Chapter 95 A Generous Chain

The five Greyhorns tucked their heads low and charged.

They moved fast. Each was quick enough to cross the twelve paces between us in a few strides. I raised both hands. "Ruin," I hissed, and a fire blacker than black poured from both palms. Once, only one of them could have answered to that word. The fire crossed the twelve paces before the beasts had crossed half of them. Two of the beasts turned to ash, and then to nothing, between one step and the next. Beneath my ribs, the Ember Core only hummed and did nothing more. I was still not used to that.

One of the three reached me first. The brown body rose up to my neck, and the body was the smaller part of it. The horn was larger than the rest of the beast. A wicked, pointed thing, longer than the creature it grew from. I leapt. With Essence infusing my legs, I rose over beast and horn both.

The first beast ran past where I had been. The other two paused where I would land. In this body, I had no way to maneuver myself in the air, and these creatures were cunning enough to know that. They did not know about the Hero.

One of the two split down the middle. It fell in two clean halves, and both halves struck the ground at once. Blood and entrails seeped onto the stone. The Greyhorn still waiting for me turned to look at its companion. It took a step back. A moment later, its neck left the rest of it.

I landed. There was only one of the beasts left. It whirled, saw the remains of its companions, and charged anyway. I raised my right hand. "Rui-"

There was a chirp. It was loud enough to shake the cavern walls above us. A gout of orange and yellow flame struck the beast mid-charge. It fell onto its side, its flesh smoking. It did not rise.

With my senses, I could feel nothing alive that should not be. But just because I did not sense a thing did not mean the danger was-

"Lys, we're fine," Ash called out.

I turned to face her. She stood in the far corner of the cavern, halfway up a set of stairs that led to a dais of striped gold. Around her lay five more of these Greyhorns, each of them split with clean cuts. Atop her head sat Solara, though she almost did not fit there any longer.

The Hero waved as she came to me at a jog. There was blood covering her side. Her cheek. Her arms. I did not think any of it was hers. "Stop," I said. Ash stopped.

I moved close to her and raised my left hand. The Cradle answered, and wisps of white flame licked past the plain leather she wore and to the skin beneath. "I'm fine, Lys. I don't have a scratch on me."

"You believe you do not have a scratch on you," I corrected her. Ash waited while I finished my inspection. None of the blood had been hers. I nodded to myself and moved my hand up to her head.

Solara watched me with those golden eyes. She let out a small chirp. The Cradle found nothing wrong with her either. They were both whole. The Hero was looking at me with an expression I knew well by now. "Only a fool is not prudent," I said.

Ash smiled and lifted Solara from her brow. I took her. The phoenix settled into my open palms, and there was no room left in them. "You did well," I told her. "Your range has improved. As has your aim. To strike a beast mid-charge is no small thing. You should be proud." Solara puffed up beneath the assessment, taking in air until she was as round as any orb. I placed her atop my own head, where she settled between my horns with a soft trill. She fit. Just barely.

I moved toward the nearest of the beasts, the one Solara had charred. Wisps of black trailed from my right hand and into the creature's chest. The flesh fell away in a ring of blood that was almost neat, and I reached inside and drew the pulsing thing out. In my palm sat a shifting sphere of brown. An Essence Heart. A D-rank Heart, for it had come from a D-rank beast.

Solara let out a chirp, and I felt her weight shift forward on my head. Before, I would not have noticed her weight at all.

"Wait, Sol," I said. "You have fed enough. These are for Ash." I looked up to find two golden eyes staring down at me. Solara regarded me, chirped, and slowly settled. She had granted me mercy. I suspected it was only a temporary grant.

Ash herself was back on the stairs, carving lines through the air over the beasts she had slain. I moved to join her, and before long we had eight Greyhorn Hearts in a neat row on one of the steps.

Not long ago, a girl with her chin in the air had pressed two of these into my hands. They were rare, but only rare for those not willing to go out and kill for them.

These Essence Hearts were petty things. The greater the beast, the greater the Heart that came from it. They reminded me of another. Of a System that had begged me to go to the heart of the world itself. To Epherion, the home of the Gods. I shook my head, and I was back in the cavern.

"You sure you don't want any?" Ash asked, glancing at me, then at the orbs.

"They will do nothing for me. They will do something for you, as little as it is. Take them. We need to grow stronger, Ash."

The Hero nodded and made a wide sweep with her left hand. The eight Hearts split down the middle, and what left them was a bright brown light that leaked into the air. Ash moved her arms into the light, and the light was drawn into the purple and black branchings of her two Sigils. Ash winced and staggered forward a step. She had steadied by the time I reached for her. "I'm fine. Just didn't expect to feel that much from eight at once."

I nodded and pulled my hand back. Ash shook out her arms, and when she looked at me she was smiling. "You know, this takes me back to the good old days. There's nothing quite like clearing a dungeon. You never know what'll happen, or what you might find."

In this time, there were places known as Dungeons. Places where the mana had coalesced and formed these strange structures, and the structures bred beasts more vicious than any found outside. In my time, there had also been places known as dungeons. They had been the strongholds of my demons, or perhaps of the beastkin. Sometimes, the System itself would create them. Strange, that the word should find a new home.

"The good old days," I said. "You were clearing my camps."

Ash had the grace to look away. She did not have the grace to stop smiling.

"What we found today," I went on, "were beasts that hardly deserve the name. Their only strength was in their quantity. In every other measure, they were rather lacking. I had at least expected more at the end of nine hours."

Ash looked past me, up the long run of stairs that climbed almost to the ceiling. "Let's get this done with, then." She rose up the steps, and I followed her.

I had felt it for some time now, which was how I knew we were near the end of this place. It was a pulsing in the air itself. Faint, but impossible to miss once one knew it was there, as if the world were a single spark away from catching. The Dungeon Core. The thing that gave the whole of this place its structure.

We found it at the head of the stairs.

It hung above the dais, and it was large. Larger than Solara, larger than my own head, and it beat. It beat slowly. Red webbing held it in place. The strands ran from the Core to the walls and the ceiling and the gold of the dais, some thick as rope and some thin as hair. They encased it from every angle. They looked almost like flesh.

A red fluid dripped from the thing. It fell onto the dais and ran down into a puddle that had spread across half the gold. Judging by the size of it, it had been dripping for some time. Judging by the dark rim around its edges, for longer than that.

"Do you want to?" Ash asked.

I raised my right hand. Solara let out a loud chirp. I looked up at her. She had opened her beak wide, and I saw the glow at the back of her throat. "Very well then, Solara." I dropped my hand.

She loosed a gout of orange fire, and it struck around the Core, at the strange flesh that pinned the thing to the air. Her flame traced a circle, and when she was done the great Core fell, and struck the gold of the dais with a wet sound. Ash stepped forward and picked it up.

Something crackled through the air. It moved past us and went down the length of the whole dungeon. A moment later, the walls began to shake. Chips of stone fell from the ceiling onto the floor below. The entire place was collapsing.

"Should be a short run back," Ash said. "About twelve minutes." She looked at me and grinned. "It's a straight path. Race to see who gets there first?"

I raised an eyebrow. The walls around us shook harder by the moment. I understood something of what Ash was asking. That was what confused me most. "You wish to compete to see who leaves this place first? What purpose would that serve?"

Ash shrugged. "It'll be fun. And we'll see who's slower."

"That is rather petty-"

Ash was already bounding down the stairs. She took them two and then three at a time. I did not have time to think. "Solara, you will hold tight," I commanded her. I felt Sol's talons dig into my hair, and a moment later I was racing after the Hero. She ran fast. She had almost made the mouth of the chamber already.

"A head start is un-Herolike!" I called out. Ash did not so much as pause.

The dungeon opened into wilderness. A line of trees stood a dozen feet from the mouth of the hill, and the sun stood high overhead, its light splitting through the leaves. We had walked into this place in the dark before dawn. We had been in there for some time then.

There was a thud somewhere behind us. I turned to see a great stone split from the ceiling of the passage and bury its entrance entirely. The dungeon was gone. I looked from it to Ash. The Hero was grinning, and I knew well enough why. "You had a head start," I said. "Even so, you only barely bested me."

Ash's grin never slipped. My left eye twitched. "And besides that, I was carrying more weight than-"

Solara let out a large chirp. I looked up to find the phoenix staring down at me with her golden eyes. It seemed she had read more into my words than I had meant her to. "That is not quite what I meant," I told her. Solara chirped again and tucked herself back down. "Very well," I said to Ash. "You have bested me. This once."

"This once," Ash nodded sagely. I sighed. It seemed Heroes had always been far better at vexing me than they had ever been at slaying me. Then again, perhaps it was not so bad. Ash seemed rather satisfied with herself. Fine lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes. They had probably always been there, whenever she smiled. I had simply not been looking closely enough to see them. I was looking now.

"You know, Ash. Perhaps someday we can-"

The air in front of us split into a single yellow tear. There was no weight to it, but only because the woman had not unfurled her Essence. Ash and I both turned toward the rip in the world. I felt Sol go very still on my head.

Through the tear stepped Arianrhod Penderyn. Her silver armor shone in the light, finer than anything I had seen in this world. Finer, perhaps, than the Darkness Binding I had buried beneath an oak.

Her eyes moved from Ash, to me, to Solara, and then settled somewhere between us. "Both uninjured," she said. "That is good." Then she looked past us, at the hill that had sealed itself. "Nine hours. A party of C-rank adventurers would take twelve, at the least. Your performance is acceptable, but not extraordinary. At least your times are improving. Though perhaps this dungeon was simpler than the others." Her face was blank.

Ash and I shared a look. This was the fourth time. Four times now this woman had opened a tear before us, and four times she had pushed us into a dungeon with no instruction save that we were to find the Core at the center of it. Four times she had appeared at the end to say the same thing in different words.

Five days. It had been five days since she had claimed us in front of that Crest chamber. She had shoved us into a yellow tear, and on the other side of that tear had been supplies, and armor that hardly deserved the name. Then we had been taken to the first of these dungeons. Where we had to clear the dungeon, or die inside. And yet she was always waiting outside for us to clear it. I wondered what she would have done, if we truly had been in danger of dying at any point. The Archon had called me an investment. I was beginning to wonder what this woman called me.

"The Blighted Lands will not be as simple as a D-rank dungeon," Arianrhod said. "The Great Hunt is no petty thing."

"We do not wish to be a part of any Hunt," I said. It was not the first time, nor the tenth.

Arianrhod's expression never changed. It stayed in that strange blankness she had worn every time since the first. "And yet you have been claimed for it. And so you will go. With your marks, perhaps you will even succeed. It is a holy duty. You should be honored to be chosen, rather than to have to volunteer."

Ash's jaw set. I knew what that word had once cost her.

My hands clenched. I even felt Solara's anger through the bond we shared. This was a chain far tighter than the one the Archon had used to bring us to the Academy. One I saw no way of breaking, at least for now. The woman's mark still danced across her skin, vanishing from one arm and appearing on the other, a stage past even the Rune that had put me on my knees. A Script. The only one in this entire nation, from what the Archon had said.

"And if the duty is so holy, why do you not do it yourself?" I had asked this question before. Twice, and twice the woman had not answered. I expected the third to go unanswered too.

It did not. "No man or woman above a Crest is allowed inside a Blighted Land," Arianrhod said. "Not even I."

It was an answer that brought its own questions with it. Ash asked before I could. "Why is that? If the land is so dangerous that nobody above a Crest can enter it, then why would you push people weaker than that inside?" There was fire in the Hero's voice as she asked it.

Arianrhod's face changed. It was a smile, or the barest fraction of one, and it was the first I had seen from her since the day she claimed us. "These lands have certain dangers only for those above the Crest."

Her hand moved, too fast to follow. One moment it was empty, and in the next the sword across her back was in it. She cut the air to her right, and in the cut's place hung another yellow tear. "This will take you back to the Academy. In two days, we make for Azareth. Use this time to say your farewells. I will find you, when it is time."

Azareth. That part Arianrhod had explained. It was the name of a great city. One of the greatest cities in the whole of the Covenant. It was where one went to walk the path of the Great Hunt. It was named after Azael, an Elder Dragon in these people's mythos. One that either did not exist, or had been after my time.

Now she wanted us to make our farewells. As if we would leave and never return. Perhaps we would not, if this Great Hunt was as dangerous as the woman suggested.

Arianrhod paused. "Give me the Core."

Ash reached inside her leather and drew out the Dungeon Core. It was still leaking that strange fluid onto her hands. She held it out, and Arianrhod opened a second tear on her right and tossed the thing inside without looking at it. Then she reached her hand into the same tear, to the wrist, and felt about. It seemed this woman possessed something like [Inventory].

"Hmm." She drew her hand back out, and the tear closed behind it. In her fingers was a silver bell. A small one, barely larger than one of my fingers. She tossed it to me. I caught it.

"If the need arises before your two days, ring it," she said. "I will come." Her gaze moved between us one last time. "And when we reach Azareth, I will give you what I have taken from you."

She meant the steel. The bottle of Protean Steel and the lump of Wraithsteel that chamber had given us. I had half believed them simply lost to us forever. "Now go."

Ash and I did. We stepped through the tear that still hung open. The sensation was one of being squeezed, of a fist closing around the skin from every side. One moment there was only endless yellow. In the next I stumbled, and barely kept my footing.

It was dark. I stood in a yard I knew, beneath a sky I had not expected. The sun had stood high overhead when we stepped out of that hill. Here the stars were out. However far the woman's tears reached, it was farther than I had guessed. It was the first time in five days that I had seen the Academy at all.

I had half expected her to throw us into this Azareth and be done with it. Instead she allowed us two days to say goodbye to the people her chain would pull us from. It was almost considerate.

I looked up at the Academy. It loomed the way it had on the first day, when I had walked in under guard with my arms hidden. I looked at Ash.

"We don't have a choice," she said. "Do we?"

"It seems not," I agreed.

Ash pointed at my hand. "That bell. Is that how she means to track us, if we run?"

I turned the thing over. It was small and cold, and it did not ring. I suspected it would not, unless I used Essence. I shook my head. "I suspect she can track us well enough on her own. Perhaps it is only what she says it is." I closed my fingers around it.

Ash was silent for a time. Solara let out a small chirp from between my horns. I lifted her down and cradled her in the crook of my arm. "Are you hungry, Sol?"

Sol chirped. I did not need the bond to know the answer. We had not eaten since we had first stepped inside today's dungeon. "Your appetites have grown, Sol," I said.

Ash held out her hand. "I think it's fine," she said. She was not looking at me. "So long as we're together, I mean." Even in the lantern light, I saw the color climb her face.

I took her hand with my free one. It was warm, and calloused, and it closed around mine without hesitating. "Indeed it is."

"Though," I said, "I would like to learn more of this Great Hunt first."

Ash smiled. We walked, and her hand stayed in mine. Yes, wherever this chain pulled, perhaps it would be alright. So long as we were together.