Milius gazed up at the black dragon in wonder, and it stared right back, its gleaming white eyes reflecting shock, curiosity, and, unless Milius’s eyes were deceiving him, a terrible sadness.

“It's horrible,” Shakil said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “It's got to be in so much pain. . . . But Cerea . . . she wasn't bound like this. . . . So why is he. . . ?”

Milius did not respond; he could think of nothing to say. But Frederick stepped forward quite abruptly, advancing towards the shining, obsidian-hilted blade enthusiastically, but before he had gone more than a few steps Milius had caught up with him and seized his arm roughly.

“What?” Frederick said defensively, wrenching his arm from Milius’s grasp.

“Are you crazy?” Milius snarled. “Look at it! It's completely covered in chains!”

“So?”

“So?” Milius looked at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘so?’ We found Cerea inside a giant bubble, sealed, yes, but otherwise completely okay! This dragon, Malidreus, is bound from head to foot by all these chains and spikes and the first thing you want to do is set it free?”

“Well, why shouldn't we?” Frederick said angrily. “You heard Cerea, she was locked away for thousands of years, clearly he was too!”

“And yet, whoever locked them away at least made sure Cerea was comfortable! But a dragon that looks like that” — he pointed at Malidreus — “and bound like that, I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on letting him go just yet!”

Frederick made a sudden movement, his hand flying towards his belt, where his bone knife was extending by the hilt upwards, but before his fingers had closed around it, Palpatunde had been unsheathed and its blade was at his throat, Milius glaring up at him; Frederick was rather taller than Milius.

“You're not touching that sword.”

Frederick stared down at him, his hand frozen inches from his knife, his face contorted with rage.

“That's enough!” Shakil said, launching himself forward and separating them, a hand on each of their chests. “Frederick, Milius is right, this dragon, this Catacomb, even this sword, we can't just act rashly, we need to know more —”

“Then use your scales again, let us talk to him!”

Shakil made to respond, but before he could speak, a loud growling sound and a familiar crackling noise rent the air. They turned, shocked, to see Lumeus and Aleia snarling at Malidreus, Lumeus’s plates sparking, and Malidreus, who was growling back, his shining silver fangs bared. Malidreus snapped at them —

The effect was instant: the chains binding him tightened before their very eyes, constricting the dragon even further; streaks of brilliant blue electricity ran along the chains, and Malidreus shrieked in agony, thrashing around wildly, but his movement seemed only to be making things worse. The chains continued to tighten, the electricity coursing, and the dragon howled still louder —

Milius looked up at the dragon and felt a squirming mixture of pity and revulsion — who could have done this?

“Stop! Stop!” he shouted. His words were directed at nothing in particular, but to his enormous surprise, the stream of electricity ceased at once, and the chains slackened. Malidreus fell limp, moaning weakly, the spike embedded in his chest bulging slightly. As he watched him, Milius felt exactly as he had in that dream, desperate to help, but at the same time apprehensive of what would happen next.

“See!” Frederick spat, gesturing at Malidreus. “How can you just leave him like this? To be tortured? What if it was Lumeus?”

The words had a stronger effect on Milius than he could have imagined. He turned around and looked up at the violet dragon, as a horrifying image flitted into his mind, of Lumeus in Malidreus’s place, bound and alone, suffering all manner of unknown, horrendous torture, but Lumeus was still glaring at the dark dragon.

Before Milius could make a decision, however, Frederick came lunging out of nowhere: he had finally managed to extract his bone knife from his belt and he swung wildly, slashing through Milius’s shoulder, then he kicked out, sending him flying into Shakil. As both of them toppled over, Frederick pelted past them and dove at the marble block.

“No!” Milius shouted, disentangling himself from Shakil and springing to his feet, blood blossoming from his shoulder — but too late. Frederick’s hands had closed around Ectomorda’s hilt, and with a tremendous effort, it slid free of the marble block.

Frederick heaved himself from the floor, Ectomorda aloft, and its obsidian ignited, burning dark purple. Palpatunde’s amethyst and Oceannerva’s sapphire reacted, exactly as they had when Cole had claimed Gaiaden, and began to shine as well, their narrow beams of light streaming upon the ceiling. And a moment later Frederick was coated in the Dragonknight’s armour, plated with sparkling obsidian sheets. Malidreus began to roar again. The chains were unwinding, retracting into the black and purple walls, and the huge spike burst free of his chest.

The black dragon collapsed with a wallshaking thud, but the blue and violet dragons, automatically, it seemed, threw their heads back and began to roar, water and lightning spouting across the room.

“Malidreus!” Frederick said, dashing over to him.

Milius and Shakil hurtled towards them as well.

“Get away from him!” Milius snarled, and as they reached him, Frederick leapt up, brandishing Ectomorda, and Milius swung —

The horrible piercing, grating, screeching noise that Milius had only ever heard once before suddenly filled his ears; Palpatunde clattered from his grip as his hands flew to his ears, trying to block out the sound. He was screaming, he knew it, and so were Shakil and Frederick, but he could not hear them. He could not hear anything. The scene seemed to be slowing down, all sound fading, as though a Temporal Paladin had imposed his abilities upon the unsuspecting Knights. A blinding white light descended over him, blocking out the entirety of the Catacomb. And a moment later it lifted.

He was now standing in a most unfamiliar place, looking around at a strange new landscape. It seemed to be a forest, but the ground was made entirely of a glittering amethyst. A sparkling crystal dome was erected over his head, and strange, colourful flowers were blooming all around him, all of them, it seemed, with the same lilac stalks.

“About time.” The voice was deep, gruff, and irritated, and quite unfamiliar.

Milius whipped around, bewildered, and found someone glaring down at him. His jaw fell open. He had never met the man himself, but he knew precisely who he was, for Milius had seen his face everyday as he walked in and out of the Dragoon Cave, carved into gleaming marble: it was Lumeus’s first rider, the original Amethyst Knight.

“Name's Archimedes, and you must be the famed Milius Manchester.”

“But — but you're —” Milius began, bewildered.

“Dead?” the Knight finished with a rather sly smile. “Oh yes, been that way for a long time. In fact, I was actually hoping to stay that way for a couple more centuries — but you done gone and screwed that up.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“The Catacombs, boy! The dragons! You've no idea what you've done — why didn't you just leave it!”

Leave it? The words had stirred something in Milius’s memory. An ancient, powerful voice, reverberating in his head, in a dark and empty chamber. . . .

“Wait a moment,” he said slowly. “It was you! You were the one who told me to ‘leave it’!”

“And yet, you didn't!” Archimedes growled.

“But I still don't know what you're talking about, leave what?”

“Whaddya think?” bellowed Archimedes. “You were having dreams about it, weren't you? I brought you to that very place, didn't I? Your bond with Palpatunde wasn't strong enough for me to reach out directly, and every time you visited a Catacomb the energy of the other swords overwhelmed it even further. But now, after being inside your own Catacomb, I was able to reach out to you. Hopefully the Jewel Curse will grant me enough time to explain to you, why you should have just left it!"

Milius stared at him. “You mean . . . Malidreus?”

“Yes, Malidreus! You have no idea what you've done, setting him free!”

“Then instead of shouting, why don't you tell me what you mean?” Milius said fiercely.

Archimedes chuckled darkly. “Oh, I'm going to — going to tell you just how badly you done messed up, son. Come along.” He jerked his head towards the amethystine path ahead and Milius set off behind him, bemused.

“Where is this place, anyway?”

“You haven't guessed yet? You're inside the sword, boy.”

“What?” Milius said quickly. “How?”

“Not yet, boy, not yet!” Archimedes said impatiently. “Now listen; for you to understand, you need to know everything, from the beginning. Cerea told you some of it, but I'll give you a bit more. Thousands of years ago, long before even I was born, there was a war between the gods of earth, and the gods of the dark plane, led by the oldest and most powerful of the bunch: the Void Giant, Alcyeoneus. The battle raged on for who knows how long, but what matters is that our gods — lost. And Alcyeoneus rose to power. He ruled the entire world, kept humanity alive, but just barely, with the rest of his lieutenants and his shadow beasts at his command.

“We were powerless. We couldn't fight him; how could we? Even the gods couldn't. But for the most part, he kept us around, working, mining.”

“Mining?”

“Oh yeah. See, unlike our gods, Alcyeoneus doesn't have a physical root in our world unless he actively maintains one. The same is true for his servants, but to a lesser degree, due to him being much larger and far more powerful. It takes a lot of energy for him to manifest on earth, energy that could be provided by leylines — you know what those are, I imagine?”

“Yes, Shakil told me,” Milius said quickly.

“Ah, the new Sapphire, eh?” Archimedes said, a hint of approval in his voice. “Seems good enough. Why couldn't Amethyst have gotten someone like him, eh? Well, anyway,” he went on, seemingly unaware of Milius staring at him, affronted, “there was one leak, particularly powerful, near to where Halgaria is today. We called it the ‘Crystal Waterfall.’ The leaks were so powerful that they couldn't always contain the energy; sometimes it would escape from them, but eventually it would crystallize.

“That's where the first ideas for the Dragonknights were born: when our forefathers first laid eyes on the bounty of sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, topazes, obsidians, and rubies that would be left over from the leaks.

“Alcyeoneus didn't care about the jewels, no. Too bright for him, I suppose. He just wanted us to keep chipping away at the mass of crystals that kept forming over so that the energy would flow freely. He let the miners have them; what was the harm? If only he knew.”

He paused, and Milius gazed at him, waiting.

“Back then he permitted people to have games every now and then,” Archimedes continued. “Sword fights, chariot racing, all the like, for his entertainment. He loved to watch the petty humans struggle against each other. And it was then that the ideas were developed. One young man, who came to be well known as a proficient swordfighter, was tired of being the king’s puppet. He dreamed of crafting a sword, embedded with the jewels that Alcyeoneus kept tossing away, and running him through with it one day. To show his mistake for looking down on them: on humanity, and on the brilliant jewels that most would have killed to have in those times.

“He was killed soon afterwards, of course,” he said conversationally. “Word traveled far and fast in those days, of any inkling of revolt so that it could be quickly extinguished. By both Alcyeoneus’s troops and desperate villagers who were terrified of suffering his wrath. But the sentiment didn't die with him.

“No one was allowed to use magic in his court, but some were still versed in the craft. He could stop them from using it but he couldn't take away what they'd already learned. And the crystals, it soon transpired, weren't useless. Each of them was a chunk of hardened magical energy. Can you imagine what they did then?” he asked, eyeing Milius shrewdly.

Milius pondered for a moment, then said slowly, “They harvested them."

“Exactly. They began to gather in secret, and started to form plans for rebellion. Only a trusted few were invited, of course, so that word wouldn't get out. But eventually they started convincing more and more, and they began to collect more of the jewels. It took them nearly thirty years to collect enough rocks, but they were patient, and determined, and it was then that they acted. They melted them down and released the energy inside them, then pooled it. And with it, they crafted the swords, as close to the design that the young swordfighter had first imagined as they could.

“They were beautiful, and powerful, but they weren't enough. What was the point of a knight, they said, without steeds? And they went back to work, now with plans for beasts of their own, to challenge the demons that Alcyeoneus had brought with him. They procured a good portion of an old Yew Tree from a forest nearby, under cover of harvesting from the cornfields in that area.”

He paused again, and Milius remembered Pan’s story, of how the Dragonknights had contributed to the destruction of an old and valuable tree in one of his long-devastated silvioterraces — an Elder Yew.

“The tree had great magical properties, but luckily, Alcyeoneus took as much interest in it as the jewels. They bound their spells with it, and created new life. Six bouncing baby cubs, each in the heart of their own Catacombs, which we had already built. They were being constructed in secret, by people we had reported dead so that they could sneak away, spend their time working. All of them were built in different locations underground, however. So much magical energy in one place was sure to attract the king's attention.

“But they were cautious, patient. . . . And at last, we were ready. We had six superb swords, and six magnificent dragons, one for each element: Lumeus, of lightning; Vrydius, of wind; Verdona, of fire; Aleia, of water; Cerea, of earth; and Malidreus . . . of darkness.”

“Darkness?”

“Oh, it gets better,” Archimedes said darkly. “Once the dragons and the swords were created, it was time to choose the Knights. Six brave men and women answered the call (myself included, obviously), and we launched the first strike. It was incredible. The village elders knew what they were doing, to say the least. Our dragons were fierce, powerful, and indestructible. Our weapons held magic more advanced than anything they had expected of us. We fought, and we fought, and we fought. But unlike the gods, we were winning. Shadow beasts, dark gods, the traitorous humans that joined them — they were being cut down by the dozen. That was when our first problems started.”

“What do you mean? Sounds as though everything went swimmingly to me.”

“Oh, you wouldn't believe. But that was the problem. Malidreus was eager, too eager. Our fights were becoming more numerous, more demanding, and that's when we noticed the first signs. Malidreus was slipping. He was losing composure, becoming too savage, bloodthirsty. You think Verdona is aggressive? He made her look tame in comparison. He gloried in death and destruction.

“His first Knight, Bullark, tried to settle him. And for a time it looked like he did. But then everything started up again. He became too wild, too unpredictable. He ended up killing several innocents.

"It was unacceptable. Bullark was forced to do the very thing that we Knights have always frowned upon.”

“He tried to control him with the sword,” Milius said wonderingly.

“Indeed, he did,” Archimedes said grimly. “And that was the worst mistake of all. The most enlightening moment — Malidreus was resisting.”

“What?” Milius said, taken aback.

Archimedes nodded, his eyes closed, still treading the seemingly endless path. “It was only then that we realized how powerful he really was. Minor resistance at first . . . but then he shook us off completely. He was furious that we tried to control him, to impose our own will upon him. He lashed out, there was a fight, all five dragons were taken down . . . and Bullark was killed.”

Milius gaped at him, aghast.

Archimedes turned his head very slowly to face Milius, then said, “Malidreus is a monster. An uncontrollable beast. He took off afterwards, to wreak more havoc, and he destroyed anything and everything within sight. And Ectomorda, regardless of what it was created to do, was a dark object, horrendous, even. You know what the four swords that were passed down do. Gaiaden, I believe, you have nothing to worry about with that new boy. But Ectomorda . . . . When Ectomorda slays a living creature, it cleaves away its soul, much like Palpatunde absorbs one's mana. What's more, it can use the soul it absorbed as a sort of binding agent, and allows the wielder to reanimate the body it was taken from.”

“What?”

“But like all the other swords, it possesses more than one ability. By releasing the entrapped soul, it creates a nexus of energy. Energy that serves the exact opposite purpose of what Palpatunde does. It releases a burst of the very essence of death. That burst kills anything and everything it touches, unless there is some special circumstance that prevents it. You see the problem now?

“Sword and dragon alike were beyond terrible, and we were too late in realizing it. Our worst fears blossomed then. The most powerful of our ranks gone rogue, with a great war demanding our attention. What if Alcyeoneus tried to take Malidreus for himself? What if he possessed some means of controlling him that surpassed even our swords?

“There was nothing else for it. . . .”

“You had to seal him?” Milius said quietly.

“The dragons couldn't be killed while the swords still existed, but we couldn't destroy Ectomorda, for the very reason I'm talking to you now. When a Knight dies, their soul is absorbed into their sword, so that their experience and wisdom can be accessed later on," he added, in response to Milius's puzzled look. "Destroying Ectomorda meant losing Bullark forever. We couldn't do it. And we didn't want to. Regardless of what Malidreus had become, we remembered what he used to be. And I doubt we could have killed him even if we wanted to.

“At the same time, Alcyeoneus was losing strength. So many of his forces were devastated, and he couldn't pull energy from the leyline again, because the miners had stopped working, and it was sealed off. The final battle was coming, we knew. He had to kill us, or he'd lose footing.

“He can't truly be killed unless he's on his own plane, and we couldn't go there anyway, so we had to deal with him another way. We fought, long and hard, but we won. We kept him bound magically until we dealt with Malidreus, and then we sealed them both. But our guard was down, and he used his last desperate breath to taint our spell; Cerea was sealed as well. We couldn't do anything for her. The spell was already set, and the Catacombs, after making certain arrangements, were moved magically, and the two halves of the mirror and tablet were created, as a way to undo the spell, because all magic needs to have balance."

Archimedes stopped and turned to Milius, who was staring up at him, appalled.

“She and Gaiaden were locked away, along with Malidreus and Ectomorda, and Alcyeoneus. We set the Catacombs to be placed in the most unlikely places, nigh unreachable: under Pan’s forest, under a lake, inside a volcano, hell, in the freaking sky! We wiped the memories of all the villagers, even the dragons, of the Catacombs, of Cerea and Malidreus, just to ensure that no one would find and release them, and still — still, you came and messed everything up.”

“I — I didn't know —”

“Of course you didn't!” Archimedes roared, suddenly violent. “That was the whole point! It was a tragedy about Cerea, but we had no choice! We took every precaution, went to the extremes, just to prevent this, and you ruined EVERYTHING!”

“I'm — I'm sorry —” Milius began, horrorstruck.

“SORRY? You put the whole world at risk, and you think it'll be all good because you said sorry?”

"But Malidreus — he just woke up — he'll be weak enough —"

"Haven't you been listening?" Archimedes bellowed. "Malidreus is another day's problem, you have a more pressing issue! Removing the sword did more than just break Malidreus's seal, boy! It was also holding down Alcyeoneus!"

"What?" Milius gasped.

"His seal is breaking at this very moment! Forget Malidreus, he will be nothing — nothing — to the revival of Alcyeoneus. That's what your focus is right now! You have to get to the seal, and you have to keep Alcyeoneus from rising!"

"But where —"

"You've already seen it! Think, boy!"

Milius's mind was racing. Where was this seal? What was —

And then he remembered.

"The tomb?" he whispered. "The white marble tomb."

"Yes. It will keep him down for a while longer, but you have to get there now, reset the seal!"

"How?"

"All five swords need to be inserted in the tomb, and the spell said over it. But Malidreus, and that fool you allowed to claim Ectomorda, will be waiting for you. Vermont is explaining the situation to your friend; the elders in the swords will act from there, power down the Jewel Curse for as long as we can so you can fight him. Kill him if you have to. But get past the boy, get past the dragon, and lock the seal, because if you don't, the destruction of the world is on your head!"

His ringing voice echoed in Milius's ears as a brilliant white light descended upon him again. It faded, and then Milius felt himself return to his body. He stirred, then looked up at Shakil, who was wearing the same horrified expression as he was, and they turned in unison to see the great black dragon, already on its feet, his wings unfurled, his teeth bared, bearing down upon them.