Come on, come on, come on. Her desperate struggles only increased as the mountaineer mage approached her, but Tsia's efforts were futile. Her hands, feet, and even her knees were trapped in the now-solid stone. No matter how she struggled, she could get no leverage to pull herself free. In the end, her struggle only served to harm herself, as the bone in her left arm snapped beneath the stone’s unyielding grasp.

With a whimper, she collapsed on her chest as her arm gave out, unable to support her weight.

Struggling to blink back the tears of pain and fear, Tsia finally looked up to see her captor.

The mountain Djinn may have been a mage, but he was clearly no stranger to leg day. An eight-foot statue of muscle and brawn that could have made even a Seraph jealous, the man’s high level was evident at a glance.

The semblance of humanity had been left far behind as his skin gleamed like marble in the low light, a greyish white striated with streaks of bright red. A pair of massive black horns rose from behind his ears, curling low around his head like a ram’s horns rather than sticking straight up like most of the Djinn she had seen. But it was his eyes that demanded her attention, drawing her to him with all the force of a black hole. More like cats’ eyes than humans, his deep amber pupils glared down at her with an almost palpable force.

He crouched down to her level, examining her with an unabashed smirk. She shrank beneath his gaze, babying her broken arm as she backed as far away from him as the unyielding stone would allow her to move. His smirk only grew as he saw her reaction.

Tsia wouldn’t have said that the cave was particularly cold, but steam rose from his lips as he spoke, wafting up in lazy spirals toward the roof. “What are you doing here, little girl? The halls of Haliqtī are no place for your kind.”

She shook her head, struggling to speak through the pain, but she did not respond fast enough for the Djinn. A massive hand closed around her throat, yanking her forward. His fingers dug into her with an iron grip, and a guttural scream of pain was forced from her lungs. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll just find out for myself.”

His jaws opened wide as an impossibly long tongue snaked forward. She shrank back as the tongue licked her face, an odious mixture of rough and slimy that scraped across her skin like sandpaper, but there was no avoiding its touch. After a second or two that felt like an eternity, the mouth serpent retreated.

The Djinn cocked his head to the side with a curious expression. “Well, well. Aren’t you a little mutt - elf, Djinn, and Corsyth are not so unusual, but the Sidhe?” He clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. "Somebody's family's been cavorting with the enemy."

Her mind was a jumble of pain and terror, but Tsia still audibly gasped at his words. “No,” she managed to choke out. "I'm not Sidhe."

His laugh rumbled through the cavern at her shock. “Didn’t know about that little secret you? Well, no surprise. There's not too many empire rats that would boast about being descended from the Sidhe.”

The Djinn stood up abruptly, running his giant hand through a waterfall of grey locks. “Let me guess, our ‘kin’ up top got tired of our presence and sent you to deal with us."

She nodded gingerly, feeling the welts around her neck twinge at even the slight movement.

He snorted. “As ever, our brothers are weak," he sneered. "To think they've fallen so low as to send a little girl to do their dirty work. I guess we just need to send a real clear message to them.”

With a wave of his hand, the ground around her shook as, with an ear-piercing shriek, the stone entrapping her tore free from the ground. Like an iceberg of stone, she rose into the air, trapped on a floating platform of rock that trailed behind the old Djinn as he headed back into the tunnels.

Her thoughts begin to wander, as the pain and terror consumed her mind completely.

You really put your foot in it this time. Nēs̆u’s face swam before her, shaking his head as he looked down at her with a mixture of pity and disappointment. How many times did I tell you you had to listen to Vaya? Why didn’t you fulfill your promise?

“I tried,” Tsia murmured, as the deep shame she felt at her inability to communicate with Vaya welled up once again.

Trying’s not good enough, Nēs̆u scolded her. I won’t always be there to save you.

She whimpered, loud enough that her captor glanced back. He dismissed her a moment later, though, when he saw her bonds still held her tight. The only blood that will be spilled is theirs. The tears slid down her cheeks as she cursed her overconfidence, her own words mocking her. But even as the tendrils of despair wrapped her ankles, ready to drag her down into the shadowed depths of the abyss, another name, unbidden, rose to her tongue. Imḫullu.

A burst of warmth spread across her chest as she muttered the mysterious name Selene had given her. Imḫullu, she repeated. Still no voice whispered in her ears, but something did respond. Her shaking ceased as an unnatural calm fell over her, a calm that felt burdened with the promise of violence.

Nēs̆u's disappointed visage dissipated into the mist as her thoughts were cleared by the calm, and she tried to pull herself together. Think, Tsia. How do you get out of this?

Another face immediately sprang to mind, this time no mirage but a memory. Jasper.

Most mages could only cast through their hands, guided by the runes that focused the flow of the essence. Sometimes classes or races could provide alternate means of casting, like Djinn fire mages, who were well known for their ability to temporarily burst into flames, but those abilities were never really targeted.

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But a few times, on those chilly nights as they sat around the campfire, Tsia had seen Jasper experimenting with casting small plumes of fire through his mouth. It was just a party trick, or at least that’s what she thought, but she was desperate. Could I do it? She knew the answer as soon as it came to her. Can’t hurt to try. She didn’t know what the mountain Djinn had in store for her, but she doubted that his plan to “send a message” would mean anything good for her.

Tsia struggled to lift herself up, a surprisingly difficult task with only one working arm. The essence responded to her sluggishly at first; despite the unnatural calm, her pain-riddled mind still fought any attempts at focus, but Tsia could not afford to give up. She demanded the essence to listen to her, commanded it to follow her orders and slowly, begrudgingly, it responded, pooling in her mouth. Her first attempt to release the essence as a spell was a complete failure; the second and third were as well. But if the Djinn noticed her failed attempts, he gave no sign of it, so she had ample time to try again.

She wasn’t sure what she did differently, but this time the essence responded to her command, spilling out of her mouth with an angry howl. Tsia had intended to cast one of her traditional spells, windblade, hoping the silent spell would cleave her captor's head from his shoulders before the Djinn even knew he was under attack.

What actually came out of her mouth was something else altogether.

The spell tore at her, shattering teeth and bone, as it forced its way free, but her screams of pain were lost to the roar of the maelstrom that surged down the tunnel. An unstructured mass of wind slammed into the back of the Djinn, throwing him down the tunnel like a rag doll. It wasn’t enough to kill her tormentor, but it was more than sufficient to destroy his focus, severing his connection to the spell that bound her.

She plummeted back to the earth in a tumble of rock and limb that smashed into the tunnel’s floor with a roar like thunder. Her throat was raw and her ears rang with the sound of screams she only vaguely recognized as her own, as her broken arm was slammed into the ground. But the mage’s rock, no longer held together by the spell, crumbled beneath her, releasing her from her bonds.

For a moment, Tsia lay there stunned, as her senses were utterly overwhelmed with an avalanched of pain. Her face had been eviscerated; most of her teeth had torn from their roots and her already injured arm was now shattered in a dozen places. Barely able to think through the haze of pain, she somehow managed to fumble with her other hand in her bag, her fingers slow and clumsy as she dug for a potion. But she was forced to abandon her efforts when a groan echoed down the narrow corridor, accompanied by the sound of a heavy, if halting, footstep.

The Djinn. Time slowed to a crawl as she struggled to rise, pulling the essence toward her one good hand. Her captor was moving slowly. His left leg dragged behind him, and he was forced to place a steadying head against the wall, but despite that injury, the old mage had clearly taken less damage from her spell than she had. His eyes met hers at the same time, his amber orbs glowing ever so slightly in the dimly lit passage. The Djinn lifted his hand to cast a spell, but Tsia was quicker on the draw. Windblade. It was perhaps the worst-formed windblade of her life, far too large and wide to preserve its usually keen edge.

The mage cast his own a fraction of a second later, discarding whatever his original spell had been to raise a protective shield of rock around him.

Perhaps if Tsia had been less injured the outcome of the battle would have been different. For years her tutors had beaten into her head the importance of precision and focus. Her spell lacked all of that, but whatever Tsia lacked in precision, she more than made up for in sheer power. Her dull, malformed windblade roared down the narrow shaft, crashing over his rock shield like a tsunami.

He staggered, as the sheer force of her spell pushed him back a few spaces. The mage raised his hand again, prepared to trap her in his quagmire, but his focus was shattered as another tsunami washed over them. Cracks formed across the face of his shield, and he was forced to divert his essence into stabilizing the spell.

Another hit. And another. And another. In seconds, every drop of the mage's essence was used up. Unable to reinforce his barrier, the Djinn was betrayed by his own spell. As the next blast of wind smashed into it, the rock shield shattered into a hundred shards. Most of the shards skittered off his toughened skull, painful but not deadly. But one shard passed through his eye, burrowing itself deep into his brain. His face was still frozen in shock as he keeled over.

When the Djinn collapsed, Tsia let go of her essence, dropping back to the ground with a pained whimper. With the most immediate danger gone, every ounce of pain came rushing back to her. She struggled to stay conscious as her only working hand rooted through her bag for a healing potion. Finding it, Tsia couldn't even use her arm well enough to tear the lid off, and had to settle for banging the vial against the ground until the narrow neck broke. Ignoring the sharp glass edges, she let the sweet liquid drop into her mouth.

One wasn’t enough. By the time she’d drained the first, her arm had healed enough to be semi-functional, but the damage to her mouth had barely been touched. She downed a second quickly, an immense feeling of relief washing over her as her lips knit back together and her teeth remerged. Utter exhaustion washed over her as the potions fed on her energy, but she fought to stay awake. She couldn’t afford to fall asleep.

To her surprise, as the pain of her injuries faded, she felt the faint tingle of a headache that the potion hadn’t been able to touch, realizing with surprise that it must have been the start of essence deprivation. It wasn't a feeling she was used to. Pushing herself to her feet, she swayed dangerously, steadying herself with one hand against the stone wall as she fought to keep her eyes. Can't fall asleep here, she muttered to herself.

A faint whimper from further down the hall broke the silence. There could only be one source. She edged down the corridor, relying on the wall's support to keep her upright until she reached the Djinn. She was surprised to see the old man's eyes - well, one eye really, as the second had been obliterated - were still wide open. The mage's hands tremored as with palsy, and he did not stir as she moved over him, save for his eye that tracked her movements.

“He-help,” he managed to gasp, his voice barely above a whisper. With a quick twist of her hand, Tsia obliged as her windblade neatly freed his head from his shoulders. A surge of anger rushed through her as she stared down at her captor and she raised her heel, prepared to stomp in his face, but after a long moment of hesitation, Tsia lowered it, unbloodied. She had won; there was no need to sully herself.

She swayed again, as her knees buckled beneath her, overwrought by the potion-induced exhaustion, but she caught herself and, after a few long moments lean against the wall, she summoned the strength to push on. She still had a job to complete after all.

Time passed in a blur. Barely conscious of her own actions, she swept through the rest of the base on a mission. Her hesitation at killing the mountain Djinn was gone, and death followed closely in her footsteps for any misfortunate enough to encounter her. When she finally broke from the depths of the cliff, the company’s wares were safely stored in her bag and, if there were any survivors, they had had the good sense to hide from her.

She rose up the side of the cliffs in jerky jumps, the minor strain in her head now a full flung storm but somehow she reached the top before she lost consciousness, only dimly aware as she slipped into the dark of the strong hands that wrapped around her, the worried face of her guardian floating above her like a vision.