Isyd’s first instinct was to gather the Grace and summon a powerful [Spell] to get rid of the intruders. However, he quickly decided otherwise since he didn’t know if he was facing Artysta. He highly doubted but he couldn’t be entirely sure. For now, he still had the advantage of surprise and he intended to use it.

“Naeht, go see on which level are they at this moment exactly,” he whispered to her.

She nodded and fazed through the walls. In the meantime, Isyd carefully considered his options. Those people were most likely after the Blysht. This meant that others may as well be. Isyd couldn’t stop them all, at least not now. The best would be for those people to delay their search for the precious crystals, either because it was too dangerous, too expensive or too inefficient. It would give enough time for Isyd to recover all the Blysht present in the mine for himself.

“They are on the first level, exploring the hallways and all,” Naeht said as she came back. “They are basically retracing our steps.”

“We must stop them from getting any deeper,” Isyd said. “They will probably waste some time in those caverns before deciding to continue. We must hit in the meantime.”

“You will kill them?”

“As a last resort,” Isyd said unflinchingly. “First, I’ll try to convince them that they can’t continue exploring.”

He walked out of the cavern until he reached the main node of the fifth level. There, Isyd could perceive the higher levels, connected haphazardly with wooden ladders. There was also the presence of elevators driven by pulleys and winches. He hesitated a brief second on climbing on it before deciding otherwise and racing up the stone stairs. Another advantage he had over the newcomers was that he’d already gone down once; he knew which ways were dead ends, which ones eventually circled back, and which ones were to follow to go deeper.

As he ran up, Isyd closed himself, focusing on perceiving the Song of the Grace. The tune he looked for was quite specific. And he needed to be precise. His mind strained in the search but when he found it, he opened his right hand and called:

“[Darken]!”

Suddenly, the Lightspheres of the third, fourth and fifth levels were snuffed out and the darkness reclaimed those parts of the mine. In Isyd’s hand appeared a small Lightsphere, grey and dull, but bright enough to light a few steps ahead of him. With the light out, the intruders would hesitate before going further down. Now, all Isyd had to do was force them to walk back.

He arrived at the second level and approached the caves the two men had entered. Isyd could feel their presence as they progressed through the uneven and narrow terrain. The newcomers did not know it yet, but after a few twists and turns and an intermediate chamber, this way would eventually fork into two, with one way ending up into a dead end while the other connecting back to a cave node of the third level. A plan began to form in Isyd’s head.

“Naeht, I need you to go and follow them,” Isyd whispered. “Rush back to me and warn me which of the two ways they decide to take!”

Naeht nodded and flew after the two men. At the same time, Isyd turned and faced the clanky wooden installation that served as an elevator to the lower floors. He pointed a gloved finger at it.

“[Wind Scythe]!” he called for a gust of Wind shaped into a blade and sliced cleanly a supporting beam of the elevator. The ruckus echoed thunderously across the mine as the timber collapsed and crashed. Far from here, Isyd could perceive the faint echoes of the two men’s surprise as they stopped in their tracks. Isyd did not mind the racket; it was part of his plan that the two intruders heard the destruction he was causing.

Isyd rushed back down the stairs as fast as he could to the third floor and once he reached it, he turned and put his hand on the wall. Through his glove, he drew first three quick [Spells] to search for weak points. Two of the three glyphs shone to signal the presence of faults inside the rock’s formation, too deep and apart to be a problem and expected from the mining activities that had taken place. Isyd just needed a little bit of Grace to reach those faults. On the grey stone, he drew a larger [Spell].

“[Collapse]!”

The [Spell] shone briefly as it was cast, then the rocks began to shake and suddenly surged a large crack that kept on spreading and widening. In a cloud of dust, an entire side of the wall collapsed on the stairs, making them unusable.

Naeht had not come back yet, which meant that the two men had yet to reach the fork. While the rest of the mine was plunged into utter darkness, Isyd had purposefully kept the Lightspheres in that cave as well as the first level, leading up to the exit of the mine. Isyd stopped on his track as he reached a part of the cave that narrowed slightly. This was the perfect place. With his senses, he could perceive the two men still strolling a bit further up, oblivious.

Isyd did not have much time to lose. He gathered Grace and with wide, sweeping movements of his arms, he began casting the [Spell]. His hands let a trail of white light as they drew the different Commands that composed the complex [Hex]. The first half of Isyd’s mind was overcome with the Idpulse and moved his body while the second half constructed the [Spell] on the fly.

Isyd first searched for hidden faults in the cave formation, then sent microscopic seismic waves through the stones to reach them and widen them. Not enough to cause an immediate collapse, but just enough to make it easier to happen. He followed by materializing a [Wind Bomb] — a sudden burst of wind pressure condensed into a ball — and attached it to the stone wall. To that, Isyd added a [Earth Spell] that turned the soil underneath sensitive to footsteps so that it would detect anyone who would walk into the cave ahead of time — he took care of dissimulating that [Spell] etchings under a layer of dust. He concluded by weaving all those [Spells] into a singular a [Hex] and inscribed that [Hex] onto a pebble he found at his feet.

The stone trembled and cracked slightly as inscriptions dark like charcoal appeared on its surface.

When all of it was done, Isyd let out a sigh of exhaustion and satisfaction. This… hadn’t been easy… He picked up the pebble, warm to the touch due to so much energy being concentrated in such a small volume. It hadn’t been easy... but it had succeeded. Far from the Academy, Isyd was glad that he could drop the façade and display his skills to his fullest.

His trap was laid, now he just had to wait for his preys to walk into it.

Isyd walked back from the cave toward the third level as he felt the men approaching the fork. Soon enough, Naeht flew back to him.

“They’re coming this way!” she said.

Isyd nodded and with a wave of his hand, turned off his own Lightsphere and faded into the darkness of the mine. Hidden behind a stone pillar, he watched the men arrive. They did not take long; they stumbled out of the cavern and pulled up short when faced with a pitch-black wall.

“Shit! Where all the Lightspheres went?” one of the men said.

“Told you it would happen! This place is a ruin, it’s just a matter of minutes before it all collapses! This was a bad idea, Dav...”

“We can't see two feet in front of us! What are you waiting for? Turn on your bloody Lightsphere!”

“What do you think a single Lightsphere will help? We can’t even see how deep this mine goes!”

Despite the protest, the man did turn on his sphere, a feeble ball of light that did nothing to repel the oppressive darkness.

“You said it would be an easy job, Dav...”

“Grace, stop whining Kuba! I’m trying to think, okay? They said it was an easy job; when they said a mine, I thought it would be an in-and-out into a cavern, two hours top! How could I know that they dug up till the fucking heart of the earth!”

There was some ruffling, and then Kuba spoke. “The stairs have collapsed here; we can’t go up that way. Probably other stairs as well further deep. What do we do now?”

“Grace if I know... Look, let’s go back in there and try the other way. There was still Lightspheres lit in that path so it should still be safe...”

“I don’t know, Dav, but I’m starting to think we shouldn’t be here... What if another part collapses and we can’t go back up? I mean, the stairs are already gone and all...”

Isyd could not see the face but it was easy to imagine the profound exasperation when Dav spoke.

“I swear to God, Dav, if you don’t shut your mouth with your whining, I’ll make you eat the first sample of the bloody crystals we find!”

“Fine, I shut it… but just a reminder that it was your idea, to begin with…”

Their voices faded away as they went back into the cavern. Isyd did not move from where he stood. Clad in his darkveil, he was indistinguishable from the shadows all around him. There he waited. And waited. And waited again.

Suddenly, the pebble in his hand jolted.

The [Detection Spell] had been activated by the two men. Without hesitation, Isyd crushed the pebble in his hand, turning it into dust and releasing the [Hex]. There was a burst of heat in his palm as the Grace repealed through the air and activated the [Hex] at distance. A few feet behind the two men the cavern shook with the sudden burst of air and the walls and ceiling of the pathway collapsed. Amidst the tumult of crashing rocks, Isyd still heard the shouts of fear and confusion of the two men as they scrambled to get away from the disaster. There was no chance for the collapsing to spread further in their direction as Isyd had carefully planned it, but they had no way to know that for sure.

Isyd let out a crude smile. The plan had worked as he anticipated. He had just now sealed any progression further down the mine, at least to any normal folk. The crumbling was nothing that any Artysta of profession could not deal with. But the two men Isyd had spotted were not versed in the Arts.

He turned back on his Lightsphere but remained in his hiding spot, senses extended to perceive the two intruders deciding on what they were to do. Isyd had expected them to try their chance with the other pathway, but apparently, the collapse had scarred them enough that they prefer to turn back immediately and head for the exit. Isyd waited for them to reach the entrance level, before concluding that they were no longer a threat and that he could go back to his activities before he was disturbed. They headed down the stairs to the lower levels.

“Well, that was eventful, wasn’t it…” Naeht muttered with a dry laugh.

“And unpredicted,” Isyd said. “Those two men were after the Blysht I venture. This is not good.”

“Seems like the Blysht is not as much a secret as we thought it was.”

Isyd shook his head, confused. None of this made sense. Who had hired those guys? And how did they know about the Blysht at a time when nobody else did? Could they have been sent by the two Arcanysta Isyd had seen at the Atelier? Perhaps…

Or perhaps, just as Naeht suggested, the Blysht wasn’t as much of a secret as it hope it was. Isyd clenched his fists at this thought.

In those circumstances, Isyd was prepared to defend his secret, whatever it took.

“Did that perturb any of your plans?” Naeht said.

“I don’t think so, no. Or at least, I hope not. For now, let’s finish what we came here to do…”

Isyd stopped in front of the stash of Blysht he’d recovered. He picked up one of the precious crystals and laid it on the stone floor before seating in front of it. He took off his darkveil as well as the coat of his Academy uniform and rolled up his sleeves so that he could be more at ease and stared down at the Blysht.

Now more than ever would be a true test of his skills as an Artysta.