“What?” Ibraxis asked her as they exited the purple hall.

“Hm?”

“You keep looking at me,” he noted, cringing away from her a little. “If you are going to say something, just say it.”

“Mmm,” Guin went, shifting her eyes away from him, but he growled at her lightly in irritation. Sighing, she said, “Look, I’ll be honest, I don’t know anything about garuli, I really don’t...”

“And?” he prompted.

“...is the fact that your scales and feathers are white, well... strange?”

He blinked. “Why do you ask?”

Guin shrugged awkwardly. “My teammate’s reaction to your color was a bit... well, odd—and she is a garuli,” she told him. “And I know—or I guess—that you are sutak, so maybe that plays into it, and I am just ignorant, but she’s never spoken ill of sutak before, so that doesn’t make all that much sense... I just... I don’t know what I am doing,” she rambled. Ibraxis stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. She watched him in distaste. “Yes, yes,” she muttered. “I get it. I’m an idiot.”

“T-That is not it,” he told her, still laughing. “Ignorant, maybe, which is better or worse depending on how you look at it, but no,” he said, looking her over as his smile faded. “You could definitely be worse. To answer you, yes, my feathers are more rare and are even considered a genetic mutation.”

“And that’s... Bad?”

“Mmm,” he considered. “If I were not known to be a sutak, I would probably be revered.”

“But you are a sutak, so that means...?”

He gave her a slight smile. “You do not know what a sutak is yet, do you?”

Guin paused and looked up at him. “I would if you would be so kind as to explain it to me...”

Chuckling, he leaned over her. “I’m not that nice,” he said and continued walking.

“Whatever a sutak is,” Guin grumbled. “Why is it that every one of them that I meet is amazingly difficult?”

“Because it is so very easy to tease someone who does not know,” he said, flipping his tail around playfully. “And honestly, how many sutak do you know?”

“Of course,” Guin rolled her eyes.

“I do not mean this as an offense,” Ibraxis told her. “It is, in a way, refreshing. People who do not know the meaning of one’s being a sutak do not know... what they do not know.” He seemed to struggle with his words as his face fell with a sad smile, saying. “It is worse for you, in a way, that you do not know what you are doing wrong than it is for me to be at the receiving end of your apparent kindness.”

Guin’s brows furrowed as she tried to make sense of the words, but in the end, the conclusion that she ended up with was, “Are you not telling me what a sutak is because you’re afraid that I would treat you differently?”

His eyes seemed almost affectionate as he looked back at her. “At the very least, I cannot call you stupid,” he said. “Call it selfishness. If you are going to hate me, I’d rather it be for who I was than what I am.”

Gaping at him, she didn’t really know how to respond to the insinuation that came with his cryptic words. Catching up to his side, she leaned over and asked, quite seriously, “Are you a member of a secret organization?”

“If I was, do you think I would tell you?” he answered with a snort. Then he pried, “What’s with this new appearance of yours, anyway? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the reason you left the group last night, would it?”

Guin shrugged. “You get your secrets, I get mine. Sound fair?” she asked, smirking at him, only acting as if she had one up on him—but she didn’t expect to see his expression falter, a trace of shock appearing in his eyes. But the moment passed so quickly that she chided herself, thinking it was just her overactive imagination. “W-What happened with Ath and Zen?” she asked, trying to shift the conversation as she moved away from him a little.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Something felt odd. Off.

Mentally, Guin instinctively put up her personal walls, trying to protect herself from whatever it was that was sending a shiver down her spine as he looked at her. Hands itching, she rubbed her arms. The face of the dragon in her dreams appeared in her head, the sharp teeth barring down on her.

The part of her that considered Ibraxis an ally hoped that he didn’t notice her sudden unease because she didn’t want to hurt him.

Then again, the part of her that knew his strength and instincts were a hundred times better than hers hoped that he didn’t notice for the sake of her own self-preservation.

“We finished Tea’s quest, and then they logged off,” Ibraxis told her. “Not much came of anything after that. Tea is as you saw him. I logged in about an hour ago to just check a few things, and he asked me for help finishing the quests that he had down here. I was not doing anything important, so I did.”

“I see,” she said. “And then you guys appeared to save me.”

“Indeed.”

She genuinely felt that it was kind of him to help Tea out, but at the same time, a little voice in the back of her head said, “Well, isn’t that convenient.”

They walked in silence for several minutes before they came to a wide chamber. Guin’s jaw dropped.

The massive room was as wide, it seemed, as the last one was long. In many ways, the room was similar to it in other ways, too, with rows of statues of monks holding braziers, moss creeping up their robes from the sides—but in this room, the colors were vastly different, as the flames in the braziers licked up white. As white as the flames of the spirit of Amikavi.

The monks, too, were more obviously marble: white, streaked with subtle lines of gray, and occasionally streaked with black. The Death Moss, which had glowed bright, electric blue in the last room, was now pitch black. And the walkway, which Guin had been so sure was made of rock in the last room, she saw in this room was made with hundreds, perhaps thousands of skulls.

But even with the horror that she felt from glancing at the floor, the most striking and unnerving thing about the room was that, on the far side of where they stood, was a wall of carvings.

A wall of very familiar-looking carvings.

“I-I’ve seen these before,” Guin murmured, stepping forward towards the wall. With each step, the pounding in her heart grew louder. Her eyes darted around each line and inscription etched into the wall. The color was wrong, but she knew it. Dread, sorrow, and confusion all filled her as drew closer, knowing; knowing that, somehow, she knew it all like the back of her hand—yet, she knew none of it, just as before, when she had dreamed of it all.

Like a dream—like the dream—she reached out as she approached with heavy steps. Running her hand against the smooth of the stone, she felt the etchings under her fingers with that same sense of nostalgia that she had before, staring at the images of the painted animals and people that held no recognizable life-like resemblance as they danced and marched in rings around colored stones.

They were all more clear now than they had been in her dream. She could see them, and though her memory still told her that the carvings were of animals and people, celebrating something, the details her heart had wanted to cling to now saw the etchings in the wall for what they were.

“What is this?” she asked nothing as she stepped back and looked them over. These weren’t etchings left by some ancient civilizations or a story left in honor of heroes. They could have been written off that way by someone who didn’t know better—but she, somehow, somehow, knew.

These were the drawings of a child.

Panic and anxiety gripped her lungs so tight she thought they might burst within her chest. How could she know that? How could she know that with such certainty that any other option was immediately dismissed? I must be crazy, she scoffed.

No, went that voice in the back of her head as she wracked her brain for answers. What you know is true.

Then she saw the etching of the man that she had remembered so well, standing tall and proud atop a black orb, wearing plain clothes as he proudly held a hammer high above his head. The pattern on his hammer's head, the small symbol carved with great care: An eight-pointed star.

A compass.

The compass.

Drawn to it, even more so than she had before, she moved over it and, with a finger, wiped away the light cover of dust that time had left.

Radiant gold.

Light.

Light poured through the cravings, running through them, flowing through the eight-pointed star until all the etchings on the walls were brightly shining. Glowing. Breath caught in her chest, Guin stumbled back over the skulls on the walkway.

“So,” she heard Ibraxis grumble behind her. “You are one of them,” he said. “A true Candidate.”

Guin shot her head around. Ibraxis stood there, arms crossed. He didn’t look very happy as the light glinted off everything it touched. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What is this?”

He sighed. “I am sorry,” he said, and she could read in his voice that he meant it, but she didn’t understand. “I take no pleasure in this,” Ibraxis told her in a pained voice as she saw him drop out of the group. “But, this is something I have to do. I wish you could understand, but I know you will not.”

As the words came out of his mouth, he began to play his bones and chant, and Guin, understanding his intent now if not his reason, cast her buffs, and shadow stepped behind him.