Theo was just contemplating whether it was time to ascend when he felt the surge of cantae. Not Rulers this time, and not soulcrafters waging war far in the distance: it was an Authority burning in the chasm. To their south, but not for long at their speed.

By the time he opened his eyes back in the real world, he saw Mattan bounding toward them. His armor from the House of Burning Leaves had been dented, but he didn't look injured, and he'd been careful enough not to bring down any more chaos on them. Though the river would have harmed him, he didn't seem concerned, leaping from wall to wall as he rapidly approached the island.

All at once, he was overhead, hurling a javelin of solid cantae. Tythes moved faster than he had in days, vaulting out of his hammock and using the posts to knock the javelin out of the air. The cantae hissed into the river with only a mild spray, but it was enough for the enemy Authority to land on the island.

Mattan rolled his shoulders and neck, more cantae crackling in his hands. This time, he definitely wasn't running, but he didn't strike quite yet. "Tythes! Your father can't protect you any longer."

"This is kind of a bad time for me," Tythes said, flipping up the hammock posts as if he intended to use them like swords. "Can you come back? In, say, two or three days?"

As soon as they had noticed the invader, Nauda and Fiyu had wisely converged on Theo's position. Nauda took point with her staff, Fiyu was prepared to use her stealth technique, and Theo was ready with a gravitational field. None of that was particularly comforting when Mattan turned to look at them.

"Do you realize just how pathetic your protector really is?" Mattan sneered broadly enough to encompass the entire island. "You used to be the scion of House Crimson, but you've lived up to all the worst rumors. You're washed up, if your soulhome is even stable. You'd already have died if your father wasn't the leader of your House. There's nothing left of your promise but a pitiful cautionary tale."

"Hey!" Tythes thrust a post in his direction. "I resent the implication that I have a father!"

Mattan hurled another javelin, and though Tythes deflected it, he didn't look as confident as before. Though Theo hadn't heard those rumors, he immediately credited them as more than insults. There was something strange about the way Tythes fought, and certainly with his behavior. A severely damaged soulhome could explain that as well as hidden strength.

"I'm going to kill him, then I'm tearing the three of you apart." Mattan lifted his arm to shoulder height, a brighter javelin forming. "Just sit there and watch a real Authority fight."

"Nah." Tythes waved a hand in their direction and a wall of cantae swept them aside.

Theo felt a surge of panic as they flew out over the river, but they hadn't been knocked in. Instead they struck the chasm wall near a narrow ledge, large enough for them to land on. In midair, Fiyu wrapped them all in her cantae, so he helped redirect them to a different landing point, just in case Mattan targeted them after all. But neither Authority was looking away, instead facing off on the island.

At the first javelin of cantae, Tythes ducked underneath it and slammed both hammock posts down into the ground. They pierced deep... and this time he lunged forward, stepping onto them. The stone foundation of the entire island broke with a terrible crack and an instant later Tythes unleashed a burst of raw cantae into his opponent's face.

Mattan weathered the blast with a defensive shield, but it didn't matter. The entire upper half of the island, weakened by all of Tythes's behavior, went hurtling backward into the river. Tythes gripped the entire chunk, stone and building alike, in a fist of his cantae and let it sail merrily down the river.

As he went, he waved cheerfully to Mattan, then hopped up onto the building for the ride.

The other Authority was astonished for a moment, giving Tythes a significant head start. Theo was puzzled by how he managed to use his cantae to propel heavy stone in the midst of the Chasm, but he'd had plenty of time to experiment. Mattan howled and set off after him, jumping from wall to wall, but Tythes only needed to hurl lazy bolts of cantae backward to inhibit his progress.

Soon the two had vanished further down the river, the gap between them widening. Theo remained standing on the narrow ledge for a while, not entirely sure what to make of it.

"Do we need to move?" Nauda asked. "In case he comes back?"

"There's no way to go except forward, but not yet. We might catch up to the fight." Theo gestured toward the remains of the island, now a crater with water occasionally lapping over the sides. "I want to investigate what's left first. Fiyu, please keep your technique up at all times from now on. The fighting will probably get denser from here."

"Is there likely to be anything left? I don't like how close the river is now. A few big waves..."

"That's why now is our only chance to check." Since Fiyu nodded her agreement, Theo decided to jump back, and Nauda came with them in the end.

The crater that remained of the island was pure rock, stripped of the top layer that had formed. When he examined the edges, he found several familiar post shapes, the surfaces between them breaking like some kind of stress fracture. It had definitely been planned for some time, then, the question was if Tythes had ever been serious about the three of them opening the door or if this was just a contingency plan.

With anyone else, he would have assumed that riding an island down the river was a near suicidal play. Given the evidence, he assumed there was more behind it. Even though it was no longer their problem, he had to admire the audacity.

"This rock is itself a sublime material," Fiyu said quietly, kneeling to place one palm on the ground. "Very dense, with durable cantae. But it would only be good for bricks, and I am not sure how you would extract it."

"If we had an Authority," Theo said, "we might be able to pull the whole thing out."

"I am not sure. Even Tythes struggled to lift the stone, I believe. It is difficult to fly here."

The two of them began to examine the remnants of the island more carefully. Theo had been hoping that the building had a basement level, or that part of the bottom had torn off and scattered the contents within. There was no sign of the building, however, only a right angled indentation that must have been the space where part of the foundation had been torn away.

"How much longer are we staying here?" Nauda stood near the front end of the island, eyeing the river rushing around them. "I can't hold the water for more than a second, so if any more of it comes over, we'll be in trouble."

"Just a little longer." Theo felt something at the edge of his awareness, a point of intense mass. If it wasn't a remnant of the building...

He found the approximate center of the island and stared down, feeling the imperceptible tug of something beneath them. Perhaps near the very core of the stone that had fallen into the river. When he gestured at Fiyu, she tilted her head briefly, then nodded confirmation.

She knelt down and used her cantae knife to cut out a cubic section of the stone. It strained her to extend her cantae underneath, and Theo struggled to generate an effective gravitational field, but they managed to lift it out. Since the block appeared to have the same density all the way through, she hopped down into the hole to cut deeper.

"I really don't like this..." Nauda's voice had gotten lower, and Theo didn't think she would fearmonger, but she didn't sound panicked yet. He focused on assisting Fiyu with the next block downward.

This one definitely had something odd at the core, so they began working to shave off the edges. Just when Theo thought he could see something within the dark stone, Nauda gave a cry and hit them from the side. They sailed through the air and he saw a white wave break over the side, washing through the crater.

Though the remains of the island didn't surrender to the river yet, when they landed back on the ledge, it was threatened by another wave. They might have been able to risk further work, but they didn't have much time. Before Theo could watch for long, he was startled as Fiyu dropped to the ground, the stone thunking from her hands.

"It is... very heavy." She pulled back a finger, sucking a place that had been pinched. When Theo examined the irregular chunk that remained, he was surprised about how heavy it felt compared to the entire block, as if it had been a large fraction of the total weight.

"Was this worth it?" Nauda kicked at the rock idly, then winced. "Wow, that is heavy."

"It's dense," Theo said, bending down to examine it more carefully. "Denser than most sublime materials by far. I think it's related to the rest of the island, and I can imagine uses for it, but there's not much time for that now."

He tried to draw it into his soulhome, but only hurt his hands trying to crush the stone. With years of soulcrafting experience from his past visit, and mostly renewed spiritual skills, Theo hadn't experienced difficulty like that in some time. Even his best efforts to absorb the material, even after Fiyu helped shave off the additional stone, failed to absorb it.

"Something else to deal with later, then." Nauda reached down to grab the rock, and though she had to shift her stance to pick it up with her legs, her Ruler's strength was sufficient. "We've waited long enough not to run into them. Do we keep moving forward?"

"I think that's the only option." Theo stared back at the dying island one more time, then they continued walking down the river.

Though they made their way along the cliff cautiously, it was obvious that their time in the Chasm of Lamentations was nearing its end. The further they went north, the more frequently they saw signs of damage to the chasm walls. Not merely surface impacts from Rulers, huge gouges that must have been caused by Strongholds. Though the sky remained dark overhead, something must have shifted that led them to fully commit.

When the western cliff broadened into another shore, they actually saw a few bodies along with signs of battle. Not long dead, but no sign of other soulcrafters. He considered examining the battlefield more closely, but as they walked along the opposite chasm, Nauda confirmed that everything had been picked clean.

In a conflict like this, retrieving sublime materials was clearly more important than retrieving bodies.

Even though they didn't sense a single opponent in range, they remained within Fiyu's bubble. Fortunately, with two fully crafted floors and a vestibule, she was able to maintain her stealth technique for extremely long periods. So long as they stayed away from the battles that involved vast swaths of destruction, Theo thought they were actually safer than most... albeit walking directly into danger.

At last they reached the end of the great pale river, where it broke apart into a small delta around the final ruins. The cliffs closed overhead, leaving them in a cavern so vast that atmospheric disturbances floated near the top. As soon as the ruins came into sight, the pressure from the cantae being used hit them like a wall. They could push further in, but there was a psychological toll just to taking in the sight before them.

Already familiar with the landscape, Theo had it easier than his companions. The chasm, previously so linear, split into three branches within the vast cavern. The western path fell off sharply, water tumbling over various falls before leaving the cavern and then the dimension entirely: he could see a vague red glow of Fithe beyond. To the east lay a particularly jagged chasm, many of the spikes bearing corpses. It seemed that the various powers fighting on the plain had fought their way down that one.

Of course, the greatest prize lay in the center cavern, a fragmentary city of pale blue buildings. Some of them were lost in the branching river, but the city had once been built on hills, so many still survived. That terminal point was the most dangerous part of the Chasm of Lamentations, even before considering all of the Strongholds and other powers who fought over it.

"Well, we're not walking into that." Nauda stared out over the chaos with her hands on her hips. "Even if Fiyu's technique is perfect, we'd get evaporated by accident."

"I confess, I'm not sure which way we should go next." Theo accepted that they couldn't just wade into a battle so far above them, but refused to believe there wasn't some useful action they could take.

They stared out for a while longer before Fiyu abruptly spoke up. "Oh, it is House Blacksilver!"

She pointed to the east, where a shoreline existed under a large cliff overhang. Not truly part of any of the three branches of the river, it appeared to be a relatively peaceful zone. He spotted defensive wards or camps from several groups, all of them apparently Houses from among the Ruling Cities. No representatives of the Asplundat Movement at all, since their primary forces were entrenched in the lowest part of the cities.

Just as Fiyu had noted, one of the defensive rings held the three Blacksilver Authorities. Since no one else was likely to give them any information about the battle, he accepted that they might be the only way of finding an angle. Nauda led the group in that direction, picking out a path over the branching river. Some parts of it had been dammed by falling chunks of stone, so the water splashed dangerously as it was redirected, but they were able to find a path more easily than before.

As they drew closer, he got a better look at the three Authorities. Dhan's robes were soaked in blood around one arm, but he stood as if uninjured. Janne was wrapped up in more robes than usual, not even her face visible. Karchibol sat behind them, holding a chest injury... and Senka sat not far away from him, chewing on a rock. Theo wasn't sure how he felt about that.

The entire group was surrounded by a ring of metal that he suspected put off some sort of reactionary barrier. Often more powerful than a constant barrier, but weak to a sustained assault or extremely swift attack. Probably a reasonable decision for their environment, though he was more concerned about its effect on their stealth technique.

He didn't have to choose, because Nauda stepped from out of their bubble and tapped her staff on the ground. All three Authorities flinched or whirled on them, drawing cantae from their soulhomes, but they calmed a moment later. Janne bent beside the circle to allow them entrance, restoring it as soon as they stepped inside.

"How are you still alive?" Karchibol asked. "When the Asplundat Movement made their largest push, we thought you had surely perished..."

"We made it, one way or another." Nauda frowned toward the battle. "Did Tythes of House Crimson come flying out of the main chasm to hit the battle? He would have been followed by an Authority from the House of Burning Leaves."

"Tythes?" Dhan spoke up with a frown. "No, there's been no sign of him. I did see Mattan arrive, but he only met up with the other soulcrafters from the House of Burning Leaves. I'm not sure where they went."

"In that case... what are you trying to do here, and how can we help?"

The Blacksilver Authorities exchanged glances, then Karchibol spoke slowly. "I'm afraid even we cannot tip the scales of this battle, so the three of you should give thanks that you are still alive and retreat as soon as it is possible."

"Why isn't it possible?" Fiyu asked.

"Because anyone who attempts to travel to the waterfalls is immediately targeted by a Stronghold, or the House of the Lost, or that... awful being by the vault. We are waiting for the battle to break, then we'll escape with all of our sublime materials. This has been risk enough."

Theo was most curious about the "awful being" referenced, but Dhan spoke up before he could ask, pointing to the west. "House Blacksilver representatives are waiting at several points around the Chasm, but the most practical is in that direction, past the waterfalls. But as Karchibol said, it isn't safe for anyone to travel that way."

"Where's the Scepter of Separation?" Nauda asked. "I assume if anyone found it again, it would have shifted the battle. Do we know where it fell?"

"Again, supposedly in the waterfall region. It was lost ten years ago while one House was using that retreat path in much the same way. That's why that direction is so closely guarded."

Then perhaps it wasn't so difficult after all. Theo glanced at Fiyu, and when she nodded, he turned to address all three Authorities. "What if the three of us sneak there and try to acquire the scepter?"

"Preposterous!" Karchibol's eyes attempted to leap from his skull. "If the three of us cannot make it, how can mere children survive?"

"Perhaps..." Janne spoke up for the first time, staring over them. "These three were able to sneak up on us despite all our defenses, after all. I don't think any other House brought Archcrafters, so their cantae might slip past. It could work."

Dhan sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I have a feeling that we'd need to use force to stop you from going. Just be as cautious as you can, alright? And if by some miracle you find the scepter, take it out of the Chasm as soon as possible. Trying to use it in the battle could get you killed, or break the armament itself. Remember, it might work against higher tiers, but each usage will degrade the artifact."

"We understand." Theo glanced at his companions to check, but he didn't see any hesitation in their eyes. They were used to confronting opponents much stronger than themselves, and it might actually be safer for them to retreat than to linger around the edge of such a vicious battlefield.

"Senka too!" The imp promptly latched herself to his leg with almost painful force. Janne frowned as she looked down at her.

"Your... creature appeared at some point and refused to leave. If she has survived this far, the decision is up to you."

"Senka too!" She promptly clamped her teeth into his pants leg as well. He saw nothing but stubbornness in her eyes and decided he didn't have the energy to fight her.

"Let us escort you part of the way," Dhan suggested. "Fiyu, can you extend your technique to hide all of us?"

Fiyu paused for a moment, then shook her head. "That would be very difficult, especially here."

"Then just hide the three of you. We'll move our barrier further west so that you at least have a more direct path to the waterfalls."

Since the plan seemed entirely reasonable, Theo didn't object. Janne knelt to manipulate the metal ring, which began to float along the shore. The representatives of other Houses glanced at them briefly, but they all seemed fixed on the battle, which was unquestionably the higher priority.

Before they reached the end of the shore, an explosion far larger than the rest rocked the center of the city. Theo strained his eyes to get a better look, trying to sort through all the cantae flooding around the blue buildings. A Stronghold-tier soulcrafter had just gone flying back, struggling to regain her balance in the air, and her expulsion had clearly tipped the balance. Yet the source of the explosion had been deeper, a large building armored like a vault... and a figure standing in front of it.

"Who is that?" Theo asked, numbness beginning to creep through his body.

"Him again." Dhan frowned and peered out over the ruins. "I thought that he didn't get involved directly unless someone attacked the door. Karchibol, can you show us closer?"

Though Karchibol grumbled, he began a farseeing technique far more powerful than any they possessed. It swept over the entire group and Theo's mind floated over the chaos. Past the soulcrafters staggering from the impact, between warriors still engaged in bloody battle, to the large vault doors.

Where Vistgil stood waiting.