Maiz hadn’t been quite sure what to do with himself after the Jin’Teslin literally disappeared before his eyes. That had really been something—Maiz was convinced that there must be a higher-level Warrior Monk skill that the Jin used to move so quickly. Then again, given what he knew about how skills progressed between realms, perhaps it was just a feature of one of the abilities he already knew about.

Now that the immediate emergency of finding help for his friends was resolved—hopefully—he found himself thinking more about what it meant that his friends were about to come to the Temple. His friends. The ones that, for weeks, he’d barely spared a thought for. He hadn’t even considered going to find them after he’d gotten to the Temple, despite having last seen Ziya in a bloody heap on the ground and Hugan and Lila swept away in the middle of a warzone.

They were fine. I knew they were fine. That was what he had told himself, but he somehow thought that other people, normal people, would have been more worried about their only friends’ fates after an experience like the battle at the training grounds. He wondered what it said about him that, instead of telling the Jin that he knew where Lila was, and asking for their help in finding her and the others, he’d kept the fact completely hidden, just taking advantage of the power that the Path had offered. He’d made excuses, learning divination spells and telling himself that he would use them to find his friends in the future, but he hadn’t done anything.

Except for violating their minds a minute after seeing them again. In that moment, he hadn’t seen another way out of it, but why had the security of his own power been his first thought? Gods, he’d used the moment when his friends were in shock at seeing him to make his spell succeed. He was a godsdammned monster. You swore yourself to the God of abyss-touched Lies, you idiot. He hadn’t considered much what that meant for him as a person, but even if he had, would he have changed his decision?

No.

Maiz sighed. It was in the past, now. He would be better in the future. If he could.

After a few minutes of sitting, he eventually decided that he should go back and find the entrance to the Temple. He stepped through the Library, into another room lined with inert portal arches. He walked to the end, and tapped the inscription carved into the wall, closing his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, he was standing at the base of a huge slope that led up into darkness. Maiz wasn’t sure exactly how this room fit into the Temple, but he didn’t much care. It could have been in a cave a thousand miles south of the Waste, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He took a step up the hill and heard a light rumbling noise. A moment later, a stone shot down the slope, much faster than the incline accounted for, aimed straight for him. Normally he hopped to the side to avoid the obstacle, proceeding to dance up the incline until he reached the top. This time he didn’t move, and though he instinctively took up a Shield Stance to weather the blow, the moment the stone touched his skin he was transported away without a hint of pain.

It took him quite a while to find what he was looking for. He would have expected more of the Warrior Monks to be awake, considering that they could use Enlightenment just as well as he could. But most of them only appeared to skip meals during the daytime, training constantly and then sleeping as normal until the next day. Maiz was careful to keep his use of the skill to relative minimum—after all, it would seem suspicious if he worked day and night without rest for weeks then slept for another week when he disengaged the skill—but he still thought the Monks were being conservative.

Eventually, he just went to the little abyss-spawn outside of the Jin’Sa’s quarters and asked for directions. The boy grudgingly gave them, and after a bit of exploration he found what he was looking for. The entrance to the Temple was a huge, open room with a vaulted ceiling. There was a truly colossal pair of doors, stone decorated with intricate golden filigree. After a moment the image resolved itself into a massive flourished ‘N.’ The symbol of Nomenadon.

The sight brought a slight smile to Maiz’s face, and he sat down comfortably on the stone floor opposite the doors. How long would it take for the Jin’Teslin to come back with Hugan, Lila, and Ziya? After a moment, Maiz decided that he should disengage Enlightenment. It had only been active for a few hours now, since his evening meal, and he wanted to be inconspicuously awake when the four did return. Letting go of the skill was more of a relaxation than anything. His stamina had tightening throughout his body almost imperceptibly, and he simply stopped the power from constricting, letting it flow back and even out in his body. Then he collapsed, asleep opposite the extravagant lie of the twin doors.

An intensely sharp pain woke him. He opened exhausted eyes, rolling onto his back in confusion and gasping at the stabbing agony that flared in his side. His mana began flowing through his body, healing whatever had been broken, and he looked up into the hard face of the Jin’Teslin. From this angle, she didn’t seem nearly as kind as she had when he first met her. The smile lines carved deep shadows in her face, and her eyes seemed as cold and hard as steel. Faintly, as the magic repaired his injury, Maiz realized something—this woman’s eyes, more than those of anyone else he had seen in the Temple, were the exact shape and color of Lila’s.

Oh. Hells. A moment later, he noticed that she was also holding all three of his friends in her arms like so much firewood. Hugan and Lila were squirming slightly, trying to look down at Maiz. Ziya was on the top of the pile, and she wasn’t moving.

The Master looked down at him for a long moment. Her eyes flicked to the bracelet on his wrist, and even as he saw understanding flicker in her gaze, he cursed himself. He scrambled to his feet, ribs still aching but healed enough that he would be fine. He unclasped the bracelet, surveying his three friends. The Jin’Teslin said nothing as he clasped it on Ziya’s wrist. It could only do so much, but it would certainly be better than nothing, and she seemed to need the healing the most of the three.

“Maiz,” Hugan croaked. “Are we—”

“—you’re all safe now,” Maiz interrupted, gently as he could. Hugan nodded, and went limp in the Master’s arms.

Maiz almost shouted, but a look at the Jin’Teslin’s face stopped him.

“Get out of the way.”

She sounded… out of breath? Suddenly Maiz wondered just how long he’d been asleep for. He felt like it had been less than an hour, but that couldn’t have been right. And how many miles must the woman have carried his three friends through the desert? Hells.

He scrambled to obey her command, though as she swept past him and through the doorway leading deeper into the Temple, he followed, jogging to keep up with her walking pace. In only a few turns, they were in a simple room much like Maiz’s own, with a single pallet laid out on the floor. Here the Master finally lowered the three to the ground, arranging Ziya and Hugan to share the space on the pallet as much as possible. She gave Lila a look that made Maiz shiver, though he barely saw it.

“I must go and get the Clerics. Stay awake.” She turned the full force of her gaze on Maiz. Instinctively, he nodded, and she inclined her head in return. The woman took in a deep breath, and Maiz felt her power draw in. There was another crack, and she vanished.

“Hells,” Lila and Maiz breathed out at the same time. She turned to look at him, and Maiz’s hair stood on end involuntarily at the similarity between her eyes and the Jin’Teslin.

“So, uh—”

“—mother.”

Maiz nodded, stomach sinking a little. “And—”

“—ran away while she was working.”

“Right. But—”

“—big, big, trouble.”

Maiz sighed. He was not big on physical contact, but he laid a comforting hand on Lila’s shoulder.

She gave him a faint nod. “I… I’m not as worried as I was when I left. And with everything that happened, it seems less important.” She looked down at their friends, limp on the pallet. “I just hope they’ll be all right.”

Maiz gave a nod of his own. He used Mana Sense, looking down at the two. Ziya’s white mana mostly remained in her pool, but an intricate series of loops snaked throughout her entire body. The bracelet at work. Even after his long hours in the Library, Maiz hadn’t seen anything nearly as complicated as that magic. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a pattern as complex as that of the normal Heal spell that Clerics used. How was that possible?

The question fell away as he turned his gaze on Hugan. The young Warden was deeply asleep and clearly breathing, but in Maiz’s magical sight he saw… nothing. Lifting his hand from Lila’s shoulder, he knelt beside Hugan, holding his own hand by the other boy’s open mouth. Warm air confirmed what Maiz already knew—Hugan was alive. But he barely glowed in Maiz’s vision at all. There was no distributed shine of his stamina, and certainly no concentrated glow of a mana pool. Maiz had never seen anything like it. Even the monsters he fought either had magic of their own or stamina throughout their body. What in the Abyss?

Maiz was about to reach down to Ziya’s wrist and transfer the healing bracelet over to Hugan. He wasn’t even sure if it would work for a non-mage, but there was no question that Hugan needed it more than Ziya did at that moment. However, before he could a strong breeze wafted over him, and several soft grunts.

Jerking his head up, Maiz saw that the Jin’Teslin had already returned with the Clerics. Four of them, in fact. Two were slung over her shoulders, and two were stacked on top of one another in her arms. Maiz suddenly realized that, even if Warrior Monks weren’t focused in Strength, she was probably being gentle with him when she broke his ribs.

Despite the awe-inspiring display of power it represented, the sight of the middle-aged woman carrying four green-robed men and women, one of whom had a belly that nearly obscured the Jin’s face, was still somewhat comical. The Master dropped them, heaving a huge breath. All of this had actually taken some effort from her, it seemed. The four priests stood stiffly, the pot-bellied man groaning quietly. When they looked at the two young people lying on the pallet, they focused quickly, however.

“Hmm, has someone cast Regenerate on her?” A sharp looking woman asked. Maiz mumbled something the bracelet, unclasping it and stepping back. He was immediately shoved to the side. The woman went to Ziya, and as Maiz once again activated Mana Sense, he saw that she was already casting an impossibly intricate spell on her. The power of these Clerics was a bit surprising. They must all be Adepts, from the way their mana pools shone. The Jin’Teslin, though she was not a mage, still outshone everyone else in the room by a large margin, and Maiz dismissed Mana Sense out of discomfort at seeing her power from so close.

The other three had all gathered around Hugan, muttering to each other.

“There’s hardly any physical damage at all.”

“Yes, yes, but his entire body is barely functioning. It almost seems like Yotinbe venom.”

“No venom, though. It must be his stamina. Torath, you are higher ranked in Rejuvenate than me.”

“Very well, but you should use Second Wind as well, and perhaps a Fortify Constitution?”

“Fortify Strength and Dexterity, if anything.”

After only a few minutes, the Clerics all looked up at the Jin’Teslin. The large man, who seemed to be the most senior of the bunch, spoke. “They should be well now with rest, Jin’Teslin, though they will both need to be fed and watered soon. Our students should be here in moments.”

The Master actually bowed to them, hair almost touching the ground as she did so. “Thank you. If I may trouble you further, it appears that my fool of a daughter has kept Enlightenment engaged for far too long.”

The four turned to Lila. She opened her mouth to speak, but a look from her mother made her shut it immediately.

“When our students come with the food and water, she can drink, and we will fortify her against her collapse. It will likely still take a week for a full recovery, but she should be in no danger.” The green-robed Cleric seemed a little timid as he answered, eyes darting between Lila and her mother, shoulders sightly hunched. Maiz knew how he felt.

The Jin’Teslin nodded, still glaring at Lila. “Thank you, Hamid. But she will be recovering from this for much, much longer than a week.”