Papers cluttered the walls like tapestries. Spellbooks and scrolls of magic, yes, but chronicles, histories, ledgers—as many as stored anywhere except the archives of Pyrthos, all preserved. So much insight into the Old Kingdom it was unthinkable.

Eris salivated. The cliché held true. Knowledge was power, in the right hands. There were none righter than hers.

But they could wait. Her eyes drifted back toward the Orb. It sat there, in the half-open palm of the statue. She lit a torch and handed it off to Robur, then lowered herself to better inspect the band around its middle: that narrow golden strait was decorated with galloping horses on course toward a Spire. She almost reached out to rotate it, to see what the band showed on its other side, but stopped herself.

She looked up at the statue’s eyes. Its head nearly touched the roof. A panoply of armor was carved into its figure, topped with a helmet. Not dissimilar from the stone guardian in the Magister’s bedroom of Dakru Spire—yet as she looked closer, she realized this ‘statue’ was not stone. It was blackened metal. The runes etched across its torso were inlaid in steel.

Regal Avatar. An arcane protector. The embodiment of the Regizar’s wrath. Mana could animate steel as easily as muscle. There would be no need for Robur to read the meaning of these runes. Their light gave away that their enchantments still held, and the tome spelled out clearly that such an Avatar would be present. Its purpose: ensure the Orb was not stolen. Unlike a stone guardian, so long as those runes maintained mana, the Avatar would be relentless. It was bound to no base; it could walk freely once activated. It would pursue the Orb to the end of the earth.

…or the end of a tunnel, where it would become stuck. Her hand extended toward the Orb once more—

The Avatar’s fingers tightened around its base. As she pulled away, it relaxed; as she drew near, it protected its prize. It reacted to her presence as naturally as a living creature. No doubt the enchantment it bore gave it sentience of a kind. A sort of life, crude and rudimentary.

This might prove quite the challenge.

“What is that?” Kauom said.

“I believe it’s a guardian of this place,” Robur said.

“You knew this was here? What does the book say? How do we turn it off? What’s that in its hand?”

Eris glanced over her shoulder. “An Orb of Power. ‘Tis what I came to retrieve.”

“So you’re saying the rest of this for us, eh?”

“I am saying no such thing.”

Kauom pushed past Robur, toward the Avatar. “Doesn’t look so special to me. You’ll find prettier rocks in any brothel in Kem-Karwene.”

“That I doubt,” Eris said. She stepped back and considered the Orb again. “The tome calls the guardian a Regal Avatar, but does not say how ‘tis disabled. That I will handle, dwarf. Do not touch anything.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s just what you want, isn’t it?”

“How easily you see through me,” she replied, turning away and toward a wall. She began her search. If all went according to her plan, she would escape this place alone, all the riches in her backpack, the orb in her hand, and as many papers as she could carry. How it was Robur and Kauom would be dealt with at this juncture was not clear to her.

It was foolish to fret about that now. There were larger issues at hand.

The walls near the entrance held detailings on the enchantments used to secure the facility, many she didn’t recognize. Magical texts were more like indentations for the Essence, like writing for the blind on special paper, than they were books to be read. She would return to those later.

She skirted around the Avatar. With luck there might be some clue elsewhere in the vault. On a table lied stacks of books; Eris, like all trained magicians, could read Regal script, and she glanced one-by-one at their titles before setting them to the side: A Treatise on the Conquest of Darom and Parallel Kingdoms: Ganarajya and Cathay, etc. All were hand-written and illuminated. Such a book might take a scribe a year to complete.

“Just a bunch of paper. My eyes are itching,” Kauom said. “Let me back down. Are you listening, witch? I said to let me back down!”

“I think this is all very interesting,” Robur said. “Look here, it’s—”

“Shut up! No one cares! It’s all a bunch of dust to me! Witch! Let me down!”

She ignored him. She chose one book at random and flipped through its pages. There was no Manastone in the ink, so her skin was forced to make contact with paper—and it flaked and crumbled at her touch. That was no wonder. They had been in storage for millennia. It took a fool like Kauom not to realize that, to the right buyer, these books were worth far more than mountains of jewels.

At the bottom of the pile was a spellbook bound in green leather. That she took at once, sliding it into her backpack.

Another table across. More books. She stood behind the Avatar now. She felt its Essence clearly, now used to its presence. It was alive. If they tried to destroy it, she felt certain it would animate. That would give them a chance to face it—and risk damaging the Orb. If they could win at all.

Her mind swam in search of solutions as she thumbed through papers. Crumbs of papyrus flecked like bread to the ground. More books. A few stray pages, covered with mounds of dust…

A black piece of obsidian, smooth and oblong like a stone on a shoreline, fell to one of the tables with a crack. It fit within her palm, but was far heavier than it looked.

It thrummed with mana.

She glanced again toward Robur and Kauom; both were distracted, examining the premises, and so quickly she slipped the stone into her pocket.

She was almost certain it was one of the keystones to the Lightning Wall. That was an ‘almost’ she did not want to get wrong, but she thought, perhaps, she had found her opening for treachery. She spent another ten minutes sorting through papers, but it was Robur who identified a parchment on one of the walls on which an emitter for the Lightning Wall was sketched. Beside it was drawn a stone just like the one Eris held now in her pocket. Another idea struck.

“’Tis most strange they made no mention of this wall in their tome,” Eris lied aloud, “but I believe I found such a device among the papers.” She revealed it, before hiding it away again.

“…why’d you take it if you didn’t know what it was?” Kauom said.

“Because it is clearly magical, dwarf. I do not make a habit of leaving magical items behind.” He didn’t believe her. Robur seemed unsuspecting, however. “I believe we have found our way back across the Lightning Wall.”

“There’s only one key.”

“The stone is infused with mana, but it should not trigger the emitters. We may simply toss it across and go through one at a time.”

His eyes narrowed again. “How do you know?

“I do not know for certain, but my guess is better than your floundering.”

“All right…let’s go.”

“Wait,” Eris said. She motioned toward the Orb. “We are not yet done here.”

Kauom growled. “How do you intend to get it then? Spend all day talking?”

She approached the Avatar once again. It was a very large construct, and as before it shielded the Orb, only just, as she drew near. This time she was certain she saw its eyes glance toward hers. They both bled violet fire from an otherwise featureless face. She shuddered.

“I am open to suggestions,” she said.

“What does trigger the emitters?” Robur asked.

“What?”

“What is required for the Lightning Wall to trip?”

Eris wanted to respond confidently, but actually she didn’t know. The tome only said ‘living creature,’ and she needed to maintain the charade that the Wall was not an anticipated trial. “There are similar devices throughout Esenia. I believe they are sensitive to living beings passing through their designated fields.”

“How’s a field know?” Kauom said.

“Know what?” Eris said with contempt.

“Know what’s dead or alive!”

She rolled her eyes. “That is simple. If a soul passes through the field, it is alive. Otherwise ‘tis none to the field and may go as it pleases. Many artifacts of the Old Kingdom operate on this principle. But I do not see—”

Robur stared at the statue. His gaze was conspicuous. The Avatar’s eyes had followed them across the room.

She realized. She withdrew her notes, flipping through paper that had burdened her shoulders terribly for weeks in her backpack, and found what she recorded on the Regal Avatar.

“‘…the spirit of one of the Regizar’s great Hetairoi, so loyal to his liege’s cause he volunteered to serve even after death—his liege’s and his own.’ The soul of a man.”

“Now you’re talking!” Kauom said. “Take the Orb and zap the statue!”

Eris smiled. She knew her course now exactly. She would take the Orb, lead the statue through the Lightning Wall, abandon her companions at the bridge, and seal them within the vault. Even if they found some way past the Wall without her key they would never overcome the magical lock on the mountainside entrance without her tome. Then, once they had starved, she could return to plunder this place unburdened. All its secrets would be hers and hers alone. All its riches would go to her and no one else.

She was a brilliant woman. Evil, perhaps, but then there were so few uses for others in this life. Relationships were fragile. Morals were loose. Ethics led nowhere. Power was the only thing that mattered. Could she feel ‘goodness,’ taste it, touch it, like she could the fine dresses and beautiful jewelry riches might buy? Could she bathe in the perfume of magnanimity? Could she elevate herself with empathy?

She thought not. Better to live for herself. Truly, sometimes she amazed even herself.

The first step was to retrieve the Orb and draw the Avatar’s attention. Easier said than done. Eris wanted to make sure she was ready first. She took anything else that seemed of value from the Vault, leaving the tome along with most of her notes—but not before removing the pages with the relevant enchantments, so she could open the mountainside passage. Paper, alas, took up a great deal of space in her backpack; she couldn’t take much more than the single spellbook.

She would be back for more.

“Here is the plan, unless you have a better one,” she said. “I will take the Orb with magic from afar. It seems only to react when we draw near, so I should be fast enough. I will then run with the key to the Lightning Wall. Then we may sort the rest of the loot.”

“And what if it doesn’t work? What if the wall doesn’t kill it?”

“Then I will think of something else.”

“What if the wall kills you?”

“Then I will be dead, and you will be stuck here.”

“Hm. Maybe the boy should take the Orb instead. Just in case.”

Robur’s eyes went wide. “I—”

“I will do it,” Eris said.

“Daring plan, witch,” Kauom said. “I like it…so long as you’re being honest.”

“I have been nothing but honest with you, dwarf.” She regarded the Avatar again. She longed for some clever solution to this problem, something more elegant than the brute force of attracting its attention so directly, but she had no better ideas. “Prepare yourselves.”

“Perhaps we should stand away…” Robur said.

“I like that idea! So it doesn’t come after us!”

“Robur must stay here to hold the light. You may jump down if you wish,” she motioned to Kauom.

“Like hell I can! Lower me down!”

She wasn’t listening. She assumed a position near the vault’s entrance, poised to jump through—and slow her descent—the moment the Orb was in her hands. Levitating distant objects through telekinesis was more challenging than lifting herself or others; non-magicians had no Essence, and she could not feel their souls, but they still breathed in mana, carried some trace amounts in their blood. An object was nothing. She could not feel it, unless it was itself magical.

But then the Archon’s Orb was magical, wasn’t it?

She couldn’t say. Too much mana in the air, the aether too nearby, the Avatar too hard to ignore. It had to be, but she still couldn’t find it with the tendrils of her mind—until she saw it nudge, as if pushed by some invisible finger, in the Avatar’s hands. It did not react. It only stared, its gaze traced back toward her. Almost like it knew what was about to come.

She pulled on the aethereal string once she was certain everything was in place. The Orb flew toward her. She caught it like a ball, clumsily; yet the moment it was in her hands, the hole at her feet, the cut in the floor through which they entered, irised shut—a trapdoor materialized from nothing.

The Avatar stood.

“Unnatural wizard’s shit!” Kauom shouted. He lowered his crossbow and shot a bolt at the Avatar’s torso. The head deflected off. He let out a short, sharp yell and backed away, cowering in the corner, but the Avatar ignored him.

Its attention was solely on Eris.

It stepped toward her. A huge step, its huge arms reaching toward her—

Robur stepped in the way. He let out a burst of energy toward the Avatar and it stumbled backward an inch, but only an inch; it rolled with the recoil and reached directly for him on the rebound, grabbing him by the wrist, tossing him effortlessly to the wall effortlessly. He hit the side of the vault hard.

His torch fell to the musty, dry, ancient books piled on the tables. They went up in flames in an instant.

Eris had the moment she needed. The Orb was clutched firmly in her right hand, pressed against her breast. She channeled mana from the aether into fire as hot as she knew how and traced her fingers around where there had once been a hole in the floor. Sparks flew as the tile underfoot sliced open. The heat required was immense. Focused beyond belief. She felt her Essence draining. Her eyelids growing heavy. Her stomach becoming upset. The fire became weaker and weaker with each second; when she looked up she saw the Avatar not a foot from her, reaching in her direction, now nothing but the black silhouette of a massive man, backlit by the immolated vault behind. She worked faster—

And she fell. She tumbled over herself and only cast half her spell before she hit the ground feet-first. Her ankle twisted in the wrong direction, sprained, but she stumbled up to her feet—

A moment later the Avatar dropped down after her. Its collision with the rocky ground of the island set the entire cavern shaking in an earthquake.

She did not look over her shoulder. She sprinted, lamely, to the bridge. Her spare hand found her pocket, thumbing the keystone within. If she was wrong she would not need to endure the consequences long, she thought—a good way to die, all things considered. Yet she had confidence. Only a little farther.

The footsteps of the Avatar on the bridge echoed like explosions in the cavern. Growing closer. Its stride was far greater than hers. Her head start only a few feet.

She sprinted faster.

The end of the bridge in sight—she jumped.

She didn’t see when it happened. Just as she crossed the threshold onto the canyon-like approach to the bridge and the cavern, where manalights were set in rows and everything glowed blue, her vision was overcome with white. The heat of the sun burned against her back. She was deafened by a blast. She fell to the ground, knocked over, and then was promptly hit in the head by a piece of scrap propelled at a hundred miles an hour from the Lightning Wall.

It took a long time before she rolled onto her back.

Shards of molten metal rained down on her. The skin down her leg was burned, but only for a moment, brushed away quickly. All around her were pieces of glowing red scrap metal.

The Regal Avatar was gone.

The Archon’s Orb was in her hands.

The ecstatic thrill of an ingenious plan performed without hitch, the reminder of her own immense brilliance, dissolved the moment she remembered the fate of the vault.

Every paper. The tome. The schematics. Everything. Up in flame. All because Robur, that idiotic fool, could not keep away from the guardian—Eris had everything in control, if it was not for him—

She screamed in anger. Then again in frustration. Then again in pain; the sprain was bad. She carried no regret for what she would do to them. But first to delay until the wall had recharged—she had to buy time. With luck they might have died in the vault and spared her the trouble.

Alas, at the island she saw Robur and Kauom descending from the hole she’d made in the vault. Robur levitated them, somewhat awkwardly, to the ground. They were both blackened with soot and coughing.

She stood up, slowly, and returned across the bridge. It took all her willpower to refrain from striking out at her two imbecilic companions right then. But she did not lose track of her purpose.

“The keystone works. We may come and go as we please,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Then let’s loot this place and get the hell out!” Kauom said.

Eris nodded. She proceeded to take anything of value, any jewelry, any statuette, any gem or coin, and shoveled it into her backpack. Robur put an arm on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Do not touch me!” she snapped at him. “Just—leave me be!”

He shrunk away.

They spent another hour securing all the valuables. Although the vault’s illusion still held overhead, the scent of smoke was impossible to miss, even from below. There was no point attempting to salvage anything from within that place. At least she’d had the prescience to take a spellbook.

“How long does that thing take to recharge?” Kauom said.

“I would not care to find out if I were you,” Eris said.

“Good point.”

They left only a few dozen drachmae of valuables behind, and that mostly in the form of those things that would be challenging to sell. They would not need to return. Then, in single file, they proceeded across the bridge, stopping before the final tile that led to the canyon, where the trigger for the Lightning Wall now most clearly was.

Eris walked through it.

“Good. Now toss me the key,” Kauom said.

She turned to him and withdrew the stone from her pocket. She regarded him, and Robur behind, and smiled. Not only according to plan, but vengeance for their destruction of her vault—and so quickly, too. Justice did exist in this world. She was just about to comment as such, to let slip her veil, when she suddenly fell to her knees.

The stone went clattering to the ground.

It is a thoroughly treacherous creature.

Blinding pain overcame her mind, like magma poured through her skull.

I hear its thoughts. It would kill its allies. Why would it do such a thing?

“Be gone, demon!” she gasped.

I have been watching. The goings of mortals are most capricious. It is the most capricious of all. It lied to me, but it lies to everyone. I wish to learn, so when I control its Essence, I may imitate it; why is it so devious?

She saw nothing now but black, but her consciousness held. She didn’t know if she spoke or merely thought the words that followed: “You are not welcome in my body!”

It welcomed me when it thought I had power to grant. It welcomed me when it wished to do battle, after it destroyed the precious Manastone with its careless magic. Yet then it forgot me.

“You have done nothing for me!”

I have done much. When its life is endangered, I assist it in pulling mana from the air. When it is sick, I take upon myself the burden of its Essence. How else would so frail a mortal become so talented with magic in so brief a time?

“My talent is my own!”

Its talent is pitiful. Before I entered its body it could not conjure White Fire. It could not levitate its companions. I watched as it was defeated by mortal bandits. It could do nothing. It does not want to believe, yet it knows this is true. Were it not for my intervention, the spellsickness would have taken it. It would be dead. It is my puppet. Its life belongs to me.”

“If that were true you would take control of me and cease talking, yet you do nothing of the kind!”

I must learn more. And there is so long yet. I have an eternity to wait until I am ready.

Another wave of pain. Spasms throughout her body.

…yet it is dangerous. It seeks to be worshipped, but does only evil. It wishes to amass followers, yet it kills those it has. It cannot be trusted to look after itself.

The preparations are set. The delicious aether in this cavern has given me the power I need. I may not find it again. Before it was my puppet; now it will be me.

All her body went numb. No sensation except tingling from toe to top. Then there came the feeling of her Essence being crushed—her magic stolen away from her, compacted to its smallest, then destroyed forever. She had been a terrible fool, to think she could outwit a creature of the aether like a manawyrm. Now she would pay for that mistake with something worse than her life:

Her soul itself. And then…

“Eris!” Robur said. His eyes glowed blue. He knelt over her. A dim blue manalight hung over his head. “You passed out just as you were about to throw us the key. I levitated it back to us, thankfully—you’re very sick. Be still.”

She tried to push him away, to no success. She felt feverish.

Her hands were empty.

“The Orb!” she gasped. “Where is it?”

“I have it here,” he said. He showed his satchel—the Archon’s Orb within. She snatched it from him at once and brought it back to her chest. “You must rest. Do you know what happened?”

She stared at one of the lights. She felt like herself. Her Essence was diminished, but still present. She was alive. What had happened?

She pushed him away and sat upright. “What did you do to me?”

His eyes faded back to their usual vibrant green—one of the other colors that could be left by the Manasearing. “I felt something…unusual…when I ran to you, so I cast Supernal Vision, and I saw something in your heart. I don’t know what it was, but it was like another Essence—like when you look upon an elf. You wouldn’t wake up, so I tapped it. And you did. What was it?”

She stared at him. “What?”

“I tapped the mana from the other Essence. I thought it might be a curse, from the Archon’s Orb—I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s gone now, but it might return later."

Still staring.

“Are you done taking your nap yet?” Kauom said. He kept watch nearby, as if someone might intrude on them. “Let’s get out of here!”

Eris felt something very strange. She cringed away from Robur. “Yes. Let us go. It has been a terribly long day.”

It was dark in the Sanguine Forest when they made their camp at the mountain’s base. The day seemed longer than ten months combined. Robur and Kauom talked loudly by a fire, but Eris retreated off into the darkness, setting her bedroll by a tree, retreating within, gazing in the darkness at the Archon’s Orb for hours into the night.

She could not make sense of how she felt. Her plan had been executed perfectly. It would have worked. Thousands of drachmae, all hers. No need to share. Yet at the last minute she was foiled by a force so far removed she had almost forgotten it. So much had happened over the last year, her encounter with the manawyrm in the mines of Kaimas seemed like a dream, so distant it could only be recalled at great effort, with hours devoted to recollection.

Was it shame for failure? Embarrassment? No. Eris knew neither. She was too vain, too prideful, too self-assured to ever feel truly embarrassed. It was something else. Something she had only felt on one or two other occasions in all her life.

Guilt.

Robur, bumbling child, teenage imbecile, fool though he was, had saved her life. That was it, wasn’t it? The manawyrm had threatened her before, yes, but never had it taken such action, never had it come at her at such a perfectly terrible time, so deliberately, not capitalizing on weakness but instead on circumstance—he hadn’t excised its Essence from hers, that would be far beyond his powers, but he had used his spell, the perfect spell for the task, to slow its progress and put it back in its place.

And all for nothing. For her. Why? She wasn’t trying to kill him; she had killed him. She had succeeded. If only the wyrm had waited ten more minutes, her betrayal would have been his end, and Kauom’s. Yet he rescued her. If he had let her die—or allowed whatever might have happened to happen without intervention—it would have been only better for him. Fewer people to share the rewards with. More profits for all.

Yet he saved her. And it wasn’t for her beauty; any other man, perhaps, but she noticed when men—and women, too—stared at her breasts, and they often did, but Robur did not. He was as chaste as a neutered kitten. She doubted he even liked girls.

She didn’t regret trying to kill him per se. She still thought her plan a good one. But she also felt guilt, to know that idiot boy had no notion of what she had in store for him. She felt guilt that he had tried to help her, when he should have left her to die. And she felt guilt that there was no way she could ever stand to harm him again going forward. It would be too cruel, even for her.

It might not be so bad. He was no Rook—not much to look at, or talk to, or be around, or travel with, or fight alongside—but he was not useless. No magician was useless (except Aletheia). Perhaps there were worse fates than having him at her side. And as for Kauom…at least he was easy to understand. He liked gold and cared for nothing else, except himself.

Eris could relate. That made him predictable. That made him useful, as far as companions went.

So it was that, still feeling somewhat sick to her stomach over the day’s affairs, Eris turned all her attention toward the Orb. She focused. What, she wondered, would such an artifact do? An Orb of Power? One of the most magnificent creations of the Manaforges of the Old Kingdom?

She closed her eyes and held it tightly. She tried to find its mana against her Essence, like focusing and closing her eyes to find the source of a sound. And…

She felt nothing except the cold stone against her fingers.

Her heart sank.

She nearly threw the Orb off the nearby cliff when she realized. It made no impression against her Essence. It gave off no mana. It carried no aura.

The Archon’s Orb was not a magical artifact.