Ein’s fire was enough to destroy the reanimated bodies, each falling away charred and in pieces, but the tentacles remained. The creature’s appendages withdrew in pain but would surely return.

“I am not going to be able to keep this up,” Sarien’s father said, his face tight with exhaustion. “I have been down here a while but have not been able to locate the main body.”

“I think I know where it is,” Sarien said.

His father raised an eyebrow.

“There’s a gateway. I can feel it.”

“Feel it? Not even your mother could do that. Or,” he thought for a moment, “maybe she kept that part from us.”

“So, if you’re Ein, that makes Sarien’s ma Anja?” Kax asked. “And she was from Rhinerien?” Everyone looked at him, and his nose twitched. “I mean, because of Sarien’s eyes, and the rhinn having gates and the like.”

“The man has a point,” Heylien said. “Is he right?”

Sarien looked at his father, who nodded. “Her name on Maydian was Anja, yes. She’s not a rhinn, though. You could say the rhinn are descendants from her people.”

Ein squeezed Sarien’s arm. “Something happened to your mother long after our struggle against the ones who called themselves gods of this world. She was taken away through her power somehow right after you were born. Without a way to get to her, and no other wayfarers on this world, much less Gatekeepers I thought she was lost to us forever.”

“Gatekeeper?” Sarien asked.

“It’s a small group among the wayfarers. Your mother is one.” He gave Sarien a hopeful smile. “Once this is all dealt with, we now have the means to go find her.”

Sarien returned the smile. “I like the sound of that.” They reached another split in the path and turned right, Sarien following the resonance inside him. He felt connected to the gate, his body drawn to it.

“About your black flame,” Ein continued. “From what you said, you can do things that shouldn’t be possible. It might be that I’ve put limitations on myself and what I can do with it from being taught it one way, like your mages here on Maydian, but I can’t be sure.”

“What do you mean?” Sarien asked. He’d picked up his spear with the baker still inside it. There was no way around it, he needed a weapon and he would deal with the trapped man’s heart later. “You’re not from Maydian?”

His father shook his head. “No, not originally. Lived here a long time, though. What I mean is that you have two powers that should not be able to co-exist. In a way, they are opposites. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like you can do things that shouldn’t be possible. This may mean that the two forces might be influencing each other in some way.”

“There’s this line inside me separating the two. Keeping them apart.”

Sarien didn’t know what to think of his father not being native to this world. Did that mean he wasn’t human? If Sarien’s mother wasn’t from here either, did that mean Sarien wasn’t human either?

His head spun with a million questions. Each answer from his father only solidified the fact that he knew so little. Sarien pushed the panicked thoughts from his mind. He could only focus on the present and their immediate task was to stop the creature. Then the rhinn. After that, he would have all the time he needed to peel away each and every one of his father’s secrets.

“We’re getting closer,” Sarien said. “Almost there.”

“Shouldn’t we come up with some sort of plan?” Lana asked, anxiously fiddling with her daggers.

Heylien cleared his throat. “I have an idea. It’s a little crazy, but it could work.”

Ein nodded approvingly. “Let’s hear it.”

They kept walking while Heylien explained. “Sarien, you said it’s likely to be by the gate?”

“Yes. If it’s anything like the kozimuz, the creature will be unwilling to leave the area around the gate. I believe the Xzxyth is the same.”

“Good. Based on the map, we’re heading toward the main water collection bay. Makes sense this Xzxyth creature will be there if it’s big.”

“Right,” Sarien agreed.

Heylien pointed at Ein. “And we have a powerful hydromancer. Even though the creature is blocking the tunnels, can you get the water?”

Ein’s smiled as he seemed to catch onto what Heylien had planned. “Good lad! I can and I will break them down and we will wash that blight down into the gate.”

“I like the sound of that,” Kax said.

“Will that really work? What if it is too big?” Lana asked.

Sarien couldn’t help but agree with her. “If it’s going through all these tunnels without moving from that bay, it must be gigantic. Can’t it grab hold onto something?”

“Won’t it drown if it does that? Nothing is stronger than a rushing river, especially funneled underground like this,” Heylien argued.

“I’m not sure it even needs to breathe,” Ein said. “But I still like the plan. It’s better than anything I’ve tried before.”

“We could just cut its arms off before flushing it out,” Kax said.

“Let’s go for it,” Sarien said. “With me, Kax, and Heylien all cutting off limbs, it should be fine. Right?” His tone was light to mask just how terrified he was by the idea of going into this beast’s lair. All he wanted was to turn and run for the nearest exit, but he couldn’t. He’d promised Goslin he would eliminate this creature and help the citizens of Tyralien. Fleeing now would mean going back on his word to the few people in the world he could call friends.

Yes, he’d found his father, but his responsibility did not end there. This was part of Goslin’s quest, so it was part of Sarien’s too.

“Let’s do it! You don’t have any more of those weapons tucked away somewhere?” Ein asked.

It was interesting to see this side of his father. The meticulously careful and deliberate man he’d grown up with wasn’t who Sarien thought he’d be. He liked this adventurous side, he decided. Perhaps Sarien should be angry or disappointed in his father for lying to him all this time, but he understood why he’d done it, and couldn’t fault the man for it.

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“Afraid not. You just focus on the water and leave the fighting to those of us who are not centuries old,” Sarien said, laughing to spite the fear.

“Let’s hurry,” Ein said, when they encountered more of the dead watching them from a distance, their blank eyes regarding them as they passed. “I don’t like those things watching us. Xzxyth will know we’re coming.”

The group picked up their pace and Lana hobbled along quickly despite her injured leg. Ein’s small globes of fire kept pace ahead of them to light up the way, and when they reached their destination, they knew that Heylien had been right. The tunnel widened before they entered a large chamber. The floor continued on before abruptly ending in a steep drop.

Thick tentacles reached out of that bay and into the different side tunnels. So many that Sarien worried there would be too many to cut through in the short amount of time.

Sarien didn’t have to look down into the dry bay to know that the gate was down there in the darkness, but Ein hurried ahead and peered down.

“It’s here. The main body.” The glow from the gate cast enough light to see the shadowy silhouette of an enormous being tucked down in the shadows.

The group pivoted to find the dead spilling out from every tunnel leading into the chamber. They moved slowly, shuffling their feet.

“How long until you can get the water down here?” Sarien asked, his voice threaded with worry.

“Start cutting,” Ein muttered. He closed his eyes and placed his palms together in front of his chest, concentrating. “This won’t take long.”

Sarien saw that they would have to sever five of the massive limbs to cut off the creature’s hold on the tunnel system.

He ran up to the tentacle away with the thought of working his way back toward the center. His knees almost bucked at a loud rumble somewhere far away, but he braced himself and hacked away at the limb with the side of his spear.

Each overhead swing with the spear bit into the monster’s flesh and cut a little deeper, but the spear really wasn’t the best weapon for the job, even with the elongated blade at the top.

The tentacle jerked, and the creature screeched each time he struck it, a horrifying sound that sent a chill up his spine. He felt the fear in the creature as he and the others hacked away at its limbs. It gave him the strength to go on.

When he sliced the last bit, that part of the creature’s body dropped away and down into the bay. One down. Sarien looked up, heaving from the exertion.

Lana was having some trouble with her tentacle. A dagger was even worse than a spear and Lana was covered in the monster’s blood from having to stand so close to the appendage. The creature’s tentacles weren’t made out of muscle and sinew, but some gelatinous substance that oozed out with every slice, showering over her.

“Want me to take over?”

Another quake hit, and she fell back a step. She braced herself and nodded. “I’ll try to keep the deadies off you.”

Sarien hadn’t even noticed how close the dead were to them. He grunted and swung the spear in a long downward arch. When it bit into the next tentacle, the creature screeched again from down in the bay. Smaller tentacles started coming in through the different passageways, along with more of the dead.

“The water is coming, hurry up!” Ein yelled. Kax and Heylien were finished with their tentacles, only Sarien’s remained. Time was running out.

The room began filling with a shallow pool of water.

Sarien’s father was on the brink of collapse. Sarien could see him trembling violently. He’d used too much of his power. Still, he didn’t stop.

Fire burned large swathes of the shambling dead bodies. Lana danced around their clumsy blows to strike at the smaller tentacles at their backs. She disconnected them from their flesh, the dead dropping at her feet.

Lana landed on her injured leg and Sarien saw her wince and grit her teeth before continuing her dance. She was still a sight to behold, but he couldn’t help but notice how much slower she’d become.

Ein kept his flame burning, destroying ten or twenty of the dead each time he directed his inner spark. While his flame burned, Sarien watched with wonder as the ground opened up beneath more of the dead, dropping some and effectively blocking those behind.

Heylien and Kax hacked away at the last tentacle with Sarien. They were close now. So close. Sarien turned to fight the dead instead, his spear mostly getting in the way of severing the thick tentacle.

Even with the last main tentacle severed from the Xzxyth’s main body, the dead would keep closing in on them. His father had explained earlier that the smaller bodies, like the ones they’d seen before, still controlled the dead even when no longer connected to the main body. In time, the severed parts of the Xzxyth would wither and die, but the effect was not immediate.

The reach of his spear was a tremendous help. As long as he was careful, Sarien didn’t have to worry about retaliation from those clumsy strikes.

Some of the dead carried longer weapons, like spears of pitchforks, but they didn’t seem to know how to use them. Instead of stabbing or thrusting, they flailed and swung wildly.

The dead swarmed the bay in the hundreds. Not even Ein’s magic could eliminate them all.

Water flowed up to Sarien’s shins.

“The wave is coming!” Ein yelled. “Cut that thing off, cut it now!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Kax yelled, desperately hacking at the bits still connecting the tentacle to Xzxyth’s main body. Much of it was underwater now, making it the all the harder to see where he was cutting. Ein’s flames were dimming too.

When the first quake hit, they felt the rumble in the ground beneath them. The second was the same, but with the third came a sound that thundered through the air. It grew louder and louder as they desperately hacked at the tentacle, water splashing all around them.

Sarien joined in again, dragging his spear back and forth over the ground to sever the bits suctioned to the floor.

Finally, the last tentacle fell into the bay. By then, the sound was loud enough to drown out their words to one another. Ein frantically gestured to the side, and they hurried to follow. The water reached up to Lana’s waist and the much smaller woman struggled against the violent current.

Their only chance to get away from the torrent of water hurtling toward them was a small service tunnel off by the far wall of the bay. A horde of dead blocked their way. Each of them shuffled through the water, kept on their feet by the slender tentacle stuck through their chest. They approached in a mass of bodies, grabbing for anyone they could reach. He thought they were looking to drown whoever they came in contact with. The Xzxyth was adapting to the new circumstances.

No matter how many of them Sarien and the others cut down, more came to take their place. Sarien looked to his father, who struggled to produce even small bolts of fire. The ball of lights flickered and remained dark for seconds at a time.

Kax grabbed Sarien’s shoulder and pointed to the tunnel they’d come from. A huge wave of water crashed against a wall and then poured into the bay. On the other side of the chamber, another wave joined in, and just to their left, a third. They hadn’t made it in time. The lights went out and Sarien felt himself being swept away in the dark, carried toward the bay and then over the edge.

He heard screams as he hurtled through the air, but they were cut off as soon as he hit the water. A terrible pull carried him downward, too strong to even consider fighting against it. Instead of trying to swim up, he focused on what was below. The gate. That was the source of the pull.

Alone in the dark, under the surface, he saw the Xzxyth struggling against the current that swept Sarien ever closer to it. The creature was nearly sucked through the gate and back to wherever it had come from.

Little by little, the Xzxyth was sucked through.

Even as the beast was being pulled through the way gate, the current also carried Sarien ever closer. A terrible realization came to him. He’d go through himself before the Xzxyth was entirely through. Perhaps Kax, Heylien, Lana, or his father were even closer. He couldn’t let them go to whatever terrible world this thing had come from, but he couldn’t hold his breath for much longer either. There wasn’t enough time to swim up to the surface. Only one solution remained.

Sarien reached out his hand toward the gate. He felt a calm overcome him as he concentrated on the reverberance inside, the force in his power that connected him to the gate, that connected him to all gates.

The white flame filled him as he waited for the creature to be pulled through. Only a tiny bit of it remained in Sarien’s world when he shut the gate closed, turning it into a silvery line in the dark depths. Then he concentrated with even more intensity as he tore a new gateway open in its place. The desperate grasping for a way out of what would otherwise become their watery grave bore fruit, and the current returned. Sarien held a profound hope inside him as he slid through the gate, a hope that their destination was where he thought it’d be. Sarien thought of Goslin, of Tomford, and of Emeryn. He even thought of Daisy, the damn dog.