am not omniscient, nor do I know the precise nature of Corvusol’s pact with the fey.”

That made me feel slightly better. Slightly.

“Then why the hell didn’t you suggest I make the deal for not being harmed?” I growled accusatorily.

“Corvusol would not risk my wrath, your safety was never in question despite his bluster.” Arx Maxima discarded my concerns in a casual way that left me angry. I hated being ignorant, not knowing what was going on. Had Corvusol only been blustering? I couldn’t have a partnership with Arx Maxima if I didn’t trust her. Against my better judgement, I decided to trust the golden crystal.

“So… what happens now?”

“Now? I augment your body. By incorporating my structure into yours, you will be elevated above your previous limitations. When the process has completed, I will guide you in awakening your abilities as an enkindler, and you will bind me to your attributes.”

“When you say augment me. Am I still going to be.. me?”

“Your identity will not be altered by physiological changes. By merging my silicate structure with your organic structure, I have created a vastly increased capacitive effect for storage and control of astral energies. Despite your late-start to absorption and manipulation of these energies my changes should make your learning process both more efficient and expedient. Additionally, it will allow you to use my computational capabilities for power control. This, in turn, allows you to access concepts and powers typically outside of humanities ability to process.”

I didn’t really grasp what Arx Maxima told me. I understood the basic meaning, but I had no context for it. How, precisely, was she improving me? What was silicate? What were astral energies? I would have to learn as I went and ask questions. Images of being back in the Havenstone Academy flashed through my mind, and I wanted to groan. I thought I’d finished my time in school!

“There is always more to learn. Query: What do you wish me to refer to you as?”

“My name is Emery.”

“Hello, Emery. I am Arx Maxima. It is a pleasure to meet you. What kind of power do you want?”

What kind of power did I want? I laughed. What kind of question even was that?

“I have assessed your capabilities. You are technically proficient in the techniques of the spear; you have no other applicable skills of note. Spatial Perception grade: AAA. Mental Rotation grade: A. Spatial Visualization grade: S. Mental folding grade: A. Visual penetrative ability grade: B.”

“What does all of that even mean?” I demanded, annoyed at how one sided this conversation had become.

“Do you like spears?”

“Yeah, they’re a good weapon. Swords are okay, but why not opt for a sword-staff or bladed spear instead?”

“Magic affinities: none. Astral affinity: S+. Dream affinity: More testing needed.”

“Are you just going to ignore me and spout stuff I don’t understand?”

“Yes.”