Thayer walked through the sunlit streets of Narcuss with two soldiers following him. He realized that he had been robbed upon the news of the guards confiscating Nissentis from the rogue, Seladia.

  The orders to capture the woman had been directly from Damius Marks, which meant he knew Thayer had essentially lost the orb. He thought he had secured the orb on the floating island of Ecnar, but Seladia and her friends had somehow acquired it. The theft was far less upsetting than to know that his superior was not only aware of it, but had solved the problem out from under him.

  He walked toward the guard tower where the orb and Seladia were being kept. His mind was full of thoughts as he passed through intersections.

  The tower stood against the morning sun as a silhouette as Thayer approached and ascended its steps. He entered, climbed the stairs to the immediate right, and was taken to a room where the lavender colored orb was nestled in a blue and white Narcuss flag.

  Thayer stood over it with his hands tied behind his back. He looked down at the orb, seeing it see him: knowing Damius Marks could also see him.

  “Where’s the girl?” Thayer asked.

  “We sent her over to the prison hall a little while ago.” The guard next to him answered.

  Thayer broke from his semi-trance state and looked over at the guard that spoke. “You sent the kingdom’s most infamous thief to the regular prisons?”

  The guard looked left and right. “Are the…regular prisons not good enough?”

  Thayer wanted to get mad, but the man was just a young recruit. Seladia had been out of the news for most of his career. “Let this be a lesson to you. Never let a thief out of your sight.”

  Thayer knew the rogue would have already figured out a way to escape, but it didn’t matter with the orb in their possession. Damius Marks was just as cunning as he had always been. Now that Nissentis had been handled, he could focus on the more pressing matters at hand.

  “We were told not to touch it.” The guard said.

  “Yes, it really isn’t safe here.” Thayer said. Having Nissentis in such close proximity to Sykhir could cause strange anomalies to take place…. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  He realized again that Marks could see his every action—assuming he was looking through the other side. Marks would want him to keep the orb somewhere safe, but close at hand in the event that they wanted to bring the three together.

  Thayer could think of a few secluded places to store it, but Seladia’s unnatural foresight via the orbs may have already told her where he planned to hide it. The situation was maddening.

  Storing it within the castle was out of the question. Keeping it on his person wouldn’t be possible in the event that Marks had Sykhir prepared for his own needs, and both individuals could easily find themselves right next to one another in the vorago during the Tornetum.

  A thought came to him. What if Thayer made a deal with the devil? It wasn’t a safe plan by any means, but it would keep the orbs apart.

  The only problem was time: he had very little of it before the Tornetum could begin. A smile played on his lips at the idea of Seladia disarming this trap. Thieves and dragons don’t mix well.

  Scooping up the Nissentis orb in the flag, Thayer gently rolled it into his cloak pocket. He gave the flag to the guard nearest to him and hurried outside.

  He couldn’t go in through the castle, but there were caves from the coast honeycombed throughout the island. He knew a scenic shortcut that would take him to the undercroft of the Narcuss castle. It would be far enough beneath castle and stone that it should be safe from the other orb.

  Thayer was able to take the royal tram to the bridge leading to the mainland. Long ago, King Narcuss himself had transformed the city of Narcuss into a giant tourist attraction. A fine, stone walking path was constructed around the perimeter of the island, allowing one to view the ancient ground and sea of their capital city.

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  Thayer knew of a locked passage that fed to that path that tourists and civilians weren’t allowed access. No area of the city was forgotten, but even the guards almost never patrolled the passages beneath the town.

  It was a good thing too, because if one were curious enough—if one were adventurous enough to tour every passage—there was little doubt they would inevitably meet an untimely end.

  Standing before a set of iron bars covering a square passage, Thayer waited for a pedestrian to amble past. Once the person was out of sight, Thayer raised his hand to the bars.

  As if the metal were made of cloth, the bars bent open for him to pass. Once Thayer stepped inside, he flicked his fingers and the bars crooked back to their original positions.

  He created a ball of revealing light for himself, and traversed the stone corridors as quickly as he could. The games would be beginning soon. He would need to be there during the first round, which meant he would need to go in through the castle after dealing with Targos. The elderly dragon would gladly comply with his request. It was retrieving the orb that would be the issue.

  Thayer felt sweat beneath the collar of his fine dress shirt beneath his doublet. He paused to unbutton the top few buttons so his chest could breathe.

  He was on the familiar path that led to the dragon’s chamber, but he would still need to climb a large number of steps. There were even more steps once he finished his business with Targos. Getting to the vorago in time was going to be a challenge.

  At last, Thayer took a breather at the top of a constant set of stairs that had to have been a quarter of a mile long. Even at nineteen years of age, the steps had almost bested him.

  “And more to come.” Thayer sighed and pushed himself into a hurried walk down the long path that opened to a great cavern. In the distance, seated between two gigantic blazing braziers, Targos was coiled like a white snake. His big reptilian eye watched Thayer approach.

  When Thayer finally entered the dragon’s great chamber beneath Narcuss Castle, Targos unraveled himself. He leaned on his ancient neck and pushed himself up with his haggard front claws. The cracking of its ancient bones shook the whole of the hall as it stretched its long head and neck skyward. The dragon lifted its left shoulder, filling the whole island with three consecutive pops before doing the same with its right shoulder.

  “Mmmmm, Thayer. I could sense you at the mouth of the caves.” The dragon groaned the words.

  The creature was over 20,000 years old and required the help of humans to remain alive. He had lived beneath Ethan Academy during Thayer’s time there, but was transported to Narcuss Castle after the events that largely destroyed the school and its stewardship.

  “Good morning, Targos.” Thayer dropped to one knee and bowed to the dragon.

  “You carry a Remel orb in your pocket.” The dragon spoke. Targos was too old to do anything but get straight to the point. Targos raised his head and squinted his green eyes at the ceiling. “So close to Sykhir. Planning something big? Should I make arrangements to retire in some mountain until things calm down?”

  “I sincerely doubt things will come to that, but you’ll be fine down here,” said Thayer. “For now, I need you to watch over Nissentis, and just…hold onto it.” He unraveled from a scarf in his pocket the lavender orb that had come to life in the presence of the dragon. Clouds of other shades of purple floated beneath its surface like a hurricane.

  Being careful not to touch it, he slowly lowered the glass ball to the stone floor. A few inches from the floor, the ball slipped and began to roll left. Thayer reflexively grabbed it with his bare hand. In that moment, his eyes went opaque, the powerful scent of some rancid smell burned through his olfactory and almost made him sneeze, but he was already entranced.

  It was the girl, Susi: she was coming right at him. Thayer put up both arms to block as she threw her staff to strike, but instead, she punched him directly in the chin with a perfect uppercut. While his body remained in one place, his ghostly vision soared up into the sky as Thayer in the real world scrambled back and away from the orb.

  Breathing heavily, Thayer felt liquid from the pain in his nose, touched his clean-shaven upper lip, and pulled two fingers away that were covered in blood.

  The elderly dragon chuckled as it pawed the orb into its claw. Thayer saw the orb’s glow from its new prison…then watched Targos draw the orb back under his paw.

  The dragon collapsed back onto its stomach with its arm and the orb tucked away while glaring at Thayer from eye level. “The orbs see all and promise potential variations of the future. They are only projections, but most are ironically always accurate.”

  Thayer pushed himself up, wiping more blood from his face as he got to his feet. “Who is this girl?” He demanded.

  The dragon gave a low, rumbling chuckle, blinked its gazing reptilian green eye, and said, “All dragons know of Susi. Good luck, young apprentice of the darkness. I and the gods will watch your battle with amusement.”

  He hardly realized that he’d been holding a fist so tightly, that red lines from his fingernails were embedded into his palms. Targos had always had a way of making Thayer feel small. This time was far more concerning than others.

  Realizing that he was on a tight schedule, Thayer turned without saying anything else, and exited the dragon’s chamber. A feeling of dread filled him to his core.

  The urgency that Chancellor Marks felt now made much more sense. He hurried through the passages toward the castle. She was already in the vorago, and that’s exactly where he needed to go.