ADARA

Tension tore a path over the huge staircase up to the doors of icebark encrusted with runes, while a haunted refrain rang out from the multitude of chimes wrapped underneath the thick window panes to join the ghostly bells. Adara choked on the behaviour of both Storm Wardens — a sense of deja vu locking her knees against each other. "We're going to head into the pressure Fenrer's feeling?"

Fenrer eyed her with a frown. "We don't have a choice either way, but the only thing I'm sensing from this building is just the entrance of the presence," he explained. "We need a crystal foci for the Umbral Gate — and Yuven—" He whipped around to said quiet Avaerilian. "I am loath to admit this of myself... but I do not have the strength to create a pathway."

"You won't need to." Yuven waved his hand through the air.

Adara held her breath at the click of the runes, whose lights flashed then went dim down the split between the doors. Magitek barriers rolled across the hooks for further freedom, and she shifted on her heel when both Yuven and Fenrer drew out their crescent blades at the last echoed thunk. It groaned open, and a burst of stale air punched her in the nose, but no wandering dead stumbled out to feast on their flesh.

Quiet as time.

Broken chandeliers swung at their entrance, scattering flashing crystal lights through the pitch darkness above their heads. In the center of the huge building, a spiral staircase with thousands upon thousands of tomes following along its sides. Rafters stuck themselves underneath the supports of the spirals, divided by sections of stone. Adara dragged her foot across the clear tiles casting their reflections beneath them. "How far up does that go?"

"Far," Yuven said.

Corridors went deeper into the mountain the spire sat against. On one wall, a giant map with Navei script along the sides. Directions, if she had to guess what they wrote. Lights glimmered in every corner, a pulling sensation crawling across her shoulders when Yuven eyed Fenrer. "Well?"

Fenrer's expression cracked with confusion as he drew around the spiral staircase, facing the opening of a strange domed room. On the floor, a maelstrom of a glyph swept along the circumference. "I... don't know," he mumbled. "I felt it outside but now I can't tell where it's coming from. It's like..." His eyes widened in connection. "Ah!" He lifted his head. "It feels like when you use your magick, Yuven."

Yuven held his arms out. "As you can see, I'm not using my magick." Adara sent her hand into his side for good measure, and he dropped his arms to glare at her. "Now, was that necessary?"

"You could've been a copy. I've seen you finesse it."

"And I would have disintegrated if that was the case the moment you swung that pitiful slap into my side." Yuven nudged her brow out of his space, but Adara smiled at his own odd way of getting along with someone else that wasn't Fenrer. "Listen, Molvisaliz, the Traye's ran this city. I would not be surprised if there was some lingering of their bloodflow here of all places." He clapped Fenrer on the shoulder. "Let's go find their elementia stores, and some essence, we're going to need it if we're to pour energy into the Gate." Yuven swept his attention over a hanging sign of swirling script, then nodded. "Should be this way."

Her boots cracked against the tile, but she stopped at the lack of another pair of footsteps behind her. Fenrer remained at the start of the staircase, chin in his palm as he searched the unseen flow. "Fenrer?" she called to him, and caused Yuven to stop in the corridor. He broke from his staredown to shuffle over to them, but cast one last glance back at the spire's core. Adara stopped him by his forearm, digging her fingers into his sleeve when Yuven continued. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be fine." Fenrer cast one last glance at the staircase. "Magick doesn't like to work when the body or mind are weakened. Which is troublesome, I wish I could be of more assistance to you and Yuven." He trailed down her face, then smiled. "I don't sense any of the draugr in here, though I'm sure that's not exactly comforting considering my... off behaviour, earlier." He bowed his head, then broke into a swift pace to catch up to Yuven at the dead-end of the corridor, but phoenix fire tickled at her elbows, and a creeping dread crawled its fingers down her spine of feathered wings. Wood creaked underneath her heel when she came closer to them, a red sun cast bloody piles aglow. Her tongue lodged into her throat when Yuven cranked open a vault-like, storage door. Light glimmered when it opened in multiple velvet boxes, the same ones from when Fenrer held out to her a crystal, which melted in her hands.

"Look for a thickened crystal, if Adara can't hold it without it exploding, it's not good enough for our purposes," Yuven directed them and headed straight for the back area, and scowled at the empty phials behind the glass shelves. Essence froze on the floor, but Adara frowned when he melted the ice, only for it to dissipate into mist. "Great..." He unfurled scrolls on the bottom of the cupboards.

Adara lifted open boxes, and she flinched when silver flames overtook the smaller ones and scattered them into crystal mist when she tried to clasp them in her fingers. Chimes continued to ring out through the corridors, a ghostly song carried on the wind, but she ignored the reminder of the world to open other boxes, all with the same result of her sheer force of unconscious power. Shards dug into her skin, and she shook one particularly sharp edge out of her fingers, where it crumbled into embered ash as Fenrer came to her with a heavier box.

"Try this one. It's more refined than the others and is meant to hold plentiful magick." Fenrer slipped open the top and held out a sphere of clearest crystal, but in his palm, it swirled with jade thickets. Hesitation cracked through her fingers when she raised them, and the gale of silver burned the forest in a towering inferno inside. An aurora of ethereal power lit up his face and straight into his eyes, his outreach of understanding and assistance while the goliath swallowed them both whole, and turned to stone when it dared to touch the blaze. Her skin drifted across its surface when Fenrer slid it into her palm with one hand beneath hers. Clammy, but strong enough to lift others out of their despair. He let her go, and stared into the sphere when it came to life as a star in her hand.

"Is this good enough?" Fenrer asked, causing Yuven to peek around one of the shelves.

"Is it cracking?" he asked.

Fenrer leaned closer, then shook his head.

"Good enough." Yuven huffed and returned to them empty-handed himself. "All their essence stores have dried out, spilled or were intaken by the flow." He tapped his hip and hissed under his breath, a plume of mist leaving his flared nostrils.

"What are we going to do?" Adara asked, but found herself drawn to the silver shadows on Fenrer's face.

"Most places have some sort of essence pool, a place where the flow and this echo intertwine," Fenrer answered. "Tebora had one in the heart of the castle, underneath the crystal. Essence gathers around those crystals as a liquid form of magick... so we're looking for a place where the flow slips into a riverbed..." His gaze drew around the room, then downwards.

"I don't like that you're looking down," Yuven grumbled.

Fenrer hummed. "It's not as far down as the presence I sensed earlier."

"Oh, I see our fortuitous luck continues," Yuven said with a deep, tired sigh. "I give up on trying to fight Fate. Let's go back and follow the flow where it pours into our echo." He took the lead once more without hesitation, a tough, abrasive direction on life without words. It was one small comfort in her upended life. Consistency. In her life without a foundation, both Yuven and Fenrer brought it when Garren left for a home she never knew, but the old man missed beyond all measure. Out of the storage for crystals and essence, Yuven led them back into the core of the spire, then folded his arms.

"I guess we must go down." He waved them into the strange lift, drawing his heel through the rune. Energy flowed with violet ferocity, and she lurched when the floor itself descended, with the ground slipping past them and out of reach. It hummed around them, a thick song reverberating her skull when her stomach ascended into her throat at the lie of motion.

"Anything, Fenrer?"

Fenrer squished his lips together and shook his head.

Security and serenity flowed into her heart, but she stumbled when the lift landed on the bottom, and a veil of mist revealed a massive cavern. Yuven held out his hands to stop them both, then slipped his heel across the threshold. Winter glyphs spread from his feet and created ice platforms on the thin layer of water. His next step set the walls alight with bioluminescent vines wrapped around mausoleums. Tombs lined the walls, with glass staircases leading to the highest ones. Cascades slipped through the divots to rejoin the lake as the path grew to a large platform in the center of the cavern, and she gasped when a rainbow sheen fell across the split, where the cavern's lake turned into a waterfall to slip over the distant edges.

Yuven glanced at Fenrer, who nodded.

Over the clear surface, ice, emeralds, and silver swirled into a dance of colour with their footsteps. "What is this place?"

"This is the place where the flow and the echo become one," Fenrer mumbled.

"It is also a sepulcher, it seems," Yuven commented. "Fenrer?"

Fenrer's attention went to the tombs wrapped in the walls. "Everything is quiet."

Adara winced at the brightest star sat over the platform. A gleaming pillar of silver. Yuven stopped at the edge of the platform, and slipped his boot into the clash of the rainbow, ignoring the familiar star. "We found it. Thank you, Fenrer." He drew out empty phials to slip it into the bubbly, jelly surface, where the waves hopped with glee into the phial, but drew closer to her. "Grab what we can fill and we'll get out of here." Yuven pushed a couple of phials into her hands, and she got to work with their intrepid leader's sharp gaze on her.

She dipped forward to scoop up the rainbow, where it bubbled and turned silver at her touch. Around the platform, she trailed along the waterfall. Phials filled, she drew up the steps and forced herself through the mist of wonder.

On top of a mountain, face to face with a cloud of monsters.

In a block of ice, a sword in the stone, the blade itself barely visible. Adara ran her hands down the silver hilt, where a pearl cut into a crescent embedded in the guard. Runes cut off from its container, she grinned and said, "Hey, Yuven."

Fenrer clasped his full phials along his empty trap, and Yuven joined her. "What? I told you to fill the phials."

"I did, but look." Adara beamed at him and patted the top of the sword. "So much for every fairytale being a lie, huh?"

Yuven scoffed and investigated the sword, then lowered his head to the floor beneath them. His own wicked smile grew. "Well, I bet you'll be pleased to know what we're standing on, Sazaka." He lifted his head and motioned with his finger, and Adara followed.

Clamps locked a section of the platform in place, and she frowned at the broken writing across the tile. She jumped when Yuven leaned closer and revealed his fangs. "We're standing on his tomb. Do you think pulling out the sword will wake him up?" He wrapped his hand around the hilt, and Adara bit her tongue when Yuven yanked.

To no avail.

Her heartbeat slowed when Yuven gave another attempt, putting his foot against the block with a scowl. "Those Naveeran poems said that only the worthy can pull the sword out of the ice," she recalled.

"You are well-read on all the wrong things." Yuven gave another sharp pull, but the sword refused to budge. "It's probably enchanted so only the owner can withdraw it."

Adara shook her head. "Or you're not worthy."

"It's a sword stuck in a block of ice," Yuven grumbled, and returned to pulling. Tangles of white wrapped around his fingers as he came at it from every angle, while Fenrer's shape remained at the bottom of the steps, apparently taking inventory of the phials.

Knew you couldn't resist the challenge. Adara left him to gaze out into the rest of the cavern. Pillars of stone rose from the bottom of the abyss. Beautiful barbs of ice wrapped around them, carving out snowy Navei script. As she traced one of the tangles and imagined the stories of the past, she found herself staring into the abyss, pitch black where the bottom and the barbs disappeared into the mist shedding off the waterfall, but no light pierced.

Adara tipped her head at the starry droplets when the darkness swallowed them with ease. In her side vision, Yuven scoffed and scowled down at the 'lie' of tales. Satisfied with one small win, she continued tracing the script.

Until the abyss flashed with crimson pupils.

Adara wiped her eyes, but the mist fluttered across the cavern, and she released the sense of doom in her heart. Unable to see the bottom, she took a step away from the abyss and returned to Yuven. "I can see it hasn't budged," she teased when Yuven wiped his hands on his pants. "Shall I try? Maybe I'm worthy enough."

"I highly doubt it." Yuven nudged her to the front of the sword.

Adara rubbed her hands for warmth and luck, then wrapped it around the hilt, but she stopped at her reflection in the crescent — and the Derelict skies above it.

"Not so easy, is it?" Yuven teased with his own fanged smile.

In the silence, she released it. In the quiet, Yuven's grin died.

In the doom, she followed her fear of the swaths of blood-soaked wheat cut down in the horde.

Fenrer stood in the dimming rainbow swirling underneath him. Yuven snapped around with a scowl. Opal flames swallowed the spirals when he stared at nothing, the same abyss she looked upon.

"Fen." Yuven leaped down the steps to cling onto his arms, though Fenrer didn't react at the violent motion of his best friend, and Adara joined him. "Fen."

"What's wrong with him?" Adara rasped, and prodded his shoulder.

Her heart stilled when he slowly lifted his hand to grasp her and Yuven's forearms, his body shaking in a slight, barely noticeable way. "Yuven," she begged at his silence. "What's going on?"

Yuven's gaze swept over Fenrer's when Fenrer looked at him, noiseless and void of emotion.

"Talk to me, Molvisaliz," he growled. "I know you can hear me like this. Talk to me."

Fenrer's movements remained stiff when he returned to his staredown behind them, following something with his gaze. Yuven dug his fingers into his collar, coming closer and causing the flames to swirl at him. "What in the Hells is giving you an Auric Trance down here?"

Adara shivered at the cavern's silence, where the waterfalls went still.

The rainbows turned gray and split apart, and Fenrer shivered without the fear to go with it.

"Ai, Fenrer." Yuven held him tighter. "Talk."

He inhaled, but his next exhale cracked tension across her spine. "Decay swirls in the depths," he mumbled, his voice familiar, but at the same time, unnatural.

"Yes, this is called the city of the dead for a reason, I know." Yuven's hold slacked. "I know this must bother you—" He stopped when Fenrer's hand grabbed his collar with a wild headshake with no emotion behind it. "What?"

"Deep in the darkness. Coura'va kesham hofva." Fenrer's breath quickened, but the opal flames swallowed and left him void. "...Keep on climbing..." the last three words came out a deeper, softer breath.

Yuven leaned back. "What?"

"What did he say?" Adara questioned.

"Blood... smears home," Yuven translated.

"Keep on climbing?" she questioned Fenrer, who tipped his head in an odd way. "Does he want to get out of here?"

"He's not going to move when he's like this," Yuven whispered. "Fen?"

"Keep on climbing," he repeated, and Fenrer stiffened, swaying with the wind, though stopped when Yuven held his shoulder.

"I know," Yuven mumbled. "Whatever it is—"

Adara winced when Fenrer's fingers dug into her collarbone, and fear wrapped along the opal spirals with his soft gasp. "Keep on climbing."

"Yuven... I don't think he's talking about us getting out of here," she rasped when the fear intensified, and Fenrer bumped his wrists against their shoulders and his gaze stopped level with them. Behind them when his face contorted into one of dismay and torment.

A plea of indication.

"It stares. Watches." Adara frowned when he touched her shoulder, and pushed into it. "I'm done climbing."

Does he... want me to turn around?

Adara turned with Yuven.

Streaks of infected blood buried the rainbow.

Huge, mangled claws dug into the rock, with the interruption of the flow stifled from its tainted touch. Tendrils of shadow swept across the bones of its wings. Crimson orbs slid behind a third eyelid, before the pupils of pitch focused on them from within the dark. Cracked horns molded and reformed in constant adjustment, a lie of a creature. Decay wafted into her nose from its single breath, which Fenrer matched, and his fingers dug deeper. Another blink of the crusted third eyelid, and the pupils dropped to them.

Chains clanged across its neck when it stretched closer to them, casting its shadow over the blade to reveal scales of dripping rot. Adara stifled the urge to choke at the smell of death. Its neck bone cracked when it tilted its head in one harsh yank, and the essence died.

Run!

It shivered from its wings.

Run!

Yuven nudged them back when it hauled itself over the edge, but sat there, still, silent, hyperfocused.

Predatory.

Hungry.

Fangs slipped out of its mandible and the scales of crusty rot slipped further back to reveal the rest of the jagged teeth. Its nostrils closed in full with a deep, unsettling hiss. Yuven's feathers stiffened and his own pupils went vertical.

"Get back to the lift," he hissed under his breath.

Adara found herself trapped in its empty smile.