The interior differed from what I had imagined. With gold-tinged marble floors and walls, wooden support beams and wide hallways. Uncle seemed unimpressed. “Hasn’t changed since I was here last.” The new kid, Envy, looked at him. “Really?”

Uncle nodded, but his mind seemed elsewhere, lost in memories no doubt. “I still remember how it looked back then, vividly. I had just left the dungeon, heading north, and was visiting more out of obligation than anything.” This seemed to pique Amber’s interest as she opened her eyes. “Obligation?”

Uncle looked over at us, reached out and gave her head a gentle rub. “Indeed. I was involved in placing the protective obelisks around Ondul’s borders, and had a standing invitation waiting for me at all times. It felt rude to not aquiest, since I was passing through with nothing but time on my hands.” He seemed rather nostalgic as he spoke.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Hey, you lazy Ox, how long do you intend to be lazing about?” I shot Shaluna a glance and stretched. “For as long as I can get away with it. Besides, I didn’t find you complaining last night.” I received a punch to my arm in response. “So, what’s the big deal?” I finally opened my eyes and sat up, not giving Shaluna my full attention. “Lady Labyrinthia wanted to talk to you earlier, but you were sleeping, so soundly she asked me to tell you when you woke up.”

A wave of cold dread washed through me. I had been sleeping while Milady needed me. Shaluna, seeing my expression chuckled. “You’re not in trouble. If it was something important, she would have just woken you up.” I couldn’t deny the logic behind Shaluna’s words. “Alright, I will go meet with her immediately.” I rose, but Shaluna grabbed my arm. “No, you’re not, not smelling like that. Go take a bath first.”

I hesitated for a moment, then just sighed and headed for the bath. Shaluna was an enigma to me. An enigma that captivated me more than anything else before it. We had met in the arena almost a decade ago, as she strolled in unarmored and holding nothing but an ordinary axe. She was barely out of her teens, and I could still recall the calls of “She’s mad!” and “Get out of there, crazy lady!” from the crowd.

However, in difference from everyone else on the arena floor who showed clear hesitation at the thought of facing me, she was eager. She had charged in with wild abandon. Some would call her reckless, other less charitable people, would call her suicidal. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you just charged headlong at me like that.” As always, all I got in response was an enigmatic smile.

With no answer forthcoming, I just shook my head and entered the bath. One day, I would get my answer. Until then, she was the best company I’d had for almost a decade, and as long as she would stay, I would let her. Good thing Milady didn’t seem to mind her presence anymore. “One day, girl… one day.” One day, I would have an answer to the mystery of Shaluna.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I felt conflicted, I had known Mordred would be here. But I didn’t expect the ravages of time to play havoc with his physical body like that. However, he was in better spirits than the last time I had seen him. I shot a glance behind me and saw him give a gentle, grandfatherly smile as he rubbed the gnome’s head. “Glad you have found a purpose, Mordred. Heavens know it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile.”

“Hey Fox-man, get your head out of the gutter and pay attention.” I noticed that Nicomphus had slowed down and was now beside me. “What’s wrong?” The redcap was on guard, his yellow eyes shooting back and forth as if searching for something.

“Hard to say. I can feel a hostile presence, but it’s obscured, as if not fully here, or were here recently. For now, just pretend nothing is wrong, but keep on guard, and see if you can warn Mage-Man on the sly while you’re at it.” Nicomphus sped up again, leaving me to ponder his words for a few moments. I had never used magical messaging, since my beloved Yrsha knew what I wanted to say before I ever said it, but she had insisted that I learn the spell, anyway. “There will come a day when it will be useful, mark my words.” As always, she was right.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Just watching that insufferable knife-ear fuss over his wife filled me with no small sense of joy. If only he knew I had used him as my vessel to deliver the poison to her. There were noises from the outside and the door slowly opened and admitted a small group of people. A redcap, an old man, two strange girls, a young woman carrying another child. No, a gnome, and… No, that wasn’t possible. Yet, there was no mistaking that face. “Rael, what have you done to yourself?” He couldn’t hear me, of course, but I still felt the need to voice my displeasure.

The redcap approached first, then paused as he neared my vessel. “Elf Lord, please step aside, and I’ll administer the healing bottle.” He looked the redcap over, hesitating as I filled his head with doubt. “Please, can I do it myself?” The redcap shook his head. “No can do, Elf Lord.” For a second, I could swear the disgusting little thing looked straight at me.

The butterflies returned, demanding my immediate departure. “Too late to flee now.” The redcap was indeed looking straight at me. “Mage-Man use spectral sight, and you can see him clear as day. He’s tethered to the Elf Lord, a partial possession by the looks of it, so aim carefully.”

The reaction speed of the old man was too fast. It was as if he had expected something like that. The queen’s guards jumped the Elf Lord and restrained him, and the old man looked at me with a strange expression. “Saol, I thought you were dead, killed in battle with Lady Labyrinthia. Well, more like blowing yourself up to take her with you.” That voice. There was no mistaking it. “Mordred…”

Rael didn’t let me continue as blue flames struck at my spectral form, oh how it burned. Worse still, THE BUTTERFLIES they… they BURNED! no keep it together. I had to be RATIONALITY WAS POINTLESS. Oh, how FUNNY this all was, back with my old WORTHLESS enemies.

Funny… wait who was LAUGHING? WHO DARED TO LAUGH IN MY PRESENCE… oh wait, I was. Why was I laughing when I was in so much pain?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As my flames hit the spectral form of what had once been the guildmaster, his entire demeanor changed, as he seemed to panic for a moment, then abruptly began laughing. “He’s gone insane, that’s for sure.” Mordred walked up beside me and readied a spell of his own. “That much is obvious. He had to be to ally himself with the Void back then.”

I couldn’t refute that claim. The blue fires died out, and the laughing stopped just as fast as it began. Saol looked down at us, his entire expression one of childish curiosity, then changed to pure hatred as he detached from the elf lord and charged towards us.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Mordred finished his cast and blasted Saol with some kind of strange purple bolt that sent him spinning head over heels through the room and slam into the wall with an audible thud. “Wait, how did he-?” My question died on my lips as the Queen’s Guard as they charged past us and attacked Saol, blocking our view of him.

With the guards ganging up on him like that, there wasn’t either of us could do without getting in the way. So instead, I pondered what Mordred had done, and it only took me a moment to realize the answer. “You made him tangible.”

Mordred nodded, his expression grim. “Figured learning such a spell would be useful should I run into some ghosts or such, since they aren't concerned about most means of attack. It took a bit of research, but I developed a spell that forces ethereal beings into a corporeal form.”

Mordred was capable of spell crafting now. Huh… He always used to say it would take far too long to even attempt such a feat, yet here he was having gone through it, anyway. Then again, it has been almost 60 years since we saw each other last. “So you took the time to learn it then, spell crafting.”

Before Mordred could answer, there was a horrible sound coming from where the guards and Saol were fighting. Saol was rapidly mutating and losing all semblance of his old self. “Say Rael, was it just me, or did he seem more lucid until the point where you attacked him?”

I paused for a second, then looked at the injured, mutated mess that was Saol’s corporeal form. “Hmm, if we assume that mutation isn’t voluntary, I’d say he was, and my flames did something.” Before either of us could continue the conversation, a strange energy emanated from Saol.

Mordred froze for a second, then rushed forward. “Dammit, Saol, you might have succeeded in that the last time, but not again!” What did Mordred - wait, this sensation seemed familiar… It was almost the same as… “EVERYONE OUT HE’S TRYING TO SELF DESTRUCT!”

The Lord, who had been released once Saol left him, grabbed the Queen and rushed towards the door, followed by the queen’s guard. The two women traveling with Mordred grabbed their smaller companions and hurried after them out the door. Saol swelled up like a balloon about to pop, and purple smoke began seeping out of his wounded body.

Then, Mordred reached Saol and began uttering strange words that made my ears hurt just listening to them over the angry hissing noises coming from Saol himself. As he finished his spell, there was a flash of purple light and Saol vanished. “Mordred, what did you just do?”

As he turned around, I could see purple energy flying across his form, causing injuries that healed as fast as they arrived. “Banished him back to the Void, or what was once the Void, at any rate. No idea what Labyrinthia made of it after the Embodiments were born.” He seemed more annoyed than pained by the aftereffect of whatever crazy magic he had just used.

Well, whatever she did with it, it’s probably not gonna bode well for Saol. “We should probably catch up to the others.” Mordred hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Just as we reached the door, however, it burst open again and the Gnome from before, visibly still under the effect of her magic sensitivity, but with a determined expression was looking right at us. “Moor, hurry, something’s wrong with Ashes!”

I had never seen Mordred move so fast before. Even as he moved to get rid of Saol, he hadn’t been this fast. I hesitated for a moment, then hurried after him.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As Mordred finished his spell, there was a wrenching sensation that burned through me, dissipating the energies I had been building and sending me hurtling… somewhere. I scraped across a stone floor and crashed into a wall. It hurt, however, without the continuous assault of the queen’s guard I was regenerating. I’d live, for now.

As I stood up and looked around, I couldn’t recognize my surroundings. Where was I? “Hmm, so that’s what the racket was all about.” I turned around. A young woman was standing in the doorway behind me, dressed in a navy-blue dress and with long raven hair, piercing blue eyes and a face that seemed almost… mask like. “I am sorry, Sir. But the Mistress is not home. I will have to ask you to leave.”

Leave? LEAVE HOW DARE SHE TELL ME TO LEAVE! Overwhelmed by sudden fury, I lashed out at her, sending a lance of purple energy straight for her. It would annihilate her on contact, I was certain of it. Then I would make my way back to Ondul and finish Mordred and Rael.

I glanced over at the woman and paused. Why was she still alive? Wait, where was my lance? The woman looked at me with an unreadable expression. “I see. Very well, annihilation it is.” The room went pitch black, swallowed by a darkness so total it was as if the room had disappeared. “The Mistress said someone might show up in her domain with hostile intent. So, she was referring to you.” The only thing still visible was the woman.

Or what had once been the woman? In her place was, a lupine, bipedal creature. An extra feral beast-kin? No, she was too large, almost half as tall as a grown man. She was covered in long black fur, had a lithe, yet powerful build for her size, and her dog face was unusually thin and huge ears. Her dress was gone, replaced with a white linen top, loincloth and linen wraps around her arms and legs.

Before I could fully process the change, something hit my gut, sending me flying backwards from the force of the impact. I looked up from where I landed. The dog creature was standing where I had been standing moments before. She had moved faster than I could register.

I had to get out of here before she - something hit me over the head with such force that I felt my cranium split in two, before the regeneration kicked in, and I began recovering. “Persistence will get you nowhere, intruder.” I finished healing and got to my feet. Then lashed out with a void-infused punch of my own. I hit her, but it was like hitting a cliff. She didn’t budge. She hadn’t even tried to dodge, and the void energies had dissipated before they even connected.

I had to get out. This monster was too much for me to overcome. I tried to phase away, nothing happened. I tried teleporting, still nothing. “No point trying to escape, intruder. Your abilities are all sealed.”

I set off towards the doorway I had seen earlier, and while I crashed into the wall once, I found it. Luckily, the hallway was still lit, and I could make out a long corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling seemed to be made of sandstone, and the walls were covered in strange pictures depicting a Sphinx in various situations.

What was this place? I came to a fork in the road, one passage to my right, which seemed to lead into a great hall, and a hallway that disappeared around a corner to the left shortly after. Where did I go? A moot point, but I felt safer in the hallway.

I ignored the path to the right and headed down the hallway instead. “This damnable place is a maze.” Where was the exit? I rounded another corner and found myself at yet another intersection. A hallway led to the right into what seemed like a hall, and another corridor straight ahead that disappeared around a left bend.

“No, thanks, no halls for me.” I headed down the long, snaking hallway ahead of me and turned the left corner. About ten minutes later I happened upon yet another intersection, one hallway going ahead and then turning left and another hallway down to the right, leading into… a hall. “Rubolgs accursed axe…” I didn’t have a choice, did I? The damn hallway was looping around on itself.

Just to be certain, I morphed my left hand into a blade and cut a gash in my right palm, then left a bloody handprint on the wall, before I headed into the hallway once more. This time, I had barely rounded the corner before I was presented with the same T intersection.

And there it was, on the wall, as if mocking me. A bloody handprint. “Very well, since there is no way around it, have it your way.” I took a deep breath and headed down the corridor on the right, while steeling my resolve for what awaited me ahead.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As Moor exited the door behind me, I rushed back over to Ashes. “Just as we exited her gauntlets began shooting off black energy, then Ashes just collapsed like a sack of coal.” Sarirrva was kneeling on the other side of Ashes, examining the gauntlets with great care. “The sudden spike in void energy inside suppressed the magic on the gauntlets for a few moments, which seems to have had some kind of adverse effect on the girl.”

Moor looked at her, then the gauntlets, then back again. “Can you tell what they were doing?” Sarirrva grabbed the left one and studied i much more up-close. Then, with a frustrated sigh, she let go. “The enchantments are too interwoven, there are some magic threads suggesting… healing? Stability? I can’t say for sure without dismantling them utterly. And if I did, I would not have the craftsmanship needed to reassemble them, let alone weave the enchantments back in. You would need an unparalleled craftsmanship to make these, if not literal divine aid.”

I looked over at Moor. “You can do something, right?” To my horror he seemed just as helpless as I felt. “Under normal circumstances, maybe. But without knowing what happened, anything I might try to do could worsen it rather than help.” Just then Rael and walked over to Nicomphus and discussed something with him in hushed tones. The gangly redcap seemed to hesitate for a moment, then answered back. He seemed reluctant about something.

Rael answered back. He now seemed angry. Nicomphus opened his mouth, closed it, then took a deep breath, before he pulled out a vial of rainbow liquid. “On your head, Fox-man, if the Queen dies because she needed three, you take the blame, got it?” Rael waved him off and hurried over to Moor. “Here, use this. If this doesn’t help her, nothing will.” Moor didn’t hesitate as he grabbed the vial and knelt next to Ashes and across from Sarirrva.

Sarirrva put her hand above his, stopping him. “Let me. The way your hands are shaking you’ll spill it all.” Her voice was gentle, but firm. Moor looked at her for a second, as if he was seeing her for the first time, with various expressions flashing across his face. I couldn’t even imagine the emotional war raging within him at that moment. Then he handed the vial over to her and stepped back. “Fine, wouldn’t do much good if I squandered it.”

Sarirrva looked over at me. “Amber, help keep her head steady and make her swallow. Medicine won’t do much good if she chokes on it.” I rushed over and put her head between my legs. Then Sarirrva showed me where to press on the neck to make Ashes swallow on reflex. Over the next 15 seconds, Sarirrva and I helped Ashes drink the entire vial. Now all we could do, was wait.