Damien and Sylph stepped out of their makeshift shelter a minute after Quinlan left and headed straight for the center of the city. They did little to mask the sound of their footfalls as they echoed through the vacant halls of the once great city.

Several times, Damien paused to marvel at the buildings. Amongst the rubble scattered everywhere were the faintest traces of what the city had once been. Half of a tower leaned against the side of another building, the rest of it already crumbled away. Across the road, the stone sign for a long destroyed building stood tall.

The city slanted downward, granting them vision of the great walls in the distance. Massive sections of them were missing or so badly damaged that they might not have been there. The remains of a watchtower sat at the edge of the wall in front of them, the roof missing and a huge portion ripped out of its walls. Just beyond it, a purplish-gray wall of energy shimmered at the horizon. It curved up, forming a dome above the city above them.

“I wonder what happened to this place,” Damien said. “It looks like there was some sort of war, but that wouldn’t explain why it got sealed off.”

“Failed defensive measures with some ancient magic?” Sylph guessed. “Or perhaps it was a monster attack. The barrier might not be to keep things out – it could have been put up afterward to keep something else in.”

“I thought you just said we could handle anything here,” Damien accused. “Something strong enough to warrant a barrier like this seems like it might be just a little bit beyond our skillset.”

“Anything of any real power is long gone.” Sylph stepped under a broken bridge, slipping effortlessly over several boulders that blocked her path. Damien clambered up them with considerably less grace, then teleported to the ground beside her to avoid having to climb back down. “And Derrod is here.”

“I trust him as far as I can throw him.”

“Have you been doing more upper body workouts recently?”

“Not really. I just do the bare minimum,” Damien admitted. “I’ve been more focused on magic.”

“Then you really don’t trust him very much at all,” Sylph said, grinning. Damien rolled his eyes.

“Are we just hoping that we’ll run into someone near the center of the city?”

“Pretty much,” Sylph replied. “I could try to stalk someone down, but I don’t think that’s your expertise. I figure it’ll be easier if we wander around like idiots until someone tries to jump us. They’ll all be focusing the artifacts first, so by the time we run into anyone, they should have something interesting.”

“I feel a little bad about this,” Damien said as they cut through a decrepit tavern. “Isn’t this like… bad guy behavior? Stealing and stuff?”

“They’d all do the exact same thing,” Sylph said. She reached out and grabbed Damien’s hand, causing his eyebrows to rise. Their eyes met and she flicked her gaze to an alley at their left that they were coming up on. “If you’re uncomfortable with it, we don’t have to. We could just go look for something normally. We might not have a special way to find anything, but we could get lucky.”

“No, it’s fine. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be Reva. She seemed pretty rude to me,” Damien said. He didn’t break pace as he cast out his net of mental energy, drawing both Dark and Space Ether into his core.

Henry’s eyes narrowed and he held his hat slightly tighter.

“What do you want to do once we finish up with Forsad?” Damien asked casually, pulling more Ether just below his left knee. He doubted anyone would expect an attack from there.

“I’ve heard that some people like to take their girlfriends shopping,” Sylph replied.

“We did get that kitchen.”

“That doesn’t count,” Sylph replied. “It was different.”

The alleyway was now almost directly to their left. A building had fallen sideways, blocking off the majority of the entrance and casting it into shadows. Damien wanted to squint at it to try and see into the darkness, but he didn’t need Sylph to tell him how stupid that would be.

They passed the alley, much to Damien’s discomfort. He shot a glance at Sylph, but she shook her head slightly and squeezed his hand. Damien’s senses stretched to their limit as he tried to figure out who was watching them, but all he had to go off was Sylph’s warning.

He felt Henry poised to slip into his mage armor at the first sign of a fight. Another few steps went by.

“I guess we can go–”

His armor turned jet black and Henry shot two tendrils out, blocking a pillar dark spike before it could strike him. Sylph spun, throwing two of her green-tinged daggers before she had even finished the motion.

The blades spun once before striking a hooded form that had just barely poked out of the alley, forcing them to stagger back with a surprised gasp. Damien’s attack came just a moment later, but it was so dark that it was almost impossible to see.

A thin purple blade shot from his knee, cutting his pants. He didn’t see it strike the figure, but a spurt of blood shot from their side a moment later. They staggered, spinning and dashing back into the alley.

Damien gathered his magic to teleport, then stopped. He shot a glance at Sylph, who shook her head. “Good call. I don’t know what’s in that alley, nor do I know if that was a student. They didn’t look that familiar, and it could have been a trap.”

“Ugh, my heart is still racing,” Damien said, shaking his head. “Good catch, Henry. And nice spot, Sylph. I had no idea that person was even there. It’s too bad I missed. I’m not used to aiming much because of my gravity spheres. They kind of just hit everything in the area.”

“Not the best ambush I’ve ever seen,” Sylph said, taking a wide loop back to peer at the alley. “Even if that spike had hit you, I don’t think it would have been fatal. I suppose it depends on the magic, though.”

Henry disengaged from Damien’s mage armor. “It was just basic dark magic. Very unlikely to kill unless it hit a vital spot, which was possible.”

“Probably a student, then,” Damien said. “Maybe they thought we’d already managed to get an artifact?”

“If that’s the case, it was a pretty stupid student,” Sylph said, pursing her lips. “We’ve only been here for a little while and aren’t injured in the slightest. If we’d already found some powerful artifact, we wouldn’t be completely uninjured. And, if we were, I’d be pretty concerned about attacking us.”

“Nobody said brains were a requirement to coming here,” Damien pointed out.

“Thank the Planes for that,” Henry said. “We would have still been at home if it was.”

“Oh, shut it. You almost gave us away when you hugged that dumb hat,” Damien said, crossing his arms.

“Notice how you automatically assumed I was talking about you,” Henry said, pointing a tentacle at him. “Telling. I could have been talking about Sylph.”

They both glared at him. Henry snorted, an impressive feat without a nose, and set his hat back on his head. “If only you had half my wit. I prefer armed opponents.”

Damien rolled his eyes and they started back toward the center of the city.

“I’m holding you to that, by the way,” Sylph said a few minutes later.

“To what?” Damien asked, cocking his head.

“You agreed to take me shopping,” she said with a smirk.

“Oh. I didn’t think that would be something typically up your alley, but sure. We have to use the gold that Whisp is giving us for something. What do you want to get? Clothes? Or weapons?”

Sylph cocked an eyebrow. “Honestly, this wasn’t how I thought this was supposed to go. I read that most guys don’t enjoy shopping and are supposed to complain about it.”

“What? Why would I do that?” Damien asked. “Shopping is cool. I mean, I don’t really care about clothes that much since I’m usually wearing my mage armor, but if it makes you happy, I don’t really see a reason not to like it. It’s not like it’ll be boring. What have you been reading?”

Sylph reddened and Henry glanced away. Damien narrowed his eyes. “Henry, what drivel did you give to Sylph?”

“She just happened to stumble upon some of my library acquisitions,” Henry said, not looking at him.

“Which ones?” Damien pressed, unsure if he should laugh or groan. “Because all I’ve ever seen you get in regard to human relationships has been horrible smut.”

“It was that one,” Sylph confirmed, her cheeks still red. “One of them, at least. Henry told me it was good research into relationships.”

“He lied.”

“Yeah, I’ve gathered,” Sylph admitted. “I’ll be tossing everything I learned from that out, I think.”

“It’s perfectly good knowledge!” Henry complained. “I’ll not stand for this slander. Show some respect.”

Damien opened his mouth to retort when he felt a slight tingle toward the back of his right shoulder. His body reacted before he could even process was happening. A Tear shot from his palm, slicing through the air and passing through the wall of a nearby house.

The wall rippled, shadows fading away to reveal a hooded form clutching their neck. They pitched forward, tumbling off the building, exploding into dozens of dark streamers that shot down an alley as soon as they hit the ground.

“Planes, what was that?” Sylph asked, her eyes wide. “How did you notice them?”

“I – I’m not sure,” Damien said, staring at his hand as if it belonged to someone else. “I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was already done.”

“That was actually somewhat impressive,” Henry said. “For you, at least. I could have done that in my sleep.”

“Thanks,” Damien said. “I’m not so sure I got them, though. I didn’t recognize that magic they did when they hit the ground.”

“Body transformation,” Henry said. “High level application of dark and shadow magic. Looks pretty similar to the stuff that the girl was doing back at Blackmist. What was her name again? Rump?”

“Reva.” Sylph scrunched her nose. “But that’s quite the jump in spell complexity, isn’t it? She wasn’t doing anything nearly that dangerous when we fought back in Blackmist, and I’m certain we wounded that other hooded figure. This one looked identical to the first, but it didn’t look like they were injured when they fell.”

“Could you really tell? We only saw them for a few seconds,” Damien pointed out.

“Yes,” Sylph replied. “They didn’t favor either side and were standing too tall when you first revealed them. That person wasn’t injured – not badly, at least.”

“Well, it’s not like we didn’t hold back ourselves,” Damien pointed out. They started back along the road, setting out toward the center of the city once more. “Maybe she was doing the same?”

“I guess its possible, but isn’t something like that considered near mastery of the element?”

Henry snorted. “Mastery. Mortals are so amusing. Not a single mortal has ever gotten near truly mastering a spell, much less an entire school of magic. Even my own kind have yet to truly master the magic that you yourselves have created. But, for the span of your short little lives, getting to the stage where you can turn your entire body into magical energy for even a few seconds is very impressive.”

“Could it be Second?” Damien asked, lowering his voice. “The last time we saw really powerful magic in the hands of people it shouldn’t have been in, it was him empowering Drew and Bartholomew.”

“That was still time magic, which Second has shown he has mastery over,” Henry said, bobbing from side to side as if he were shaking his head. “He’s shown no signs of knowing dark and shadow magic. That makes me hesitant to suspect him, although it could certainly be some other Corrupted trick. I’m not going to be able to help you figure that out without fighting them more. My senses are as useless as ever.”

Damien chewed his lip and raised his hand to look at the rune circle on his palm. At the same time, the shadowy designs covering the rune circles on his chest tightened and twisted, sensing his unease. “I could ask Herald.”

“Do you really want to deal with it?” Sylph asked, worry creasing her brow. “Every time you do, you get hurt or it makes you do something ridiculously dangerous.”

“Isn’t that what we’re usually doing?”

“The moment Herald is involved, things seem to get about a dozen times worse. Having it on our side feels like working together with a ball of condensed magic that is just seconds from exploding and taking us all with it to the afterlife.”

“You forgot to mention how incredibly boring he was,” Henry said. “Not to mention stiff. I can’t believe I was ever part of that fool. All the magic it could have learned if it co-operated with us – I bet that keeps Herald up at night.”

“Does Herald even sleep?” Sylph asked. “Do you?”

“No, and no,” Henry replied. “But that isn’t the point, is it? Look, we’re almost there.”

The three slowed to a stop at the edge of a large clearing. It was mostly free of rubble, and the dry water fountain in the center was in surprisingly good shape. Three statues of angels stood around it, their arms raised in rapture to the sky. The last one had fallen and laid on the ground at their feet.

Intricate runes and artwork covered the four basins that made up the fountain. They had been arranged in such a manner that water would trickle down from the top bowl to the bottom, and Damien suspected the runes would have likely delivered the water from the lowest bowl back up to the peak so it could start all over again.

“I wish we could have seen this place before it got ruined,” Damien said sadly. “This fountain must have been really popular.”

“We can still enjoy it now,” Sylph said. “No point lamenting over what’s already passed. It’s a pretty rock, even if it isn’t a fountain anymore. And, better for us, it looks like a great place to sit while we wait for someone to come hunting for us again.”

They both approached the fountain and sat down at its edge, relaxed but ready for whoever was unlucky enough to come seeking them first.