“Before we begin, Orenda,” Quiroris said, “I’d like to show you something, something that may be a bit… inappropriate for a young lady to see. But I think it will better help you to understand.”

“Alright,” Orenda said, stirring her coffee long past the point where it would help dissolve the sugar.

Quiroris stood and slowly stripped out of his robes. Underneath, he wore a flowing poet’s shirt, which he carefully unbuttoned, looking away from her as if the act caused him great embarrassment, which, Orenda thought, it certainly should. This was her room now, and anyone should be embarrassed to be half-naked in it, but especially a headmaster who had been the one to decide the task himself, not at Orenda’s command.

But his intentions soon became clear. The flesh where his abdominal muscles should be, from just under his chest to where it disappeared below his belt, was… not flesh, exactly. It looked like melted candle wax. It was not smooth as skin should be, did not resemble skin at all, nor was it exactly a scar. It looked as if he had been… “melted” was the only word that came to mind, over and over, as Orenda stared at the misshapen mound that was his torso.

“You may notice that I sometimes use a cane,” Quiroris said as he went back to buttoning up his shirt, “the healers call it ‘nerve damage’. Some days are better than others, but there are times when I cannot stand on my own. I have no core strength, and nothing I can do will ever return it to me.”

“It looks awful,” Orenda said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “Which was complicated by the fact that teenagers are not finished growing. It, perhaps, would not have been so bad, had I been injured as an adult. They may have been able to do more. Over the years I’ve heard many different opinions. But, the fact of the matter is that I was blessed with great luck. I should be dead. Many people who met with similar injuries are no longer with us.”

“What happened, Felearn?” Orenda asked as he sat back down on the far side of the desk, buttoned his shirt, and sipped his coffee.

Felearn Quiroris did not join the military because he dreamed of some sort of warrior’s honor, or because he delighted in combat. The simple fact was that he was a skilled mage from an agricultural family and he needed the money. He needed it to live, and he needed it to send home. He had been under the impression, as so many are, that he would be protecting the queen and would never leave Urilian soil unless he decided to, when he was able to retire, with a complete set of skills and the money he had saved, to live out the rest of his days in peace pursuing his interest in unlocking the secrets of magic.

That did not mean that he was not excited by the prospect of travel. Voyages were expensive at the best of times, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the fire continent for a diplomatic mission seemed like a paid vacation. He was told that on one of the ships the prince regent was traveling, but he never saw him. He and his unit were there to protect Lady Glenlen, a diplomat who was traveling with the prince to meet with the council of priests at the Sacred Mountain Temple to discuss an artifact housed there, which the empress was keen to possess. It was going to be a quick and easy mission- escort the lady and the prince to pick up the artifact and return home.

Most of their time would be spent acting as tourists, taking in the local sights, smells, tastes, and, of course, people. Fire elves rarely traveled, so most of the soldiers, certainly, all of them in his unit, had never seen one. Felaern was not the sort of person to participate in idle gossip or ridiculous speculation, but he heard his fair share.

He was delighted to find that the fire elves lived up to the hype. The Urillian soldiers disembarked, all three ships of them, on a coastal city full of tall, white, sparkling spires that reached to the heavens. Their eventual destination was a temple located high on a mountain range that he could see in the distance, but could not imagine actually marching into. It was far to the north, and higher than any of the mountains back home, stretching into and above the clouds.

On that first day, he was in heaven. As their troop leaders left to haggle for supplies for their journey, they were turned loose upon the city. It was all sights and smells and food so spicy it made his eyes water, with not only the normal shops that he thought were very similar to Urilian businesses but an open-air marketplace selling all kinds of trinkets perfect for remembering your trip or sending home to your parents.

One of his traveling companions, Tolimaur, grabbed his arm and pointed skyward.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, “They can fly!”

Felaern craned his neck to see what Tolimaur had been pointing to and saw a fire elven woman with her arms outstretched, looking as if she was a water elf surfing along the ocean waves, but she was flying above them, not on a plank of wood, but on a carpet- into the bottom of which he saw several fire crystals woven and alight.

“They’re giving rides, Maury,” Tolimaur’s sister, Solomaur pointed toward a booth, “it must be a tourist thing.”

“We should do it!” Sokomaur linked arms with her sister, and together they pushed through the crowd to a booth, where three gorgeous, shirtless fire elven men were in various stages of flight.

“Wanna go with me?” Maury asked, licked his lips and added, “Though now… I would not be at all averse to, uh, goin by myself. We supposed to stick together but…”

“I know, Maury,” Felaern said, “I got eyes. I wonder how they keep from fallin?”

“Yup,” Tolimaur agreed, “That would be tragic. It’d make perfect sense for an earth elf to fear that. Nobody could’t blame him if he was to hold on for dear life to… whatever he could reach.” His eyes seemed to glaze over as he watched one of the men hover a few inches off the ground while his sisters stepped onto his carpet, and both instantly clung to him out of fear. “...I’m goin. Just meet me after the ride.”

“Right,” Felaern said, “Have fun. Maybe I’ll take the next’n.”

Felaern thought that the booth, like many of the booths, had been set up specifically because the strange land’s inhabitants knew there would be a large influx of tourists because those carpets seemed to be a fairly common means of conveyance. He watched as Maury stepped onto the next carpet and wrapped his arms around the man in mock fear, then gave a shout of very real fear as they rose into the air.

“I know how that’s done,” Orenda interrupted. She stood, picked up her staff, then took Quiroris’s robe from the back of his chair as he watched her.

“It’s a matter of air currents,” she explained, “warm air rises, so you only have to heat the air under the object enough to make it float. It must be easier with the crystals to distribute the heat. I can’t imagine it would support a person’s weight, but it makes sense.”

She threw the cloak into the air, and Quiroris watched in amazement as it spread out and remained there, fluttering a little, up and down, as Orenda’s staff glowed and dimmed in time.

“You discovered that on your own?” Quiroris asked.

“It was easy to figure out; I have a natural understanding of heat. You can see it rise, with water. That’s how steam works, Felaern, don’t be a fool. It isn’t exactly complex alchemy.”

Orenda felt that he should have noticed this same thing happening in the square, when Nochdifache had used it to get the attention of the crowd, but she did not want to delay the story any longer, and almost regretted telling him that she knew the trick used to operate the carpet. But she knew of them, had seen them in the book that she had retrieved from Spring and hidden in the wardrobe of her new room. They likely had been common, once. But no more, like the fire elves themselves.

“Right,” Quiroris said with a soft smile.

While he waited, Felaern joined a large group of the soldiers who had gathered to watch some sort of street performance. Glowing red coals, simmering in the heat of the day and still giving off smoke, had been laid out upon the street. A fire elven woman was standing in her bare feet, arms outstretched, walking back and forth upon the coals as if they didn’t affect her in the slightest. As the soldiers watched, she began to dance and was soon joined by two other women holding flowing strips of fabric.

The three of them sang in a language that Felaern could not understand, accompanied by a group of musicians who stood to the side, and a fire elven boy began to walk the crowd holding out a tambourine, which the other soldiers tossed money into.

The man next to him seemed to notice something in Felearn because he nudged him and said, “Here, Fella. I reckon I owe you anyhow.”

Felearn looked up to see that he was standing by Kailu, a man he had once shared a barrack with, who had attempted to pierce his ears and failed horribly. Kailu came from a wealthy family and was holding coins in his outstretched hands.

“Thanks,” Felearn said, took them, and dropped them into the tambourine.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the city on the waterfront was the inhabitants. In Uril, it was rare to see a dwarf among elves, and unheard of for a human to travel alone without an express purpose, which they would perform as quickly and efficiently as possible. A human who had not been well trained would simply not be allowed out of the house.

Here they were everywhere. Dwarves mingled up and down the streets not as merchants, but in all manner of dress, from sailors to scholars, mages to fighters, shopkeeps to pickpockets. Felaern had never seen any dwarf who was not a dignitary or representative, usually of the mercantile class, and didn’t really know what to make of them.

Humans wandered up and down the streets in full family groups; their children darted about in the chaos, and he was sure that he saw a group of children- human, elven, and dwarven playing some sort of game that involved running from booth to booth and tackling each other. He didn’t know what to make of it, but part of him wondered if the elven child would be hurt by the much too gruff kind of play. He wanted to step in and protect her, and wondered where her parents were.

“Fella,” it was Sokomaur’s hand on his shoulder now, “Have y’all seen Maury? I want to trick him into eatin this,” She held some sort of street food wrapped in bread, “I done went and put all of that red sauce they’d gimme on it.”

“What is that?” Kailu asked, narrowing his eyes at her. Felearn had somehow wound up walking around with Kailu and another soldier in their unit of mages with a similar name that he could not remember, because everyone called them Kai and Ky. Or, alternatively, Rich Kai and Poor Ky, which was likely not enjoyed by the former.

“They called it a kati roll,” She said, “But it looked like a shish kebab rolled into a pancake. I done filled it with that spicy sauce. Solo’s over there tryin to coat her tongue!” She laughed, and Felaern thought that was a terrible thing to do.

“You shouldn’t trick people,” he shrugged her off.

“It ain’t a trick when they kin to ya,” Sokomaur told him, “You gotta be an only child or you would understand.”

“We get it,” Rich Kai said as if he was genuinely jealous, “you got siblings.”

“All the money in the world can’t buy family, can it?” She asked with a smirk, “You want you a bite, moneybags?”

Rich Kai took a step forward and attempted to knock the thing out of her hands, but cringed in pain when a woman grabbed him by the wrist.

“Boy,” was the only word the woman said, but all three men took her meaning to heart, though her speech was limited by what Felearn assumed was a swollen tongue. Solomaur was the broadest person in the small group, an infantry fighter.

“That hurts,” Rich Kai said as if she didn’t know, “Ow! My bones are grindin! Quit it! I’ll cast! I swear to god!”

“Solo,” Poor Kai said calmly, “Quit.”

“You best keep your sugar daddy on a leash,” Solo said, “don’t be hittin folks.”

“What?” Felearn asked, “Your mouth ain’t workin.”

“Your ears ain’t workin,” she countered as the group made its way back to the booth giving out carpet rides.

“Oh,” Maury was saying as they approached, “So then, what do you do when you ain’t flyin scared tourists around?”

He was leaning dangerously close to the man, staring up at him with a wicked smile, and the man was smiling back down with nearly the same expression.

“I normally work at my father’s textile company,” the man answered in his thick accent, “We just saw an opportunity, and we took it. Sometimes, you must jump at opportunities. There can be…” He trailed one finger up Tolimaur’s uniform, hitting every button, “A brief window. You never know when something can come into your life.”

“Darlin,” Tolimaur leaned heavily on his staff, towards the man, “I understand that more than most folks. You gotta take chances, grab what life gives you. It ain’t like perfect men are gonna just fall out the sky. I’m an earth mage, I ain’t used to havin my head in the clouds.” He playfully slid one hand down the long flowing fabric that the man had knotted around his waist as a belt, “But I can make the earth move. I can rock your world.”

“Maury,” Sokomaur burst into the conversation, “eat this. I know how you love to sample the local cuisine.”

“Go away,” he said, happily, without looking at her.

“Oh,” the man said, “Those are quite good. I actually think you would like it. How long are you going to be in town?”

A loud whistle rang out, and Felaern’s head shot in that direction. “They finished already?” He asked, “I sure didn’t think they’d get in no hurry.”

“You were always awkward, weren’t you?” Orenda asked, startling Quiroris out of his memory.

“What?” Quiroris asked.

“I imagine,” Orenda said, “That most people would have told this story to make themselves seem a little better. You’ve told me that you were too frightened to fly, too poor to tip, too pretentious to assist in pranks, and willing to awkwardly stand in the shadows while your friend flirted instead of talking to locals yourself.”

Quiroris was silent for a second before he said, “I take your meaning, but that is what happened. I’m simply trying to remember all I can about Tolimaur, because I know that you were interested in him.”

“I’m more interested in the fire elves,” Orenda told him.

“The dance those ladies did,” Felaern told her, “Is very similar to the one outlined in the book you let me copy. It relies heavily on a… lack of modesty. It was interesting but I wouldn’t like to describe it to one so young.”

“What about the temple, then?” Orenda asked, “The one that no one can travel to anymore?”

Felaern and his unit traveled for days, and he did not recount all of it to Orenda for a variety of reasons, the chief among them that it was a rather dull trip. His unit was right in the middle of it, neither near the front with the prince, nor particularly close to Lady Glenlen. The simple truth was that he, and others like him, were not overly important. They were more there for show than actual protection. The nobles had wanted to impress the priests, so they had sent a large force under the impression that most of the people in that force wouldn’t need to actually do anything.

The sacred site around the temple was shockingly similar to the marketplace, in that it housed more diverse inhabitants than he would have expected. They had stopped for supplies again, during their trip, at a dwarven city carved into the very living rock of the sacred mountain, though he did not relay this information to Orenda, and the place had been predictably dwarven. But here, in the city that had sprang up around the temple, he saw, once again, humans and dwarves among the elven inhabitants. It was much smaller than the city on the coast or the other towns they had passed, and there were fewer of them, but there were enough that it did not escape his notice.

The temple was beautiful, but it made him thankful for the armor they had picked up in the dwarven city. It had a special magic upon it that reduced the heat, using a mechanism that he did not understand, but which was working wonderfully because the beautiful temple held a terrifying secret. The rooms that, in Uril, would have been guarded against the elements by stone walls, were out and open, tall white ceilings supported by pillars that allowed the congregation to weave in and out as the outdoors and inside merged seamlessly. There were no pews, as one would see in a Urilian church, rather the congregation sat on the carpeted floor on their knees, and listened to the priests give their sermons.

But beyond these public spaces, the temple was carved into the very living rock of the mountain, and as he marched in formation beside Tolimaur with the other mages, he saw the air ripple with the heat of it. The incense that saturated the air, the voices raised in song of the fire elven congregation, and the heat that made everything shimmer and ripple like a mirage were so disorienting he could not, with any authority, say that he was not dreaming.

Near the front of the procession, the Emerald Knight stood with Lady Glenlen, looking as terrifying as his reputation would lead one to believe. His armor moved and rustled like a living thing, like a forest taking life, and the stone in his chest shone with the divine light of his status- the chosen one, sent by Thesis to unite all of elvenkind under divine rule. The artifact held in the temple had been guarded by the council of fire elven priests for centuries, and finally, the rightful owner had come to claim it.

The eight priests sat in a semicircle on a raised platform, and the ninth stood tall and strong before them. She was undeniably beautiful, but in a way that Felaern could not understand. She looked nothing like Xandra, nothing like how the Urilians understood beauty. She wore her long, flowing priest robes, but was sturdy underneath, and tall enough that the Emerald Knight would only stand a head above her. She dwarfed the soldiers before her. Her ceremonial headdress drew the eye to a fire crystal on her forehead, in the same place that many of the fire elves wore ceremonial makeup to symbolize the placement of a “third eye”, a gesture that mages and priests used to represent seeing into the ‘spiritual world’ or ‘magical world’. Her golden eyes seemed to radiate a light of their own as she spoke.

“Welcome,” She said in her gorgeous accent, deep and exotic, “To the Sacred Mountain Temple. I have been told that one of you believes himself to be the Chosen Child of Thesis, and would like to be tested.”

The Emerald Knight stepped forward, and spoke, “High Priestess Firefist,” he said, “I am the Chosen One. I am a knight in the service of the Urilian crown, chosen by Thesis to wield the sacred sword.”

“What is your name?” The high priestess asked.

“I am the Emerald Knight,” the Emerald Knight replied, “And I have traveled long on the advice of my sword. It tells me that the artifact lies in the heart in the temple, and I must claim it.”

“The great fire spirit dwells in the heart of the temple,” The high priestess told him, “That is not where the artifact lies. The great fire spirit holds a link to Thesis himself, and no one can look upon it who has not been chosen.”

“I have been chosen,” The Emerald Knight swore.

“Only the Chosen Child of Thesis may take the sacred staff from its resting place,” The high priestess explained, “This test was devised by the one true god himself, when he built the temple. It is held in a fire that burns from the very core of the planet, the life-force that flows from within Xren herself, the heat that allows all life, that creates the movement of the continents, that builds mountains and carves valleys. This is the fire that flows from the heart of the world, just as magic flows from the heart of the body. This is a particularly trying test for you, as a foreigner. All who have not been chosen for the priesthood who have ever tried to take the staff from this sacred fire have been succumbed by it. The mountain, and the great fire spirit within, will not allow the failure of a false prophet. If you fail this test, you will die burning.”

“I understand the trial by fire,” The Emerald Knight said, “And I will overcome this trial, and meet with a god.”

“Very well,” she raised a hand and the entire council of priests rose, “We take your sword as proof of your divine right on your own ground, but to meet with the great fire spirit, to prove you are truly the one chosen by the great god Thesis, you must obtain the sacred staff. Follow me.”

“Well shit,” Tolimaur huffed as the Emerald Knight and his personal guards followed the council of priests, “I thought we’d get to see it.”

“I thought we’d get to spend more time here,” Felaern sighed, “We done spent most of our time climbin the mountain. They made it seem like it’d be a vacation.”

“That’s how government work is,” Rich Kai pulled open the neck of his robe in an attempt to escape the heat, “and that’s gonna be my life. Y’all are lucky.”

“It’s hot as hell in here,” Tolimaur used one hand to flutter his robes trying to get some air, “I hate to think what it’s like without this here dwarven underwear. Y’all know Soko didn’t even get to come in here? Them archers is all positioned outside for some reason. She was real pissed about it.”

“I’m sure,” Poor Ky said, “But I reckon that’s a moot point. None of us is gonna see anything.”

“Taking him a long time to grab a staff,” Maury leaned heavily against his own staff.

That was an understatement. An hour passed, then another, and another, and eventually the soldiers were allowed to sit down. Meals were brought and served, and none of them understood why, if it was to take so long, they weren’t allowed to break formation and wander around the town.

He, Maury, Kai and Ky had actually been sitting facing each other playing cards when their superior officer ran, raising her staff, and shouting. It was such an abrupt tonal shift, and the situation was still so dreamlike, that Felaern thought at first that she was a mirage herself.

Then the ground began to shake and the sound of something outside boomed so loudly that it echoed in his ears and they were being herded out onto the street into a snowstorm that could not, logically, exist. Tolimaur was beside him, was shrieking, but Felaern’s ears were still ringing and he had no idea what he was screaming about. The town was in chaos, but Felaern could not understand the snow.

He looked up to try to make sense of it and saw that the clouds had turned black as his hearing gradually returned and the sounds of the panicked crowd filled his ears.

“SHIELD!” the Commander was screaming, every other breath, and he turned to face her, to face the direction of his unit.

The earth had exploded, and hell was seeping into their reality.

He screamed himself at the sight of it and concentrated as hard as he could. Together the unit worked, and the ground under their feet shifted as they all lifted their hands, trying to create a makeshift wall of earth between them and the hellscape that was descending upon them.

Felaern still did not understand the snow.

It was the strongest earth shield he had ever seen, tall and thick and composed of the strong rock of the mountain, the foundation upon which the civilization had been built.

It was melting.

One of the people screaming rose above the others.

“Their false prophet has brought this upon us!”

Felaern jerked his head to see a woman standing on the top of the temple, but did not recognize her as a priest, “Orenda Firefist is dead! The Council has been slain by the Emerald Knight! The Great Fire Spirit calls out to all of us in pain! Can’t you hear it? The Urilians came to slay a god!”

“No, we didn’t!” Felaern was not the only one who had screamed this- it seemed to be the general consensus- but they obviously were not believed.

Felaern didn’t know that they had had an army, had seen no signs of them when they had arrived, but they were here now, and he had no idea from whence they came. But he had already been looking at the sky, and his vision narrowed to the man in uniform on the carpet with a glowing staff.

He had only enough time to form the thought, “He’s going to fire at us!”. He did not have time enough to say it, to warn anyone.

He could not describe the pain, because it took him too long to register it as pain. It didn’t even feel like fire at first. It felt cold, as if he had been sprayed hard, in the stomach, by a blast of icy water. He looked at the wound in disbelief, at the gaping hole that exposed the way his raw abdominal muscles twisted when he tried to sit up-

The real pain hit him when he looked at it. And whatever spell had been on the armor was gone now. The full heat of the area hit him at once, and blood oozed out as his muscles contracted with the force of his vomit.

Maury was kneeling over him, thrusting a potion at him, speaking exclusively in a string of curses, begging the universe to answer the one pressing question on all of their minds, “What the actual goddamn everlovin FUCK!?”

“Drink this you dumb summbitch, quit throwing up; you’re gonna die!” Maury told him, sensibly, so he opened his mouth and allowed him to pour it down his throat. He felt it flowing through his blood, but the wound did not close completely.

“I’m going to die,” he hadn’t realized he had said it out loud, but he had to, because Maury answered him.

“No, shit,” he snapped, “We all gonna die! That shield’s meltin! It’s hot enough to melt stone! We gotta move, now!”

He jerked him, unceremoniously up by the arm to keep the rest of the unit from trampling him, but the heat was too much, he was too thirsty, he was burning from the inside out- he was dying and he knew it. He didn’t know where his staff was. His vision swam in the heat of it, and none of it was real, none of it made sense.

The mages were not the only fire elves fighting back. They were pressed up against the fighters, dual wielding curved swords and shouting. Felaern could not fight. He didn’t know where he was. Rich Kai, who had given him money, screamed in the chaos, and suddenly Tolimaur was no longer by his side, but running in that direction, toward the fighting, toward the screaming.

“On your toes,” his Commander snarled and shoved his staff into his hands, “They’re in the air. We have to ground them.”

“How can they see through the snow?” Felaern asked.

“Hit em with poison!” she commanded, “Protect the fighters!”

She was gone and Felaern leaned on the staff as if it was a walking stick. He did not know where their fighters were.

“Shit they up there doing another pass!” Someone screamed, and he looked up to see that they were right.

Felaern did as those around him had done and reached into his bag for a projectile. The potion within was a volatile earth spell that mimicked the airborne pathogens of certain plants. It was a terrible way to die, closing off the pathways and shutting down the circulatory system, but he told himself that at least it acted quickly as he threw it.

It hit the man on the carpet in the face and shattered. Felaern did not know if it was the same man who had attacked him, because he didn’t have time to make that distinction. He was in so much pain, he was so hot that he knew he was only a few breaths away from a heat stroke himself, and he had to keep pressing forward. Everything was chaos and heat and snow and black clouds and fire from every direction and the unrelenting, unending pain in his torso that made his legs give out more than once, but he picked himself up and he kept moving forward.

“SOKO!” Maury screamed like a man dying, and Felaern followed his eyeline just in time to see Sokomaur’s commander fall. Soko was still holding her bow taunt, standing on the roof of a building, and Felaern watched her commander move with the force of the arrow in her skull, over the edge of the roof and into the crowd below. “SHE’S LOST HER FUCKING MIND! YOU DUMB BITCH!”

Desertion would not be tolerated, and several of the mages readied spells to cast or potions to throw, but Tolimaur was faster. He had already had a poison potion in his hand, and in one smooth motion, he turned-

And threw it into his own unit with a shout of his sister’s name.

Felaern was resistant to earth magic as an earth elf, moreso than elves of other elements, so normally this would have been incapacitating, but not fatal. But he was already so weak, and it was already so difficult to breathe. He clutched his staff in agony as every cough made his abdominal muscles contract and sent that bolt of excruciating pain through his body. As his vision blurred, he made peace with the fact that he was going to die, and as it faded to black, he hoped that Thesis would count this pathetic wasting away as a warrior’s death.

“I woke up in a medic’s tent,” Quiroris explained, “in what is now the wastelands, the great forest at the foot of the sacred mountains. I had killed three of the fire mages before I went down. I had been injured in action. They gave me a medal.”

He said this as if it was somehow an insult to him.

“Oh,” Orenda said because she didn’t know what she was supposed to say in response to that.

“The sky was black around the mountain,” he said, “And, I am told, orange, yellow and red everywhere else. People claimed to see it on the water continent and at the capital. They said that the entire sky changed, that they could see the billowing clouds. I think that those accounts may be exaggerated, but… sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“There were a lot of reports of the eruption,” Orenda said, “It destroyed the entire ecosystem of the continent. I daresay you could see it from a great distance away.”

“The rumor around the unit was,” Quiroris stared into his empty cup, “That the Emerald Knight really had killed their god- that minor deity, the ‘great fire spirit’ that could commune with Thesis. I liked to think, for a long while, that the fire elves had had time to evacuate, because of the shield we put up to buy them that time, that perhaps at least the children survived. Then, I reached a point, because I had gone for so long and seen none of them, that I admitted to myself that that probably was not the case. But now… now I have you, Orenda.”

“Two centuries and one person,” Orenda said, “Those are not particularly comforting numbers, Felaern.”

“I don’t know why I thought they would be,” he said.

They were silent for some time, in thought, but eventually, Felaern spoke again.

“No one goes up there, anymore,” he said, “a few expeditions say that they’ve tried but the land must be cursed, because they can’t even get close before they begin to get sick, deathly sick. More than one person has died of heatstroke, or of a magic blast from their blood that burned them from the inside out.”

“Do you think the Emerald Knight is the chosen one?” Orenda asked.

“Are you the sort of person who could turn me in for treason?” Quiroris asked.

“Of course not.”

“I don’t think the Emerald Knight should have been allowed inside that temple. I think that we brought something unholy to a holy place, that we spilled sacred blood on sacred ground, and now all of us who let that happen are being punished for it. Almost everyone who was there that day is dead, Orenda. I don’t know why I’ve been spared. I know that the Emerald Knight claimed to have the sacred sword, but that thing is no child of god. If anything, it’s a demon.”