I marched to the meeting room for a quick word with the King-Emperor while I had the chance and passed Mal, the great, unkempt, shaggy lion of the Dark Element, on the way there. I believe the King and he were discussing what would come next that day, because Mal was uttering quite a bit and your name definitely was in the mix.

I made a mental note then to find out who “Joshua”, “Kael”, and “Gianna” were, because they seemed important. Would you be terribly offended if I pointed out that all three had widely different levels of importance?

###

Fingertips digging into the black sooty mountain, Avonly took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt the rush of energy tingle through her body, pour from her hand and expanded into the mountain. She could feel it all within a certain range. Every nook, every crevice, every pebble. Finally, she took a step back and wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead. Every mound of dirt or rock had some metal in it.

“Is it up there?” Kael asked. A building. Buried. Or something.”

“As much as I would love to build up the drama on this,” she huffed, “there's nothing on top of the mountain.” Kael stood back, staggered almost. Avonly saw this and smiled. “But. . . there is a weird feeling I'm getting. Like the metal-sea in the desert.”

“I don't understand,” Joshua said. “What does that mean? Something you can't feel?”

“Exactly. As far as I can tell, the guts of the mountain are either hollow or there is a Sy field in place.”

“Hollow?” Joshua pipped up.

“Guts?” Kael echoed behind.

“Whatever. Let's just dig in and you can see for yourself." She stepped aside, motioning for Kael to do his thing. With how little metal was there, she couldn't manipulate it to tunnel. Instead, she watched Kael push his sleeves up and gingerly lay his fingers on the scratchy rock. Explosives were how humanity first started tunneling through mountains after all. And she was pretty sure that if Kael couldn't do it, Gianna could manage it. And still Kael sat there, still as the stone. “Do. . . do you want Gianna to do it?” Avonly hesitantly asked. There was no telling how he'd react to that.

Gianna jerked to life in surprise, and tilted her head, looking towards Kael who in turn bit his lip and looked to the mountainside and then to her. “I'm not entirely sure how. . . .” she droned off.

"Alright, let's work through this,” Kael said, clearing his throat. “Any combustion we create is just energy. We're using stored energy in the molecules right?"

Joshua put up a finger silencing him. "We all know how–"

"I'm trying to figure out how to do something new. Shut up." His finger traced the rock wall as Gianna stalked alongside. "Neither of us can destroy matter, and we have a lot of stone to get through.”

“Right,” Gianna said, “ But enough energy can grind it down smaller, even change some of it into smoke, or I guess gas.”

“But that energy we release will have to go somewhere. So if we don't punch all the way through in one go, then whatever we put in will kick back against us.”

“But we can't punch through all the way, because we have no idea what's on the other side. If it's hollow we could cause a cave-in. If it's a Sy Field, then we could disrupt it.”

“Right,” Kael nodded. “So we can't have it explode in, and we can't have it explode out. So what can we do?”

Gianna and Avonly simultaneously crossed their arms and scowled, remaining silent.

Joshua rolled his eyes and cleared his throat in an overly obvious way that said look over here. “You people are thinking too literally. Explosion this, explode that. You said it yourself, it's a release of energy. Don't blow it up, melt it. Slow the release of energy and focus on turning the heat up as high as possible.”

“Is that possible?” Avonly asked. She had melted metal before, but that was draining in a way nothing else was. Of course, this sort of thing was right in the realm of a Combustion Syche.

“I'll take one half you take the other,” Kael ordered, stepping up the wall and placing both of his palms on the mountain's face. “Go on, this is the only play we have. Either we try this or we head back to the palace.” With a quick look to the palace, Gianna nodded and stood with Kael, shoulder to shoulder.

Avonly wrung her hands in excitement but almost cried out in surprise when Joshua's hand hooked around her shoulder and yanked her back off-balanced. “What are you doing?” she cried, almost falling backwards.

“Do you have any idea how hot it's going to be? They're making magma. That's too hot for Kael to even touch directly, heat resistance and all.

Avonly wasn't even sure how Joshua knew this. She had never heard any stories from their trips that ended with volcanoes. Then again, that wasn't the sort of thing you figured out in an uncontrolled environment. You didn't exactly get two tries to touch lava.

And honestly, that was the more exciting question at this point, because Kael and Gianna just touched the stone. There was no flash, no pomp. Nothing exciting to it. Just the two of them standing together in dead silence. She was about to ask Joshua how long it would take when the outer wall grew red hot and caved in in a messy sluice of gooey rock.

Kael smiled, wiped several beads of sweat off his face, and raised the back of his hand for a fist bump which Gianna stared at for a full five seconds before saying “oh” and hitting it with the back of her own hand. “Way to do your part,” she added.

“You're welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic. You made me do most of the work.”

Gianna tried her best but couldn't hide a coy little smile at the fringe of her mouth. “I was hoping you wouldn't notice.”

“Is it hot?” Avonly yelled across the open space, looking over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone in their little corner of the palace grounds. She began walking towards them.

Gianna nodded, her hand making a motion to shoo her back.

“No idea how long it will take to cool,” Kael said, scowling at the gooey cave.

“Are you Syches or aren't you?” Joshua said. “Funnel the heat to the sides. Disperse it until we can get through. That should be easy in comparison.”

“All you Gi,” Kael said, raising an eyebrow.

“Alright form a line, I'll do it as we go.” Gianna looked down into the newly formed cave with an eerie red glow “This is great, I love tight spaces,” Gianna merrily noted before disappearing, some of the glow vanishing with her.

“You're weird sometimes," Avonly shouted through, jogging to catch up.

###

It took mere seconds before the light from the outside world vanished and the group stumbled in acrid darkness. Joshua looked behind and was the last one to say goodbye to the light.

Joshua complained, "It's hot in here and I don't think it's cooled down from the blast." He brought his hand up to wipe sweat from his forehead and realized it was outlined with the faintest of crimson light. Gianna could have done a better job, even if it was manageable as is. But with every step, he wasn't even sure if it was Gianna's fault. The air grew stiffer, hotter. The cave grew brighter with that foreign red color. These sensations grew and grew until both the heat and light were blinding.

Grunting, Kael suddenly dropped from view. Joshua almost bumped into Avonly who wasn't so gung ho and Joshua quickly grew frustrated waiting to see what was before them. Finally, after no small amount of coaxing from Kael somewhere below them, she leapt and Joshua was assaulted by the neon red light of magma irradiating from all around. The bowels of the mountain were a volcano and all around its blood stood blackened and still. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, half-frozen magma spider-webbed out into a series of caves going every which way. Joshua slid down the incline and joined the others on the frozen magma. He expected it to buckle under his feet like the metal-sea had, but it stood firm, only emanating more light as his feet touched the charcoal-like ground.

"So this is the Sy field you felt," Joshua mused, lightly taking steps and watching the charred magma light up. Joshua studied the ground and could make out all of Kael's footprints stamped about. He had danced around expecting it to be like the metal-sea.

“It's hot in here, but it's not lava hot. Ya' know?" Avonly said, scraping sweat from her arms.

“Doesn't bother me,” Gianna grunted.

“Yeah it's all trippy.” Kael crossed his arms and looked around. “It's the perfect place to hide the Book of Light. Let's spread out and look. Everyone be careful not to use your powers. We don't want to reignite the mountain.”

Joshua shrugged incredulously. "No dude. We aren't going to split up. We keep splitting up and horrible things keep happening when we do."

Kael scowled. "So you're just the leader now?"

“Oh shut up. Let's just pick a direction and muddle through it together.”

“I'd actually prefer us all together,” Avonly murmured on the group's edge.

"Probably for the best," Gianna added.

With one molten tunnel as appealing as the next, the group picked a path and drove ahead. As they vanished from the room, they just missed the outline of Mal appearing in the mouth of the tunnel they had made.

The tunnels grew and shrank. There were calderas made of frozen magma. Bridges arched with the stuff. This strange world glowed the color of blood as Joshua and Avonly cooked in the sauna, their clothes plastered in wetness. As the group moved from room to room, pathway to pathway, the temperature never changed. Until a relative cold struck their faces. As they squeezed through one particularly tiny crevice, they emerged out into a massive cavern, below their ledge the neon glowing floor was a fatal drop below, and they craned their necks to look in wonder at the giant obsidian temple towering above them, across the abyss.

“Well, it's not a library,” Joshua tasted the sweat as he said it, “but that might have the Book. If you know what I mean.”

“Who wouldn’t understand what that means?” Kael said elbowing him in the ribs and strutting past.

The group was almost in a dead sprint moving over the giant bridge that spanned the chasm. Through the next tunnel and then u-turn and moved closer in the direction that the temple had to be. Until finally, they burst forth from the caves back into the giant chamber, directly under the pitch-black arch of the building’s entrance. There was no door, no such pomp. Just a lone opening sat mere feet away. With a sudden caution, they crept to it and turned the corner. Cries of exasperation echoed around.

Completely empty aside from the coating of frozen magma.

“Come on!” Kael screamed, punching the magma-coated wall with all his might. As his fingers made contact, a crisp crunching noise rang through their ears.

Joshua and Avonly looked over horrified. “How broken are your fingers?'

Kael slowly lowered his hand, and in doing so revealed the bright red glow in that patch of the wall. The magma had gone from muddy glass to cracked and solid red. Kael breathed slowly looking at it, as the entire group looked cautiously. He moved his hand back over it and closed his eyes. Slowly, the cracked piece of magma-glass faded, turning darker and darker until even the muddy crimson sheen was gone and only black remained.

“Sorry. I lost my temper.”

“For no good reason either,” Gianna said from the middle of the room. Her finger pointed up to a hole in the ceiling and what could only be a second floor. “Can't propel ourselves up there. Need to see if there is another way.”

The group fanned out around the temple's base, looking for a pathway or a way to climb. Joshua placed a finger on the obsidian in order to test its strength but immediately withdrew it, his finger dripping blood. As he sucked his middle finger, he heard someone call out from the backside. Sprinting over, he passed Avonly to find Kael and Gianna halfway up a set of stairs hewn into the building's spine.

Letting his sister go first, Joshua was the last to climb and enter the second floor, and the last to have his stomach sink.

“Magnanimous ain't it?” Mal's crackling voice said lowly. His teeth barred and shining in the red. He and Zagan stood across the hole in the floor, by what looked like a giant stone pedestal.

Joshua's eyes scanned the room, completely baron aside from the rectangular plinth that Mal stood beside. A large book could easily have fit on top, yet there was no book here. The Book of Light was gone– and there was no doubt it was once here.

“The Book!” Kael screamed. “What did you do with the Book?”

“Umbrage. Nothing but umbrage. You actually thought your prized treasure would be here? There is no Book here. Hasn't been in a really long time. I'm just here for you. Always have been.” As his eyes violently bounced between the group, Gianna softly backpedaled behind Avonly and Kael, sending Mal into a howl of laughter. “Yea, it's overdue but it's just about time you've had your time little girl."

Joshua took a step forward and gritted his teeth. “You aren't touching her.”

Zagan finally looked up, his eyes briefly catching Joshua. He shook his head. What does that mean? Is he trying to say something? Joshua took another look to see what else he could glean, but now the scarred giant was staring transfixed at the floor, the life gone from his eyes.

In that moment, Joshua pitied him. Zagan had become disposable trash, some plaything Mal would toss aside the moment he got bored. And then Joshua looked around, counting their numbers. The answer was so obvious. “Zagan!” Joshua hollered across the room. “I think it's time to put our differences aside.”

And Mal cackled. Gleefully. His back arched. His head thrown back. “He knows better. You all will too. Your father won't like me hurting any of you, but he didn't expressly forbid it. It will be worth it to teach you a lesson."

"You are standing all around obsidian,” Avonly taunted, stepping forward and staring down Mal with her brothers. “I can bring this entire building down on you."

"I know obsidian isn't metal. I don't appreciate the bluff. I think we'll start with you," he held up an accusatory finger in Avonly's direction. It was just a finger but there was real menace with that simple act.

“You aren't starting with anyone,” Kael spoke up, crossing his arms. He knocked the toe of his shoe against the ground and watched the frozen magma glow a fainter orange. “You can’t lob explosions around without bringing the volcano back to life.”

Zagan's ears perked at these words. If anyone had an advantage right now, it was a Blood Syche. Zagan's shoulders straighten as he stood tall over Mal, staring him down.

Mal turned on the giant and grabbed Zagan by the scruff of his neck. “What about now, huh?” Mal asked, his head bobbing to the side. “How much energy do I need to release from your shirt directly into your chest? Plenty of ways to cook a man without scorching the chamber.” One of Mal's spindly fingers poked into Zagan's chest. Mal looked over to see Joshua, Kael, and Avonly begin to move around the hole in the room and walk definitely towards him. He threw his free hand out facing them, signaling them to stop. “You’re only digging yourself deeper– all of you.”

Zagan’s meaty hand grabbed Mal’s wrist and tightened his hold. Zagan's mouth curved into that vindictive smile that Joshua had once seen directed at him.

More like a screech than a scream, Mal let out a howl of vitriolic hate. “Like I said, it’s time for my girl to shine. Welcome to hell.”

Joshua turned to share another puzzled glance with his brother and watched instead, in slow motioned horror as Gianna's right arm hooked around his brother's neck, almost instantly turning his face crimson. Her left hand carelessly flicked to Avonly's abdomen and flicked the side of her shirt.

The muddled cries of Zagan and Mal in the background faded and swirled together. Joshua was already running. The energy of combustion sent into Avonly's shirt exploded with a small pop sending a focused jolt of heat like a jagged dagger into her side. Still Joshua ran. Avonly dropped to the ground screaming in agony. Kael fumbled with the chokehold but his eyes were glazing over.

By the time Gianna remembered Joshua, he had his arms around her and together they tumbled through the hole unto the floor below.