When they got to the Adventurer’s Guild, it was far more crowded than Sophie would’ve expected seeing as it was barely noon. People were already drinking and laughing, and it all centered around one particular table. Even Calli wasn’t waiting at the front desk like usual – instead, a thin, balding man greeted Acacia by name.

His eyes twinkled as he added, “Linden’s back.”

“Dad!” Acacia complained, and the man chuckled as Acacia dragged Sophie into the fray, towards the source of all of the excitement.

A tall, muscular man who rivaled Ryland for his good looks stood at the head of one of the long tables, where people were drinking and chatting. He had curly black hair and light brown skin and both Calli and Garrick, the bard, stood at his side. His eyes lit up when he saw Acacia, and he immediately took a step forward. “Acacia!”

In that moment, Sophie was pretty sure Acacia’s crush was mutual.

Acacia practically threw herself at him, who caught her with ease, and gave her a huge hug.

“You’re back early!”

“I suppose I am,” Linden conceded. “But it still felt like ages.”

Sophie met Calli’s eyes, and the clerk winked at her with a knowing grin. So Acacia and Linden’s thing – whatever it was – was something that was obvious to everyone around them. Sophie wondered why they didn’t just make it official, then. She was contemplating how the story might work out if this had been one of her romance novels when she remembered Elowen, standing beside her.

Elowen’s eyes were wide, glancing around at all of the people with interest, and occasionally someone’s elbow or foot went through her, but she seemed to pay no attention to any of that. The image hurt Sophie a bit – but it’s not like anyone would know to leave space for an unmanifested shrine spirit.

“Are you doing okay?” Sophie asked under her breath. Elowen looked over at her, and Sophie realized that she was smiling.

She nodded happily. “There’s so many people!” she exclaimed. “It’s like –”

Before Sophie could catch what Elowen was about to say, Acacia turned back towards them again, grabbing Sophie’s hand and pulling her towards their group.

“Meet our priestess!” she announced, quite loudly in fact. Several other people at the table glanced up at Sophie and a buzz of murmurs started working its way around the room. Sophie’s face heated at all of the attention.

“A priestess! In Caulis?” Linden stuck out his hand for Sophie, and she accepted it, shaking it.

“She showed up right around the time you left on your quest,” Acacia explained to him. “She’s still learning the ropes, but we’re going to have a class festival soon!”

“Sophie here’s been dying to talk to you,“ Calli interrupted. “In fact –”

Sophie shook her head. “It can wait –” she insisted, but Linden was looking at her thoughtfully.

“A priestess, huh?” he repeated. “Well, then. I have something you should take a look at. Do you wanna see what I brought back?”

Before Sophie could answer for herself, Acacia was already saying yes, and Linden laughed. “Come on,” he said, gesturing for them to follow.

They left Garrick in with the crowd, and Calli grabbed a huge set of keys off of the information desk next to her father. “We’re going to show off what Linden found,“ Calli said.

Her father looked skeptical, but eventually nodded. “Just be careful…” he warned.

Sophie frowned at the words, but Calli waved him off with a smile. “We will!”

Calli led them through a set of employee doors and down a long hallway lined with other doors. Elowen took this as some sort of invitation to go exploring and occasionally poked her head and sometimes her entire body through one of the walls before popping back out again. Sophie partially wanted to tell her to knock it off, but it also seemed kind of pointless to try to hold an ageless, unmanifested shrine spirit to human ethical standards.

“Where are we going?” Elowen asked after one of her adventures into a neighboring room.

Acacia was busy chatting with Linden up ahead, so Sophie hung back a bit to wait for Elowen to catch up, shaking her head. “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “Do you want to go back? We can always talk to Linden another time.”

Elowen shook her head. “No! This is interesting.”

Sophie snorted. Perhaps for Elowen it was. She definitely looked more excited than Sophie had seen her in a while. Even, perhaps, more excited than she had on their way to Caulis. Sophie supposed it was the most human interaction Elowen had seen in nearly a century – other than her own arrival, of course – so she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Well just let me know if you get tired or want to head back.”

She patted her pocket where the garden stone rested safely, and Elowen gave her a brilliant smile in return. “Okay!” she said cheerily and popped into the neighboring room.

Sophie rolled her eyes and continued following the rest of their little party, feeling a little like a third, or perhaps, fourth wheel in this situation. What could Linden possibly have to show her?

After turning a corner, though, Calli finally stopped in front of two huge wooden doors. She flipped through the ring of keys in her hand until she found the right one, and then pushed the heavy-looking doors open. She quickly disappeared inside, Acacia and Linden following behind her.

Sophie paused, however. Partially waiting for Elowen to return and partially because as soon as the doors had opened, Sophie felt…

Something.

She took a few cautious steps forward towards the open doors, even though Elowen was still exploring a nearby room. When Sophie got to the doorway, she hesitated there, feeling a strange reluctance to go inside.

The room was much larger than she had expected. In fact, it reminded her a lot of when she went to the Crafter’s Guild to look at a chill box a while back. Tall stacks of shelves and drawers, all with shiny brass labels, lined the edge of the room, and long, wooden tables displayed a variety of strange objects in the center. The room was nearly entirely windowless except a row of thin notches along the top of the back wall – almost like something Sophie would expect to see in a basement, but it was lit by the glow of mana lamps – similar to the ones Sophie had seen at the library.

Linden was striding forward towards one of the huge tables, while Calli stood to the side, whispering something to Acacia that made the other woman’s face turn bright red. Obviously teasing her, Sophie decided.

Everything appeared quite ordinary, in fact, and Sophie wondered what it was about this room that set her hackles rising. Elowen came up alongside her then and suddenly froze, staring straight ahead at one of the many tables in the large room.

“What is it?” Sophie half-whispered, something creeping along her spine as well. There was definitely something in this room that felt wrong. Or maybe a whole lot of somethings.

“Sophie it’s –” Elowen began, but before Sophie could hear what she had to say, Linden grabbed something off of the large wooden table that Elowen had been staring at, holding it up to display proudly.

It was a huge silver axe with an elaborately carved handle – something that Sophie had only seen in movies.

“Seriously Linden, be careful!” Acacia warned.

“It’s fine, Caci,” Calli scolded her sister. “The room’s warded anyway.”

Acacia looked skeptical at the statement, but Sophie could barely take her eyes off of the strange weapon.

There was something very wrong with it, she realized suddenly. It – and perhaps other things like it in this room – was the source of that bizarre bad feeling she had. Even so, she found herself taking a step forward in curiosity, even as she was also repelled from it. Before she could take one more step, however, Elowen made a sound like a gasp, and the garden stone in Sophie’s pocket grew very warm suddenly.

She turned to Elowen to see what was wrong, but then it hit her –

That sick pulling sensation of Elowen’s bond wrapping around her so tightly she could barely breathe with it.

Sophie staggered at the intensity of the rapid mana loss, almost unable to get words out as she tried to fight against Elowen’s bond, but luckily she didn’t have to say a thing –

“Elowen?” Acacia asked, and weirdly enough she was staring right at Elowen, who was pressed all the way back against the far corner of the room, tears streaming down her face looking positively terrified.

“It’s corrupted!” Elowen gasped out, almost as if she were choking. Sophie had enough sense to find her reaction strange, considering Linden was handling the thing with no trouble.

“Woah! Who’s that?” Calli asked, suddenly wary.

Linden dropped the axe back down on the table, taking a defensive stance.

“It’s fine! She’s just the shrine spirit, but –” Acacia began.

“Help,” Sophie managed to interrupt her, and all of the eyes in the room turned towards her instead. She felt her knees grow weak, and she willed herself not to fall to the ground. “She’s – she’s draining me.”

Calli’s eyes widened. “Well, that doesn’t sound good.”

Acacia rushed over, pale and worried, wrapping her arm around Sophie’s waist to support her. “Draining you? Your mana? Why?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t know. Elowen – you’ve got to get a hold of yourself.”

Elowen was outright sobbing now though and seemed insensible to Sophie’s words.

“Here –” Linden hurried over to a large leather bag nearby, digging through it.

“Sophie, what’s going on?” Acacia asked again, but Sophie couldn’t even get words out to explain it. She had a grip on the bond, holding it as tightly as she could, trying to limit it somehow as Elowen blinked in and out of focus. As much as she really didn’t want to experience mana exhaustion again, she was much more afraid of what would happen to Elowen if Sophie passed out.

Suddenly, Linden was standing in front of her, holding out a piece of familiar-looking bread. Mana bread.

“Thank you,” Sophie gasped, accepting the bread and taking a huge bite, mana already rushing back to her as she chewed it, although it was nearly drained again as soon as it arrived. “I think we need to get out of this room. She might calm down.”

Calli was already opening the doors again. “We’ll take you upstairs,” she said. “We have rooms up there.”

“I’ve got you,” Acacia reassured her, arm still firm around Sophie’s waist. “You can explain things later. Just keep taking small bites if you need them and try to stay conscious.”

“Won’t it make me sick?”

“You’ll be much more sick if you pass out,” Calli quipped.

Sophie felt that was solid logic, given the circumstance, and took another small bite of the mana bread.

“What do we do about the spirit?” Linden asked.

Right. Elowen.

Elowen still had her face buried in her hands, pressed up against the wall. She was solid, or so it seemed to Sophie, and Sophie wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pass through walls this way if they tried to leave.

“Let me get her,” Sophie said, and she staggered over to Elowen with Acacia’s help. She reached up, grabbing Elowen’s hand, holding it in her own for the very first time. It felt oddly warm and pleasant, and her mana seemed to respond to Sophie’s own with interest.

“Come on,” Sophie said, tugging at her. “Let’s get you out of here.”