“This is a weird area,” Murunel said as she and Kay stood on top of a tree, looking out.

“It really is,” Kay agreed, “Massive forest to the south, two gigantic mountains that their own small mountain chains leading off of them to the north, a plateau that stretches for miles and miles then suddenly ends with no reason to be seen, and now this.” Kay shook his head at the swamp stretching out to the west. “Why is there such random terrain all next to each other? Is this actually a video game?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” He sighed, “Just referencing something from home.”

“Okay…” Murunel pointed with her claw, “Are we going in there?”

Kay snorted and started climbing down the tree, “Fuck no. It’s going to be a pain in the ass getting back up the cliff to the top of the plateau; I’m not going into a damn swamp. We’re supposed to be back home in two or three days. I don’t want to waste time walking through muck and ooze.”

Murunel sighed dejectedly, “Not going into the swamp, not going into the cave in the side of the cliff, not going down the crack in the plateau. You’re being boring!”

“We’re going to come back! Both the cave and the weird crack in the ground probably lead to the same tunnels we found earlier; I’m not going in them with no one to watch my back!”

“I’m here!”

“You can’t see my back from in there.”

Murunel pouted and poked at the ball she was stuck in. “That… is true.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be out of there in no time. That wand thing should be recharged any day now.” Kay gently hopped off the tree and landed on the ground.

“Will you wait to go in those places till I get back?”

He pulled the chain short, so she was sitting in front of his face, “What?”

“Once I get out, I have to go tell my family I’m okay, and that might take a little while. You’re going to wait to check it out till I’m back?”

Kay felt a smile cross his face as he processed that statement. “You’ll come back after we let you out?”

“Of course! You’re my friends! And making a brand new settlement with a Class Line Progenitor will be awesome!” She did a little draconic dance in her ball. “It’ll be so much fun!”

“Well, I’m glad you’ll be coming back to us. And it’s nice to hear that you’ll be willing to pull your own weight instead of making me carry you everywhere.”

“Boo. Boo. That was a bad joke.”

Kay rilled his eye and grinned. “It was good!”

“I weigh like an ounce right now; it was terrible.”

“Whatever. Should we take a different route back home? Go farther north on the way back to the cliff or something?”

She shrugged, “Who cares? I’m not walking.”

Kay narrowed his eyes in a glare, “Seriously?”

“Of course not! There were some cool-looking rocks to the east I saw when we were climbing down the cliff; go check those out!” She wiggled excitedly and pointed with her claw in the direction they’d come. “Did you see them? The one’s with the rounded tops?”

“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. That’s only a few hours away. We can map out the rest of the edge of the plateau on the way back.”

“Onward, noble steed!”

“I am totally riding you at least once after we get you out.”

“I don’t want to be part of a dragon rider pair!”

“You can give me one ride, right?”

“Oh, for sure, I just wanted to be upfront with you.”

“My range isn’t that great; I don’t think it’d be smart for me to start aiming to get a Dragon Rider Class.”

“One of my cousins has a rider; they work for some big nation to the east that his partner is from. She’s a cutie. She’s an elf-like Eleniah, except she’s a lot paler, and she has some magic class.”

“Oh, cool. What’s your cousin like?”

She snorted contemptuously, “He’s all braggy-braggy about her. Ooh, my wife’s a tier-five caster! Ooh, we killed some bandit dude! Ooh, she incinerated an entire pirate fleet with her weird burny magic! It was like four ships! And she used multiple attacks; it wasn’t as cool as he was saying!”

Kay stepped around a rock and glanced down at Murunel. “A bit jealous, are we?”

“No!” She snapped, “I’m annoyed at him always going on about his rider-wife and talking shit because I don’t have anyone yet! I haven’t been looking! I was working on getting a great skill for my tier five Class when I get it, and then the pompous prick that stuck me in here showed up!” She shifted around and whipped her tail back and forth, “If I see him when I get to my parent’s place and he says something, I’ll rip him a new one!”

“Wow, he really pisses you off.”

“He followed me around talking up his wife and talking crap about me for three weeks once! He’s so annoying! The only good thing about him is his wife, ironically,” Murunel grumbled, “She always calls him out for his bullshit if she catches him. And admittedly, he’s been getting much better after they got married.”

“Do most people marry their rider, or partner, or whatever you call it?”

“Eh,” She bobbled her head back and forth, “Maybe half? You don’t always bond with someone you’re attracted to, obviously, but about half the dragons I know with riders are married to them. The rest are just best friends and all that.”

Kay flicked his hand and sent out a tendril of blood to wrap around an outcropping of rock sticking out of the hill next to him. With another application of will, he wrapped the tendril around his arm and yanked himself over the hole in front of him.

“That was so cool!” Murunel exclaimed.

“Thanks, I’ve been trying to think of more ways to use Blood Manipulation. Once I get stable armor worked out, I’m going to try and do some stuff with the boots and gloves and stuff. I want to see if I can kind of subconsciously take control of the armor to keep it perfectly shaped, and then I can do more with my conscious thoughts to control my weapons and do different things to improve my mobility.” He straightened his back and grinned, “Or! Stuff like this!” He made two different blobs of blood and focused on shaping them into daggers. The blood quickly and cleanly transformed into solid red weapons that floated above his palms.

“That was a great transformation!”

“Thanks, I’ve been practicing it a lot since it’s probably the most important part of my build right now.” He focused on the two daggers. “So my idea is, I have blood armor that I can shift to react to different attacks, a blood weapon in hand to take advantage of my two weapons Classes, and then…” Kay narrowed his eyes and concentrated. The two blades shot forward and stabbed into a rock. They bounced off and started attacking imaginary enemies in the air. A third bundle of blood floated up behind Kay’s shoulder and fired a pressurized bolt into the rock. “Like that! Multiple angles of attack and the ability to hit multiple targets simultaneously. I think it’ll make me even better at my strengths as a combatant.”

“That’s so coooooool!” Murunel cheered and did another excited dance. “I love it! What strength are you talking about?”

“From what I’ve been thinking and the fights I’ve been in, I’m strongest against multiple opponents that bleed. Each one I can cut, puncture, or kill gives me more ammunition to use. The stronger I make my blood-based Classes and the more I can focus on multiple enemies at once, the stronger I’ll get, I think.”

“You wouldn’t do badly against really big enemies either. But you’re right, you versus a lot of people to give you more blood is a good match-up for you, as long as there’s no one in the group that can just stomp you right away.”

“That’s always a factor, though.” Kay pulled the blood back and stored it in his canteen.

“True! Also, you might want to look into getting a class that gives you a Skill for better multitasking. It would go really well with your planned build.”

“Do you know any?” He asked.

“Specifically, no. But I’ve heard they exist.”

“I’ll have to ask Eleniah about it.”

They chatted about Classes and Skills until they made it back under the massive walls of the plateau cliff.

“Those, right?” Kay asked as he pointed ahead of them.

“Right!”

They walked closer to the interesting gathering of rocks. Most of the area below the plateau and to the west until the swamp was rocky, with a few trees, bushes, and hills breaking up the terrain. Directly under the plateau, at least this far south, it was just barren rock and dirt. The group of stones were all taller than Kay, and except for wear and tear, it looked like they’d all started at the same height.

“These are definitely not natural,” Kay muttered.

“The carvings in them look uniform,” Murunel added, “If they’re all the same, they might have been magical in some way. Used in a ritual or something.”

Kay laughed as he stepped up to inspect the finger-width carvings in the stones.

“What’s funny?”

“Okay, so I get that there really are magical rituals on Torotia, but back home ‘for ritual purposes’ meant that archaeologists didn’t know what something they found was used for.”

“Oh, that is kind of funny,” Murunel chuckled. “But seriously, don’t touch potentially magical stuff.”

Kay looked over a few of the standing stones. “The carvings look the same, outside of the weathering. I don’t think they still work, though. They look too worn down.”

“Kay, Look over there.” She pointed in between a few of the stones. “I think there are stairs over there.”

He slipped between the stones until he reached their center, where there was a set of stairs going down into the ground. Looking around him, he could now tell that the stones were set up in some kind of pattern. He’d have to get above them to map it out perfectly, but it looked kind of like a four-leaf clover shape.

“We should go down!”

“That seems like a bad idea.”

“Just take a peek! Do something exciting! You won’t always be able to go back for reinforcements!” Murunel said, “You can always run if it gets too dangerous!”

Kay thought it over and realized she was right. “Fine. We’re leaving the instant it gets too much.”

“Yay!”

Kay rolled his eyes and pulled out the lightstone he’d gotten from Darten before leaving. He’d wrapped it in cloth to keep the light from leaking out as he traveled, and he unwrapped a portion of it now to make a magical flashlight of sorts. He pointed it down the stairs and started downward.

The stairs led down into a hallway that had a partially collapsed wall. The stone was smooth and definitely worked. It lacked decoration and seemed purely functional. There was enough space to squeeze through, and they kept going. As they approached the end of the hallway, which led towards the cliff and extended past the stones near the entrance, Kay stopped. “Blood.”

Murunel perked up. “Anything alive?”

“… No, it’s old.” He stepped forward again, slowly approaching the darkened arch that led out of the hallway.

Past the archway was a small room. In the center, there was a small stone pedestal, made out of the same stone that was surrounding them, and just as plain. Surrounding the pedestal was a pile of broken glass, multiple large bloodstains, and three broken piles of metal.

“Constructs!” Murunel quietly exclaimed.

“Dead ones.” Kay walked over and started inspecting the scene. “Looks like they were up there,” He pointed the light at three small recesses in the ceiling, “And they dropped down to attack once someone or something came out of there,” Another archway at the opposite end of the room, this one completely collapsed. “They fought, the constructs lost, and whoever won took what was on there.” He pointed at the pedestal.

Murunel spun in the ball to look up at him, “Wow. That was great. Can you tell how long ago it happened?”

Kay stared at the bloodstains. “Three weeks? Maybe? I can’t tell exactly, but that seems right.”

“Huh. So there really is something in the tunnels inside the plateau.”

“And I really don’t want to meet them without backup,” Kay whispered as he frowned down at all the blood staining the stone floors.

“Why?”

“Their blood feels weird.”

“What?”

Kay shook his head and started walking out of the room. “I don’t know. It just feels… wrong.” He picked up his pace. “We discovered something; now we’re leaving.”

“Kay?”

“I don’t know what it is.” He repeated. “It’s just a bad feeling, but I really don’t like it. There aren’t any bodies left either, did you notice?”

“They could have just taken their dead back to take care of them the way their people do, burial or whatever.”

Kay shook his head. “Yeah, that makes sense. I am starting to hate that feeling, so I’m getting away from it. There’s not much left here for us.”

“You alright?” She asked after he’d made it back up the stairs and into the daylight.

“Yeah.” He shook himself. “That was… unpleasant. I really don’t want to run into whatever was fighting in there without help. That feeling was horrible in old, dried blood; I’d hate if it was worse with fresh blood.”

“You think that they’ll be enemies?” Murunel asked in a worried voice.

Kay nodded firmly. “Something about that feeling. If we run into them, we’re going to have to fight.”