“You know,” Sylph drawled some time later, “I think we might be lost.”

“We can’t be lost. We’re leaving markings behind,” Damien replied. “I think the word you’re looking for is confused.”

“As to where in the Planes we are?” Sylph asked, cocking an eyebrow. Damien could barely even see her face in the dim light, but he recognized the changes in her tone enough to guess what she was doing.

“Pretty much,” Damien admitted, letting out a sigh as they came to a stop in yet another room identical to all the others they’d just passed through. “I guess we could backtrack. Who knows how long we’ve been down here, but it’s been hours at least. It might be night already.”

“That’s a possibility, but it’ll take us just as long to get out,” Sylph replied, drumming her fingers on her chin. “We might have made a slight mistake.”

“Aren’t you trained for this sort of thing?” Henry asked, popping out of Damien’s shadow with a purple ripple.

“I’m not sure that’s something we should be talking about, even here,” Sylph reprimanded.

Henry snorted. “I’m blocking the sound waves from leaving the area. I’m not an idiot.”

“Debatable,” Sylph said with a smirk. “But, thank you. And no, I’m not trained for this. I’m trained to kill people and infiltrate houses, not weird maze-catacombs. I’m completely and utterly confused as to how this place is built like this. It makes no sense.”

“Could someone still be messing with us somehow?” Damien asked, leaning against a wall. “Maybe the person that hid the entrance is also making us somehow circle around or remain lost?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Sylph replied. “But it just makes no sense to me. Who would waste so much time for literally no reward? At this point they must realize we have no idea what we’re doing.”

“Maybe they’re hoping we’ll wear out and give up so they can attack?” Damien wondered.

“Could be. Either way, we aren’t getting out today. We’ll have to apologize to Quinlan,” Sylph grumbled. “Damn. This entire trip is one giant waste of time.”

“Should we just sleep?” Damien asked. “Maybe we’ll get attacked at night and the problem will sort itself out.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Henry said, pumping a tentacle in the air. “Just kill everything in our way. Add in a few more visits to the library and you will become the perfect human being. Well, mostly. There are a few other small things we can change, but the murder and library hopping should cover most of it.”

“You’re taking first watch,” Sylph informed Henry, laying her pack down on the ground and leaning her head against it. “Actually, can’t you just take all of them? You don’t sleep.”

“He did sleep once,” Damien said, setting up beside her. “For four years.”

“Don’t make me do it again.” Henry pointed an accusatory tentacle at Damien. “But I can watch for tonight. I’m unbelievably bored after watching you waste so much time wandering around stone halls.”

“Hey, look at the bright side. You’re starting to get a much better grasp on how humans view time. Hours actually matter,” Damien said. “Maybe you’ll be able to start making your own spells soon too. You’ve got half of my spark, right?”

“Hmm,” Henry mused. “That’s actually a good point. I’ll have to do some testing tomorrow. It would be unfortunate if I accidentally blew you up and banished myself back to the Void.”

“Yes,” Damien drawled. “Unfortunate.”

“Just sleep,” Sylph said, prodding Damien in the side. Damien certainly wasn’t going to argue with that, so he scooted in close to Sylph and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the cold floor digging into his back. Slowly, sleep came.

***

A tentacle prodded Damien in the nose. His eyes snapped open and he jerked upright, nearly smacking his forehead into Sylph’s. She dodged back just in time and rolled her eyes before nodding at one of the corridors.

“Company,” Henry said from behind Damien. “And they aren’t trying to hide their presence. Even with how horrible my senses are right now, I felt them coming from quite a distance. One humanoid.”

“How strong?” Damien asked as Sylph pulled him to his feet and flicked some dust off his shoulder. “Is it the Corruption?”

“No,” Henry said with a snort. “Not everything is the Corruption. I doubt I would have recognized the Corruption anyway. If I can’t spot Second, I can’t spot the other ones. This was much more amateur. Probably another student, since it wasn’t anywhere near Stormsword’s strength.”

“Did you catch how big?” Damien asked, rolling his shoulders and drawing Ether into himself. His reserves were still mostly full from the previous day, but a little extra never hurt.

“Bigger than you,” Henry replied. “Which narrows it down a fair bit, since they were quite large.”

“Teddy?” Damien guessed.

“Not bad,” a voice echoed down a tunnel, immediately confirming Damien’s thoughts. “How’d you know?”

“Why did you drop the noise canceling?” Damien hissed. Henry bobbed out a shrug in response.

“I got bored. It’s not like the kid is a real threat. You’ve got to be bored, just go train on him already.”

“I think I’m going to take offense to that,” Teddy said, stepping out of the shadows and into the dim room. Stone snaked around him, forming a seething armor. Two long tendrils emerged from its back and hung over his shoulders.

One of them twitched, batting aside the inky dagger that Sylph launched at him. Teddy shook his head and chuckled. “Going for the kill before we even get a chance to talk. We’re just students, you know. This isn’t life or death.”

Sylph shimmered and faded away, vanishing from view.

“It is for us,” Damien said, lowering into a fighting stance. “I trust you’re the reason that this damn place has been so difficult to navigate?”

“Everything I’ve heard about you is true,” Teddy said, rolling his shoulders. Particulates of stone whistled around him, forming a gale full of razor sharp fragments to keep Sylph from getting too close. “Of course I’ve been doing it. Did you really think I only had one school of magic?”

“No, we more thought you’d have better things to do with your time than waste it here,” Damien replied, forming a gravity sphere in one of his hands. “Seriously, why even bother? We don’t have anything worth your time.”

“I’ve got it on good word that you’re lying,” Teddy said, cracking his neck. “You’ve already gotten an artifact, right under everyone’s noses.”

“You mean the stupid thing Reva gave us?” Damien asked, squinting at Teddy.

“Of course not,” Teddy snapped. “Pretending to be a moron isn’t going to get you any farther, Damien. I’m onto you. I’m not foolish enough to think you’ll just hand the artifact over for free, so I’m going to have to beat it out of you. Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. As soon as you hand it over, I’ll leave you and your girlfriend alone.”

A dagger flashed and Teddy’s armor shifted to catch it. A second blade flew from the darkness, drawing a thin line across the large boy’s cheek.

“And what makes you so sure you can even take us?” Damien asked, forming several more gravity spheres. “Not that we even have the artifact you want. Two versus one is pretty dumb.”

“I can handle two second years,” Teddy growled.

“Oh,” Henry said, disappointment tinging his voice. “He’s an idiot.”

More gravity spheres blinked to life around Damien. He flicked a hand forward and the black dots surged forward, rocketing toward Teddy like a miniature cosmos was being drawn in. Teddy whistled and the air shattered.

The two spells met with a loud crash. Flashes of shadow and pops filled the room as their magic warred. Damien’s spells were blown away and he yanked a Devour open moments before Teddy’s magic washed into him.

The dark disk absorbed a fair amount of Teddy’s magic before it touched Damien, but his bones still rattled as the magic clipped him. Damien fired several tears out from his feet. Teddy’s armor rushed to meet it, but the other boy underestimated just how dangerous the spell was.

Four purple crescents carved right through his defenses and scored lines across his body. Teddy blinked, glancing down at the blood that was suddenly flowing freely down his chest. The movement almost cost him his life as a scythe whipped out of the darkness, headed straight for his chest.

Teddy spun to the side, taking a savage cut across the side instead of straight through the heart. He snarled and his armor lashed out in the direction of the attack, striking Sylph and shattering her camouflage as it shot her across the room.

She struck the wall hard, her wind armor dissipating. Teddy’s attack had left a deep wound running from the top of her left shoulder all the way down to her hip. Not letting up on his advantage, Teddy fired off several more vibration spells.

Damien cast Devour before himself and teleported, firing a gravity lance at Teddy before teleporting twice more, using Devour to block the majority of the damage of the other spell.

Teddy blocked the gravity lance with a thick shield of sand and shot a ripple of condensed air at Sylph. She raised her hand and wind surged before her, dissipating Teddy’s magic before it reached her.

“Can you wrap this up?” Henry asked, yawning. “I was really hoping this would be more interesting, but this guy is just a normal mage. Let’s get on with it.”

“Would you shut your annoying companion up?” Teddy growled, hurling a spear of stone at Damien, who teleported to safety.

“If I could, I would,” Damien replied as he appeared directly behind Teddy, casting a gravity sphere at the other boy’s feet before teleporting once more. The stone armor whipped out, wrapping around Teddy’s leg and shielding him from the magic before it could harm him. “But you really aren’t going to win this. Look, you’re barely holding your own.”

Teddy scoffed. “Sylph took a bad blow already. She’ll be out from blood loss shortly. It’s just you.”

Damien glanced at Sylph. Her wound had already closed, leaving only faint traces of greenish liquid and stone where the cut had been.

“You sure about that?”

Teddy glanced at her and caught a shadowy knife inches before it hit his nose. He growled, flicking it to the side. His eyes caught sight of Sylph, completely uninjured, and widened.

“You’ve got healing magic?”

“We aren’t here to answer your questions,” Sylph said, fading back into her camouflage. Teddy curled his lips and snapped his fingers. The stone armor vibrated around him as more tendrils sprouted from the ground and entered his defenses, reinforcing them.

The walls shook and dust rained down on Damien. Thick, ropey stone vines erupted from the floor and ceiling, spreading across the room like roots.

“Fine then,” Teddy said, sinking into the ground. “You’re a fair bit more competent than I expected, so you’ll make me use my full manifestation again.”

His head vanished beneath the stone and several rock vines lashed out, swinging at Damien. He teleported, dodging the attack and appearing on the other side of the room.

“Again?” Damien asked. “Wait, have you been making the ground shift around us so it looks like we’re walking through the same area constantly?”

A distant chuckle echoed through the stone. Damien’s eyes narrowed. On the other side of the room, dark lines carved through the air as Sylph cut at the stone, but it didn’t look like her attacks were making much headway.

“Henry, this is a serious pain,” Damien complained, avoiding several vines. “He’s pretty deep in the rock, isn’t he?”

“Yup,” Henry replied. “Not an illusion either. He’s really controlling the stone. I have no idea where he is though. Judging by the rate I feel the Ether fading, he probably won’t be able to keep this up for too long, though. Maybe an hour.”

“I really don’t want to waste another hour,” Damien said, tossing a gravity sphere into a cluster of vines. They shattered, blown to pieces, but rebuilt themselves before the debris could all even fall to the ground. “Can you get us some privacy for a few seconds?”

“I can block the area out for a moment,” Henry replied. “Stormsword will know something happened if he’s looking, but he won’t know what it was.”

“Good enough,” Damien decided. “I still don’t want him knowing everything I can do. Sylph, make sure you keep some distance.”

Henry thrust his tentacles out and a purple haze flooded the room. It permeated into the rock and sank deep into the ground, setting in like heavy fog.

Damien established the link to the runes in his mind, drawing on the Ether waiting for his beck and call. Power surged through his body, filling his core and traveling through every vein.

“Shatter,” Damien commanded. The word tore from his lips and the Ether bent to his will. Lines of black light carved through the air, spiderwebbing out and digging deep into the earth around them.

Teddy only had time for a startled yelp before gravity ruptured all along the lines, shattering rock and anything else unlucky enough to be caught beside it. Stone screamed and the room exploded, every single part of it tearing apart.

Damien staggered, falling to his knees as the powerful command drew the Ether out of his own body, draining his core dry and dimming the golden lines in the air around him.

Another cry split the din as Teddy was caught in the Damien’s spell. He fell from within one of the walls, his arm shattered in half a dozen locations and hanging limply at his side. The older boy caught himself with a pillar of stone that pushed him back to his feet.

He stared wide-eyed at Damien, fear stretching across his face. “What was that? How can you–”

“Kneel.”

Teddy’s face slammed through the rock. Damien only had time for a brief smirk before the lights in his mind blinked out and he crumbled, swallowed by unconsciousness.