The Old Regal Spire was like a guiding star through the forest. The evil shape in the distance, always overhead, was a beacon to set any traveler on her course. From town they’d seen its jagged heights framed against the backdrop of Thermopos Mountain’s cloud-shrouded peaks; now, beneath the canopy overhead, it was more of a cool metal moon, a distant gray blob that grew larger hour by hour, until come dusk they emerged from the tree line, and finally they saw it in all its up-close glory.

One hundred storeys. Black bricks for a base. An enormous slab of metal for a door, with no apparent hinges or knob. The uneven black steel of the walls looked like a candle down the sides of which cried beads of wax, now frozen with the fire burned out. Like there could be some infernal wick at the tower’s top that once burned to provide light for all the surrounding lands.

For all Eris knew, that may well have been this tower’s purpose. That ignited her passions. She desperately needed to know what was inside such a place. She desperately needed it for herself.

They were about twenty feet off from the door. On all the trees that surrounded the Spire hung large, fresh apples. The ranchgirl, Lina, examined one such fruit, while the farmboy, Algis, stared at the tower with his mouth open and head craned upward.

“Think they've got stairs?” he said.

Eris glanced at him. He was a slender young man of about fifteen with a too-large bronze helmet and a spear, which he clung to like a pitchfork. She found herself possessed with an urge to stand far off from him.

“I could scale the outside,” Lina said.

“That I would like to see,” Eris said.

“I could!”

There was an apple in her hand, but seeing plenty more she decided to drop it for the time being. Lina was short and poorly dressed; Eris thought her much too thin and considered her complexion muddled, but then one could expect nothing more from a peasant. Her only weapon was a dagger in her belt, which was, in fact, a kitchen knife, and not a dagger at all.

“I will not stop you,” Eris replied. Lina studied the tower. First with confidence, then with visible deflation. She took one step forward, then stayed still. “How easily confidence is dispelled.”

“What do we do?” Algis said. A cry out to the skies for guidance.

“Let’s try the front door,” Rook’s voice came. The final member of their brave group. He stepped forward from the trees to disrupt their congregation. He was clad in rags as the rest of them, and no older than Eris, but he carried himself differently, and the fact he had brought with him his own sword—made of steel—inspired a certain degree of confidence. More appealing, too, Eris thought, in the tall and virile sense of gladiators and war captains.

“How sensible,” she said.

“Jeeze,” Algis said again. Eris rolled her eyes. “You know—you know there’s laws against going into places like this? Oldwalls, they chop your head off if they know you’ve been inside—”

Rook was at the door now. Eris pursued. It was forged from black steel and had no handle except a cylindrical rune-etched bar that ran down its center, which looked solid enough to grasp.

Lina followed to the door. “It might be trapped. What does that say?” She pointed to the runes.

Rook glanced at Eris, who felt a tug of smug gratification. She reached her hand out and touched the symbols. They were inert: magical symbols, spent. “It does not ‘say’ anything, it is a spell. But whatever magic was held within these runes, it is held no longer. They are nothing but pictures now.”

Rook tugged the bar. It was heavy, but he pulled harder and it budged an inch, then a foot. Suddenly it lurched forward, as if on invisible wheels, and stopped—then slid to the side. A dark hallway was revealed beyond. Wide, with a low ceiling. No windows.

Now Algis finally pursued. He was shivering. The tip of his spear bouncing on the shaft’s lever.

Rook grabbed it to still it. “Are you all right?” he said softly.

“I don’t know,” Algis said. “What if they find out…even just going in, even if we don’t take anything, you know…”

“You can keep watch outside while we go in.”

Eris scoffed. “You do not intend to share whatever we find within this place with a guard dog who waits outside, do you? That is not why we brought him along.”

“Yeah,” Lina said with gathering confidence, “why shouldn’t he have to risk anything?”

“I’ll split my share with him,” Rook said. “Yours can stay one third. Will that make you happy?”

“It makes me unhappy to know I am travelling with two fools instead of one,” Eris replied. Rook’s appeal was fading rapidly. “But no matter.” She glanced down the hall. “Perhaps we should investigate the premises ere we proceed?”

“That’s safer,” Lina agreed.

Rook found this notion agreeable, too, so together the four explored the Spire’s outer premises. The eastern premises near the forest were largely unmolested; in that direction there was a wall that extended outward from the Spire's circular base, shooting off for miles out into the hills. To the west, heading clockwise around the tower, a number of trees were cut down, and everywhere on the ground were strewn apple cores.

They came presently to a campsite. A burned out fire at its center. Two bedrolls. Two bodies. Eris froze when she saw them, but they were more frozen still.

“Are they go?” Algis said.

Rook approached. “Are you okay?” he called.

Eris folded her arms. Wise men, when confronted with corpses, might think to search first for threats; as the sole wise woman present, she alone was forced to take this course of action. She saw nothing. The forests of Rytus were as calm as they were green on that warm spring day—yet alertness never brought destruction. Carelessness, on the other hand…

Rook kneeled down at the bodies and turned them onto their sides. Bodies they were indeed. Lina drew her kitchen knife, while Algis lingered at the Spire.

“They’re dead,” Rook said.

Now Eris approached to get a look. They were two men, boys really, but their bodies had no obvious wounds.

“What killed them?” Lina said.

Rook shrugged. He dragged his hands down the larger boy’s neck; his fingers snagged on a rope, and he pulled a small cube, like a die, from beneath the boy’s shirt. He pulled it off and tossed it to Eris. It was heavier than it looked. Cut from some strange stone, with Regal script etched across its edges. She looked it over, but slipped it away into a pocket when he said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Lina said.

“No fight. Looks like they all just went to sleep,” Rook said.

“They must’ve been poisoned!” Algis said. When Eris looked his way once more she saw he had an apple off a nearby tree in his hand; and looking down, she once again saw the sea of apple cores surrounding them.

A connection apparent to her was not so apparent to her companion. She decided to say nothing and see what happened.

“Wait!” Rook said. “I’ve heard the Spires and the Oldwalls can bear curses. You have rations still, don’t you?”

Algis dropped the apple. He nodded. “Aw, you think, I didn’t even—well, I—are you…”

“It’s okay,” Lina said. She gave the bodies one more look over; the smaller boy had an armband around his shoulder, partially silver, which she promptly took for herself. “Here. We’ll be able to sell this.”

“You’re going to steal that?” Algis said.

Rook shrugged. “He doesn’t need it. Let’s look around for anything else we can take.”

“I won’t be able to sleep at night after stealing from two dead boys—" Algis started.

“My conscience, on the other hand, is unburdened already,” Eris said. She began back toward the Spire’s entrance while her companions looted the campsite. The treasures she pursued were unlikely to be discovered outside the ancient, cursed ruins.

She pulled the cube back out from her pocket and examined it more closely. Any student at the Tower of Pyrthos needed to know Regal, and bad student as she had been, this was one topic she learned well. The writing read ‘Keystone: Dakru.’

Having found nothing more of interest but a handful of copper coins, they all rendezvoused at the Spire’s door. Eris retrieved a pair of torches from her backpack.

She held her hand to the pitch.

Closed her eyes.

It was as simple as pulling breath into her lungs. Even simpler. She only had to focus…

Her fingers tingled. Static electricity in the air around her hand. The air felt solid; there was a spark, then a flare of heat. When she opened her eyes the torch had lit itself.

Her spell worked. She smiled. With the flame from one torch she lit the other, then handed it to Rook. He smiled back at her. She didn’t show it, but her heart was pounding. Even something so simple could have gone so wrong, and if it had, she would have looked a terrible fool in front of her companions.

They stepped over the threshold into the Spire. True to his word, Algis stayed at the door. “I’ll be watching!” he said. “Right here!”

The walls of the hall were painted with red and yellow lines: one to the left, one to the right. They both led down a path to the right, down into the walls themselves that funneled toward the mountains east, but in the spire proper they were connected to a central door at the far end of the hall.

The trio walked carefully. It was dark even with their torches raised. Before investigating the central hall they tried a door to the left of the front entrance; it pulled open, just as the last, and beyond they saw a square, low-ceilinged room lined with racks of armor and weaponry. Shelf after shelf: suits of iron, steel, chain, and helmets; swords, arrows, spears, and shields. Enough for a dozen soldiers.

Lina’s eyes flashed within the torchlight. “My brother is a blacksmith—do you know what a dwarf would pay for so much steel? It’s unheard of! It’s practically—we’re rich already!”

“Be careful,” Rook said, but he had excitement on his voice, too.

Eris held a hand near one of the suits of armor. As an inducted magician, she was Manaseared—she had mana in her veins, magic that would pulse at the presence of an enchantment or an illusion. This was no illusion. But…this place was infused with magic, no doubt. More than anywhere else she had been, even the tower. So she kept her hands to herself. And…

Lina screamed in agony. Rook grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her away from a sword on the wall; she had grabbed it by its hilt, and the metal, what looked like metal, had turned instantly to molten lava. It now oozed in the shape of a hand’s grip down to the ground, where it sizzled and burned.

She sobbed a tear of pain.

While Rook comforted the injured girl, Eris continued her survey. The metal was cool—it radiated no heat—but when prodded with anything, a stick, a canteen, a cloth, it disintegrated like putrefied flesh.

Once the sobbing had stopped Eris said, “There is a reason why places like this are left unraided.”

“With our luck we’ll find their treasury and all the gold will be molten,” Rook said.

“With her luck, perhaps.”

Lina’s hand was wrapped in a makeshift bandage. “I’ll be okay. Let’s find something and get out of here.”

There was another room adjacent to this one, which Rook entered into cautiously with his torch raised. Within lingered the faintest traces of six bunkbeds. It was a barracks, perhaps, an eternity ago, but it was since picked clean. A small gap in the wall let in a trace amount of light from outside; they must have missed a hole in the wall when scouting around the Spire’s outskirts.

“This is hopeless,” Linda groaned, “we’re never going to find anything here! Why did we come…”

“We’ll find something worth selling. Let’s try the other door,” Rook said.

Back into the hallway, they followed the lines on the walls to another large door. This one, when tugged, remained sealed shut. The runes on its cylindrical bar glowed blue.

“See,” Eris pointed, “the spell is still active. ‘tis locked. We will need a key.”

“Can’t you cast a spell to open it?” Rook said.

“That is not how—wait,” she remembered then the cube they had found. “I have seen doors like this one before, at Pyrthos. They work remotely: the key can open them from afar. It may be this is the right one.” She held the cube to the door and tugged on the cylinder, and…

Nothing.

“Great,” Lina said.

Eris raised her torch. Along the wall, the blue line led down another hall, toward one last door that was already ajar. “Look. We have found where soldiers were stationed; if we are lucky, we may yet find where soldiers were paid.”

At the end of the hall they found a domed room with a higher ceiling than the others. A single bed, well-preserved, was against the far wall; beside it was a large mirror, foggy but intact, and a chest. On the bed was a beautiful purple robe. A tall marble statue stood opposite from the door; he wore intricate carved armor, bore a spear and shield, and wore a high plumed helmet. He stared into what Eris recognized instantly to be a spell-sealed vault. It made up the entirety of one of the room’s walls.

“The commander’s bedroom,” Rook said.

“The commander,” Eris said, nodding toward the robes.

Rook drew his sword and poked the robes. Finding them to be solid, he looked through them; a cascade of ash fell from the fabric, and with it another slab of rock. This one was uneven, triangular in cut, and larger than the last; its inscription read Magister Alekaneraz Assumes Control.

“I think we have found the key,” Eris said.

“Kind of him to die so nearby,” Rook said. With a great deal of caution they searched the remainder of the room; they found nothing further, except what was already there. “Can you pick the lock on the chest?”

Lina shrugged. “I can try.”

With one hand, Eris thought, even the farmer would have better luck. While their burglar attempted the deed she turned her attention elsewhere. First, the mirror. Eris never wasted the opportunity to look at herself, and even in dim torchlight she found time to admire her features. She straightened her cloak, pulled back her hair, and felt confident again that if the men in their party were to be leering at anyone, it would be her, not Lina. There was some satisfaction in that thought.

Then she turned her attention to the vault.

An arch carved out a vaguely door-shaped silhouette in the black masonry of the room and the Spire as a whole. The stones within its arched area were tan, not black, and much smaller than elsewhere throughout the Oldwalls so far surveyed. A number of small animals were painted onto its face: a chariot, two horses, a bear, and a lion. They were jumbled and arranged up and down the wall in no particular order.

She reached out to touch it.

Her fingers found the painting of one of the horses, and it ignited blue. Suddenly the whole of the wall oozed light, and when she slid her finger across the bricks, the depiction of the horse moved with it.

Rook moved toward her to investigate. “It’s a puzzle.”

“A combination lock.”

“So what’s the combination?”

“That is easy. It is…”

The horses went after the chariot. That, at least, seemed obvious. She remembered something about bears and lions in classes on Old Kingdom symbology, but such things had not, at the time, seemed incredible in their significance to her ambitions.

Man rode on chariots. Man commanded horses. Man pursued bears. Bears pursued lions. A bear was a more fearsome creature than a lion, surely? She felt confident in her line of reasoning, so with her finger she slid the symbols into place: chariot, horse, bear, lion.

The wall flashed blue, and nothing happened. Until...

Lina screamed.

Rook and Eris both turned in an instant. Behind them they saw the statue, the marble statue, tall and proud and white and polished, perfectly stolid, an avatar of a people long since extinct--

Its stone shoulders rolled.

Its stone spear lowered.

Its stone shield raised.

The stone came to life, and the statue stepped off its pedestal.

Lina, still at the chest, lockpick in her hand, was closest by. She scurried away. The pick clattered on the ground and she made it to the door; just as she turned to face the statue, still far off from her; it raised its spear, and it threw it like a javelin. A hundred pounds of stone flew straight at her. She ducked but only too late--

The chiseled tip impaled her through the gut. She cried out for help, then she gurgled, and then...silence.

Rook had been dazed by the sight, but now he was driven to action. He drew his sword and rushed to Lina's side. He raised the blade and slashed the statue across its torso as it retrieved its spear: the cut did nothing. Then the statue turned and thrust at him, and only through quick reflexes did he manage to deflect the blow and jump out of the way.

“Eris!” he shouted. She had been dazed, too, stunned by the enchantment that still held even after all these years. Now called back to the peril at hand, she acted on instinct. She did precisely what she had always told herself she would when thrust into mortal danger: she focused on the air around her, drawing energy into her fingertips, preparing to let forth a burst of fire at her foe—

An anemic gust of embers shot from her fingertips. Rook and the statue both were showered, but neither noticed.

She noticed. She had worked too quickly. She wasn’t practiced enough with the spell. The effort had knocked the wind out of her; she doubled over onto the ground, nauseated, and all the while fight between Rook and the statue raged on.

There was nothing Rook could do. It was a dance, and if he missed a step, he would be crushed. He ducked beneath the swinging shield and dodged beneath the thrusting spear, and when Eris looked up she saw him take a hit from the statue’s shield across the head, knocking him down to the ground.

She threw up. The world around her spinning.

Rook collapsed.

The statue turned its attention toward her. Walking slowly, step by step, thundering in her direction…

It raised its spear and she rolled out of the way just in time. She jumped to her feet, over toward Rook; he was alive, only knocked out, and she screamed at him to get up. But the statue kept up its approach, and he didn’t move, so she sprinted out toward the door—

It closed in her face. She heard air rush behind her head. She dodged just in time to see the point of the spear soar over her. She crawled on hands and feet to the bed, then under it. Again the point of the spear came down, this time through the mattress. She gasped, inhaling a millennium’s worth of dust—

She remembered. The Magister’s keystone. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Magister’s keystone, the carved stone that fell from the robes on the bed, just as she rolled to avoid yet another thrust through the mattress.

The statue’s shield dropped.

Its chiseled marble fingers reached down to grab the bed’s frame.

Tightened.

Lifted. Throwing the mattress over its top. Over Eris’ head, revealing her from her hiding space. The statue lifted its spear for a final thrust just as Rook behind it stirred—

Eris held out the keystone and shouted, “Alekaneraz assumes control!”

Rook froze.

The statue stopped.

The whole room fell silent save for rapid breath.

No one moved an inch.

Eris collapsed down to the floor for a long time. Her head still spinning. She coughed, and only after half her lungs had been expelled onto the cold stones of the floor had she risen back up to her feet.

Rook rocked upward. Clutching his head. Blood seeping through his fingers. But he didn't waste time on himself. Once he had recomposed himself, he crawled to Lina and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Lina,” he whispered.

Eris limped toward them.

Lina bled torrents from the spear wound in her stomach. She was limp in Rook’s arms. He held her like a slain lover, cradled; Eris could regard the scene with nothing but confusion. She didn't understand the gesture. She couldn't comprehend why this man would act in such a way with a girl he hardly knew. A girl he didn't know at all.

And yet...

She did feel something. Guilt, for her own foolishness. Shame, for her own failure. And...realization, for how swift and deadly and brutal the consequences for a small mistake could be in a place like this. This was no easy path to power. This time she was lucky. This time someone else would bear the consequences for her failings. She wondered if next time she might be so lucky.

Eris would not mourn Lina, but she would never forget that sight.

It was only after a long time in silence that Rook let her body go and struggled back to her feet.

There was only one thing to do.

Eris proceeded back to the puzzle on the wall. She swapped the position of the lion and the bear, and sure enough the border of the door’s silhouette began to glow. An instant later the bricks before her vanished completely, revealing a small vault lined with ancient valuables.

One last glance over their shoulders back at the carnage in the room behind. And then...

They wasted no time. Their backpacks were stuffed with gold and silver coins to the point of overflowing; that alone would be enough to get them through the month, if not longer, in Vandens. There was also a jade bracelet which hummed with magic when Eris drew near; she put it on without hesitation.

“We can get back to Vandens before midnight,” Rook said quietly.

“You know I cannot go back yet.”

“Can you carry more?”

“I did not come all this way for gold alone,” she said. A weak voice betrayed the confidence of her words.

A long pause as Rook considered the words. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Eris echoed. She had thought he would abandon her. She was ready for it. She was expecting it. If she was in his position, she would never stay.

He nodded. “Let’s not waste time.”

As a child in Katharos, Eris had seen bodies in the streets. She had seen men and women die. But to see a woman, a girl her age, be killed…yet there was nothing to be done for it. They left her in that place where she fell, and they did not look back.

Until...

"Wait," Eris said.

She doubled back to Lina. A moment of reflection over the girl's body...

She took the silver armband from her bicep and put it on.

Then, with backpacks heavy and jangling with coins, they made their way back to the locked door.

It opened with a single tug on its bar. The keystone in Eris’ hand hummed, then went silent.

Beyond the door was a circular antechamber with a ceiling higher than the light from their torches could reach. Complicated runes were etched across the ground between the threshold where they stood and an elevated pedestal about ten feet into the room. All around was an iron ring an inch high. Painted rainbow-colored lines ran down each of the walls in columns, all a different shade: yellow, blue, red, the same lines seen leading into the Magister’s room, the same lines leading out into the Oldwalls. They transitioned from the walls and to the ground, then converged at the pedestal.

Eris placed her backpack down near the door. She slowly approached the pedestal. At its center was a slot for a small cube, like a die.

The boy’s necklace from outside.

She still felt nauseous and her skin still tingled with needle-points, but she steeled herself, and with a glance back at Rook she found him approving. And she was desperate to know what this place did—what it was—what would happen when the Spire was activated.

So she placed the cube into its slot.

A hiss.

A flash of light.

Immediately, a blue portal ignited at the far end of the room. The lines along the walls began to glow in their respective colors, casting enough light throughout the room to see clearly without the need of their torches.

Through the portal was darkness.

“Are you going through?” Rook said.

Eris hesitated. “Yes,” she said.

“You shouldn’t.”

She didn’t answer. She stepped forward. She held the torch up; its light was reflected back toward her, but on the other side she saw the faint twinkling of stars. This led outside. Or…

Up.

She went through.

On the other side a fresh breeze collided against her like a statue’s spear. Crisp air more delicious than pure water flooded into her lungs. She gasped, and in an instant her nausea was dispelled. She stood there, gasping, torch in hand, for a long time.

It was even longer before she noticed the moon overhead. Bright, shining, full, illuminating the land in every direction, a hundred miles around. The moonlight caught against the shoreline off beyond the town of Vandens, and even Eris had to admit that this was a sight more beautiful than she was.

She was on top of the Spire.

She walked to the edge.

Looking down…

A thousand foot drop, or maybe a thousand miles. The difference was the same. Vertigo overcame her.

She stepped back.

In the center of the Spire rose a large black obelisk. A man-sized hatch was built into its front, facing toward the portal which still flickered now behind her, sealed with an apparently mechanical lock. Text was inscribed all along its edges:

Here lies Pyraz the Dog of War, Spellblade in service to His Majesty, mortally wounded at the Siege of Seronos c. 638, may he one day returneth to walk the lands of Esenia

Over her shoulder—

She saw Rook standing on the other side. His torch burning still

She had no idea how to pick a lock. Her keystones would do nothing. But she had a different kind of key…she herself was a key, in a certain sense.

She had to know what was within this sepulcher.

The air bristled with energy. She was higher up here, closer to the heavens, closer to the Veil Between the Worlds—or what little remained of it. That gave her power. So she focused. Lowering the torch, she placed her right hand on the lock, and she gathered all the mana around her into her veins. She focused it into her fingertips. Soon she smelled the searing of metal. Her blood heating up. After twenty seconds she let go, then tugged with her fingers:

A gust of energy from behind the lock. It was sent flying toward her. She ducked; it soared over her head, off the edge of the tower, down, down, down…

The door swung open.

A hideous growl.

She turned, horrified; the torch lowered to fend off whatever was on the other side, but it fell from her hand and rolled off the nearby ledge. She screamed, and she heard Rook cry, “Eris!” as claws collided with her torso, knocking her to her back and to the ground. Rook stepped through the portal and drew his sword, and just then—

She felt a course tongue against her forehead.

Growling turned to barking.

Rook burst into laughter. He sheathed his sword.

“Get off me, you mongrel!” Eris said. She pushed the beast aside, and she saw clearly then that it was a dog. Rook offered her a hand and she took it.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Inside.”

All around them the dog, a brown-furred mutt, jumped and wagged his tail. “Sit,” Rook said. The dog sat. Rook rubbed his ears. “Pet him.”

“No,” Eris said. “Give me the light.”

Inside the sepulcher was an empty burial gown and a small amulet. She took the amulet and hooked it around her neck. And that was it. Nothing else. Nothing but a dog and…

Something else.

She leaned down. From within the gown she retrieved a sheath, and from within the sheath she pulled a dagger. An ancient dagger of Regal make—real steel, and in the fuller was again the name Pyraz.

Eris loathed metal weapons. They were beneath her. Once back outside in the open air, where the foolish young swordsman still contended himself playing with the dog, she offered it to him.

“You should keep it," he said, "you'll need it someday.”

“I do not want it.”

“Why not?”

“A dagger is a tool for thugs and warriors. I am neither.”

“No, you’re a graverobber.”

“Take it,” she said again, more harshly. He shrugged. Rook was happy to have a weapon as fine as that, and he slid it into his belt.

“Are you done now?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”