Jasper was the first to step through the door. Not knowing what to expect, he’d cast Bramble Crown first, allowing the thick crust of bark to cover his skin, and then prepped a cast of Shooting Star before crossing the threshold. It was nearly pitch black inside, and though his recent increase in vision allowed him to make out vague shapes in the darkness, it still made him uncomfortable. Holding his hand up like a torch, Jasper allowed a trickle of flames to run up his hand.

The resulting light was nearly blinding, and he blinked rapidly as his eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden change. Why is it so damn bright? When his eyes had suggested, Jasper could tell that the crypt was no simple cave. Though piles of dirt and debris filed portions of the crypt’s entrance hall, he could still clearly tell that the entrance hall had been carved out of the rock into the same trapezoidal shape as the entrance, although the hall was slightly larger.

The craftsmanship was far beyond anything he could have expected; three of the four sides were carved so smooth, so precise, that it was difficult to believe it could have been carved with any physical tools. Maybe they used mages? Or a mold of some sort?

The fourth and smallest side was the ceiling and it was here that Jasper found the source of the blinding light. Hundreds of small, rough crystals were embedded into the narrow strip of ceiling. The pale orange color of the crystals resembled nothing he was familiar with, but the way they reflected and magnified the light of his flames was nothing short of magical.

“Selene’s grace, it’s as bright as day in here.” Stepping through the entrance, Ihra stared at the ceiling in wonder. “What is that?’

“That is kethûm, though I’ve never seen so much of it in one place,” Gūla answered as she joined them.

Jasper waved his hand back and forth, marveling at how thoroughly it lit the chamber. “I’m guessing it’s pretty valuable?”

“Not really,” Gūla replied with a shrug. “Some nobles will use it as a decoration, but most aren’t too fond of the color.”

“But this could revolutionize the lighting industry,” Jasper argued. “It's like discovering the light bulb and refusing to use it.”

“I don't know what a 'light bowl' is but, like I said, this is the most kethûm I’ve ever seen. The only known source of the crystal is in geodes, but they're pretty rare. Besides,” the firebird captain brushed past him, her body lingering next to his perhaps a beat longer than was truly necessary, “we’re not here for kethûm. We need to find Sels̆arrat as soon as possible.”

For the first hundred feet, the trapezoidal corridor continued uninterrupted. Surprisingly, no halls or chambers branched off of it, nor, at least as far as Jasper could detect, was there even a gradual slope deeper into the bowels of the earth. That all changed, though, when they reached the rather abrupt ending of the hall.

The walls and ceiling of the corridor disappeared as a vast, dark chasm opened around them. The floor continued slightly further, blossoming into a semicircular platform that jutted out into the heart of the ravine. With the light of his hand no longer being magnified by the strange crystals, it was hard to see through the eternal darkness of the underground realm, yet from what Jasper could tell the rift stretched at least two hundred feet in either direction; after that, the shadows were too thick for even his buffed eyesight to pierce.

Below them, there was nothing but a pool of blackness that descended an immeasurable distance though, in the dim light that Jasper’s flaming hand produced, he could detect hundreds, perhaps thousands, of trapezoidal entrances carved into the cliff face. There was no obvious way to reach them, but he supposed that if the place really was constructed by the dorēsah, then perhaps they had simply flown there. But what was this place? A tomb or a city?

Glancing around the chasm, Jasper couldn’t figure out where the mage they were chasing after could have gone. Unless she could fly, in which case, she could be anywhere. But then his eyes caught something glittering in the darkness opposite them. While the chasm was both long and deep, it seemed it wasn’t nearly as wide. On the far side, perhaps a bit more than fifty away, he caught a flash of white that seemed to be a platform just like theirs. Maybe the hall continues over there?

“Do you see the platforms?” Ihra, whose eyes were far better than his, pointed confidently to the platform opposite them. “There’s also another one below us,” she added, though, no matter how hard Jasper squinted into the inky depths, he could not spot it.

“The first one was obvious, but I doubt I would have seen the second,” Gūla admitted. Bending down at the edge of the platform near where Ihra had pointed out the second platform, she seemed to search for something. “As far as I know, Sels̆arrat can’t fly. There are perhaps a few warriors who could make that jump, but I don’t think she could, so she must have gone down…” She trailed off, running her hands along the platform’s surface until she gave a triumphant cry. “Aha! There’s a sticky residue here with strands of fiber caught in it. There’s nothing here to tie a rope to, so she must have tried to glue it to the platform.”

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“But there’s no rope there now,” Jasper pointed out. “Do you think it came loose while she was climbing down?”

“I think it's likely," the Djinn admitted with a grimace. "There's not enough residue here to have provided a good anchor, but the platform is a fairly straight shot down; she might have survived the fall. to hope she survived. Can you get us down there, Yas̆peh?”

“I can only cast Spectral Wings on two people at a time, so it will take two trips but, yeah, I can do it.” Reaching out his hands, Jasper touched Gūla and Tsia on the shoulder. Their backs spasmed as twin pairs of spectral wings erupted from between their shoulder blades, flapping languidly in the darkness. Gūla examined hers with a touch of doubt, waving her hand back and forth through the wings unobstructed. “This looks awesome, but are you sure they can hold me up? They’re, uh, kind of insubstantial?”

“They totally shouldn't work,” Jasper agreed, “but somehow they do. I've used them many times,” and Ihra agreed.

Whatever further confirmation Gūla needed was provided when Tsia walked off the edge of the platform and hovered in mid-air. “You coming?”

With Gūla and Tsia gone, Jasper and Ihra had nothing to do until the ten minutes had passed and he could cast the spell again. Ihra plopped down on the edge of the platform, contently kicking her legs back and forth in the air, but Jasper kept well away from the edge. He wasn’t afraid of heights per se - and having a flying spell had done wonders for his fear of falling - but he saw no point in testing fate.

“Soooo…that’s her, huh?”

“Her who?” Jasper asked, though he knew perfectly well who Ihra was asking about.

She rolled her eyes. “Gūla. So are you, like, with her, or…” she trailed off awkwardly.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know?”

“Honestly,” Jasper sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on in her head half the time.” He hadn’t been speaking loudly, but he lowered his voice to nearly a whisper, not wanting to risk the firebird captain overhearing him. “I just have a hard time figuring out what’s real with her and what’s an act.”

“Do you like her?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted candidly. “She’s clever, and pretty, and manipulative as hell. Not a big fan of that last trait. But-”

Whatever else he was about to say was cut off as Ihra bolted to her feet, clutching his arm so tightly that her fingernails dug into his flesh, as a blur of white exploded out of the darkness. Jasper barely had time to process a flash of pale wings and baleful eyes as Ihra leapt toward the tunnel, dragging him along with her, but it was already too late.

The dorēsah’s ghastly shriek disrupted her jump mid-air and tossed the two back onto the platform. Jasper stuck the landing well; rolling to his feet with the nimbleness of a cat, he immediately sprinted toward the relative shelter of the hall, but the dorēsah wailed again, much stronger than before. The two fell to the ground, pinned in place as the specter swept down on them. The force of the sonic scream was so powerful Jasper felt like his insides were turning to mush, but his body was made of sterner stuff than before. The ancient platform, on the other hand, was long past its expiration date. As it exploded into a shower of shards, the two were spent plummeting into the depths.

The dorēsah was on them a moment later, and its taloned feet lashed out viciously at the falling pair. His brambled skin tanked the worst of the blow, but Jasper could hear Ihra cry out in pain. Snatching her hand, he cast the only spell he could think of. Seraph’s Burst.

He pulled her close as the spell surged him forward, twisting them in a tight spiral of metallic wings that slashed cruelly at the dorēsah’s legs. With another screech, the dorēsah pulled back, but the spell only propelled them deeper into the darkness. He had no sense of direction left, but angling his body away from their current direction, he cast the spell again, praying it would take them toward the cliff face.

They were closer than he’d realized. Blinding pain blacked out his vision as he slammed head-first into the rock. He bounced off and his arms went limp as he plummeted downward. More pain followed as he landed back-first on a platform below them. Tossed in the air again, he might have gone over the edge if a pair of arms hadn’t wrapped tight around him and flung him back to the platform.

“Got you,” Ihra muttered. A flash of white loomed above them, and he could feel his body scraping against the rock as Ihra dragged him toward a waiting tunnel. This time, she beat the bird there. A thunderous roar echoed behind them as the platform crumbled into dust, but she was already bolting down the hallway with him in tow.

With an angry screech, the dorēsah tried to follow, but its wings hit the walls with a resounding crack. Undeterred, it poked its long head down the narrow passage. A beak filled with sharp teeth narrowly missed Ihra’s back; the dry, sandpaper tongue that followed didn’t.

Like a prehensile tail, it curled around her waist and dragged her back to the dorēsah's waiting maw. After the blow he’d taken to the head, Jasper could barely form a coherent thought, but as her leg brushed against his hand, he instinctively grabbed on. His added weight only slowed the beast's progress a little, but it was enough to allow him to finally fight back. Despite the ringing in his ears, he cast the only spell he could think of. Scourge of Despair.

With a wild flick of his hand, the spectral whip sliced upward toward the tongue wrapped around Ihra’s torso. It wasn’t strong enough to slice through, but large drops of viscous, black blood rained down on his face, accompanied by the angry screams of his specters. The tongue suddenly retreated, dropping them on the ground like an unwanted toy, but the dorēsah could not flee fast enough as a swarm of specters descended upon them. His addled mind couldn’t count them up, but Jasper could tell there were more than three of them this time.

Painful sonic waves washed over them, plastering them to the ground as the creature sought to rid itself of its assailants, but they passed through the specters without harm. With shrieks and wails, they ripped and tore at its flesh, never ceasing in their fury until the great beast, in a blur of white, fell into the depths below.