Ravenous roots upturned a square formation of stone some distance from the Keep. Covered in dirt, halfway buried, surrounded by vines and trees. The party missed the structure on first entrance, or perhaps mistook it for nothing but rubble; now Aletheia spotted it, and now they scaled its sides to look beyond its walls. The stones formed a ring filled with stagnant water. Within stood a pillar. Weathered terribly by time, yet erected upright. Man-made.

All around its surface were etched runes.

Rook squinted to get a better look. “Can you read it?”

Not from so far off, Eris thought. She sighed and jumped into the ring. The water came up to her knees. It was warm and slimy and at her impact it splashed like lava. She waded to the pillar and wiped off moss to better inspect the writing. The impression of enchanted words struck her at once.

“The script is Regal,” she said. “But these words are not. I do not know them.” Something scaley licked at her foot and mud bubbled against her leg; she cringed away, but when nothing more happened she recentered herself, glancing about the forest, listening to its sounds, then focusing on the words once more.

She used the Wisdom of the Sages. When she blinked the intention behind each character revealed itself. She traced her index finger across the inscriptions.

“It is a door. With a lock.” She pronounced aloud: “The Great Magister Musikaz keeps us safe from harm; deep below the Earth his dryness is found; with the word for clear skies, entreat entrance to our for-now home.”

A moment. “What’s the word for clear skies?” Aletheia said.

Eris frowned. Her spell was not so robust. She did not actually speak the tongue of Ancient Telmos, so she had no idea, and she admitted it aloud. “Unless you have some plan to dislodge this stone, we would best move on.”

“For my part I grow weary of magic doors,” Rook said. He grabbed Eris by the wrist and pulled her back up the walls. “We can try to open this door later, if our packs aren’t already full.”

“I suspect this entrance is to subterranean living quarters, where ‘tis dry. We will find little of interest there. Foremost is to investigate the tower.”

She glanced up at its heights. There were windows, very high up, and all were sealed. Its base was made of thick stone with no entrance. The way in would be through the Keep.

They scouted one last time around the Keep’s perimeter. Toward the back, near the cliff, where there was a lake and a stream drained from it and out through a crack in the walls downhill. It was there Eris felt a tug on her heart. She pressed into a place surrounded by branches and leaves, where she went nearly blind from so much green, and then she saw green no longer.

She found a grove. Here the trees were smaller—which was to say the size of normal trees in a normal forest—and they grew beneath the canopy, so that they hardly received any sunlight on those rare days when the clouds left the Telmos sky. Yet they wouldn’t need any sunlight at all, for they didn’t grow green.

They were blue. Blue and dark red. Sapphire grass covered the ground. Sanguine ferns. Leaves of teal and emerald. Each was vibrant, practically glowing, yet only in this small grove, only here, only in this one area of the old bailey of the ruined Magister’s Keep.

“Elektronoi,” Eris said. “There is mana here underground.”

In the past Eris had only ever known that to meant one thing—a demon nearby. Aletheia cringed toward Rook. She knew something she didn’t say.

“It must be beneath the Keep, like Lord Arqa’s vault,” Rook said.

“No,” Eris said. “I feel it. There is no wall or rock between us and this source. In fact ‘tis not far below at all.”

“Should we dig?”

“No!” Aletheia said.

Eris held her hand over a blade of grass. She took a handful and placed them in her herbalist’s pouch. Then she prodded at the soil, sensing more mana still. “No,” she said. “Whatever the cause we are not here to play gardeners. Let us proceed into the Keep; we may find our answers there.”

The arch around the guardhouse was collapsed. Slick and slimy stone piled about where once stood a door, any trace of which was now lost to time. The masonry would need be excavated to clear a way inside—but not for a small hole burrowed through, as if by a creature of about a child’s size. Aletheia conjured a light and sent it into the darkness. Thus she revealed that it went all the way.

Eris grimaced to see the girl cast a useful spell which she herself did not know.

Rook peered through. “The room on the other side is intact,” he said. “But I’m not certain I’ll fit.”

Aletheia measured the tunnel. “I will.”

“I will as well,” Eris said. Tall as she was, her shoulders were slender. “Though not so well as you.” She looked pointedly at the girl.

The girl stared back. “I don’t want to go first,” she whispered.

“‘Tis your spell on the other side,” Eris said.

“It’s okay,” Rook said. “Eris. Will you go?”

She had no reservations about going first in any scenario, but if Rook was indeed too broad to fit through, or the way past this tunnel was blocked, then it made the most sense to send their smallest—and most expendable—member instead. But now Aletheia cowered; there was little point in argument.

“We could send Pyraz,” Aletheia said. He barked in agreement.

“We could, but he can’t tell us what he finds,” Rook said.

“Very well. I will go. Retrieve your light, for I shan’t need it.” Once Aletheia had done as instructed Eris cast the Embering Eyes of the Lynx. The forest was blindingly bright as color faded from her vision, but she closed her eyes and placed her hands on the tunnel in the fallen stone and pulled herself within. Soon her biceps formed a seal to block out the sun. Darkness overcame her—but still she saw clearly.

It was not a pleasant squeeze. But before long she withdrew herself into a circular room. The air was stale yet surprisingly dry. Nothing else at all. This would have been a mere side entrance to the main hall, she presumed, the larger front doors now collapsed at the gatehouse. Strange that whoever dug this tunnel did not do it there. Unless…

The only egress from this chamber was a door. Metal. Black. More familiar. She kicked it to feel it move; someone had barred the other side.

“What do you see?” Rook’s muffled voice called.

“There is a door which leads into the keep, but ‘tis locked,” she called back.

“Can you open it?”

“Yes, I can open it.” Her reply came with a tinge of hostility. Need he ask the question? She pushed it once more. The hinges were rusted, but they did move.

She placed her hand against the warm metal. A moment’s concentration. Then, a burst from her mind, concentrated force toward the door…

Something metal snapped and hit the ground and rolled on the other side. She threw her shoulder against the door and it still held, so she gave it another ram, this time less concentrated; with that there was another metallic snap and the door flew open. Or, screamed open, slowly, revealing the great hall of a dark age throne room beyond.

It was very dry here. No humidity past the threshold. She turned to her left, toward where the gatehouse would have led to the keep’s main entrance, and there she expected to find an entire wall collapsed—but she found nothing of the kind.

The ruined gatehouse outside, the remnants of a portcullis which extended from rubble, led to a solid wall. Like it had closed on its own, to leave no trace.

Eris felt a prickling in her blood. A shooting numbness in her veins. Some ancient enchantments still held over the interior of this place. That was a good sign for what they were likely to find preserved, for she saw on the walls tapestries depicting the jaws of a great creature in purple; on the ground were rugs; manalights, off, hung from the ceiling; and a staircase led up to a gilded throne, still with a velvet seat.

All were decayed. Rotted, and the room smelled of a drawer of clothes left unopened for thirty years. Yet still, in a place like Telmos, where it rained hard three hundred days a year, nothing should have been left after so long.

The door had been barred—and latched. Her spell blew both off. Luckily the metal had been weakened. Evidently the enchantment did not hold on the door itself.

“Eris?” Rook called.

“Yes,” she said, returning to the guardhouse. “The way is clear. You may send another light.”

She ended the Embering Eyes just as Aletheia obeyed. Some seconds later the shape of Pyraz emerged from the tunnel. He barked to smell her and jumped down at her feet before proceeding into the hall. Next was Aletheia. She slipped easily into the open. Then, one-by-one, they squeezed their backpacks through, and Rook followed.

He made it halfway before he stopped. His arms and head made it, but the base of his shoulders was too broad.

“What’s wrong?” Aletheia said.

He exhaled. Collapsing his chest. Attempting to move. And…

“I’m stuck,” he said. He flailed his arms ineffectually. There was jocularity to his tone when he added, “I told you I wouldn’t fit.”

Eris came to his side. “We will pull you. Breathe in again.”

So they tried, and a few inches of progress to clear his shoulders was made, but soon he became stuck again—this time his sternum. Eris sighed.

“You are too barrel-chested. Empty your lungs.”

He gasped. “Not working.” He tried pulling himself, but to no more success.

“Can you get out?” Aletheia said nervously.

A moment. “No,” he said.

“What do we do?”

“We’ll think of something.”

Eris thought of something. “I will transform you with Polymorph,” she said.

“Transform?” Rook said.

“Wait!” Aletheia said. “What if it doesn’t wear off?”

“It will wear off, it does not last forever,” Eris said.

“What if you do it wrong?”

“I will not do it wrong! Move!”

Aletheia tugged at Eris’ arm. “Can’t we lift the rubble? With magic?”

Eris looked the rubble over. It was thousands of pounds. She might be able to lift it, but that risk seemed greater than any posed by Polymorph. “Rook will be fine to keep Pyraz company as a hound for ten minutes while we wait for the spell to wear off. ‘Tis much safer than lifting the crumbling carcass of an ancient castle.”

“You want to turn me into a dog?” Rook said.

“Would you rather be a rat?”

“A crow would be appropriate.”

Eris snorted. “A mammal is safer. Perhaps one day I will grant your wish, however.”

“Eris! You don’t know what will happen—once he turns back,” Aletheia said. “You’ve never used it on a human.”

“No, but rats were quite content to return to their old selves. Rook will be fine.”

“Eris,” Rook said, “I trust you, but—perhaps it would be better to go with Aletheia’s plan.” He was having trouble breathing. “I’m not sure I want to live with the memory of being a dog.”

“Have a care with your tone or you might not live with any memory at all,” she said.

“Please?” he said. He smiled at her upside down.

She was resolute to have her way since the fiasco with the Manawyrm. But it did seem cruel to disregard his wishes, and it was true that she had never used the spell on a human before.”

“Fine,” she relented. “We will lift the rock. Be ready to move quickly.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Aletheia parroted.

She and Eris thus worked together to raise the rubble over Rook’s torso. It was enormously heavy. Eris thought back to when she moved the clouds in Darom overhead; that was far heavier, and now she had help, but still she felt her mind straining much the same. Lifting…

Rook took a breath. He scrambled through, tumbling out the other side. Eris went to gently lower the rubble once more, but Aletheia could no longer hold; she gave in, falling to the ground, and the sudden shock of the extra weight caused Eris to falter, too, and she gasped in pain and tumbled to her knees.

A cascade of brick fell down.

The whole of the wall, all the rubble, toppling onto them. Dust shot into the air and ancient building materials fell in an avalanche to their feet as the tunnel collapsed in on itself and any hint of the outside world disappeared from vision.

Pyraz whimpered. Eris clutched her head. Her mind throbbed, her vision blurred, the wind knocked from her lungs. By the time she regained control of herself she scrambled to her feet.

“You idiot!” she screamed at Aletheia. “This—” she pointed at where there was once a tunnel— “was your plan, and still you do not pull your weight! Now we are trapped! If you had allowed me to do the sensible thing as I had said we would still have some way out, but now—”

Another pulse through her head cut her sentence short. She felt dizzy.

In that brief second Aletheia said, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you are sorry. Well that makes all well—I will be glad indeed to know you were sorry when we are all dead. Hmph. You are lucky the ceiling above us did not collapse and crush us all. Or perhaps unlucky, for if we find no other way out we may have preferred the quicker end.”

Rook slowly made his way to his feet. “We’re through. That’s what matters for now.”

“Is this the attitude which saw Lord Arqa let loose from his cell?”

“Eris,” Rook said. “That’s enough.” He embraced Aletheia, whose eyes were closed and teary, before looking back, “When we started together you failed to control your powers more than once yourself.”

That was so undeniably true that Eris fell silent at once. Her only retorts felt too cruel even for her, so she stayed quiet—for now.

Now in the great hall Rook and Aletheia became acquainted with the premises. An arch covered in frescos led to a kitchen covered in rubble. A stairwell led both up and down at the end of a corridor, yet it was the opposite direction from the tower.

The tower. Past the throne, toward another arch, into a domed room. That was their course.

Pyraz lowered himself to the ground, sniffing, and led that direction. He took a seat beneath the arch and looked over his shoulder.

“He smells something,” Aletheia said.

“Perhaps whoever dug the tunnel?” Eris said.

“Hold on,” he said. He climbed the steps toward the throne. There, looking back down upon the great hall, he took a seat.

Eris sighed. “Is this the time to be playing?”

He propped his chin up with his knuckle. “That’s Your Highness, Sorceress.” His eyes glanced around the dark room. Eris and Aletheia moved his way, the latter more enthusiastically than the former. “It’s not much compared to the Archon’s Halls.”

Aletheia kicked the rug underfoot. “It would still have been beautiful. Once.”

“Filled to the brim with courtiers, knights from across the realm…there are worse places to rule.”

“Darom, perhaps,” Eris said. She looked over her shoulder—and for a brief moment she smelled something foul in the air. She shivered instinctively as her Essence took in a gasp of tainted mana, yet it lasted only a second. “Are you done?”

“Are you jealous? Would you like to try the throne?”

“No, I would not.”

“Would you prefer to sit upon my lap?” he said with a smile. Aletheia rolled her eyes and with that he jumped to his feet and said, “I’m joking! Pyraz has the scent. You’re quite right.”

Yet as he and Aletheia stepped over toward the arch, Eris was left at the throne. A golden throne. A velvet seat. Depictions of horses and tigers on its back. She stepped toward it for a touch—and she could hardly resist to sit, only for a second, just a second to see what it was like to sit in a throne and look out upon a great hall all her own.

She straightened her back and rapped her fingers on the gilt armrests.

“Eris?” Rook called.

She leaped upward, cautious not to be seen, and fled down to him. But she would have lied if she said that she did not like the sensation of dignity, of power and control, that she felt in that seat.

It would be hers again someday.

Past the arch was painted on the floor a large red symbol that radiated mana. Four triangles, all meeting at their tips in the center, and from the outward facing angle of each extended a red line to the walls. From there the lines led up, painted, to the ceiling, where they converged at a device which looked something like a large, solid piece of red Manastone hanging above them. It glowed dimly.

Directly beneath it, at the center of the symbol, extended a sculpted stone hand. Clutched in its grip was an inert blue crystal ball.

“This is a conduit room,” Eris said. “The lines pipe mana from the tower’s top down to this place to fuel the seeing stone.”

“Antigone had one,” Aletheia said. “She had me practice there. She said—it was easier. Like being closer to the aether.”

Eris nodded. “The magic still flows; there is much here.”

Aletheia poked the crystal ball. Nothing happened. Pyraz followed his nose to the room’s only exit, a door with a large keyhole. He growled.

“Strange they use doors, when Antigone had forcefields,” Rook said quietly. He drew his sword and approached.

“This place was built when the world after the Fall was little known,” Eris whispered. “I suspect ‘twas constructed wholly without mana’s assistance.”

Rook pushed at the door, but as he hit it a second time to force it open, Aletheia yelled for him to wait.

“I feel it again,” she said, shuddering. “Like the air is freezing and…”

Eris felt it too. A creeping, tingling draft in the stagnant air, like inhaling frozen oxygen into the lungs after a long run. The sensation grew worse and worse and worse with each second until—an exhale, and it was gone.

“Something terrible awaits us here,” Eris said.

“Like what?” Rook said.

“A creature of the aether dwelling in the upper levels. Or experiments of magic which have left their mark. We will not know until we proceed.”

Rook took Aletheia’s hand. They waited for a moment. Then he kicked the door open.

The smell of rot exuded from the other side. Eris gagged.

Bodies littered the floor.

“What is it?” Aletheia said, covering her nose.

“Chickens,” Rook said. He stepped to the side. Eris saw then a half-dozen carcasses—feathered creatures the size of kobolds, like the ‘chickens’ of Hebat’s garden, only slightly larger and slightly more human in shape, a strange hybrid of bird and ancient man. They wore no clothes but at their sides were primitive spears.

Eris frowned. She investigated despite the smell. “The door was not locked.”

“No,” Rook said.

“The other was, from the inside. They could not have starved with the way out so readily available—they were not stuck.”

“So what killed them?” He looked each over. They were not wounded anywhere. It had not been long since their deaths—but then it was hard to tell when such a place was enchanted to slow decomposition.

“A demon? Some kind of curse?” Aletheia asked.

“Possible,” Eris said. “There is too much magic here to detect it.”

Pyraz sniffed the bodies a moment. Then he barked. Past another archway they entered into a circular chamber, and at its far side, as the walls narrowed into a corridor, a staircase revealed itself.

The bottom of the tower.

“Let us hope the journey was worth it,” Eris said. She took the first step.

The staircase spiraled in vast circles around the tower’s lower levels. It was a long way up. From wall to wall the steps were wide across, relative to most other dungeons Eris had descended up and down over the years, and she supposed such a place was impressive enough compared to any mundane structure. It did not compare to the levitating staircases or free-floating elevators of the modern-day Magisters or Old Kingdom architects, yet one made do.

Red lines coursing with magic followed them along the walls all the way.

Presently they emerged at a landing, a second storey, although the stairs and tower proceeded upward very far yet, and stepping off, and looking around, Eris saw—

A library. A vast library, lined with shelves up twelve feet high and down to her toes and all covered in books. She gasped.

The air was musty. It smelled of knowledge. Nothing excited Eris more, except perhaps a jewelry shop. She began at once scaling shelves and pulling down books. Many had been taken, but still more remained, left behind when this place was abandoned—no doubt too hard to haul all the way to Pyrthos. They would never survive the weather. Most were in the illegible language of Ancient Telmos but some were in Regal and she scoured for any spellbooks.

Aletheia found a manalight. She touched it and it turned on, letting off a bright blue glow.

“Help me search,” Eris said.

“For what?” Aletheia asked.

“Spellbooks, you imbecile, or anything which might mention animal transformation. The rest is rubbish.”

Aletheia had stepped forward to help, but at that response she retreated. “Fuck you,” she said quietly. “Do it yourself.”

Eris glanced at her. There was none of the flippant attitude that once defined Aletheia, soon after they first met. She was more timid, more resigned, more depressed. Yet secretly Eris was pleased to see the girl stand up for herself.

“Then make yourself useful otherwise.”

Rook probed away at different books. “I feel like a peasant—I can’t even pronounce the letters,” he said, holding up a scroll. “What on Earth is that supposed to be?”

He pointed at a word written in Regal. The character in question was a direct analogy to the letter L.

“Can you read at all?” Eris said, somewhat disgusted.

“I can read plenty. Books and plays and all sorts of things. In Kathar.”

“‘Tis hardly different from Kathar. What did they teach you at the University if not this?”

“Even I can read Regal,” Aletheia said.

Rook frowned, glancing the scroll over. “I never said they didn’t teach me. I just didn’t learn.” He smiled. “I'll check the other rooms.”

So the two of them departed to the adjacent chambers while Eris continued to probe. While the library was located in the circular chamber of the tower, they had evidently not yet crested the top of the keep, for the hallways that led into darkness from this place connected back to corridors and more chambers still which were very large.

Many of the ‘books’ here were not books at all. They were more scrolls and loose papers. She quickly found herself disappointed by what she found. Ledgers, record books, chronicles, but little in the way of magic.

She swore. All this way for nothing.

Long before she had finished her search Rook reported their findings. “There’s a vast study with frescos up and down the wall. They look religious to me.”

“I am sick of interpreting ancient cave paintings,” Eris said. “I do not care about these people.”

“You’re interested in what they knew.”

“I am interested in what they preserved. There is a difference.”

Eris spent hours looking through everything while the other two rested on the ground. Soon she found herself exhausted, having ransacked the entire storey of its papers, still empty-handed. But in the last place she checked, on a high shelf, concealed out of sight, she climbed to its top and pulled down a scroll—

A treatise on forgestones. That was something, at least. She would need to translate it and now she was too tired to sustain the Wisdom of the Sages any longer.

“Is it a surprise?” Rook said.

“That they would take everything of value can be a disappointment without being a surprise.” She collapsed against the wall beside him.

He nodded in agreement. “It’s late.”

“Or so you think. Still, we may as well rest here, out of the rain, than elsewhere.”

“What about what killed the chickens?” Aletheia said. “It’s still out there. Something is—I can still feel it. I don’t like it here.”

“Do you think there are no creatures outside who will kill you?” Eris said. “We are safer here. Besides, your ineptitude cost us our exit. We cannot leave the way we came.”

“She’s right,” Rook said. “The study should be safe.”

The study did indeed have paintings of some great flight from some great tragedy all across the walls, but Eris paid it no regard. She no longer cared. She set out her bedroll beneath a desk and looked for sleep, and before long she found it.

Aletheia screamed. She babbled something but Eris couldn’t hear the words and as she pulled herself awake she saw nothing in the darkness except the translucent shape of a child—glowing blue.

It stood in the doorway toward the library. Featureless, still, staring at them, nothing but a silhouette of mana. The stench in the air assaulted Eris’ Essence now; worse than any decay, a feeling like her very soul was being corrupted. She closed herself off to it.

Rook rose and pointed his sword its way. Eris drew Pyraz’s dagger. Aletheia cowered.

“What is it?” Rook whispered.

Eris shook her head. “Leave us!” she shouted.

The child did not move. Rook took a step forward—and at that it vanished, dissipating like a cloud of mist into the air.

“It’s a demon,” Aletheia stuttered.

Eris rushed to the library. She saw two more silhouettes, one blue and another red, ascending the tower. Then, from the corner of her eye, she spotted another watching her from the wall, yet when she looked its way it vanished, too.

She retreated back to Rook, but bumped into him after two steps.

“Not demons,” she said. “They are scarshades, a type of manascar. Otherwise known as ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Rook said.

“When the soul of a human is not merged properly with an Essence, it is destroyed—and only the Essence remains. Such a fate awaited Aletheia had she not been revived.”

“Why would there be scarshades here?” Aletheia said.

Eris took a breath. She knew exactly why. It was obvious. But after her discussion with Rook the other night, she was reticent to tell. “There are many ways for a magician to lose his soul. If he does his body will wither and a scarshade will be all that remains. Certain spells, demons—such as a Vampire, and traumatic exposure to the aether. ‘Tis a most unpleasant fate. Whatever the answer, we will likely learn more in the tower’s higher levels.”

Rook pulled his hair back. “Ghosts. Perhaps we shouldn’t linger here after all.”

“No,” Eris said, “perhaps not.”

They gathered their things and continued to the next level. This was much farther: two thousand steps, so that they were all exhausted by the time they reached the top. Now there was no way they were not well above the keep, and yet as they stepped onto the landing, they found themselves in a dungeon.

An expansive dungeon. Cell after cell down two corridors adjacent, both a hundred feet to their conclusion.

This tower was larger inside than out.

“What is this?” Rook said. “How—why is this here?”

“Oh no,” Aletheia said. She stepped backward. Shaking her head.

“What? Why a prison, up here?”

Eris stepped toward the nearest cell. She glanced through the bars. Inside the accoutrements were not bad; a small bed, a small wash basin, and a small toy—so long as one ignored the straps on the bed.

“It is not a prison,” she said. “It is a recovery ward.”

“For what?”

“For Manasearing,” Aletheia said.

They glanced about the cells. Each was filled with children’s toys—wooden horses and lions and eagles. Some had multiple beds as small as cribs, but always were the straps present. Eris knew only too well what those were for.

Rook fell silent. Eris looked around the other side of the staircase, behind it; at once she found another door, this one locked. She melted its latch, but realized then it was powered—magic kept it closed. With Rook’s help she tugged it ajar and stepped through.

On the other side was a large room. At its center, a table with straps for the feet, arms, wrists, sternum, and head. A counter was at the far side lined with vials and syringes. Attached to the wall behind the table was a device like might be found in a distillery, painted red. To the other was one in blue. There were no windows here but manalights in the corners which Eris tapped on, and she stepped to the desk.

Vials of blue and red. No green. A syringe filled with red liquid jittered when she brought her hand near. She grabbed it and held it up. The fluid inside writhed like crushed stone, glistening in the light, rumbling in her grip.

“Manaserum,” she said.

Aletheia pressed her back against the wall. Shaking her head.

“They were making magicians,” Rook said.

“They have no green serum. I suspect that accounts for the high casualty rate; the process was yet to be perfected, at least in this remote place.”

“Casualty rate?”

“Even today fewer than five percent survive Manasearing.” Eris spoke with disinterest as she perused the things set out here. A selection of crumbling papers—she thumbed through them. She saw another scarshade hanging in the corner of the room, watching her, but it disappeared seconds later.

Another paper—

She gasped.

A scroll was buried beneath the papers—a spell scroll, imbued with Manastone ink, written in Regal, its magic not expended. She picked it up and saw at once the word written at its top:

Sleep.

Used to entrance initiates, no doubt. She would find her own uses for it. She noticed the name inscribed beneath the spell’s title: Eisolaz. Another nearby paper bore the same name.

She nearly coughed in laughter. Of all the places to find an old friend. That ancient elf knew how to get around, it seemed. It meant nothing to her, except for passing amusement, and she moved on at once. She rolled up the scroll and put it into her backpack.

“Children?” Rook said.

“What?” Eris said, turning.

“One percent of children? They sacrifice a hundred children for a single magician?”

She nodded. “For those who die ‘tis an agonizing, tortuous end. You are well aware what it is like for us who do survive.” A thought. “The Elektron plants below. That is where they buried the bodies of their failed initiates. So many that even centuries later the mana in their blood permeates the soil. In Pyrthos they do not sear those younger than six, but here it seems they started earlier. That would explain the cribs—"

“Younger than six?” Rook said.

“‘Tis less of a loss, for a baby to die than a toddler, and so on. Up to a point.” She shared a glance with Rook, who was horrified at the thought. “Or clearly so they believed.”

“Thousands of children—toddlers and…how could these people do it?”

“If they were anything like Pyrthos, they had an elf do it for them.”

“What sort of monster can slaughter his own people's children by the thousands?"

Eris turned back to the table. She grabbed the vials of manaserum, which together nearly shook so hard to shatter in her hand, and stepped away.

“Please,” she said. “They were no different from us. Do you think they could have survived in this place without magic?”

“Is it worth it, if that’s the price?”

“What an idiotic thing to say! Of course ‘tis worth it. Anything is worth it, if ‘it’ is survival. It is a price we still pay today at Pyrthos—which your Archon takes no issue with.”

“He doesn’t know. If he did—"

“Of course he knows. Who do you think supplies the children to be seared? How do you think I ended up at the Tower? I was sent over as a captive, as tribute. They did not expect me to survive; no one is expected to survive.”

Rook shook his head. Apparently he didn’t know. “I knew the Manasearing was horrible—but that so many died—do you truly think this is acceptable? It’s—human sacrifice. You could be one of these scars. Aletheia could be a scar! It’s luck that you’re alive!”

“It is ‘luck’ that any of us are alive. It is luck we were ever conceived in the first place, or that we survived to adulthood, or that we were not struck by lightning on our way to this Keep. Shall we consider what else is luck?”

“No, you know that’s different. You’re lying to yourself. No one can control whether or not they’re born, but the Magisters could stop—this—tomorrow, and thousands of lives would be saved.”

“Do you think the world would be a better place without magic?” Eris was aghast. “You would be dead, or have you forgotten your infection already?”

“Better me than them.”

“More likely it would be both. Do not make the mistake of thinking they would live happy, healthy lives were it not for the Magisters’ intervention.”

“You don’t know that, but you do know most will die if you inject Manastone into their veins.”

“And? Do not blame me for their deaths simply because I survived.”

“But would you stop it, if you could?”

She hesitated. “You consider only the lives extinguished by the process, not the lives saved by magicians in adulthood. The latter is far greater each year. All good things have a price, Rook.”

“Forgive me if I think it’s wrong to guarantee evil at the long shot at good,” Rook said. “And there is a world of difference between doing that evil yourself and allowing it to exist. Any philosopher will tell you that.”

“You are illiterate, do not lecture me on philosophy. Listen to me, Rook: it is easy to envision your world, but you would find it harder to live in. The Searing is terrible. I cannot express the pain it brought me. I will never forget it. But it made me who I am, and I would gladly do it again—even if the chance to survive is but one in one hundred.”

"Then that's your choice. You're alive to make it. What about everyone else?"

She didn't care about them. She would gladly sacrifice a hundred children for the power of mana. A thousand. Ten thousand. A better question would be to ask what price she wouldn't pay, in other's lives. But she decided not to speak her mind.

She still clutched the serum in her hand. One of the vials cracked. Blue manaserum spilled onto her skin, burning it. She swore and dropped another; the vial fell to the ground, shattering.

“Here,” she said to Rook. “Only you may carry these safely.”

“Don’t!” Aletheia said.

Rook gave a long consideration to the shaking glass in Eris’ hand. At length he said, “No. I won’t.”

“You won’t?”

“I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“You must! I cannot keep them myself!”

He raised his hand in surrender and took a step backward.

“You idiot! We have come all this way—”

“What do you intend to do with those vials? Will they transform Pyraz? Why take them?”

“Manaserum is controlled by the Tower jealously—we will never find this again,” Eris said. Now both she and Rook were shouting. “We cannot leave it because you feel moralistic! It is more valuable than gold!”

“I don’t want it,” Aletheia said.

“Leave it here, Eris. Some things aren’t worth taking.”

“Yes,” Eris said, “rocks, and little girls from caves, but not manaserum. You lunatic! Gah!”

She tightened her grip around the two vials still in her hand. The shaking intensified—and another shattered. Red manaserum covered her hand and immediately rashes swelled across her palm, and she was forced to put the other down.

She swore. Rook stepped forward to grab her shoulder—a comforting gesture—but she pushed him away. “Do not touch me!”

She was furious. She grabbed her backpack and pushed past Rook, back toward the stairs, gasping in pain at the burn on her hand and clutching her wrist. Yet it was only when she reached the stairs that she looked up, back toward the holding cells, and then she saw.

Scarshades. Blue and red all. The silhouettes of children. Hundreds of them, shoulder to shoulder. Some tall, some short, packed like courtiers in a busy hall, and all staring right back at her.

One stepped in front of her. It put a hand on her shoulder—

And she felt her consciousness get sucked away.