Kellen couldn’t deny the mana they sensed tugged at his curiosity. What could be hiding down there? The room they’d been trapped in was clearly made by humans but at some point the cave had taken on a more natural appearance, almost like the people who’d created the trap room had explored the tunnels and created or developed the exit to the cliff side. He wished they had someone from the Southern Earth Badger Empire with them to provide insight. Aside from no evidence of recent traffic, the cave just felt ancient.

Shani nodded and drew her dagger. Kneeling down, she scratched an x in the tunnel floor they’d emerged from. Her knife barely bit into the stone, but the mark was deep enough to give them a hint if they passed that way again.

With Vex in the lead, they headed downward. The gentle slope of the tunnel made walking easy. The decline held and after about twenty minutes, Kellen wondered how much elevation they’d lost. Here and there, tiny spots of glowing neon green and pink moss flickered. Over the course of the next hour, the tunnel grew larger and the glowing moss more frequent. As the ceiling rose away from them, stalactites appeared overhead like a flock of icicle Christmas lights winking with a soft luminescent blue light. Between the rock formations and the moss, Vex ceased his glowing, and they used the natural light to lead their way.

All the while, the aura of mana somewhere ahead grew stronger. It sat in Kellen’s mind like a paperweight on a desk, present and unmoving. Based on their senses, the source was stationary — at least Kellen hoped it wasn’t a sleeping monster. Now that Vex was no longer needed to light the path ahead, Kellen tasked him with watching their backs, even more wary now they’d left the one-way tunnel.

At last, the cave floor leveled off. The tunnel was wide enough for a truck to drive through and twice as tall. They came around a sharp bend and were greeted with a perfectly flat wall covered in carvings. The hall had four antechambers on each side, all the size of a doorway. Shani paused at the threshold, the first doors on either side just a few paces ahead of them. She gestured Kellen forward and pointed. He bit back a gasp.

At the foot of the giant carved panel, a person was seated with crossed legs, facing the rock. Their outline flickered in the glow of luminescent moss and stalactites. If they’d heard the group approached, they showed no sign. Shani drew her knife and Kellen formed a bolt of sun mana in his hand. Even Vex seemed to realize the gravity of the situation and made no sound. Kellen looked at Shani, silently asking about their next move. She pointed to the chambers on the side, then shook her head. Kellen thought he caught her meaning and nodded. Shani didn’t want them to get close because it would expose them to anyone or anything that might be hiding in the side chambers. The presence of mana exuded from the end of the hall. Whether it was from the person or the carvings, Kellen couldn’t tell.

The two humans exchanged another look, Kellen looking to Shani for guidance. She hesitated, and an idea came to Kellen’s mind. He pointed to Vex and then forward, intending to convey that Vex could scout ahead for them. Vex figured it out too, because he shook himself side to side vigorously in objection. Kellen scowled and nodded. Vex shook again. Kellen pointed, trying to look more stern.

“Oh sure, just make me be the bait!” Vex’s grumble was quiet, but Kellen froze at the sound. He looked at the seated person for any signs of movement, but they remained in the same position. Kellen stabbed his finger forward again. Vex shot him a look at that said he’d find a way to get Kellen back, then he fluttered forward.

As Vex passed the doorways on either side of the big chamber, torches along the walls flared to life, flickering with pale gray flames. Vex glanced left and right. Nothing stirred as he passed each of the side chambers and he paused several paces away from the person. At their distance, Kellen could only tell the person was dressed in gray cloth. He thought their head might be bowed. Were they asleep? Dead?

“Hey you!”

Kellen cringed as Vex shouted and scrambled to gather up the sun mana he’d released back into his beast heart when they’d sent Vex ahead. The person didn’t move and the mana in the room remained unchanged. Vex flew closer while keeping out of the reach. He shouted again as he moved, and when no response came, he made a sweep to the side of the person.

“No worries, guys,” he called back to them. “It’s a mummy!”

Kellen relaxed the channeled mana once more with a sigh. Shani turned toward him, knife still drawn. “You should have Vex check the other chambers as well for traps. I don’t want to be stuck again.”

“I can hear you just fine!” Vex shouted across the room. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got big ears. And yeah, I’ll do the dirty work again — sheesh.”

Kellen heard Vex’s voice echo out of the side rooms as he flew into each, grumbling about humans and being bait. He refused to tell them what was in any of the chambers until he’d finished his inspection and returned to their spot at the far end of the hall.

“There’s a bunch of old junk in all the rooms,” Vex reported, flapping in front of them. “Weapons, jars, all sorts of crap. Looks like it’s been here quite a while. No water, though.”

Kellen felt disappointment in the pit of his stomach. They’d wasted over an hour walking down here for nothing. To his surprise, Shani started exploring the different chambers. Reluctantly, he followed, Vex perched on his shoulder.

The first few chambers they entered look like store rooms. Vases and pots with sealed lids in all shapes and sizes stacked up to the ceiling. Shani picked one the size of a gallon of milk up and tossed it on the ground. The clay pottery shattered, revealing a thick, oozing substance. Before Kellen could stop him, Vex was on the ground lapping it up with his face. When he looked up, the fur around his face was matted and the goo dripped from his nose.

“It’s honey! Tastes great!”

Shani dropped to the ground and scooped up handfuls of the stuff like a starving person, which, Kellen reflected, she was. He held back and tried to warn the others.

“What if that’s poison? Or expired?”

They ignored him. As soon as it was gone, both started busting other jars.

“These were all sealed with mana markings,” Vex said, gnawing on a raw potato. “They’re perfectly fine!”

Kellen’s hunger soon got the better of him, and he joined in. Exploring the two rooms with pottery, they found all sorts of stored foods: more honey, berries, corn cobs, yams, all that tasted like they’d been stored the same day. That worried Kellen. Vex and Shani seemed to think the pottery was old and preserved with the mana markings on the outside. What if it was much fresher, and this was a storehouse of some kind? That didn’t explain the mummified seated person, though that gave him little comfort. Still, Kellen ate until he was stuffed just like the others and followed on as they continued their search.

The other chambers were much less impressive. The first two on the left — the store rooms were the first two on the right — held little more than old animal hides, some bones, teeth, antlers and tusks. Those tusks gave Kellen pause. They were smaller than an elephant’s, maybe four feet long. He wondered if they came from a juvenile elephant or another creature. None of the items exuded any trace of mana, though the cool dry air of this lower cavern preserved them somewhat.

Moving on, they found the middle rooms on both sides empty, save for a table and bench carved out of the stone of the cave. Each had raised areas in the back corners. Kellen imagined they might be stone beds and told himself they definitely weren’t sacrificial altars or anything like that. With only one room on each side to go, they continued their search.

Entering the front chamber on the left behind Shani and Vex, Kellen gave the sitting mummy a sidelong glance. Up close, he could see the dry, wrinkled skin clinging to its hands, feet and face. Its mouth hung slightly agape, revealing a mouthful of false teeth. The bottom row was jade, while the top row looked like shards of obsidian. The same prickling sensation needled the back of Kellen’s neck and it took all of his willpower to turn away from the mummy and examine the room.

Racks of weapons and cloth armor lined the walls. On one side, Kellen saw a row of spears made from dark gray stone. One was missing, which Kellen thought strange because everything else remained in place. Aside from the spears, there were clubs with sharpened rock embedded in the sides — Kellen dubbed them saw swords. There were also knives of obsidian and stone axes. Shani perused the racks of weapons, selecting two knives and a spear. Her face remained passive, but her eyes shone like a kid in a candy store.

“This is good armor,” she said when she’d finished outfitting herself. She ran a hand over the padded lined vest. Based on the stand it hung from, it looked like you belted it in the middle providing some protection for your thighs, too. Kellen reached out and felt the material between his fingers. Just based on the look and feel, it appeared similar to the ponchos they’d received from the Earth Badger traders, though several layers thicker.

Shani pulled one off the rack and tossed it to Kellen before selection one for herself.

“Do you really think we need this?” Kellen asked.

Shani paused, with her vest raised over her head. Kellen might as well have asked her if she thought she needed clothes at all. “I have heard of the fiber armor from the south. It is said it can stop an arrow or the cut of a knife. Just put it on.”

Kellen did as he was told, removing his bronze belt and replacing it over the outside once the vest was on. He felt like he was wearing several bolts of fabric layered on top of each other. The vest was made of dozens of layers over an inch thick. He smacked his chest and barely felt the blow through the padding.

“Aren’t you going to take any weapons?” Shani asked. Standing before him, she looked like a war goddess on a Black Friday shopping spree. Aside from the half dozen knives and sword belted at her waist, she leaned against one of the stone spears. Rather than looking or sounding like an idiot again, Kellen selected an obsidian knife of his own and tucked the sheathed knife into his belt.

“This way, they’ll see your puny knives and underestimate you,” Vex said. “They we can hit them with a blast of sun mana to the face!” As he finished the sentence, Vex did a loop in the air and let out a growl.

Shani stared at Kellen as if they’d fallen into a money pit and he’d told he was good putting a dollar bill in his wallet. After a moment, she sighed and shook her head, then walked out of the chamber. She passed within a couple feet of the mummy with no more concern than if it were a pile of rocks. Kellen took a wide berth again, summoning all of his willpower not to run past Shani and into the other room like a little kid scared of the dark. He’d noticed a number of interesting details in the carvings on the panel, but didn’t want to stand by the mummy to read them.

The last chamber was the smallest of the eight, just a few paces wide and as many deep. Aside from a scattering of tarnished jewelry, the only thing to look at was a single dais against the back wall. Two round discs with the circumference of a fist sat upon on it. Both looked like the same gray stone as Shani’s new spear-staff — nothing all that special except for the carvings inside of them. One was in the shape of a clawed paw, of an unidentifiable animal. The other featured a pair of curved fangs that reminded Kellen of a saber-tooth tiger. The carvings themselves look like bright blue glass or ice and gave off a faint, pulsing glow. It’d been muted by mana aura exuding from the stone wall outside, but now they were inside the little chamber, Kellen could feel the mana resonating from both medallions. Without ceremony, Shani snatched them up and held them out to Kellen.

“Are you sure we should take these?” Kellen asked her.

“If nothing else, they will be a nice find for the person who stumbles across our bones,” Shani said. “Even I can feel the mana in them. You should show them to my grandmother, if you ever see her again.”

Kellen didn’t miss that she didn’t mention herself when talking about reuniting with Nokom. She didn’t seem all that optimistic about Kellen’s chances, either.

“I think she’s right,” Vex said, hovering close until his nose almost touched the discs. “There is big mana in these things. They make me feel funny when I look at them. Like… I want to chew on something.”

“Thank you for that insight and wisdom,” Kellen said. Both discs had leather cords around them, so Kellen raised them overhead to loop over his neck. As he did, the one with the fangs slipped from his grasp. It hit the floor with a click and Kellen thought for an instant it would shatter. When he picked it up, however, the medallion showed no damage.

“That’s probably just a priceless artifact,” Vex said. “No need to worry about breaking it.”

Kellen ignored him. He was about to leave when a small oval-shaped stone in a corner below the dais caught his eye. Picking it up, Kellen found a lumpy, pink rock with veins of gold and silver running through it. The tiny veins ran like fine spiderwebs throughout the different bumps and grooves in the stone and shimmered in the light of the enchanted torches burning in their sconces. Upon closer examination, Kellen realized they weren’t technically gold and silver, rather a shimmering white and a fiery golden color lighter and brighter than copper.

“It’s a mana stone,” Vex said.

Kellen pulled out the emptied stone from the bear and held it up to compare the two. The difference in the empty stone and the staggering amount of mana in the one he’d just discovered was the spiritual difference between holding a feather in one hand a brick in the other — a brick of iron.

“Try to tap into it and see what happens,” Vex said.

Kellen looked at him and offered up the stone. “Why don’t you?”

“Can’t,” Vex said. “Mana Beasts can’t draw from mana stones, only the surrounding environment. Just do it — what could go wrong?”

Preferring not to answer that question, Kellen reached out to the stone in his palm, seeking to connect the channels of his beast heart to it and tap into the stored mana.

The result was the magical equivalent of setting a match to a bathtub full of gas.

A deafening whoosh filled the air, driving Kellen off his feet and out of the tiny chamber. He flew out the doorway, over the top of the mummy, and slammed into the far wall. Vex landed beside him, fur sparking and smoking with golden sun mana. Somehow, the release of mana had transformed him back into a fox. His fluffy fur looked like he’d stuck his tongue in a power outlet and he laughed hysterically in his high-pitched voice.

“What a rush!”

Kellen groaned, rubbing at a knot forming on the back of his head. “Somehow I knew that was going to happen.”

Shani stared at them, wide eyed. “What did you do?” Kellen thought it was the first time he’d ever seen her taken by complete shock.

“Listened to Vex,” Kellen said. In the explosion of mana, he’d lost the stone. It was probably emptied anyway. Judging by the blast, they’d release all the mana at once. As temperamental as it was, Kellen guessed it had been storm mana, anyway, which was useless to him. He picked up Vex, wincing as a magical shock ran through him. “Let’s get out of here before something worse happens.”

Shani nodded and headed for the tunnel leading out of the hall. Kellen hurried to catch up as an eerie sensation gripped him again. Without glancing back, he recalled the sudden burst of mana had done nothing to the mummy. A single rotted thread of clothing wasn’t out of place.

They’d almost reached the tunnel when a man’s voice shouted after them.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

Kellen, Shani, and Vex whipped around. The mummy stood at the far end of the hall, pointing an accusing finger at them.