If the torch had felt unreal, the morning after was a fable cooked up by a hallucinating badger. Felix woke in a barrack shared by seven other knights, men and women. Half asleep, he mimicked the others’ morning routines several steps behind them, until a familiar voice called out.

“Felix, Julia. Are you ready?” Saga asked, all armored up and chirpy.

“Yes templar Kjellberg! A moment templar Kjellberg.” Julia struggled with the armored bracers.

“Yeah. Hold on.” Felix kicked his belongings under the bed and slipped the torch around his neck. “Can Bii come with?”

“Up to the Reliquary, but not inside.” Saga waited for them to catch up. They took off, striding past underground corridors. Felix caught glimpses of enormous training halls, an underground swimming pool, and even an actual farm, where knights used their relics to till the soil and plant seeds.

“You have underground farms?” Felix turned his head, continuing to gawk at the room.

“Knights of the End are prepared for everything.” Saga paused to insert a key into a bulky metal door. Mechanisms rattled and clanked. With a hiss, the door slid open, revealing a lift cage. The trio piled inside.

Felix peeked through the door’s slit at the corridors they passed, hoping to catch something interesting.

“This isn’t hundred percent confirmed,” Saga began. “But we got news from a sister monastery in the southern Scandies last night. Apparently Sofie is collecting all of the Scandies together.”

“Did we get news from any of the other Lords, or the silver torches?” Felix asked urgently.

Saga shook her head slowly. “Nothing yet, but I’m sure they’re working hard. Apprentice knight Roos.”

“Yes, knight Kjellberg!” Julia stood straight.

“You will be joining us for a ten day scouting delve tomorrow. Estimated depth, two yonders maximum. I’m sure Reliquist Roos already has a compatible relic picked for you, but let him know, just in case so you don’t bind anything that takes too long to tame.”

“Yes, knight Kjellberg!”

“Can I come too?” Felix blurted.

Saga turned to him, lips pursed. “You’ll have chances to delve later. Meanwhile, there is much work to do in the fortress.”

“Yeah but, she gets to go,” said Felix in a true pinnacle of eloquence.

“We are short on hands that are not absolutely required at the monastery. Arch Templar determined her fit for the mission, and thus she gets to go. I’m sure if apprentice templar Roos wasn’t here, you might have been picked, but out of you two she is better fit.” Saga looked away. “Though I understand the urge to save the Half-Valley.”

“Not just that. There’s a person who might be able to—” Felix almost told her about the note. Almost. His gaze turned to the metal grid beneath them. “Yeah. I just want to see my family again.”

“You will.” Saga rubbed his back. “We will. Let’s just do our best. No need to rush.”

“Right. No need to rush.” Wrong!

Felix had to keep moving now. Else he knew he might again grow complacent, waiting for someone else to fix everything, while becoming another black armored cog in the monastery. If he wanted to keep the hope of finding ‘S’ alive, he had to keep feeding that hope with actions. Actions in the now. Not weeks from now. For that, he had to get himself on a delving team as soon as possible. Besides, there was no guarantee an opportunity like this would repeat next week.

Pieces of Felix’s ‘infiltrate the delving trip’ plan began to solidify, taking the smelly shape of gammelost.

Felix gave Saga and Julia a warm smile, and said, “You’re right. Let’s do our best.”

With a whirr and a hiss, the elevator halted. Door opened into a wide chamber with a big empty desk, a gigantic round vault door with a human’s face, and the stern faced gray haired Reliquist sitting in a chair comically undersized for his bulky frame.

“I’ve come to get armor for our newest knight apprentice, and relics for both of them,” said Saga.

The massive man stood up, put away a book, and took out a set of gigantic keys. He and Julie shared a long strange look, ended by the Reliquist fixing his attention on Felix. “Any budget restrictions on the relics?”

“None, besides any compatibility limitations,” Saga said. “One thing though, we’ll take apprentice knight Roos for a seven day scouting delve tomorrow.”

“Gotcha. Quiet down for a bit.” The Reliquist slotted his huge keys into the vault door one by one. After turning the first key, the Reliquist leaned into the vault face’s ear and whispered a word.

“Correct.” A deep metallic voice thrummed within the vault door.

Another key click. Another whisper. Another ‘correct’. Bolts slid and mechanisms whirred, when all five keys and passwords had been spoken. Mouth of the vault door stretched unnaturally wide, revealing a smaller lockless door.

The Reliquist opened it and bent his head down to fit in. “Aight kids. Come along. Most of the dangerous stuff is sealed, but you never know when they wiggle free, so don’t tempt the Byss by licking everything shiny you see. Right. And the denizen stays here.”

“Bii wait here,” said Felix.

Bii pinged sadly and found a corner to mope in. Felix rolled his eyes at the drama queen.

Saga stayed by the elevator. “Take your time with them. I need to run and start my delving preparations, but I should be back within an hour.”

Julia saluted her. “Thank you for your guidance, knight Kjellberg.”

“See ya,” Felix waved.

Saga waved back.

“Knight Kjellberg,” Felix added.

She smiled, and mouthed ‘no need’, before the elevator door closed.

“Chop chop,” called the Reliquist.

Felix hurried after them, and entered a delver’s wet dream. He barely registered the door slamming shut behind them, and missed a conversation between the two Rooses. Loosely spaced shelves towered four stories high into the cavernous warehouse.

Haphazard walkways and ladders criss-crossed from shelf to shelf. Electric light gleamed off of hundreds of bottles and jars and all manner of queer glass containers, within which relics floated and sometimes swam. Shelf boards bent under the weight of crates and chests. Everything was neatly labeled and organized.

Felix crouched beside a big bottle held down by chains and anchors. Inside, a fish-shaped cloud bonked its head against the top of the bottle. Next to it, within a narrow metal reinforced container, an arm-sized caterpillar’s face parted into a hundred wiggly limbs to scratch the glass in Felix’s direction.

“Right here. Come on. Keep up now,” the Reliquist called.

“Sorry! I just… I’ve never seen so many relics in one place.”

“Eh.” The Reliquist brushed his nose. “Our vault is aight. Tho you should see the HQ.”

Alright? A slight understatement. A hundred containers packed with wonder and explanations of how it worked battled for Felix’s attention. They must’ve had ten potency orbs worth of relics on display. Collecting all this had to have taken centuries. How many relics had they found that no one else ever heard of? Countless.

“Cloth and boot sizes?” asked the Reliquist.

Felix snapped his gaze to the closet he had opened. Light versions of the knights’ armor hung in a neat row.

“Men’s small. Forty. I’m still growing though,” said Felix.

“Try these.” The Reliquist tossed Felix a black and dark red bundle, and thumbed at a dirty curtain. “Changing room is there. Oh, and lemme carve your name on the torch.”

“Okay. Just a sec.” Felix gave the vial pendant away.

After a few minutes, Felix returned with his own clothes folded up. The knight’s light armor hugged him a little too tight in places, but he had to admit it did look badass. He recovered the unlit torch and attached it to a belt. After a glance in the mirror, Felix began braiding his hair to try to look more knightly.

“Fit?” asked the old man.

“Tight.”

“Good. It’ll stretch to fit in about a week. Wash with Abyssal water only. If you need it to transform around your relic, put a couple chips in the wash water.“ The Reliquist closed the closet. “Right then. It’s funtime. Let’s get you kids some relics. Julia.”

“Yes, Reliquist Roos.” Julia straightened.

“Your offshoot already has brown roots. No flowers yet, is that right?”

“That’s correct, Reliquist Roos.”

“Aight. Aight. And red tint on your silverflame, close to purple… Plus you’ve got a delve tomorrow...” While mumbling, the Reliquist rubbed his wide stubbly chin. Then nodded with a decisive ‘hm’. “Gotcha. We’ll figure out where to grow it, after working out the chinks in your bond stability. Come on.”

They walked to an edge of the warehouse and climbed onto the teetering catwalks. The Reliquist blew dust off of a small ornate casket, and handed it to Julia. “Soil from the Philosophers’ Conference. Bind it and sink the offshoots roots in it. It’ll absorb it right quick. You’ll have a better understanding of what the relic needs better afterwards.”

“Thank you, Reliquist Roos.” Julia hugged the casket against her.

“Right then.” The old man turned to Felix. “What should we do with your relic?”

“Well, I could use use something useful.”

“Heh. Heh. Heh!” He had a coughing laugh, and coughed more afterwards. “Right right. Gotta say it’s a tough job without seeing your silverlight, but we’ll manage. We’ll manage. Didn’t leave anything out of the relic explanation you gave them yesterday, did you?”

“Not this time.”

“Heh. Heh.” The Reliquist began coughing violently and patted his chest. “Hmm. Hmm. Let me just double check.” He pulled out, and leafed through a neatly organized binder with colored bookmarks and stickers on the back. “Did you have any restrictions?”

“I’ve had trouble binding feeling relics,” Felix replied.

“Right. Right…” After a few more hmms and haas, the Reliquist looked back down to Felix. “Now I remember. You were the kid that knocked back Elina. Lords it got hard to tell you kids apart after a dip in Rodmar’s mud, Byss bless his soul. Anywho, that Intent Bank of yours could last you through copper, maybe iron, if you get to know it good. Out of Mind… I’ll say right straight I’m not convinced about these types of highly situational causality abilities. Not for a copper torch, that’s for sure. It’s not a liability, but it’s not gonna make a bonk shit’s difference whether you have it or don’t. Hmm...”

Felix licked his lips, awaiting the verdict.

He wasn’t at all prepared for the Reliquist turning grim and asking him, “Who are you and what are you doing with your life?”

“Wha…” Felix’s jaw opened. “Sorry, did I say something to offend you? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Nobody’s offended, kid. It was a straight question. See, the Scandie’s relic categorizing system is sort of bogus. Well, not bogus. Incomplete. Is good for making sure civvies don’t get themselves possessed. Not so good for me, ‘cos I get to retrain every Håkan and Heidi who’s been raised in a barrel.

“To find compatible relics, you gotta find out who you are, decide who you wanna be, and figure out what you’re gonna do with your life. Once you get that, find relics willing to ride along to the finish line with you. Preferably relics that you’re willing to get along with in turn. And there’s no perfect relic for anodyne. I’m not saying treat them like you’d treat a woman. Most women don’t try to possess your soul at the first sign of weakness, or eat your flesh after a bad argument...” The Reliquist a spot where a vine sprouted through his arm. “...But it’s a relationship. A relic-human relationship. Don’t even dream of getting it perfect the first time. Though maybe you’ll get lucky. Who knows. First loves can be true. Altho, if you don’t have a clue who you are, I’m not too surprised you’ve failed to bind anything but sticks.”

“Relationship… Why didn’t anyone say anything?” If it’s all about compatible personalities, concepts, aspirations, Felix could’ve saved years of wasting his time. He could’ve bound something related to being an obsessive hopeless day-dreamer or— Hannes knew.

Hannes knew, and that’s why he got me a bit of the Dreaming Abyss.

“Like I said, Scandie regulations,” said the Reliquist. “Anywho, since we didn’t get a psych eval. Unless you’ve got an idea we’re gonna go with something easy.”

“Well, I’m a bit of a dreamer and a...” Felix floundered for words.

What was he exactly? Cheerful, sure to others but half the time that was a facade. Optimist, yeah same problem. Liar? Well, everyone lies, right? He had always thought of himself as an easy-going guy who made friends, but honestly the last couple of years after the Academy had been a bit lonely. What was he? Felix drew blank after blank.

“...uuuh. Uuuhhh. I’ve got long hair.”

“That ain’t a personality trait, kid. But good try. Aight. Dream stuff… dream stuff… What kind?”

“Well, I’ve always dreamt of delving the Abyss.” That bit he knew for certain.

The Reliquist looked wistfully into the distance, while beginning to lead them down the ladders. “That’s par for the course, kid.”

“No. I mean, I read two delving logs a day, I’ve written ten books full of my own imaginary delving logs, and I keep dreaming of myself as a delver every night.” Felix’s cheeks flushed.

“Huh. Right then. Obsessive dreams. We’ve got a few that might fit. You two wait by the changing room, I’ll fetch some options.”

The half an hour of sitting quietly with Julia passed extremely awkwardly, with a few fumbling conversation attempts. Felix did his best, but the girl was tenser than a steel cord. Okay, asking about her relationship with the Reliquist probably hadn’t been the best conversation starter, considering the friction between the two, but c’mon. How could she expect Felix not to ask?

The Reliquist arrived with a pull cart loaded with a man-sized crate, a huge grimey bottle, two urns big and small, and an odd lump wrapped in delving foil and staked by copper nails. He said, “Aight. I’ve got five options for you,” and pried open the crate.

Inside, on a bed of hay sat a black cockroach with eerily humanoid proportions and a white blank face with two empty eyes and two horns. It resembled Saga’s and Daniel’s relics.

“A cockroach monkey. The physical enhancement relic at Half-Valley monastery. Been handing these out since the fifties, and we still got a bunch left. Everything but muscles and chitin has been scraped off. According to the relicwright’s notes, this one’s obsessed with touching things. You’d need to unbind the Intent Bank, but it’d be better all around than what you’ve got.”

“Can I touch it?” Felix asked.

The Reliquist laughed. “Heh. Heh. Heh! Go on.”

While Felix inspected the cockroach monkey’s black chitinous limbs, the Reliquist polished the grimy bottle from the back of his chart. Inside, in yellow fluid, floated a ghost-white relic. It looked like a cross between a paint-brush with meter long hairs and a jellyfish.

“Right here we’ve got the tail of a linkworm. This one’s actually inert, cos the relicwright botched the butchering. No synergy with your personality, but it could work with that Intent Bank.” Passion for relics sparkled in the Reliquist old gray eyes. “See, linkworms’ tendrils let them connect with just about anything and get some sensory info on the structure of things, as well as surface thoughts. A complete linkworm had some ways to manipulate them. A no-brainer to match it with Intent Bank, right? You even get to rename the relic, since the label is all smudgy.”

“Lords…” Felix moved to gawk over the grimy bottlem. Could it let him put intent into denizens, relics, other people, or maybe even inert objects? The possibilities overwhelmed him.

“And here, we’ve got a pair.” The Reliquist patted the two ornate clay urns. “Restless Heart and Drifting Thoughts. It’s a pain to store them, so I’ll keep the lids closed. Restless Heart hits you with a pretty heavy compulsion to keep moving. Tho, the upside is it does some conceptual warping around you to make dreams easier to achieve. Good if your dream is surviving.”

“This smaller one’s the Drifting Thoughts. They were from the same denizen. If you can handle one of them, I could let you bind both. Drifting Thoughts makes you fantasize more, but also accelerates your perception of time. One of those relics that’ll make the world look slo-mo.”

Felix detached from the linkworm bottle and approached the urns, studying their labels intently.

The Reliquist lifted the final odd bundle of foil and nails on his lap. “Right then. Last one. This here is a living kicking screaming dreamgnome that’s been copper sealed. Fully sentient. It talks to you with images and such. Has a nasty conceptual ability to pull out other sentient beings’ dreams from their heads and punch ‘em with yours. Damage goes straight through physical defences and hits your brain. This here’s by far the strongest and most dangerous of the five. If this is what you pick, be prepared to work hard binding it.”

Felix pulled back, running fingers over his mouth. “A lot of options.”

“That’s right. It is a lot,” the Reqliquist said proudly.

All of them were leagues above Felix’s current relics. In a perfect world, he would’ve wanted to bind all of them, or take them apart and cook up something new. However, he had plans that didn’t allow him to spend the next few weeks taming a difficult relic.

After moments of pondering, Felix asked, “Could I bind both linkworm and Drifting Thoughts?”

“I’ll say, I wouldn’t recommend. Both of them are conceptually linked to nerves and the brain, so the binding might overlap, unless we shave some bits off to make them compatible. Right now, our relicwrights got better things to do though so… pick one for now. You never know which will be best. So I say trust your guts.”

“Linkworm it is.” ‘Always pick synergy over new ability’, some delver, probably. Felix was pretty sure he had read it somewhere. Besides, he already had an awesome name thought up. Thought Threads.

The Reliquist clapped his hands. “Right then. Pinch your noses kids, you never know what the preservation fluids of these older relics will smell like.”

Felix and Julia clamped their noses shut. It was of little use, when the Reliquist uncorked linkworm’s bottle.

Burning acrid stench crawled up through Felix’s mouth. An itch spread through the front half of his face to his eyes. His vision blurred behind tears.

“Lords!” Julia groaned, retreating.

“Bhrrr!” The Reliquist shivered, wrinkling his nose as he took a sniff. “Stiff stuff. Aight, dip your hand right in and bind it.”

“What? Don’t you have… tongs or something?”

“Do you?” The Reliquist asked back.

“No.”

“Aight. Then we don’t have tongs.”

Felix grumbled under his breath, while trying not to breathe at all. He rolled up his left sleeve, and summoned a year’s worth of bravery. The viscous greasy fluid dented around his arm, tickling Felix’s skin. “It’s itching.”

“Right. Makes sense. It’s a couple decades old.”

“That’s normal? It’s not as if itchy relic goop could be dangerous for my health?” Felix groped around for the linkworm, unable to see it through distorted liquid.

The Reliquist shrugged. “Can’t say I know for sure. You’re couple fingers short of reaching it kid, put your whole arm in there.”

“Lords below…” Felix dipped his arm down to the bicep. The moment the slippery relic brushed against his fingertips, Felix shut his eyes and focused on binding it. As if stuck in mud, the linkworm’s tail resisted his pull. Felix clenched his brows, focusing on the slippery relic until, with a loud slurp, the relic slipped inside his soul. Like Felix’s new armor, it felt a little out of place, unfamiliar, untested.

“Finally!” Felix evacuated his ichor coated arm from the jar.

Around twenty tissues later, Saga came to pick up Felix and Julia to have breakfast at a senior filled mess hall. Oatmeal, beans, and hardened rye bread with a slice of gammelost was the day’s menu.

Felix took note of Julia being refused thirds of the cheese bread. Perfect. Almost too perfect. He slipped his own second slice under the table, and, when nobody was looking, whispered to Bii, “Buddy, I need a favor.”

Bii pinged quietly.

Felix slid the cheese towards him. “Can you pee on this cheese for me?”