"Poro, I need your help."

Poro Aetherwilde, Councilor of the Outer North, had been one of the two people who voted for moving forward with the evacuation, and the only one Rubines could turn to. The other, Councilor of Sea, would have neither the means nor connections necessary to assist in his increasingly desperate gamble.

"How can I help you, Rubines?" A wiry forest elf, Poro always looked half like he belonged in a hunt rather than a town. His outfit today maintained his dignity as a councilor while also nonconventional enough to show off his heritage. More ostentatiously than usual, Rubines thought, almost as though the textured brown jacket and slitted trousers were making up for the fact that his people were refugees and his land destroyed. A last cry of loyalty to a heritage whose very survival was no longer a certainty.

"I want to move forward with the evacuation."

Poro's silver eyebrows rose, arching in consternation. "You want me to defy the edicts of the council?"

"I know when and where a safe passage will be open, but if we don't take advantage of it we're going to end up dead. You know as well as I do that the dungeons won't be stopped by any effort we put forth. Our best chance is to retreat and hide until they destroy themselves."

"That's assuming they can't reach the Undercaverns on their own. I would not put my faith in such an eventuality."

Rubines' heart sank. "You don't know that, though?"

"They came from the direction of our passage. Whether they came through it or simply happened to approach from that exact angle, I can't say. No one survived to tell from where they originated."

Despair assailed Rubines like a physical wave. He put a hand on the nearest wall to support himself. He'd been through too much lately, and yet the pressure continued to build relentlessly. "So we may be leading them to a doom as certain as if they remain," he murmured.

"No other passage remains open. All have been sealed now, save this new one you've uncovered. If you heed my warning, you'll seal it before it has a chance to reopen. It may be destruction which it heralds, rather than salvation."

"I will not accept this. I will go through myself and see that the way is clear. If there is no safe haven, then we will return."

"We?"

Rubines bowed his head. "You must bring as many of your people as you can. I beg you. Anyone who is willing. I swear to you, I will personally stand between your people and any threat before I allow them to be lost. I will seal the passage with my own blood if need arises. But if there is any way to save any of our people from this disaster, I will find it."

Poro nodded slowly. "I believe you. I had hoped you would prove as good as your word, and now I acknowledge your passion. But while I am willing to support a Council effort to evacuate safely, I am not confident in the ability of my people to fight should it come to that. They are weary, many weak and hungry, few with any experience fighting anything but wild beasts. The dungeons' spawn are aggressive, cunning, and relentless in a way no other creature is. If my fears prove correct, and the Undercaverns have been overtaken as well, there will be no one to stand between us and death. Not to cast doubt on your own skills, but merely that no one elf can withstand the hordes for more than moments."

"I don't suppose anyone can."

Delarin Shadowcalled could withstand anything. But as Rubines imagined asking him to stand between refugees and death, he could not even envision a future in which Delarin agreed to do so.

"What would it take to convince you?"

Poro shook his head. "I would follow you, but I have to think of my people. Right now, the choice seems between uncertainty and uncertainty. If you can prove there is refuge and not death, I will go against the council's wishes and aid you in this. But it must be proven, not words and wishes."

"Then I will find a way," Rubines promised.

"I pray that you do. Else I fear there is no future in which we survive."

"Do what you can to ready your people. I will find proof. I swear it. The passage will be secured."

"If you can do that, you'll have my undying gratitude. I will prepare what I can. For anything more than that, we will wait upon your return."

For the second time in less than a week, Rubines Highfait slammed his palm against the door of the most feared elf in the world.

"Delarin, open the door!"

Delarin Shadowcalled opened the door. He sat hunched over his worktable, one hand half raised from the casting he'd used to unlock the entry, the other holding two delicate needles threaded with silver. He did not look up as Rubines stepped inside.

"What is it?" Delarin grumbled. "Did you bring my dragonscales?"

"Not yet. I have someone looking." Rubines still needed to find a way to pay Othrelos; his personal savings of just over ten thousand buen would cover less than half the cost of what Delarin needed, without considering the current economy. But that was another problem for another time. "Can you open a window?"

"No."

"Have you looked at the Undercaverns at all in the past month?"

"No."

"Can you guarantee they aren't another dungeon-infested trap?"

Delarin carefully set the needles aside, turning to look Rubines over. His eyes, unsettlingly nebulous, the dark purple irises too large, bored into Rubines' own. It was a struggle not to look away. "I wonder, have you finally abandoned your idealistic ideas about honor and truth?"

Rubines bristled at the implication. "Of course not."

"Yet you again come to me, and not your precious council, though to open a window to the Undercaverns is a trivial matter for any archaen worth the title. Have you, perhaps, finally realized what a useless blight they are? How incapable of doing anything but meddling in the lives of those best left to themselves?"

"Delarin, please. Now is not the time. Every day, every minute, the dungeons are coming closer. We have already lost so much. Three cities are all that remain between us and the hordes. Another month and it'll be too late."

"If you get me my dragonscales I can have a passage open in five days."

"Yes, I know, I know, I'm working on it." Rubines struggled to keep his temper in check. "But there's no use opening a passage if no one is there to pass through it."

Delarin cackled. "Ah, truly? After you abandoned all dignity and self-respect, prostrating yourself to The Shadowcalled on their behalf, they turn you away? That is beautiful."

Rubines' anger flared up. "Beautiful? You mock me! How do you expect us to work together like this?"

Delarin's laughter faded. "We are not working together, Rubines. You are working for me. I offered you the chance to work together." His voice turned cold. "Five times, I offered, and you turned away more vehemently every time. No, this is no partnership. If you wish to again be counted as a friend, you must do more than give a grudging oath on behalf of those who deserve neither of our time."

"So that's how it is." Rubines felt an odd sense of loss, a deep disappointment that their renewed partnership could mean so little to his once-friend.

"You cannot expect that after turning your back on me for so long I would welcome you back with open arms, as though none of the decades between had occurred, did you? I will accept your service for the same reason I always sought your partnership - your potential is wasted on the Council. They would stifle your passion and your gifts and leave you empty. I will fan your soul into a flame that could burn the world, but I will not be betrayed again."

"I suppose I cannot ask for more than that. I had hoped some affection remained between us. I... I have always admired you, even when I thought your path one of madness." In truth, he still considered Delarin to be mad. But mad in the way a genius ought to be, mad with higher purpose and deeper understanding than one such as himself could comprehend.

"You pitied me as you would a rabid dog." Delarin's lip twisted in a mocking smile. "You could retain affection for me, as I had done nothing to harm you. But I? I lived with the knowledge that my best friend was willing to choose the idiots on the Council over me. That he would rather turn his back on me than give up any scrap of power. That he would gladly spread lies rather than believe in me. No, Rubines, you gave up any claim to friendship the moment you sold my future to purchase your own."

"It wasn't like that," Rubines protested. He'd agreed to avoid contact with Delarin, sworn to uphold the sanctity of the ban on interactions with The Shadowcalled, and to avoid trespass in Shadowdell, yes. But... "I never betrayed you."

"Your silence makes you complicit. You never once spoke up for me, you left me to be cast out without so much as a single word of warning. You knew I would wait for you, and you let them exploit that knowledge to trap me here. Even if you did not give them the information yourself, you were the sole reason it succeeded. If you could have spared a single hour from your self-congratulation to send me a message, you could have retained some measure of my respect."

"I did not realize they would move so quickly. I had a great many things on my mind. I was young and overwhelmed. You cannot--"

"Do not tell me what I can and cannot do." Delarin raised a hand, and Rubines felt his oath constrict around him, vision blurring as pressure assaulted him from every side. "Do not forget, you came to me. I did not seek you out. I still can use you, but I do not need you. I know your weaknesses. In time, I will burn them out of you. In time, you may be worthy to stand at my side as I had always intended. But not now. Now, you have one task, and that is to assemble the ingredients I require before it is too late."

"Please," Rubines gasped out. He'd fallen to his knees at some point, the pressure too much and his balance unsteady as his vision wavered and spun. "I have to know. I swear, this isn't some plot, I just need to know. Is it safe?"

"Still you give everything to them. What have they done to earn your loyalty? What have they ever done to deserve your sacrifice?"

"It's not about that. It doesn't matter what they've done. No one deserves to die like that. I only want to save them."

Delarin sighed, but he lowered his hand and the oath pressure dissipated, allowing Rubines to shakily get to his feet again and brush himself off before the answer came. "I'll need four ruby buttons," Delarin warned. "Pure."

"I will find them."

"Then come. I will show you that our people's new home is secure."

Rubines followed Delarin down into the depths of the workshop. The walls were hewn stone, unsmoothed and uneven, except for the sections where they'd been polished smooth and flat and inlaid with silver tracings of castings. Rubines recognized almost none of the symbols involved and couldn't begin to grasp their meaning.

The passage split several times, but Delarin led them unerringly to a single door set in granite. Within lay a silver-wrought casting embedded into the floor, an advanced design of which Rubines recognized only the base form: a viewing window. Four points surrounded its tracings like a diamond, and into each of these Delarin placed a thin ruby disc formed for just such a purpose. He fished them out of his pockets as though it were normal to carry such wealth.

The Archaen all had their quirks.

"Stand here."

Delarin pointed, and Rubines stood where he was instructed.

Delarin began to activate the casting. Rubines could hardly follow the workings of it, the ingredients and formulas vaguely familiar but long forgotten. Everyone learned basic and advanced castings in school, but he'd never seen a use for exotic things like windows until it was too late to regret his lapses.

Delarin Shadowcalled never forgot a single casting formula. He drew the casting together unerringly, and then the space within the diamond filled with clear blue light.

Rubines frowned uncertainly. "What am I looking at?"

"The future of our people." Delarin held his hands up, a wide grin splitting his face and gleaming in his eyes. "The Undercaverns, pah, no. This world is lost. But this..." he gestured to the window, "this world is pure, unsullied by the touch of the Dungeon Queen or her spawn. Here, the land is clean and the sky is open. Here, we can truly begin anew."

Rubines stared down at the pristine crystal blue sky beneath him, at the distant sun whose glow was clean and bright and not tainted with crimson death.

"What is this madness?" he whispered. "This cannot be possible. There is no other world that we can inhabit. The seers have searched. There is nowhere we can go."

"Correction: There was no other world."

Rubines tore his eyes away from the pure, clean sky to Delarin. "What have you done?" he whispered hoarsely.

"There was no world to which we could relocate, no safe haven upon this one." Delarin laughed exultantly. "So I'm building a new one."