Time passed in peace as they continued, an occasional comment exchanged, but it wasn’t long until they were all curled up in the dust, trying to fall asleep, hoping, for all their luck, that they might get an uninterrupted rest period and wake up without having to run away for the third time.

Dominic was the first to wake, his fingers stretched out, clenching tightly around the wood of his bow, assuring himself that he still could, that the magic responded, and responded to him. It wasn’t a conscious thought, it wasn’t a deliberate move. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when he opened his eyes and saw the bow and quiver safely resting beside him. The grain of the wood, the warm brown hue and perfect curvature didn’t even seem to blur before he put on his glasses, as if his mind simply conjured the image and placed it there.

And wasn’t that just the perfect joke? An archer with glasses.

Dominic sighed as he rose, brushing the coarse dust from his hair. The magic may have chosen him, but now he had to earn it, now he had to become worthy of being chosen to wield it. It was a thought that made his stomach do backflips and his palms start to sweat.

What if he wasn’t worthy? What if he messed up too much, and it rejected him? If one day he woke up and he could no longer touch it, like Corey had described?

He had to earn it, which meant he had to be able to use it.

With that thought guiding him, Dominic rose to his feet, grabbing the quiver and strapping it over his shoulder, with quivering fingers. He needed to practice! He needed to become the best archer that had ever been and he couldn’t do that if he’d only fired one shot, and over a lake no less! He needed…

He needed a target. Dominic frowned as he looked around at the crystalline walls that surrounded them, pristine and without so much as a divot for him to use as a bullseye. Maybe he could go down the tunnels a little further? It's not like he wouldn't still be in line of sight out his friends, since everything was so light around here. Not to mention that if there was something dangerous nearby, Natalie would have woken up by now.

With this in mind, he moved with quiet steps down the passage, going in the direction they'd come from, further reassuring himself that they know it's safe down this way. He could always just shoot down a side passage, one of the ones they passed earlier. Yeah. That's what he'll do.

Excited to see the magic of his quiver in action, Dominic picked up his pace until he was nearly jogging. A couple minutes was all he needed at this pace before he thought he'd gained enough distance to not disturb his friends. He then shrugged off the quiver, laying it on the ground beside his feet before pulling an arrow from it, feeling a thrill in the pit of his stomach, an intense satisfaction at the way it felt when he drew the string back to his ear.

It was almost too easy. He hadn't noticed last time in his excitement, but it was the strangest thing. Like there was no draw weight at all, yet he could feel the power in the weapon, ready to be released. A power and decision that belonged only to him. Breathing quickly, he let the arrow fly.

Down the corridor, it went about ten feet before skipping off of the crystal wall. He scowled after it, and fired another down the passage, growling when the second also went wild. Embittered by his inability to fire straight, Dominic didn't even look to see the empty spaces in the quiver shiver and warp as the arrows reappeared in them.

A couple more shots yielded similar results as his frustration only grew, and with no training, no one to tell him that his excited state is what was causing his aim to be so dramatically off. In a show of temper, after the final shot, he threw the bow down the passage, where it landed with a puff of dust.

Dominic’s scowl faded as he stared at it for a few moments, shame starting to take the place of anger, and his cheeks flushed. Grabbing the quiver and slinging it over his shoulder, he retrieved the weapon, now covered in a fine layer of dust, and with slumped shoulders, started back to his friends. As he walked, he dwelled in black thoughts.

He was stupid. He should never have tried to fire the bow.

He was weak. That’s why it didn’t work.

He was never going to be good enough, and if he didn’t accept that now, his friends would die if they were foolish enough to trust him for protection.

In his misery, he didn’t notice the low fog ahead of him, barely knee high, but dense and impossible to see through, now solidly between himself and where his friends were, presumably, still sleeping. Five feet away, an unknown voice called out from behind him, “Stop!”

Whirling, Dominic nearly tripped over his feet in his shock. A woman was there, a nice, normal human woman, perhaps in her mid twenties. Well, normal was a matter of speaking, as she wore a chainmail shirt over over her long sleeved shirt, and soft, loose leather pants. Not to mention the sword strapped at her hip, its hilt and scabbard decorated with glowing veins of some sort of vibrant teal gemstone inlaid into a silvery metal.

Gawking openly, the bemused boy flinched as she cried, “Move! Come to me, get away from the mist!”

Dominic’s heart sounded in his ears, the obvious fear in her voice sending him skittering towards the woman and she nodded with approval, her calming as she got closer and turning her attention to the unknown threat behind him, raising hands, which Dominic could now see were covered in tattoos that had the same sort of glow that came from her sword.

The glow in her palms flashed, making Dominic shout in pain as he found himself blinded by the glow, bright even in such a well lit area, he reeled off to the side and into a wall, covering his watering eyes and left to sit and wonder what was going as he heard a hiss from the direction he’d been walking in, like water coming into contact with fire, and lots of it.

A solid minute later, the pain in his eyes lessened enough that he was able to move his hands from his eyes, blinking and squinting to try and see a little clearer as the female moved past him and towards the fog, where she knelt down and seemed to be drawing something in the dust, but he couldn’t see anything more than that.

Whatever it was, she finished it quickly before looking back at Dominic, smiling apologetically when she saw him looking at her. “I am sorry, little one.” her inflection and accent were completely foreign to his ears, as her words pitched low and seemed to put emphasis on the wrong syllables.

“I did not think to warn you to close your eyes. When I saw you were going to walk into the rift, I panicked.”

Still in shock, but at least mostly recovered from the brilliant flash of light, Dominic could only ask, “What was that?”

The question was met with a small frown and she cocked her head to the side, remaining where she drew in the dust, as if to reassure him with her distance, “Has no one told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“About the rifts, the rips between this world and…” she trailed off at the look of total bewilderment on Dominic’s face and shook her head, asking in disbelief, “How long have you been here?”

Dominic’s brow furrowed, as he thought about it. Like Natalie, he’d lost track of time, between the short bursts of rest, and forgetting to check his pocketwatch as regularly in his excitement with his bow, the boy had no idea of how much time had gone by anymore, and he could only shrug, “A few days, I think.”

The woman’s eyes widened, flicking from his face to his bow, then back, prompting Dominic to ask, “Why? What does it matter? Natalie said we have a week to get back to the surface, do you know any way up?”

“You are not alone?” she asked, a cautious relief in her voice, and Dominic shook his head, now getting a true look of immense relief, “Good. Good! May I meet them? I have information that you must know. Survival down here is difficult at the best of times, and the best of times are not when one first begins their journey! Please, I swear by my sword, I will bring you and your friends no harm.”

Dominic, still staring at her in growing fascination, noticed that the glowing veins on the weapon flashed as she spoke the oath, sending his curiosity into overdrive. Natalie would kill him, but the stranger had just saved his life...