The chamber fell quiet except for the moans of the injured or dying. Kellen slumped onto the steps of the well as a freight train of emotion hit him. Allison was gone. He’d sent her home, just as he’d promised over and over. And he’d stayed behind. It would take time to sort out the conflicts welling inside him.

Vex padded up to Kellen and rested his whiskered head on Kellen’s leg. His golden eyes faded to their familiar brilliant green, and a purr rumbled in his chest.

“You stayed.” The voice was Vex, but a slightly deeper one, like Vex had gone from a child to a teenager in his growth from the ward to companion strength.

Kellen ruffled the Mana Beast between his large, tufted ears. “Sure did, buddy.”

A sob caused them both to turn. Shani stood on the opposite side of the well, holding a spear that pinned Ubira to the top step of the well. Kellen rushed to her side. Ubira stared up at them with lifeless, yellow eyes. His head slumped back and the scarf around the lower half of his face unraveled. The skin from his lips down was albino white, providing a stark contrast to his tanned features. The white skin looked wrinkled, like he’d soaked in the bathtub for too long, and was covered in pock marks and open sores. Kellen shivered and took a step backward.

Still holding the spear shaft, Shani stared at the man she’d just killed. Her entire body shook and silent tears ran down her face. Kellen hesitated and then placed a hand on her shoulder. Shani made no move to shake him off. They stood that way for a minute, the surviving slaves gathering around to stare at Ubira’s corpse. Eventually, Shani sucked in a deep breath. She wrenched her spear free. Ubira’s remains fell backward into the well with a sickening splash of milky liquid.

Shani let out a sharp cry of pain and fell to her knees. Kellen tried to help her up, but a pulse of mana drove him backward. Dark purple smoke rolled from Shani’s eyes and mouth. It gathered in front of her, swirling to take the shape of a four-legged animal. Shani cried out again, and the smoke ceased to pour from her. The rolling mass before them faded, revealing what could only be described as a monster.

Kellen and the freed slaves stepped back in alarm. Vex pinned his ears to his head and growled.

“Relax, brother,” the monster said. “We are all friends here, no?”

The voice of the newly formed Mana Beast sent chills down Kellen’s back. It spoke in a low, husky tone, full of pent up malice and danger. Kellen would have described the beast as hyena-like, a powerful sneering maw and a hulking, muscled front shoulders that stood as high as Kellen’s waist. A stiff purple mane ran from the top of its head down to its stubby, switching tail. The beast’s hide was gray, flecked with dark purple spots. It radiated a sense of hunger.

Mouth agape, Kellen looked from Shani to the Mana Beast she’d just manifested. He fought an overwhelming sense of disgust and dread. It was as if all of Shani’s feelings of hate and vengeance and come together to form the creature before them. The hyena looked into Shani’s eyes. She was still seated in front of hit, staring in terror at the creature.

“Well, here I am!”

The Mana Beast’s curved fangs opened and a terrible laughing sound, half like a hyena and half like a cackling woman, reverberated through the chamber. Kellen’s stomach felt like he’d swallowed a bucket of ice cubes. The manic laughter subsided and a long, purple tongue lolled out of the side of the grinning Mana Beast’s mouth. Shani stretched out a trembling hand and touched the hyena, who turned her head into the touch. Based on her expression, Kellen thought Shani warred between disgust and disbelief.

“I’ve waited so long for this day, Shani,” the hyena said. “All those years of self-doubt and loathing slowly shaped me. And then when you fell in love with him, I thought we’d never meet. But your vengeance and hatred gave me life at long last.”

Kellen wanted to be anywhere but part of this dark, intimate discussion. Shani didn’t seem to notice any of them there, though. Her hand jerked back from her new Mana Beast and another sob tore from her chest.

“Little sister, this is not the place to linger.” Everyone’s attention jerked across the chamber where Kiypu stood, the skeleton of a crow sitting on his shoulder. It flapped its bones and clacked its pale beak, tiny eyes alight with a flickering red light.

“It’s okay!” Kellen said as some of the captives shouted in fear and backed toward the door. “He’s a friend.”

“Whatever he is, I think he’s right,” a rich, deep, comforting voice behind Kellen caused him to turn around. His eyes met a tall man with dark skin and the graying hair and beard of late middle age. “You’re Kellen I believe?”

Kellen nodded. “How do you know me?”

“I’m a spirit traveler, like you,” the man said. “I tried to look after your sister these past weeks. I’m glad she got home. My name is E. Arthur Ruggs. In another life, I was a Professor of Evolutionary Biology.”

The professor held out a hand and Kellen shook it, somehow grateful for the familiar gesture. Around them, the other captives began to mutter.

“What are we going to do?”

“The cultists will come back and kill us!”

“We need to run.”

“To where? You’ll wander around the tunnels until you die of thirst!”

“Peace, new friends,” Kiypu slammed the butt of his stone spear-staff on the ground, like a judge calling order. “I will lead you to freedom, but it is time to go now.”

Galvanized into action by the talking mummy, the others gathered weapons and tended to the wounded in order to depart. Kellen glanced at Shani, who sat on the steps of the stone well, face buried in folded arms over her knees. Her Mana Beast sat beside her, bright, mischievous eyes roaming about.

“I need to see if my friend is okay,” Kellen said to the professor. It felt strange using that word to describe Shani, but Kellen felt more than anything she needed a friend just now.

Ruggs nodded. “We will talk more.”

Despite Kellen’s words, he delayed facing Shani’s new Mana Beast and watched the professor walk away. Professor Ruggs gathered up a young girl from the Storm Horse Tribe, who, oblivious to the carnage around her, laughed on the floor as she played with a small, rabbit-looking Mana Beast with bright pink fur. Had hers manifested during the battle, too? Kellen didn’t recall seeing it while they’d watched from above before the fight.

“Is it wrong that it’s so cute and fluffy but I just want to eat it?” Vex asked, confirming to Kellen that, in spite of his changes on the outside, it was the same old Vex within. “I bet it tastes like cotton candy.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Kellen said. He sighed, knowing what they need to do next. Vex switched his tail and nodded.

“Well, let’s go talk to the, uh…”

Vex trailed off, but Kellen got a strong impression that the fox-cat felt just as apprehensive about having a conversation with Shani and her hyena as he did. They approached the pair, and the hyena grinned at them. Kellen almost congratulated Shani for fulfilling her oath, but giving someone props for killing a guy didn’t sit quite right with him.

“My sister is home,” he said instead. “Thank you. I couldn’t have saved her without your help.”

Shani looked up at him with haunted eyes, her black war paint streaked from tears and sweat. She nodded. “It is done.”

It didn’t feel like the right time to ask Shani what she’d do next, so Kellen nodded awkwardly, unsure how to fill the quiet. To his surprise, Shani let out a cold, empty laugh.

“It looks like I got everything I wanted too, doesn’t it?”

As she spoke, the hyena rose and circled Vex, sniffing at him and offering appraising looks. Vex curled his tail in around him and looked terribly unsettled, which Kellen found funny even given recent events.

“I am called Inferi,” she said. “I’ve been watching you.”

Vex backed away, tail tucked between his legs. He glanced at Kellen for help, but Kellen just grimaced and shrugged.

“I.. I, uh, thanks?”

Kiypu walked up to them, saving Vex from saying anything else. “I have consulted the record knots. There is another way out that will take us to the east side of the mountains, not far from the cave you entered. We should go now.” He glanced at Inferi as he said this, but reading emotion on the mummy’s face was almost impossible. “We have spent too much time in this chamber. The girl prevented something terrible from happening, but the bad mana is stronger than before.”

“How are we going to go back the way we came?” Kellen asked. “There’s no way some of these people can climb up to that hole and we don’t have a rope. It sounds like the other way leads into the city.”

In response, Kiypu raised a bony finger and ran it along the beak of the crow skeleton perched on his shoulder. Seeing the bird up close for the first time, a familiar fear gripped Kellen, and he stepped back. At his side, Vex hissed and growled. Shani’s head shot up as well, and Inferi barked.

“That’s Ubira’s black bird!”

Kiypu nodded and his forehead cracked in a scowl as he continued to caress the bird’s beak. “Yes, this is my Shakraa. I do not know how that Ubira stole her from me, but I am grateful to you for freeing her from his corruption. She means you no harm now.”

Questions piled like leaves in Kellen’s mind. A Mana Beast could be stolen? How was that possible when Kiypu was dead? Nothing of Shakraa should have remained. And how had she reincarnated as a skeleton?

Vex swished his tail, watching the bird with an unwavering intensity that only a cat could. “I’m going to keep an eye on you.”

“You keep your paws off my bird if you know what’s good for you,” Kiypu said, wagging a finger at Vex. Shakraa cawed in response, as if taunting Vex. “Now, before we go, there is something I must do. This place is bad mana, but it has given me some strength again. It is time it is sealed again from ignorant fools.”

Kiypu hobbled across the room to the tunnel’s exit, shooing people away as he did. Once more, he began his shuffling, stumbling dance, then spread his feet wide and heaved with an undignified old man groan. Aided by the previous earthquakes, massive stones broke loose from the tunnel and collapsed in on the chamber. Kiypu heft one in the air with his mana and floated it across the room to the well, where he dropped it with a resounding boom. The boulder split the stones below, sealing the opening.

Swaying side to side, the mummy performed a series of gestures with his hands. Swirling pictographs of light poured from his fingers and mouth, circling the boulder on the well and plastering themselves against the fallen rock of the tunnel exit. When the icons of mana settled and faded into the stone, Kellen felt a strange, slippery sensation when he tried to focus any mana toward the tunnel entrance or the well. He guessed that even someone experienced in Earth mana would have trouble unblocking the chamber or the well.

Kiypu dusted his hands off and gave a nod of satisfaction. “It feels good to work the earth again, but not good enough to stay in this place.” He tottered across the chamber, toward the hole Shani and Kellen observed the sacrifices from. Kellen glanced at the freed captives, and a wave of empathy overcame him. There were seven in all, plus the professor from Earth. Aside from the little girl still happily playing with her pink bunny, the other Oras natives seemed completely overwhelmed by the recent events. Professor Ruggs, on the other hand, stared with intense interest as the mummy went about his work, stretching out the stone below the hole, then forming it into rock. The masterful display of mana channeling awoke possibilities in Kellen’s mind he’d never considered before. He wondered how strong Kiypu had been before his death.

“He’s good, but he’s also getting some help,” Vex said. “You can feel the mana aura, right? There is big mana here. If we had the understanding he did, we could probably do things impossible to anyone below chieftain strength.”

“Really?” A desire to experiment seized Kellen, but Kiypu was already waving them toward the stairs impatiently.

“Come, come, Kiypu will show you the way, poor people,” the mummy said. “No time to linger here, new friends!”

Still distraught, the former captives made their way to the stairs.

“And no running once you get out of here,” Kiypu added. “I’m not as young as I used to be and can’t go hunting you down all the tunnels if you get lost! You will see the sunlight again, I swear it by the Wild Mother.”

As the others filed out, Kellen and Vex hung back. Shani remained seated on the stone steps, though a light had returned to her eyes, and she studied Inferi with less disgust and more interest. Kellen left her to her thoughts for a moment longer. He recalled how jarring his meeting with Vex had been. Part of that was the shock of waking up in another existence with a talking animal, but even for a native of Oras, Kellen imagined the sudden manifestation of a Mana Beast would be jarring. Especially since Shani had long ago given up the possibility that her grandmother’s beastcaller bloodline had been passed to her.

Aside from her sinister appearance and voice, Inferi seemed to not be a threat. Still, the Mana Beast’s first words chilled Kellen when he recalled them again.

All those years of self-doubt and loathing slowly shaped me…your vengeance and hatred gave me life at long last.

Through their bond, Vex sent an affirmative pulse. He was worried too. Kellen pushed the thoughts aside. He could only fathom the barest inkling of the mysteries between beastcaller and Mana Beast. Nokom would surely have guidance for her granddaughter.

Fighting a sense of unease as he approached Shani and Inferi, Kellen offered a hand to the Gray Dawn warrior. Shani didn’t take it right away, but she met his eyes and for the first time since Kellen had known her she looked… lost.

“A lot of things happened here,” Kellen said, waving his hand around the chamber. “For both of us. The way I see it, though, we’re both about to start a new life. It’s not everyday someone gets that chance.”

Shani nodded and grasped his hand. Kellen pulled her to her feet and together they left their pasts behind.