Jackson broke the tense silence first.

“Your divine magic should work fine on A.D.A.M. just the same as a body with flesh and blood,” he said, looking down at Ephin kneeling beside the injured and unconscious bodies. “However, he cannot know I’ve been here. He cannot know I am alive.”

“Why should we trust you?” Beth said, standing her ground in front of the grey skinned man. Now that she had an opportunity to get a better look at him, he didn’t look that old at all, possibly as young as Jadon, early to mid-twenties, tusks pushing through his lower lip. A well-cropped beard and a change in attire. Last they had met, the man had clearly not been prepared for a fight, with his torn robes covered in haphazardly placed armor. This time, he had changed into vibrant purple armor, his breastplate emblazoned with a symbol of a ship passing through a doorway.

“Necessity and nothing else,” Jackson said flatly, “I apologize for your friend, but, and this isn’t an excuse by any means, I believed this one,” he pointed at Jadon, “to be a thief. Someone who stole something of great value to me and the realm. Now I realise I was tricked. I have become complacent and unfeeling and the combination of both led to your friend’s death.”

“Our friend’s murder,” Beth said.

“Perhaps. It isn’t the issue right now. That man, is what is known as a chyringa. A shapeshifter. Deadly enough on its own but now it had accomplished something that hasn’t been done in three millennia. It has acquired more than one piece of the Ritual of Unholy Restoration.” Jackson waited for any sign of recognition before continuing. “Look, I’m going to check on the other locations for the other pieces. I only came here as the alarm was triggered when the sculptor’s mannequin was picked up. Take this,” he held out a black coin with a shield on it, “to the Cloudline Arcanium in Gythosin. Say it’s payment for a favor as that’s what it is. It’ll get you home and then you get to work tracking down this chyringa. Hopefully we’ll meet in the middle and end this mess before they manage to get any more pieces. Any questions?”

“That was a lot of information, you realize that?” Beth said, taking the black coin for the Cloudline Arcanium from Jackson and pocketing it.

“I haven’t spoken to another person in a little while.”

“I just have one question,” Jadon said from the floor. “Who are you?”

“Like I said, Jackson. Good luck.”

With that, the man’s eyes shone light blue, a circle appeared at his feet and he was sucked into the ground and out of sight.

“Can I heal him now?” Ephin asked, still bent over A.D.A.M.’s limp body.

Beth nodded, moving to make sure Guy was okay. His head had bled a little but the helmet had taken the worst of the damage.

After a short while, everyone was healed up enough to walk and Ephin was drained of enough energy that he needed help to get to his feet.

“How are you feeling?” Beth asked A.D.A.M. as he stretched out to loosen up his joints a little.

“I’ve had worse. My ego took more of a hit than I did.”

“Well, you fight better than most three-thousand-year-olds I meet,” Jadon joked.

“Not well enough. I have no idea where this guy would have gotten to. Unfortunately, this is the only item in the collection I knew the location of, and I failed an old friend by letting it go.”

“We have our course of action and a plan to find this person, hopefully before it’s too late,” Beth said, “what will you do?”

“Stay here and figure out how to secure the other items in the vault now that I know it’s been compromised. I don’t even know how he got in.” A.D.A.M.’s face didn’t change at all, but Beth could feel the embarrassment steaming off of him. He wanted to get even.

“We’ll figure it out. We’ll find him and we’ll let you know when we do, if you want to help finish the job?” Beth asked.

“Oh, I want to,” A.D.A.M. said, “no doubt about that. Realistically, though, my fighting days are long gone. I only took him on out of necessity. To protect what I have been tasked to protect.”

“Necessity,” Beth said, “funny.”

“What is?” A.D.A.M. asked, cocking his head slightly as if missing a joke.

“Nothing. Don’t mind me,” Beth said, “we should be going though, it’s a long way and I feel like we have a deadline that we don’t know the cut-off point to.”

“Damn right you do,” A.D.A.M. said, “if this person gets all these items he’s collecting, he could break the barriers that the rupture war was fought to create. The peace we have known for the past few thousand years will be undone in an instant.”

“Peace? There are always wars going on,” Beth said.

“On this realm maybe. Imagine if all the other realms were given an open door right into our realm. Devils, demons, monsters of all kinds, designed specifically for war and to kill people like you. Many of them won’t just kill you. They’ll harvest your soul, so that you can serve them for eternity. That’s what awaits everyone if they manage to succeed in what they’re beginning. The heroes are all long dead. Who’s willing to take their place?”

The walk back to the underground crossroads was just as cold as before, however, none of the group truly felt the biting winds. The amount of information they had been saddled with, who they had met and what they were now caught up in was becoming scarily apparent.

Guy kept enough wits about himself to keep an eye out for dangers, in case the chyringa returned to end them on the mountainside. It did not. Instead, the group had to dive for cover and partially bury themselves in snow to avoid the gaze of a huge, scaled beast flying overhead. They all agreed on it being a dragon, however it was yellow, not a color that was in any book Iarkspur or Beth had read.

They all waited until it was safely out of their eye line and earshot, and then waited some more.

Eventually, the group found themselves back in front of the signs, at the base of the staircase. The steps were just as difficult to descend as they were to climb, due to having to let yourself down each large step without losing balance and falling the countless feet to a messy landing.

“So, this way to Gythosin?” Jadon said, “but it says Griffindon?”

“Well, that’s at least closer to the name than Krotreo,” Ephin said, reading the other sign in the sparse draco that he knew. As a priest in training, Ephin had to study many old or dead languages to better read the older texts, instead of the filtered modern versions. Draco, language of the dragons, was one of these older languages.

“I say we take a shot and go for Griffindon. Perhaps Gythosin is nearby?” Guy said, shrugging.

The others agreed, with little other reason to argue against going that way.

The tunnel under the mountain was long, uneventful and dull. Jadon saw a couple off shoots from the main path. Possibly to other underground towns, such as Kimmington, but he figured it was safer to still assume they were to burrows of deadly beasts. He kept his hands rested on the handles of his daggers, just in case.

“I have a request,” Iarkspur said to the quiet group as they traveled. “I know you said that these magic people have the means to send us anywhere, and that High Morr would be a good place to begin searching for this guy. I have a different plan, if you would like to hear it?”

“We aren’t exactly hearing anything else down here,” Jadon mumbled.

“We ask them to send us as close to my home as possible. In Urkeoaes.”

“Why the heck would we do that?” Beth laughed. “If I figured it was worth it, I’d be asking them to send us to my home, not yours.”

“Arledge lived nearby to me, and I’ve seen my matrons bring beings back from the dead. He also knew something about what Douglas was looking for in Urkeoaes.”

“You want to bring Arledge back from the dead?” Guy asked.

“Yes. Beth, you said Davistone said ‘two down’. If we count the sword and the brush, then he never found what was in the forest, right? Arledge knows what was in the forest.”

“But bringing anything back from the dead isn’t exactly kind,” Ephin said, “Arledge’s entire family is with him and you wish to take that away from him for a second time?”

“It was just a thought,” Iarkspur said.

“And a valid one,” Beth hastened to pat Iarkspur’s shoulder to comfort her a little.

“My matrons may also be able to put us on the right path to finding this person. They are quite good at divination.”

“I get it, you want to go home,” Jadon said. “Don’t we all?”

We can help you come back.

Just long for it enough.

When the time is right.

You will be home again.

The voices tore through Iarkspur’s head for a split second. The voices of her matrons. She lost her footing and put a hand out to balance against the tunnel wall before completely falling over.

“Are you okay?” Guy asked, trying to look in her eyes for any signs of health complications. Iarkspur gently pushed him away as the dizziness faded.

“I’m good. Not sure what came over me.”

When the light came, every member of the party was grateful for the sun. Unfiltered by snow clouds and no need for everflames, they took in the afternoon sun and allowed a smile to crack wide on each of their faces. To their right, there were a couple hundred metres of flat land before a sheer cliff drop-off. Bright blue seas extended past the cliff. The mountain range they were just under pushed out further to the right, causing an unorthodox right angle of land where the cliffs hit the mountains, cutting off easy access to the country beyond the mountains, a place simply known as Crend. Beth could see from her book that they had now officially passed into Araven. Squinting ahead, she could see Griffindon, perched by the sea, overlooking the cliffs.

“We have at least a few days walking to make it all the way to Griffindon, or Gythosin, or whatever that place is,” Beth said, holding the book out like a dousing rod and walking ahead of the others.

Three long days of walking across grassy hills, watching the city grow closer and larger, watching the cliffs stay upright and the seas keep churning. Jadon found it almost as boring as the tunnel.

Looking up at the city walls now as they approached the southern gate, Jadon figured it was worth it. There was a slight mound to the city, with some of the buildings on the surface being built to overlook the others, the closer to the center of the city they reached. However, they could not find any building that went by the name of the Cloudline Arcanium. One helpful passer-by told Guy that there was a Cliffbit Arcanium instead, so the group followed the directions in an attempt to find this organisation.

They went down a flight of stairs, all tense as it seemed very much like a trap. That was when they saw the true gem of Griffindon. Whilst there were a few modest buildings on the surface, to give the impression of a normal city, as the group made their way below ground, they saw all manner of impressive structures, all jutting out of rock pillars, the cavern sinking too far down for the group to see. There were bridges and paths creating a spiderweb of interlocking paths to reach each building.

Beth couldn’t figure out if this was a dwarven built masterpiece or not, as the underground ingenuity lent itself to the dwarves, but not a single architectural or design choice matched with what she knew of them. It was as if they were looking at the inverse of a city, building down, not up.

Guy flagged down yet another passing pedestrian and whilst they didn’t know the way to the Cliffbit Arcanium, they did point the group to the signage system.

At each crossroads of more than two dimensions, there was a tall post, littered with labelled arrows, pointing to a variety of close-by buildings of importance or interest. More than two dimensions as the paths and bridges overlapped and converged seemingly randomly from different levels, sometimes causing extra side paths to be built to get around one bridge being built directly onto another one.

The first signpost that they saw had what must have been thirty or more arrows, so the group all took a portion and began searching for the Cliffbit Arcanium. They searched like this on three more signposts before Jadon spotted it, nestled in between a sign for a bakery and another for a doctor’s office.

After such a long trip to reach the city, followed by the hours of looking around the city to find the building, everyone walked as quickly as they could, without breaking into a jog, to find themselves at the stark white double doors with the modest white sign, with the words Cliffbit Arcanium written on it in black print.

“Ready to finally get home?” Jadon said to Ephin from the back of the group, pricking the ears of both Iarkspur and Beth.

Home

Yes, Home.

Come Home, child.

Child

Iarkspur tensed up, upon hearing the voices again, but kept her footing. She gained a concerned glance from Beth, but nobody else noticed.

Guy stepped forward and knocked on one of the white doors. Before he had finished the third knock, the door opened and a young elf, looking the same age as Beth, but probably older than the entire group put together, greeted them.

“Welcome to the home of the Arcane here in Araven, how may we help you?” The young elf said, smiling pleasantly up at the group.

Beth didn’t really know what to say, so she held out the black coin in a flat palm, the shield facing upwards.

“My apologies, I don’t quite understand. I’ll just go and fetch-” The elf ran off, leaving the door ajar.

Jadon inched closer to try and get a peek inside when the door swung open once more, revealing a much older looking human. He had long white hair going down the sides of his head and into side burns that reached down to his waist. He was bald apart from these stringy side tassels of hair.

“Please, come in. We apologize for the wait,” the old man said, turning to allow the group inside. Once everybody was in the foyer of the Arcanium, the older man continued, “How may we be of service?”

“The coin is payment for a favor. We would like to make use of your arcane means to aid us in returning home to High Morr,” Beth said rigidly, as if she had been practicing the words in her head on the way.

“Of course, of course. If you follow Keiexirel here, he can show you to our teleportation room. Think strongly of where you wish to go and it will send you there, upon this realm of course. Unfortunately, you did only provide one coin, so it is one teleportation for the lot of you, so have a decision ready for you all.” The old man bowed slightly and indicated for the young elf to take the reins of the group.

The interior of the Arcanium was overwhelmingly white. Every bit of furniture was white, even the everflames glowed white. The people working there only seemed to wear blue robes, however that at least helped differentiate them from everything else in the building, so that they weren’t just bobbing heads.

Keiexirel led the group through a white door into a white corridor of white doors. He led everyone through door after door, each one revealing an identical corridor, even those that seemed to go back on previous corridors. He stopped at a room simply marked TR.

“In here you will find a circle. Once you have decided your destination, all please step into the circle at the same time and you will experience the wonder of teleportation,” he said, opening the door and turning to leave.

“Keirexirex?” Beth said quickly, “I just have a couple questions.”

“Not my name, but go ahead, how can I help?”

“Sorry. Um, we were sent to find Gythosin and the Cloudline Arcanium. Instead we found this place and you. Why would that be?”

“I am not sure who was sending you, likely they were having a little joke at your expense, apart from the coin you possessed. This city has not been called Gythosin for at least a millennium or more. The Arcanium stopped going by its Cloudline title shortly after the mountain collapsed.”

“Mountain?” Iarkspur asked.

“Yes, Gythosin used to be built atop, and inside, a mountain. Its original version was attacked and destroyed around the same time as the Rupture War. Anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Beth said, her eyebrows fighting to furrow even more.

“Shall we get going?” Beth said to the group.

“Finally,” Jadon agreed.

They all walked into the large room, it was also white, but had deep blue carvings all around the walls, ceiling and floor. Various symbols and lines connecting them, all converging towards a large circle in the center of the room.

“To High Morr?” Beth said.

“To home,” Jadon agreed.

Home

Home

Home

Home

Iarkspur nodded. Everyone else nodded.

They took a breath in unison.

And stepped into the circle.