The inside of the building was even stranger than the outside. The stillness was unbroken there as well, and as they walked through the columns to the entryway, Orenda saw that this place, too, was covered in what she thought must be ash. But something was different. Something had happened here. In Gareth’s story there had been a battle inside the temple, but Orenda saw no signs of it. There were no corpses lining the prayer hall as they walked through it, and when she followed him through a backdoor into the room she recognized from his story she began, despite herself, to question it.

That place did not match the rest of the surreal world she had stepped into. That place had decayed.

The pillars were cracked and broken; there may have been a table, once, but what she was looking at no longer resembled a table in any way. It could have once been made of metal, but certainly no longer. There were no carpets or tapestries, not even coated in ash. But above all, the place looked as if it had seen two centuries of nothing in a way that nothing else she had seen so far had.

The magic in the place was not stifled. It was alive, and intense, and moving through and around her in a way that she had not felt since she summoned a demon.

“This is where the council met,” Gareth said, “Once upon a time. On that platform there was, once, a table, and my mother sat in the middle of it. Ronnie was supposed to sit there one day.”

“Why is this place so different?” Orenda asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “I feel it too. This is place where I saw the Emerald Knight, the first time. Isn’t it strange… or... maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t strange. Maybe it was predictable. But both times he said the same thing. Both times he told me to run. I was never supposed to come back here. That chapter of my life should have been closed.”

He shrugged and began walking in long strides towards the back of the room, “Don’t dawdle. Off to the back over there are more corredores, leading underground and out at the living quarters near the spring. But there’s nothing there now. Ronnie and I went looking for our old life and couldn’t find it. We’re going this way.”

Orenda had to jog to keep up with him. It was not lost on her that he didn’t want to be here, or that he was suppressing some emotions that he would probably be better off setting free, releasing, and dealing with. But that was not her burden to bear, and as she followed him through a tall archway into a long hall that went deeper into the mountain, she kept her thoughts to herself.

At the end of this hall was another tall archway, and Orenda saw the first moving thing she had seen since they arrived.

The open archway was filled with fire, and it seemed to be the source of the magic she felt in the place. It was bright, hot, and had no fuel that she could make out. It shouldn’t be there, and it certainly shouldn’t be burning. It made her uncomfortable in its impossibility, but it didn’t phase Gareth in the slightest; it was the source of his determination, and he marched toward it like a man walking his last mile.

“This is the trial by fire,” Gareth explained, and Orenda saw runes in the ancient language of the high elves, the language spoken before Morgani caused the fall, carved into the stone over the archway.

Leave all xrenian imperfections at this door. Beyond lies the will of a god. Burn away all things that are not one with the sacred flame. Only the holy may enter here.

“This is a good time to change your mind,” Gareth said as he followed her eyeline. “If you believe in that sort of thing neither of us have any right to go in there. Or… I don’t. I’m not sure about you.”

“We have to press forward, Gareth,” Orenda said, and he deflated.

He wrapped an arm around Orenda’s shoulders and together they stepped into the fire.

Orenda felt the magic wash over her, more powerful than she had ever felt, more than she could contain. She felt herself, as she had the night she had summoned the demon, becoming detached from her physical body, flowing out with the magic. She knew, in that moment, that the physical world was so small, such a tiny fraction of the real world, and the real world was an expanse that was so large she could never hope to understand it. It was a vast plane with some life, but mostly void. It was all heat and energy from the top down. It was the beginning and the end. It was a strong burst of hot energy that kept moving, forever, to the edges of an eternity without edges. It was the middle of a newborn star, it was the breath of life, it was the middle not just of this planet, but of every planet, it was not just the nucleus of xren’s sun, but of every star stretching out beyond her comprehension. It flowed through this everything from this nothing and there was just so much of it-

And then she slammed, hard into her body as Gareth led her out the other side, and she did not understand how Gareth could deny the existence of a god.

“It’s an illusion,” he said as if he read her mind. “If it were real, I wouldn’t be able to go though. Ronnie and I share the same magical signature, not the same faith.” He smiled and said, “It’s a high though, isn’t it? We always go through in pairs because one person could not be blamed for just standing there until they starved. To become a priest, one must walk through it alone.”

“Right,” Orenda said. The magic was still intense in the room, even without the sacred flame, and it energized her almost too much. She felt herself vibrating.

“You have to be able to push past it,” Gareth told her, “To… to ‘win’ I suppose. The trial by fire. And that’s if you’re the kind of person who can stand in a flame that hot. Most people who aren’t fire elves just burst into flames, which usually causes a bad case of the death.”

“Right,” Orenda said again, because she wasn’t paying particular attention. She was too enamored by the sight before her.

They had stepped into a large circular room and were standing in an alcove that hugged the walls. The ceiling over their head was held up by pillars running along an edge only a few steps in front of them. Most of the room had no floor, and a much higher ceiling. In the center of the circle of nothing was another pillar of flame, and there were four walkways set along it at right angles. They had no railing, and if one looked down they would see a rolling lake of lava.

The room had no other adornment except for a mural or carving on the opposite side. There were runes running up and down it as well, but the thing was so far away and on the other side of the pillar of flame that it was impossible to read. It was a large circular carving, taller than Orenda, and she inferred that it probably had the instructions needed for the Chosen One.

But Orenda didn’t need instructions. She knew what to do. She had done it before, in a dream.

Master, the pillar of flame called to her, Master I have waited here so long. I have longed for you. Please, please help me.

Gareth apparently could not hear this voice, because he spoke over it as he unraveled his carpet.

“The walkways are rather narrow and there’s no guard rails or anything for some reason, so if you fall, I’ll have to catch you. When it burns you, pull back immediately. You’ve never been burned, so you can’t understand how much it hurts.”

Orenda thought of Ali, and of how all people were flammable.

Then she took one step onto the walkway, then another.

She as not accustomed to being hot, to feeling the heat so intensely. This was, she realized, what other people spoke of when they complained of it. This was what the earth elves and humans warned their children about. This is what Susan had been afraid of when she had warned, “Don’t touch that! It’s hot!”

It was rare for Orenda to sweat, but it poured from her as she took another step and tried not to look over the sides of the walkway.

Master the staff called, and Orenda yelled over her shoulder to Gareth.

“Can you hear that?” She asked.

“Hear what?” he asked, “The rushing of the flame? I know, it’s loud as hell. Can you please prove a point to yourself so we can get out of here?”

He cannot hear my cries, master. Only the Chosen One can hear the words of the sacred staff. I have waited here so long for you. Only you can free me. And together we will achieve greatness.

Orenda stepped onto the platform and the heat of the fire billowing from the core of the planet, the beating heart of Xren herself, burned in her face. It was unbearably hot, immeasurably hot, and Orenda didn’t understand how she had not burst into flames, how her clothing had not burned to ash, how her hair had not singed. A great wind carried up with the force of the pillar, but it did not blow her away. None of it made any sense. She had to take it on faith.

She could see, like a mirage, wavy and ehterial, a shape in the pillar of fire. She recognized this, too, and without hesitation, she took her leap of faith.

She plunged her hand into the sacred fire-

And it did not burn. Her body outside of the flame was hot, was drenched in sweat, was sizzling, but inside? Inside she only felt the rush of the magic, the calm comfort of the vast nothingness, and the cool metal of the staff.

Orenda Nochdifache pulled the Sacred Staff from the very living heart of the planet, from the Sacred Flame fueled by the core of a living world.

And the fire went out.

It had been cut off from below, from the source, and the last plume of flame soared over her, hit the ceiling above, and dissipated. Orenda held the staff in both hands and studied it.

Something was wrong.

She didn’t like this.

No magic flowed from the staff.