Gray rocks jutted from the hills like bones on a field. The trees were blades of grass. Boulders, pebbles. The open tunnel of the mineshaft: a skull’s gaping mouth.

“That’s it! That’s it, that’s the mine!” Zyd said.

They lingered at the tree line. The shaft was open, not blocked by rubble; a wooden track led down its throat into darkness. That same track was connected to a large, blocky building of crude construction just outside the entrance, to its left. It had no door and a roof perhaps six feet high. A wooden wagon sat outside.

“Are you certain, Zydnus? This may be some other mine in these hills, which fits the description and the map,” Eris said. She rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I’m positive!” He stormed forward, calling out: “Hello? Master Erkent? Are you here? Anyone?”

“Zyd!” Rook said. “We don’t know who’s here. Let’s look around first, okay?”

“Oh, yeah! Good idea. Let’s look around.”

A few signs of a campsite in the surrounding countryside. Nothing more. Eris lurked toward the structure, wherein she stepped through the open entrance. The ceiling was just low enough that she had to bend to stand. It was dark; inside were rows of leaden crates, like metal coffins. Each was empty and lidless except one, across the side of which glowed blue runes in Dwarfish. A ward kept the crate magnetically sealed.

Rook pursued her inside.

“What does it say?” he asked.

Eris did not speak Dwarfish.

“What does it say?” Zyd echoed from the threshold.

“Give me a moment,” she said.

She knew a spell for this. It was, in fact, the only spell she knew. Levitation, shielding, burning through locks, gusts of flame or frost: these were simple expenditures of energy, consequences of the directional channeling of mana from within herself and the atmosphere around her. Magic, but not spells, not precisely. Any mage could do such things with practice.

True spells were more challenging. True spells required more subtlety, and she departed her arcane education before such subtle techniques were imparted onto her. But every student learned the Wisdom of the Sages in their first year: a harmless spell for translating ancient texts. That she still knew.

If she could only remember the technique…

A spell like that required energy to be channeled inward, not outward. She focused, then, on herself. Tapping mana from the air…

Her eyes closed.

She concentrated on her eyes. She sculpted her very willpower into a physical thing, wielding her mind like an artisan would wield hands, molding its shape until she could see her desire to make this language reveal its meaning to her.

When she looked again, the text was clear and legible. She pronounced it aloud, slowly:

“I hereby relinquish Erkent, son of Arkent, of all liability for any ensuing damages to my person or my property due to the manipulation of Manastone ore, now and forever in perpetuity.”

With the final syllable, the lid popped open.

The words were a waiver.

Dizziness overcame her. Nausea. She steadied herself, trying hard not to show the cost of using such a simple spell, but a moment passed and a wave of invigoration hit her.

Every muscle in her body impowered.

Fatigue banished.

Rook pushed off the crate’s lid and peered inside. A blue light shined back across his scruffy-stubbled face.

Eris leapt forward. Inside she saw what he did: an enormous piece of unrefined Manastone ore.

A large crystal, uneven, like a flash of blue lightning that had been frozen in stone. Its surface hummed with arcane power, and all the air radiated with heat, like the stone was blazing with flame.

Zyd was looking at it too, now. He reached a hand down to touch the crystal. Eris grabbed his wrist.

“I do not recommend that,” she said.

“Why not?” he snapped back.

“Would you care to find out?”

“Give me a good reason not to!”

“You are not a magician. Your body cannot conduct the energy stored within this stone. Touch it and it will discharge.”

“’Discharge’ is the Pyrthian word for ‘explode,’” Rook said. He pulled the lid back into place. “We didn’t come here to rob Erkent anyway.”

“We didn’t?” Eris said.

“…not any more than we need to.”

“One stone is a small price to pay for the salvation of his business.”

“Let’s save his business first, then, okay?”

The crate blocked the stone’s mana emissions. Once its blue light was gone, it was like the sun had just been overtaken by clouds on a winter’s day. Nothing but cold darkness remained.

She could do incredible things with even a single Manastone this large. Any competent Magician could. That it had been left here unplundered…

But it was also dangerous. Volatile. Unrefined. They would do better with smaller fragments. Transporting such a stone was not prudent.

For the time being.

Back at the entrance to the mine Zyd handed Eris his lantern.

“Don’t lose it,” he said, “it’s very valuable!”

Against all odds the small lantern gave off enough light for the whole party to see. Eris accepted the burden of the lightbearer—this time.

Rook turned to Pyraz. The mutt followed Rook everywhere on an invisible leash. “Stay here ‘til we get back,” he said, and the dog sat, wagging its tail, like it could understand every word. Eris found the display of intelligence deeply disturbing.

The tunnel’s roof was also low, never higher than seven feet. It continued on for some distance. Holding up the lantern to the walls Eris saw large, precisely cut incisions where veins of mana once sat, now since extracted; both sides, up and down, scars everywhere.

The air cooled and became stale. The tunnel snaked onward for what felt like miles. A circuit, a labyrinth underground.

“I can’t imagine working in a place like this,” Rook said.

“We are working in a place like this,” Eris said.

“Every day,” he said.

A number of paths branched off to the left and the right, but never for long; the miners followed each seam to its conclusion, only to return to the main tunnel and continue deeper into the hillside.

An hour of walking.

Eris wondered if they might soon find themselves at the center of the Earth.

And then—there it was. An end of the tunnel. A cave-in. Dirt and dust and rock piled high atop the track; yet at the top of the pile some of the dirt was cleared away.

Zyd scurried up the side.

“Someone’s cleared it! Look, we can fit through!”

“I won’t fit,” Rook said. He followed after Zyd. “Let’s widen it.”

“You’ll fit just fine! Just—fine. Fine, fine, fine. Fine!”

“Yes, you do that,” Eris said. “I will stand here with the light. You can see clearly still, yes?”

“You could help move these rocks,” Rook said.

“Now, now—I wouldn’t wish to emasculate such big, strong men as yourselves. You will feel better to know you did it without my help.”

After only a few minutes enough dirt and rock was shoveled aside to make room for the broad-shouldered Rook. Just as he climbed onto it, Zyd screamed:

A rustling in the dirt—

Dust in the air—

Rocks rolled down the pile’s side, and Eris stepped back. Just then she saw, emerging from between two rocks by Rook’s feet, was a huge teal lizard. It yanked itself from the earthen confines before darting off down the tunnel, into darkness.

“A lizard,” Eris said. She coughed as the dust settled.

“That wasn’t a lizard! That was a—a—a dragon! A blue dragon! Is everyone okay!?”

“We made it out alive this time,” Rook said. He pushed Zyd out of the way and took the light from Eris. Glancing through the tunnel they’d made. “The other side is clear. Not much of a cave-in.”

“So where is Master Erkent?” Eris said.

“You don’t think he made it back to Kaimas, do you?” Zyd said. “Aw—I was only gone for a week! I thought for sure he was dead, he’d been gone for ten whole days! He better not be okay, or I swear—”

“Just stay on your toes,” Rook said.

Soon they found themselves all on the other side. The air became mustier. Only one path led forward, pitch black save a single hanging blue light in the distance. The mineshaft narrowed; soon the track disappeared, damaged as it was past the cave-in, and they found an old, small cloak strewn across the ground.

A dress.

A shirt.

The farther they went, the more clothes, until soon an entire wardrobe covered every inch of the passage. They were halfling-sized.

Rook handed Eris the lantern again and drew his sword.

“What do you make of this?” he said.

“I think there was no cave-in. We should be cautious,” she said.

Zyd advanced. He pulled one dress out from underfoot, then a jacket. “There’s nothing here! It’s just a bunch of crap.”

Rook followed, doing the same with his sword. Zyd took another five steps, and then—

A scream.

The fabric underfoot gave away.

He fell.

Rook jumped forward, but too late; Zyd tumbled into a pit covered by the clothing. He turned and grabbed onto the edge and tried to scramble back to solid ground, but his arms gave, and he slipped out of sight.

Silence for a moment. Neither Rook nor Eris moved. Then, “Help!”

They both walked to the pit’s edge.

The trap was uneven. A vein of Manastone had been extracted underfoot, and the scar where it was removed had been expanded, deepened, then covered with a handful of sharp pieces of debris. The fall wasn’t sheer; Zyd had tumbled down into it, and he was still alive. Not even terribly injured, only—

The blue light across the pit darkened. A bird eclipsing the moon—

“Look out!” Rook said.

A spear whizzed past her head and clattered against the rock wall. Another shadow, like an arm winding back, preparing to throw a javelin; Eris let out a cry and sent a pulse of energy, directed down the shaft. A blast of wind picked up her hair—

More shadows across the blue in the background. Scurrying of claws across hard ground. A hiss, then—

“What was that!?” Zyd wailed. “What’s happening?!”

Eris panted. Her muscles ached. The world around her darkened, and after a moment she looked again and saw the spear.

In the air.

The spear was in the air, frozen, suspended, its tip two inches from her heart. Rook gave her a long look. He reached out for its heft with a hand and grabbed it from the air. With a single tug he pulled it free.

“Keep an eye open,” he whispered to her. He took the spear and broke off its head, then kneeled down and lowered the heft to Zyd. “How bad?”

“Bad! Bad! Terrible!”

“Grab it.”

“I can’t!”

“Take it, damnit!”

Eris pressed her back against the wall and skirted across the gap.

“Eris!” Rook shouted, but she didn’t listen. She reached the other side and a moment later came face-to-face with the Manastone still in the wall. Looking carefully, glancing side-to-side, seeing no one and hearing nothing: she raised her hand up and touched the blue crystal. An electric shock arced to her skin as her palm leveled against the stone.

In an instant all her fatigue cleared away. Her mind sharpened. A shot of stimulant into her soul.

When she turned back around she saw Zyd climbing up the spear’s shaft. His pants were torn to shreds and blood ran down his thighs. He hissed in pain as he leveled out on the rocky ground.

“Is anything broken?”

“No! I’m fine!” he was wailing in pain, “let’s go get those—those things!”

There was a crack in the wall past the Manastone vein. Tight, but wide enough to squeeze through with empty lungs.

“What were they? Did you see?” Rook said.

She lowered the lantern and glanced through the crack. More blue on the other side, a glow, barely enough to see. “Not human. Nor halfling. I think…two.”

“Let’s go,” Zyd said.

Rook held his sword straight in his hands. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

“I say we take the ore and leave,” Eris said.

“We have to find Erkent!” Zyd said.

“We do not ‘have’ to do anything. There may be twenty more of these creatures on the other side, lying in ambush.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I am not afraid, but I am not suicidal, either.”

“Neither am I, since I have Eris at my back,” Rook said. With that he exhaled, and he stepped into the crack in the cave wall.

“You idiot!” Eris said, but they were partners for the time being, so she followed after him. Zyd followed after her.

Her chest scraped against rock. A cut from a sharp stone on her cheek. She made it through to the other side, bumping Rook in the back—

They emerged into a large natural cavern. Manastone murals lined every wall. More frozen forks of blue lightning, bright enough to see without the lantern.

A roar.

Some few feet off, toward a pillar of rock in the cavern’s center, was a man with scales for skin. He was Rook’s height or shorter, dressed in rags, and a dimly glowing blue necklace hung from his neck.

Atop his head was a ridge.

He was a lizard.

Four more of them behind. Lizardmen. The others were smaller, weak in the arms, with bug eyes and long tails, armed with spears and knives. They shied away at the sight of Eris, but when their Chieftain rushed to join battle, they followed.

Zyd shot an arrow. One lizard dropped.

The Chieftain went for Rook. It raised a sword—a fine sword of silver steel, a Dwarven sword, and Rook met it with his own. Their blades clashed high, then low; the Chieftain was nicked across the scales but no blood was drawn, and the two broke apart. Another lizard with a spear came for Rook but he parried the thrust and grabbed the attacker by the arm, tossing him in Eris’ direction—

It lowered its spear.

She still felt invigorated. And in this room, surrounded by magic…it was nothing like being out on the surface. Here she could do anything.

As the lizard’s spear came hurtling toward her, she sent out bursts of fire in its direction.

Green jets of flame consumed every scale.

Immolation commenced.

As it stumbled again in her direction she set out a gust of wind; the green flame grew in a massive burst, and the lizard was sent flying across the room.

This was true power.

She turned—

The last lizardman, armed with a knife, tackled her from behind. They fell fighting to the ground. The creature wasn’t large; only halfling sized, really, but even at that it was stronger than her. It took all her strength to keep its blade at bay. She fought and kicked against it with no luck, the point edging nearer and nearer to her chest, rocking back and forth until—

Zyd jumped onto its back.

“Get off!” he cried.

He had a dagger in his hands and he shoved it through the lizard’s chest scales. It faltered, for a moment, and Eris used the chance to reach up and grab it by the snout. She pushed up with all her strength and channeled the ambient mana into the room, all ripe for the taking, into the lizardman’s head.

First its scales scalded. Smoke rising. Hissing from its mouth. Then they turned black. Then they began to melt, until soon she felt cold blood against her fingers, and then she felt nothing at all.

She burned a hole clean through its skull.

Zyd struggled back up to his feet.

Now exhaustion set in. She had been too enamored with her own power. She crawled up to standing, coughing, and—

Steel clanged against steel. The Chieftain and Rook traded blows again, another volley, toe-to-toe with their swords. Every time Rook landed a hit the lizardman’s scales deflected the blow. It would take a thrust to get through its armor. So he waited, went for a parry, deflected the Dwarven blade to the left, and landed a thrust near the Chieftain’s heart—

Rook ran it through down to his his sword's hilt.

The battle stopped in an instant. The lizardman looked down at Rook and roared. He tried to pull himself away with his blade, but it was stuck in its sternum; he let go of the hilt, but the Chieftain grabbed him by the wrist, and thrust its sword straight at his torso. He flattened himself just as the blow landed, making himself a smaller target, presenting only his right arm, his dominant arm—

And the Dwarven sword went clean through his bicep.

Rook screamed.

Eris stumbled toward him, dizzy, but just then an onslaught of arrows rushed past her shoulder. Four in a single volley. Three of them hit their mark: dead center mass of the Chieftain. It turned in their direction just as it was peppered in the torso. Its sword fell from its claws, and with that Rook drew his dagger, the dagger from Pyraz’s sepulcher at the top of the Spire, and drove it into the lizard’s back.

It fell to its knees, then collapsed to the ground.

Eris grabbed the lantern and rushed to Rook’s side. Without any instruction she looked the arm over for the site of the wound and placed her hand there; he flinched away, and a moment later there was an orange flash. The smell of burnt skin filled the air as she cauterized the bleeding. She wasn’t being careful with her casting; there was plenty of energy to call from, all around her, everywhere, but even that minor expression of heat was a punch in the gut.

Rook screamed again. Then he fell silent and made no sound but heavy breathing.

“Guys…” Zyd said, “look around…”

Eris looked.

Nests covered the walls of the room, nestled beneath Manastone outcroppings or atop Manastone veins in the cavern floor. There were dozens of them. And in nearly every one sat a lizard, half the size of a man, teal and scaled and bug-eyed; and in nearly every one that lizard stared precisely at Rook or Eris or Zyd.

“Scare them off,” Rook said through gritted teeth.

“They may attack,” Eris said.

“Where do you wanna scare them off to, anyway?”

They fell silent. And it was silent. The only noise then was the distant running of water—an underground river somewhere connected to this cave. No doubt the place these lizards came from. They were unnatural creatures which used the mana for warmth…

Eris looked over her shoulder. More lights through a passage at one end of the cavern. There was something else here.

Rook crawled over to the Chieftain’s body. He kicked the Dwarven sword to Zyd. “Must be Erkent’s.” Then he pulled his own sword from the lizard’s sternum, which, with one good left arm, was no small feat. Eris helped steady him, but only as a pretext for grabbing the small Manastone necklace hung around its shoulders.

Crudely made, but Manastone all the same. She put it on.

With the help of the lantern they soon found bodies. Remains, hardly decayed but mostly gnawed away. The lizards in their nests made no signs of hostility and allowed them to pick clean the corpses; no warriors they.

A number of halflings were identified. A matching bowl and silverware set. And…

The body of a dwarf in chainmail armor. The mail was ruined. The remains half eaten; they exuded a miasma of wet earth. His satchel had been torn asunder and raided, any food within stolen away; the lizards had discarded as if useless a fine set of Dwarven tools. Eris took both.

“Let’s drag him out of here,” Zyd said.

“We have his sword, is that not proof enough?” Eris said.

“The bounty is for his body! We’re getting his body!”

“Fine, but we are missing something—”

“What!” Zyd said.

“Eris,” Rook muttered, “I can’t fence left-handed. Let’s go.”

She looked again toward the far end of the cavern.

“More than skinks are drawn to places like this,” she said, “if we leave now, we may never discover what else lies hidden here.”

“Who cares?” Zyd said, “my legs hurt!”

Rook’s capacity for reason was clearly diminished, but he attempted anyway. “If we get into another fight…it’s time to go.”

A long pause for consideration.

“No,” she said. “I will not. You may go now. I will follow in my own time.”

“Okay,” Zyd said, “fine. Help me with him! And give me back my lantern!”

Eris was familiar with the expression on Rook’s face. It was a look of contempt, frustration, anger, resignation, and disappointment, all in the single blink of an eye. But he didn’t say anything. All he did was turn to the dead dwarf, and help the halfling lift him up.

She gave Zyd back his lantern and walked toward the light.

There was a narrow path past a cluttering of stalagmites. She skirted past, then saw the opening of the mouth to the bright room adjacent to this cavern:

White light. Bright as high summer. White and blue and orange, blinding. She stepped forward. Quickly her eyes adjusted, and she saw, resting as a dog rests with its head on its paws, was a mighty wyrm in the center of a circular cavern, the walls of which were solid Manastone. Every square inch.

Cast around its feet was a mountain of treasure. Silver. Gold. Pots and plates. Gems. A lantern. A Dwarven statue. All a roost for its lair.

Its skin was made of crystal. Each segment of its body conjoined with invisible sinew. Light shined from behind every joint. As she stared at awe at the majesty of this creature, as she was overcome with the radiation of mana that it emitted, more power than she knew a thousand magicians over could access combined—

Two fiery blue eyes opened.

They stared straight at her.

This was a manawyrm. It had a mouth. But when it spoke, its mouth did not move—yet still the walls of the cavern shook.

“Does it speak?”

Eris was struck too dumb to do anything but nod.

“Does it think? Is it afraid? Does it understand? Does it know why it worships me?”

“I do not worship you,” she managed.

“Then it is clever enough to be foolish.”

“And the lizardmen—they were foolish enough to be wise?”

“Yes. But no longer. They bore me.” With alarming alacrity the wyrm lurched forward toward her. She was terribly afraid. “What is it?”

“A magician.”

“I do not know ‘magician.’ Are you an elf?”

“Very much like an elf, but I am human.”

“Elves do not worship. They come to take me away. They are tiresome. I do not like them.”

It settled back in place.

“What does the clever-thinking human offer?”

A long silence. Eris chose her words carefully. “What do you offer me in return?”

The very cave itself groaned. “…I do not know what it wants.”

“I crave power. You wish to be worshipped, yes?”

“It must acknowledge my puissance.”

“What greater acknowledgement is there to your greatness than to know that the human Magister Eris sought you for guidance?”

“I must leave to know. I care not what happens above. I live below; I never desire to leave. For this price it would need remain at my side.” Another rumble in the walls. “It is powerful. It would make a fitting ornament for my throne.”

The creature dealt so easily with her fate that it caught her entirely off-guard. She was struck by the realization that, for a being of pure energy, it seemed possessed with an immense sprit of lethargy. Never had she witnessed a more slothful monstrosity. Flattery would do it well.

“I am but mortal, great one. Impart unto me a shard of your power and I may spread it wide throughout Esenia, but keep me here and I will wither and die in what is, to you, no time at all. That will do you no good.”

A sudden idea. She pulled off her backpack. Inside, tucked safely away, was her golden mirror. She presented it to the wyrm. Its blue eyes stared back at their own reflection. There was pain in her voice as she spoke; there was nothing else she owned that she would rather part with less than this mirror. But the price was worth it:

“I will leave with you this mirror. A far greater gift than the mere baubles the lizardmen had gifted unto you. It will stand the test of time, unlike I. And in exchange…”

It thought this offer over briefly.

“A shard of power for it to spread and show. To bring others to me.”

“Yes! With their own gifts.”

The Manastones overhead shook. Then...

“…its terms are acceptable,” the wyrm said.

Eris stepped forward. She was shaking, both in anticipation and fear. It lowered its head to hers, its massive crystalline head; their skulls brushed together, and as they touched she was overcome with a flash of white.

A feeling like her mind was being crushed from below and above…

A whisper in her mind:

Give me the mirror.

She placed the mirror on the ground.

Eris gazed up at the wyrm; and on its jaw, for the first time, she swore she saw a smile. The pain returned. Another flash of white. She darted outside the creature's lair, back into the cavern. She rested against the wall of the cave while the pain passed, then lit a torch and followed after Rook and Zyd.

“About time! What did you find?” Zyd said. They were past the pit trap, but not far.

Tell them about me.

“I found nothing,” she said. “A room with more Manastone—that is all. Let us go.”

They took turns hauling the body. Dwarfs were very dense. It was a miserable few hours; they stopped six times to rest and twice to eat, and when they finally reached the mouth of the tunnel, it was night. The moon was so bright that after a day in a mine Eris swore it was the sun.

They were exhausted. Miserable. Injured. They made camp and treated each other’s wounds in the clearing outside the mine, and it was, ironically, Eris who noticed first, as smoke was trailing over camp:

“Where is Pyraz?”

The forest was quiet. They all looked around. Nothing, until…

The snapping of a twig—

Rook went for his sword just as an arrow flew past his head. Eris saw the shadows of three men step out from the trees, all armed, and a dwarf with an axe atop a rock overlooking the clearing.

“I don’t be recommendin’ you do that,” he called down to them. “Hand over the body, and all yer things, and we just might let you go!”