“Do you think we’re close?”

  “Impossible to say, Kat. I find it hard to believe they didn’t have an easier way back and forth. This is getting a little ridiculous.” Fralend replied while trying to focus on the satisfying crunch of footsteps on the rough-hewn stone stairs to distract her from the burning sensation in her legs. She walked before the group, letting her staff’s light break through the gloom.

  “Maybe, maybe, we should head back up and try again tomorrow.” Wheezed Dothen behind her. The old alchemist was having a more challenging time with the stairs, as his typical days in the Academy were far less demanding.

  “And do all this again? You’d talk yourself out of it, and we’d never come back,” she replied without taking her eyes off the next step. She carefully put her weight on it, ready to jump back if the rock gave way.

  When Fralend ordered them to stay behind her so she could take the lead, she had been confident that if the rocks gave way to a chasm, she could levitate before gravity took hold. After a few more hours of this exertion, she wondered if she would be fast enough. “Just one more turn and we’ll be there.” She told herself again.

  Katrin walked just behind her to her right. The stairs were wide enough for six people abreast, but they tried to maintain a more or less single-file line in case of collapse.

  “If you’d let me lead, we’d go much faster,” Kat said with a spring in her step that suggested she was growing impatient at the slow crawl.

  “These tunnels haven’t been walked on in at least a thousand years. Who knows what a geological shift might have done? You would launch yourself clear into the void.” Fralend replied.

  “Yeah, but we’d have found the end.” Kat chuckled.

  “Mhm, no. We’re doing this slowly, my way. No one is coming to help us if we get into trouble.”

  “Taking chances is part of being a Magos, Fae. It’s okay to risk a little.” Kat replied while wiping her hand across a stone partially jutting out of the wall, where it looked like it had shifted. She could never stop moving, constantly idly touching things. Frealun would have already tied her hands behind her back if they hadn’t known each other since childhood.

  “We ran away from our responsibilities to search a ruin, which is illegal, and you want to say this whole thing isn’t already a risk?”

  “No, you left YOUR responsibilities. My only responsibility is to you, Ma’lady.” Fralend knew she’d be doing a dramatic curtsy bow without having to look back.

  Fralend snorted a laugh.

  “Fair, okay, I left MY responsibilities, and you two were foolish enough to follow me. We still don’t need any more risks.”

  “Do you think The Master is ever coming back?”

  “Of course. It's probably only been a day or two at most.”

  “The Master is only ever gone a few hours. This is highly unusual.”

  “It is longer, but only by a little. Be patient.”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  “None. We’ve been dormant longer than this. You’ll see. Do you even really want The Master back?”

  “No, but following The Master is at least more interesting than going insane inside our mind.”

  “We’ve been insane for as long as we can remember.”

  “Okay, going MORE insane?”

  “Can we just enjoy the silence once more?”

  “Fine….”

  “This is…less than what I hoped for.” Dothen tried to pick up a rusted candlestick holder, but the base remained rooted to the shelf while he held the now-useless top.

  “Maybe moisture got in; everything looks long past rotted.”

  “Surely we can find something preserved. They wouldn’t have spent the time digging this place if it weren’t of significance. We need to, at minimum, discover the function of this place.” The rocks and debris of the old castle covering the entrance should have been enough to keep water out, and there was no sign of even a trickle going down the stairs. Yet the metals were corroded, the wood barely more than splinters, and the books couldn’t be opened without ruining the pages.

  “Hey, cheer up! Could have found a dead end where it was all collapsed.” Her face must have been more revealing than she thought, as Kat tried to cheer her up.

  The stairwell had opened into what could only be described as a temple with a stepped ceiling that went high into the darkness beyond her staff's light. The floor was covered in broken mosaics of geometric shapes that held no significance to them but would need to be wholly unearthed and studied to comprehend fully. What looked like three hundred feet from the entrance was a lectern atop a vast stone pulpit, clearly a place for a speaker to engage with a large audience. The space between the pulpit and the stairs was mainly vacant except for shelves on the walls, the occasional table, and what might have been pews at one point.

  “We should send off for a proper encampment, excavation, and restoration magic to be brought in. This can all be saved with the right time and magic.” Dothen said as he picked up a piece of pottery to examine its calligraphy. Much slower and careful than before with the candlestick holder.

  “Do you have the money for that or the connections to do it discreetly so the Athenaeum doesn’t catch up?” Kat replied.

  “Of course not, it’s just…None of this has to be left to rot. We have the ability to save everything.” Dothen sighed as he set the pot back down, unable to make out the words. He slouched a little, realizing they’d have to leave all this behind.

  “We have the ability but not the desire, as my father would say. Those pottery shards could cause the world's end again; best to bury them for all eternity.” Fralend grimaced at the thought—such a backwards way of thinking for a society built on knowledge. Being sent to assist with constructing The Grand Spire was a poor use of her skills as a Magos and only furthered her desire to search for relics, no matter the risks. If she could find something of value, she could maybe get elevated higher than a Magos assigned to demeaning architecture. Passing off any relic magic as something she created would be another problem entirely, but that was a tomorrow problem; today was finding something she could learn from.

  “It’s more than I thought we’d find.” Kat was walking on ahead. Having lit a torch to provide her own light, she was oddly confident despite the imposing nature of the massive room they were in. It dwarfed her as she walked in front; the darkness all around looked like the mouth of a great whale ready to swallow her whole.

  “Stay close by!” Fralend called to her, not wanting to lose sight of either of them. They had walked down the stairs for hours and it was hours further to the nearest town. Even then, no one would come to your aid if you were in a ruin, as it was likely to get them executed if the Athenaeum Guard caught wind. If they got lost or hurt, they were as good as dead.

  Kat rolled her eyes and turned to rejoin Dothen and Fralend when she spotted a brass orb about waist high sticking out of the temple floor. It was covered in intricate lettering, reminding her of the spherical instruments Magos used to attune Ether crystals. A metal housing connected it to the floor, but she couldn’t see how far down it went.

  “What have we here?” Kat poked at the orb, which moved fluidly like it was still in perfect condition. When she flicked her finger over it, it spun and made a satisfying whirring sound.

  CLICK!

  Kat recoiled back a step and jerked her hand away from the orb.

  “What did you do?” Fralend asked and started to walk towards her.

  “Nothing at all! It was spinning on its own when I got close, I swear, Magos!” Fralend knew she was lying. She only referred to her by her title in the company of other Magos or when she screwed up. Before Fralend could get close, another much louder CLICK echoed throughout the temple, shuddering like a tremor preceding an earthquake.

  “We should get back to the stairs, ladies,” Dothen said as he picked up his bag and kept his eyes peeled on the ceiling where the sound had come from. Fralend's eyes locked onto the Orb in front of Kat, which was sinking into the floor.

  A loud BOOM sounded above them as an ancient mechanism stirred to life.

  Sand began cascading like waterfalls from the darkness of the ceiling. Following it was a boulder the size of three Fralends, which crashed into the mosaic floor with an explosion, sending shards of rocks flying in all directions. Kat had started running back to Frealun, but another boulder was falling between them; she’d never make it. Frealun braced her feet and gripped her staff in both hands; maybe architecture-based magic would be helpful after all. She let loose a blast of energy that collided with the boulder and changed its effect on gravity. Where once it had been falling like a comet, now it slowly sank as if in water.

  “Go back to the stairs!” Frealun ordered as she pushed Kat back. She tried to apologize, but Frealun wasn’t listening. She could fix this. She had to.

  Kat and Dothen were so preoccupied with avoiding falling debris that they failed to notice that Frealun wasn’t coming with them. She was kneeling beside the Orb, the symbols etched into the brass meant nothing to her. She couldn’t tell if they were just warped with rust or a new language unknown to the Athenaeum, or at least unknown to her.

  “Focus,” she whispered to herself.

  “Fae!” Kat shouted at her from the relative safety of the stairwell entrance from which they had arrived. Kat waved her hand for Frealun to join them, but Frealun ignored them.

  “It’s been longer than a few days.”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we start counting again?”

  “No.”

  “You really don’t mind the silence?”

  “I do actually, but we’ve had this conversation before. Nothing is going to change.”

  “1…2…3…4…5…6”

  “Please stop.”

  BOOM!

  “What was that?”

  “Hush, listen.”

  “Do you think The Master is back?”

  “Hush!”

  The shaking began to subside and Fralend stopped manipulating the orb. In truth, she had no idea what it was. She assumed it was a means of command telepathy and was just holding it and wishing for the temple to not collapse. She didn’t exactly have the time to properly study it for a better guess.

  “In hindsight, I probably should have run for the exit.” She sighed, relieved not to have been crushed.

  Slowly she got up from the floor where the Orb was barely poking out from now. Dusting herself off, she took stock of the situation. Several hundred rocks had fallen from above and littered the temple floor, smashing what little furniture had been present. The beautiful mosaics on the floor were almost all destroyed, and that made her gut twist.

  Her mana expenditure to survive the ordeal was far from negligible. She examined the bauble atop her staff and could see the liquid inside had been halved from before the collapse. The heirloomed metal staff was gifted to her by her father, and she used the same Ether he did to fuel her mana, the Essence of Ambrosia. Killing an entire Ambrosia sprout only derived a few drops of Ether, but it was a consistent fuel and relatively sustainable. However, she’d need to be more careful; getting this low this far from home was not a good sign.

  “Hello!?” She coughed a lungful of dirty air and tried not to look at the little remaining Ether. There was a pile of rocks between her and the stairwell, not enough that she couldn’t levitate over it, but using any more Ether when there was an alternative didn’t seem wise.

  She could hear someone moving on the other side of the rocks blocking her path to the stairwell.

  “Frealun? Are you okay?!” It was Kat.

  “Yes, what about you guys?!”

  “We’re fine, thanks to you; I’d be crushed if you hadn’t shielded me in time.”

  There was a pause for a moment. “I’m sorry,”..

  Frealun let out a sigh and finally relaxed.

  “It’s fine, we’re explorers, right? Better to break some of it than never find any of it.” Frealun was glad the rocks kept Kat from seeing the expression on her face. She could fake her voice, but never her face.

  “That’s a relief, I thought you’d want to kill me, Fae.”

  If I didn’t have so little Ether, I would consider it….Frealun thought very aggressively.

  “Can you make your way to us?” Kat asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it. I’d rather not use the last of my Ether moving these rocks, let me look for a way to crawl through.”

  Using a negligible amount of Ether, she increased the light emitted by her staff to examine the fallen rocks around her. She could start crawling over the rocks or… …behind her, the collapse had opened something in the temple wall. It looked like an entire wall had fallen over, revealing a path previously hidden.

  Leaving the debris between her and her companions behind, she clambered over the fallen rocks, making her way to the new path. Her pants were sewn with leather over the knee and meant for such exploring. Had she been wearing her Library robes, this would have been far more difficult, but thankfully, she came prepared. She had the tailor specially sew enough pockets to carry a warehouse’s worth of supplies. Formal robes barely had enough pocket space for pocket lint. Focusing her staff’s light, she could see that the inside of the path was similarly styled as the temple, with mosaics on the floor and the same rough-hewn stone walls.

  Suppressing her excitement as she slid feet first down a flat-faced stone easily the size of seven of her. She had to remind herself that she was alone and could not be helped if something happened now. She could still make out the sounds of her companions digging around, but it was much more faint now, and with each step, she doubted they’d even hear her shouts.

  The hole led into a hallway; she could go right or left. The floor was free of debris, and the collapse didn’t appear to have done much here. The ceiling was only fifteen or so feet high, likely making it more structurally sound than the high-domed temple. She chose left as that led further away from the stairs and would likely be where anything significant would be. She knew it would be better to wait on the others, but she could think free of distractions when alone. She had only been walking down this hall for maybe a minute, and her mood was already changing from the collapse, perhaps that hadn't been so bad after all.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach a junction in the hall. A metal arch covered in strange symbols sat over the hallway she walked down. The simple stone changed, and everything past the arch was smooth black granite that made her head spin when she looked too close at it. Her staff’s light didn’t reach far into the path beyond the metal arch. The style change was so sudden that it unnerved her. It didn’t look like it belonged here. She stepped through slowly, and the walls were far from the simple gray and brown of the previous section. No, this was lavish to the extreme with identical suits of armor carved from the same black polished granite as the wall.

  They were taller than her by at least three feet and expertly done. Warriors clad in armor so bulky that it revealed little detail about the nature of the people wearing the armor. She supposed they could have been elves, but the arms and legs were much too thick, and the castle ruin atop the undercroft was too simplistic in design to be elvish. She detected faint magic on them and realized they were not carved by hand but perhaps entirely conjured into existence. The amount of Ether such a thing would have taken made her anxious. Past the carvings of armor were vacant plinths that looked out of place, like something was missing. Some decorative item was supposed to be set atop, maybe an actual suit of armor, but it was taken during an emergency, she theorized at least. Further past the plinths were decorative arches carved into the wall that looked like the granite had been rolled up to mimic the appearance of a parchment or scrolls curving from floor to ceiling and back to the floor. The arches were the only variation in the hallway, as each would be slightly different, with the texture or pattern on the rolled granite varying slightly. Every ten feet would be the plinth, carved armor, then an arch. The pattern repeated on either side of the hallway and was only interrupted by the occasional intersection leading to more of the same manner of hallway.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Letting her staff’s light dance over the reliefs and artwork of the floor mosaics, she tried to make out the significance of everything. A crypt, no, it was much too plain for that. The Ancients normally entombed their dead with lavish ornaments and jewels that made them easy targets for looters and grave robbers, but she spied no such jewels. An armory, but what use would an armory have so far underground and so hard to get to? Maybe a place for royalty to meet, but like the armory, it was so far underground that it didn’t seem practical, unless more magic was at hand.

  She had passed a few intersections in the hall but decided to keep straight, so backtracking out would be easier. Given how similar everything looked here, she would quickly get lost if she started making turns. After passing the third intersection, she started using chalk to mark where she had been—another benefit of having plenty of pockets. The white powder stood out like a beacon on the black granite and would be easy to see on the way back.

  She tried not to think about how far she had already gone alone. There was too much potential to stop. They would be fine without her for a little longer and wouldn’t dig to reach her side for a while. Letting them worry about where she had gone would be payment for the collapse, she told herself, looking for any excuse to keep going.

  Her boots clicked with each step on the granite flooring, which was in surprisingly good condition despite its age. She could almost see herself in the mirror-like shine of the floor, but tried not to look at it. Every time she did, she could swear she saw movement behind her. She attributed it to her staff’s light casting eerie shadows over the carvings and pushed it from her thoughts.

  “Being several hundred feet underground, alone, in an ancient ruin would creep anyone out.” She said to comfort herself with her own voice.

  She passed so many of the same carvings that she was almost getting dizzy at the repeating patterns: Ten steps vacant plinth, ten more steps stone relief of armor, ten steps again archway—again and again and again. The prospect was starting to worry her, and she wondered if the magic she sensed earlier was not indicative of the carving being created by magic but of the entire hall being magical in nature. She stopped walking to reassess her situation.

  “By the Three Disciplines, what is this place?” She was unknowingly holding her breath. Terrified, but hopeful.

  “If I were ever going to find something to make me more powerful, this looks like the place to find it.” She brushed her hand over one of the arches, the smoothness of the inscriptions carved into it was fascinating. She had spent only two years training in such crafts but knew this was beyond most of her instructors. The carvings were so close to the surface that it should have cracked, and it didn’t have any seams where one block stopped and another began. All this, even the statues, were a single block.

  “That’s not possible,” She mumbled and tried to pull at the arch to see if there was the slightest wiggle to it. Nothing. She thought for just a moment, perhaps a moment faster than she should have.

  “I can spare a little more Ether.” She raised her staff, and before she could second-guess her decision, she whispered the incantation for one foot by one foot of stone to shake itself to gravel. Typically only useful for that damned Grand Spire construction, it was ironic she was using the magic taught to her in the thing she hated to commit the gravest of crimes, studying history.

  A few seconds passed, longer than it should have taken, but the beautiful smooth polish began to darken and quickly turned to pebbles that rolled down the wall and scattered across the floor. Revealing more black granite beneath.

  “Hmm, well…I had expected something behind it.” She touched the granite, and it didn’t feel special; it was just rock, now ruined. She sighed, turned around, and walked further into the dark hallway.

  “Just a tad further.”

  “I haven’t heard anything else, have you?”

  “We’re the same being. You and I.”

  “Okay, but you didn’t answer me.”

  “No. Nothing since the first explosion or….wait”

  “Can you feel that?”

  “Yes, yes, I can. The Master has returned, I told you it wouldn’t be much longer.”

  “You say that every time The Master leaves us in the void.”

  “Yes, and every time The Master returns!”

  In the space between nothingness, where dreams go to become reality and existence ceases to have normal meaning, power flooded into a being that had been waiting for a long, long time, and it took its first step back into the realm of reality.

  “Maybe I should dissolve the statue this time…. No, I’ll never get back home without a little Ether left. I’m going to use it all, toying with rocks, ung!” Fralend clinched her hands into fists, frustrated more at the repetition than anything else. This place was driving her mad with its perfectness. No changes after at least ten minutes of walking, this had to be an illusion or some sort of magical trickery. A defensive ward the Ancients had put up, she was wasting time and Ether on tricks.

  She turned around to walk back to her friends. She was excited to at least show them the strange hallway, but she was doubtful they would have anything of value to help discover its function. It was fine to be friends with people not of the Magos, but she had to remind herself that they wouldn’t be as helpful as others of her kind.

  She stopped walking for a moment and listened.

  Her footsteps continued to echo off the walls longer than they should.

  Her eyes grew wide at the realization.

  “Kat!?” She yelled and immediately regretted it, knowing they wouldn’t have even been close to finding her already. The footsteps grew louder, definitely not an echo. She dimmed the light from her staff and looked around momentarily before deciding to hide behind one of the stone carvings of armor. She squeezed herself between the wall and the armor's backplate. Grabbing either side of the stone armor, she scooted herself up. Using the closeness of the wall to wedge herself firmly between the two, so her limited height was now about equal to the suit, and should adequately work to conceal her from anyone walking by.

  The footsteps were close and sounded heavier with each passing moment. A firm thud and clank that reminded her of the soldiers marching in parade formation during the Master of Disciplines' coronation day. Except no flowers were being thrown from rooftops or music played in a joyous celebration. She was alone and sorely regretting leaving her friends behind.

  She whispered a word, and instantly, all light was gone, throwing her into a pitch-black darkness where her only sense was sound. The sound of footsteps was like thunder in the otherwise silent darkness. Her mind conjured images of predators hunting prey that sought refuge in burrows; she didn’t like being prey.

  She gripped her staff tightly between her palm and the stone suit, shut her eyes, and waited. The footsteps had stopped at what sounded like right in front of her. She dared not look and would stay like this until they walked away. There was no way they could have seen her; she was sure of it.

  Seconds passed, then minutes, had it been ten, twenty? She couldn’t be sure. In the darkness, she had no way to know anything other than the feeling of polished granite under her hands as she worried her palms would start sweating and she would slip and fall. Maybe the footsteps walked past her, but in her fear, she didn’t realize it. Surely they hadn’t been standing perfectly still this entire time.

  Slowly, carefully, she lowered herself down. Her feet delicately touched the floor with barely a sound, but to her ears, it was like a bomb going off in the otherwise silent darkness. Pausing every few seconds to listen before moving again, she crawled out from around the statue. She finally decided it was safe and lit her staff. She was blinded for a moment before her vision finally adjusted.

  She gasped.

  A living replica of the statues stood not seven feet away, staring down at her with a cold, impassive gaze. She didn’t wait to look any closer and bolted down the hall back the way she had come. She could hear the loud THING following her, its wide stride made it cross ground much faster than her, and she was sure it was right behind her.

  Thankfully, she knew a way to run faster, and she whispered the same incantation to levitate boulders, but instead cast it on herself in a much more depleted form. It didn’t separate her from gravity, but it did remove about half her weight, letting her muscles carry her further, faster. She kept running, she just needed to reach her friends…wait, what would they do to stop this thing…She thought about what she would do if she did manage to get to them; she was just luring a monster to her friend.

  On the floor in front of her were smooth, round black pebbles. The same pebbles she had broken from the wall. They were now resting almost perfectly invisible directly in the direction she was running.

  She grunted from the sudden sensation of losing her balance and had a split second to correct her stride in her reduced weight state. It wasn’t enough as she stepped on more pebbles, and she continued falling.

  She rolled to avoid face-planting into the floor. As she did, she noticed the thing was slowing down with her. She popped back to her feet and started to run again, but saw it was just standing there, watching her. It had never been more than a foot or two away and had no problems matching her speed. She stopped, holding her staff with both hands, and aimed it at the thing. Mentally going through spells that would have the penetration to hurt it. She was not versed in combat spell doctrine, maybe she could increase its weight on gravity enough to slow it down…Or perhaps it wasn’t out to kill her.

  “Who summoned you? What is your purpose?” She was panting from running and tried to catch her breath. She didn’t think she needed to impress this thing, as it likely didn’t comprehend her in that manner, so she greedily gulped in mouthfuls of air while she could.

  It just stared. She took the moment to get a closer look at it. The metal was covered in symbols that she could only assume were runes, not purely decorative. It didn’t look like an animated suit of armor or any summoned creature she had ever heard of. Animated suits were clumsy and slow, and this thing moved with purpose and determination like a person. No creatures or beasts were this awkward or inactive. They were giddy with movement and excitement. Being born from magic was a rare moment of joy for summoned creatures as they otherwise were damned to oblivion in a sea of nothing. They rarely sat still or behaved the way you wanted, and only through strong magic could you get them to do anything productive. This, this was something new.

  She waved her hand, feeling stupid for doing it, but not sure what else to do. The thing tilted its head slightly to one side, looking confused.

  “Do you understand me?” She asked, more confidently now that she had a moment to breathe.

  It nodded its head, yes.

  “Do you wish to hurt me?”

  It shook its head, no. She let out a sigh of relief but quickly reminded herself of what was going on. A suit of armor in a ruin, likely thousands of years old, had just decided to follow her. She wasn’t safe yet.

  “Can you speak?”

  It shook its head, no.

  “Are you a summon?”

  It shook its head, no.

  “Take off your helmet,” She asked hesitantly, unsure if she should press her luck.

  Using both hands, it lifted its helmet off, revealing nothing but air where a head should have been.

  “I think I’d be more worried if you had a head.” She laughed more out of stress than anything funny.

  “Is this your home?”

  It held its helmet in outstretched arms and shook it back and forth, no.

  “You can put that back on if you want.” It placed the helmet back with a clank.

  “Okay, well, do you want to follow me?”

  It shook its head, yes.

  “Okay, well, let's go then, I guess.”

  By the Three Disciplines, this might be the relic I was looking for! She thought internally as it began following her.

  “Can you walk in front, please, sir?” She decided that it being behind her made her uneasy after only a few steps.

  Sir, why, sir? Because IT seems rude.

  It nodded and began walking in front at a pace that mimicked her own. It could have easily outpaced her, but didn’t. What a unique specification for a magical creature to have. Something like this wouldn’t be hard individually, but to create something capable of detection to find her, reserved enough not to be an out-of-control beast, capable of some degree of problem solving and self-aware thought, and courteous enough to walk at her pace.… All things combined made it very unique indeed.

  “Are you a thousand years old?” She asked from behind it, curious how it would decide to answer. It shrugged its shoulders without looking back. The massive pauldrons slid over metal plates in a smooth motion that was ordinarily difficult for anyone wearing armor to do. She was no armorer, but could tell this level of articulation would need to be studied. The deep blackness of the armor absorbed the light from her staff, and not a single ray was reflected. Nothing about its design was familiar, but that didn’t surprise her since history was so heavily restricted. It could be a typical design of the Ancients, and how would she be any wiser?

  The Suit walked somewhat naturally, as naturally as someone wearing several hundred pounds of armor could walk, at least. Its arms swayed, its head bobbed, and its legs and hips moved in a normal motion. She could probably convince someone that a person was inside, besides it being around eight feet tall. They walked the rest of the way in silence. She was starting to get worried they were lost, but The Suit seemed to know where it was going and led her back to the metal archway that separated the rough-hewn rock from the polished mirror-like granite. The contrasts were astounding to look at together, like they were two worlds smashed together. The rough stones were poorly slotted together and plain, compared to the mirror polish of the granite, with every surface covered in ornate carvings.

  “Did the people who made you make all of this?”

  The Suit turned abruptly around, pointed at the polished granite side of the arch, and nodded, yes. Then pointed at the rough-cut stone and shook its head, no.

  “Can you write? I need more answers than that, you see. I’m a historian and wish to learn about this place.” She grew more confident now that she was back in a familiar area. The longer she lingered on the polished black granite side, the more sickly she felt. The familiarity of the cobblestone was oddly reassuring compared to the alien side.

  The Suit nodded yes.

  “Show me, please. Write your name?” She asked with a smile that worked on her father when she was a child to get what she wanted.

  The Suit stopped and turned to face her with an outstretched hand, palm up. She instinctively flinched back and pointed her staff at it, then immediately felt ridiculous.

  “Of course, you need something to write with, apologies.” She pulled a piece of marking chalk from her third pocket on her blouse's second row of pockets.

  As she handed the chalk to the suit, she felt the metal of its palm. Her entire hand could easily fit in the center of it. It was warm, too warm to be natural; it shouldn’t be warm. As The Suit took the chalk and started drawing, she tried to wrap her mind around why The Suit would be warm. Animated suits were just that—suits. They had no temperature besides whatever was ambient.

  She looked down and was astonished at how well The Suit could write with such heavy gauntlets. The letters meant nothing to her, but they were beautiful with dramatized curves and elongated spines on the letters.

  “I suppose it would have helped if I understood any of that. Even if you could speak, I probably wouldn’t understand you…Wait, how do you understand me?” She asked as The Suit looked up at her. Its visor was finally at her level and she could see directly into the slits. It was unnerving how it stared at her, the intelligence it had shown so far, this wasn’t just a suit of magical armor, there was an intelligence behind that visor.

  It just continued to stare.

  “I don’t know what I expected you to say, honestly. Not as if you could explain that”

  It stared back.

  “Right, well, anyway. I have some friends I wish you to meet. Please, don’t…do anything weird or sudden? You might scare them.”

  It nodded as if it understood, and they continued along to the main temple, where the floor was covered in fallen debris, making walking difficult. She started to clamber over the first few rocks and used her staff to lift her weight up and over. Had she extra Ether to spare, she’d float overtop, but there was no chance she’d waste anymore. After the first few rocks, The Suit stooped down next to her, making her jump with fright.

  “What?!” It motioned for her to climb into its arms.

  This is would SO get me killed if the Athenaeum found out… She thought to herself as it performed yet another act of self-awareness that unsettled her.

  “I guess you could have already killed me if you wanted to, please, don’t drop me.” She walked into its grasp, and it lifted her with one arm under her legs and another supporting her back. It stood up slowly, not to drop her, and began moving over the rocks with surprising grace. Its height made it much easier for both of them, and if a gap were especially large, it would jump from one rock to the other. She tried not to look into the visor the entire time, but it was hard not to fixate on it. She expected eyes to stare back at her whenever she blinked, rather than a black void. The Suit radiated heat, which wasn’t painful, but similar to standing slightly too close to a fire. Maybe uncomfortable for too long.

  They were back at the collapsed wall separating her from Kat and Dothen in under a minute. She could hear them pulling rocks away and breathing heavily.

  “Hello?” Fralend said.

  “By the Three! Where have you been, girl?” Dothen sighed.

  “We were worried sick, it’s been over an hour since we heard your voice.”

  “I thought you were hurt. Why did you get quiet? What happened?” Kat and Dothen talked over each other, obviously relieved to hear her.

  “Sorry, sorry, but listen. I found a path leading deeper in, and I found something…”

  “Found what?” Kat asked with an edge of nervousness in her voice.

  “Well, it’ll be easier to show you.”

  “Can you get over this wall?” She asked The Suit, who was still carrying her. It looked up at the wall of debris and picked out a path before squatting down.

  “Wait!” She knew what it was about to do a second before it did it. From a squatting position, it launched into the air. Fralend had a death grip on The Suit, squinting her eyes shut and bracing. She had no idea how far the top of the debris was, but they were there when she opened her eyes. Before she could react, it jumped off the top, too high. That’s how high she determined they were. Too high to jump off without levitation. In a second, they were on the ground, it landed on one knee and held her tight to its chest. The impact didn’t seem to transfer through the metal plates to her. The cuirass and vambraces acted like shock absorbers while the impact cracked the rough rock underneath it. The armor around the knee and legs was unharmed from the impact. Any typical metal would have been ruined, and a body inside bludgeoned, likely to death, if not close to it.

  “By all that is sanctioned by the Three, what is that?!” Dothen yelled after they landed.

  Fralend slipped down from The Suit, who remained kneeling beside her.

  “This is my friend, sort of.” Fralend hadn’t thought this far ahead, honestly.

  “Friend? Get away from it, girl! That thing is probably a guardian of this place; we’re trespassers in its home!” Dothen went to grab Fralend and pull her away from it, but as he did, The Suit moved its hand in front of him, blocking him. Dothen recoiled back at the sudden movement from The Suit.

  “No, no, he’s fine.” Fralend turned to face the suit, who nodded that it understood.

  Fralend walked to her pair of friends, who pulled her further away from the suit.

  “Did you hit your head on something?” Dothen was close to hyperventilating.

  “I should never have encouraged you back in the Academy. History is dangerous, we need*”

  “Dothen!” Fralen yelled before jumping up to hug the old man. Silencing his complaints.

  “WE, are fine. I won’t go off alone again, promise.”

  He let out a long sigh. “I would blame myself if anything happened to you,” he said as he hugged her back. His scraggly gray beard, unkempt from travel, poked at her neck. He smelled terrible; they probably all did. Just getting here was three days from the Capital, and only one night had been at an Inn.

  “I know you would, but I’m here because I chose to be.”

  “Fine, I’m fine. Okay, now really.” He took a step back from her.

  “Really, what is THAT?” He nodded to The Suit, who stood looking at seemingly nothing.

  “THAT is our golden goose.” She smiled.

  Just barely perceptible, The Suit tilted its head.

  “FORWARD!”

  Stellan was startled awake as he heard a whip crack over someone’s back, and they responded with a scream. The living train of human slaves was moving again. he didn’t know what had caused the holdup for the last few minutes, but the sleep he managed was welcomed. The ground stung the sores in his feet as he stood up, and he was quickly reminded of his predicament as a slave. The slow, monotonous clatter of shackles echoed as hundreds of people like him were driven forward.

  “Could be worse,” Suurose whispered from Stellan's side.

  “Care to explain, how?” Stellan asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “We could be important enough to warrant torture for information, instead, we’re hiding in plain sight and mostly ignored.”

  “Our souls will likely be consumed, and you think this is a positive thing?” Stellan snorted as he stepped on an incredibly sharp rock.

  “Ah, but we’ll get close to one of them. Our job is to kill Mages, right? How else would we get close if not to be consumed?” Surrose chuckled.

  Stellan could see the despair behind his friend's attempt at humor. They were not blind like the masses around them. They knew what was waiting for them at the end of this path. Eternal damnation, so someone in a golden laced velvet cloak could wave their hand around and feel like a God. He wanted to bite back with anger and scream at his friend that now was not the time for jokes, but Surrose was right, at least they would get close and maybe they could make a God bleed since the ones they worshipped had been silent thus far.

  “We’ll need a plan,” Stellan said, determination shielding him from despair.

  “One step ahead.” Suurose pulled two metal bits sharpened into daggers from his long-ago, soiled, ruined pants.

  Stellan had to keep from laughing. “That's our Golden Goose huh?”