A terrible rumbling filled the cavern, as the ground rocked as if they stood upon a great hibernating bear stirring from sleep. The crystals flickered and flashed while bits of rock and dust sprinkled from the ceiling.

“Go!” Aniya shouted. “The Paragon must be warned!”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than screams and war cries filled the air. Kellen’s head whipped around to their left. Several Snake cult warriors charged toward them, weapons drawn. Each one wore the same anti-mana wrappings as the woman Kellen had fought during the raid.

“Our mana cannot harm them directly while they wear those wrappings,” Kiypu said. “You will need my help if we are going to survive.”

Aniya didn’t argue, highlighting how serious she viewed the situation. Kellen stood rooted to the spot as the cultists bore down on them until another quake brought him to his senses. He and Vex took off up the cavern slope at a dead sprint.

“Warn the Paragon!” Aniya shouted. An instant later, Kellen heard a mighty whoosh of wind and the clash of weapons. He did not look back.

Larger chunks fell from the ceiling now, the size of books and bowling balls. Kellen summoned a shield and held it aloft while Vex ran as close as he could to his side to stay beneath its safety. Once, he thought he saw a glimpse of white-wrapped warriors sprinting downward. He forced his attention upward, where a thin slice of light marked the exit to the caverns.

His legs ached from the run up the stony slope. Twice, his footing went out from under him when his boots dug into a spot of loose gravel. Both times he went down hard, banging his knees and elbow. Vex urged him to his feet and on they ran toward the surface.

The air filled with the hot, almost metallic scent of rocks smashing against one another. Dust clogged the air. Kellen willed his legs to keep going as they burned with overexertion. They were almost there now, just yards away.

The rumbling intensified, throwing Kellen and even Vex to the ground, breaking the focus that held their protective shield in place. In the last possible moment, Kellen summoned it once more, just in time for a piano-sized slab of rock to crash down and smash on the edge. Kellen coughed and gagged, the stony dust filling his lungs and eyes.

“Follow me!” Vex shouted over the avalanche of rock. His blue marked blazed to life and even his fur flowed golden. Kellen reached into his beast heart, flooding his limbs with mana to squeeze out every ounce of effort he could from them.

Ten yards. Ten feet.

Throwing themselves forward, Kellen and Vex shout out of the cavern. The ceiling collapsed behind them, the glowing rock spires snapping at their heels like the rotten, gnashing fangs of a great stone mouth. Kellen struggled to sit up, hacking and retching from the dust and the exertion to make it out of the cave. As the dust settled and onlookers rushed to the scene, he looked around for anyone else who’d escaped the collapse. No one else emerged from the rubble.

Paragon Winoyah landed as the crowd gathered around him and Vex. Everyone fell back at once, allowing her to pass. Her silver eagle Windwake spread his arms and sent out a warning screech, which backed people away even further.

“What happened?” Winoyah asked, helping Kellen to his feet.

Through coughing fits, Kellen explained the attack of the Snake Cult and the cave-in as best he could. “I don’t know where they came from or what happened after I came to warn you,” he finished.

He felt like a coward. Aniya had commanded him to leave, true, but Kiypu had stayed to fight. He should have stayed to fight, too. Now, who knew if Kiypu and the rest were buried alive beneath the rock or killed fighting cultists?

“You did the right thing, spirit traveler,” Winoyah said, as if reading his thoughts. “This message is more help than any aid you could have provided in the fight.”

She was right, of course, but that only made Kellen feel worse about his ineptitude as a Beastcaller in combat than anything. The Paragon now seemed to know who he was, though they’d never met before.

“Move aside now,” Winoyah said. “I must move the rock. If you are well enough, once the tunnel is open, I will need the help of every Beastcaller who is able to rescue those within.”

Kellen nodded and limped away to the front of the crowd, giving the Paragon space to work. A ripple of storm mana gathered around her, so powerful Kellen couldn’t have missed it anymore than he could have missed a pouring rain if he were standing in it. Winoyah raised her hands overhead as a tornado gathered around her and her Mana Beast. The vortex grew until she disappeared from sight. A moment later, she reappeared as she slammed an open palm to the ground.

Raising a hand, anticipating flying rock and dirt, Kellen saw the tornado rise in the air above the Paragon before forming itself into an arrow. It struck the ground with a boom of thunder and flash of lightning. When the light and sound faded, however, the rubble looked the same as it had before.

Murmurs arose from the crowd. How had the ground resisted the mana of a Paragon, one of the strongest Beastcallers in the land? Winoyah repeated the kyyoh movements again, summoning another tornado. This was twice the size of the first, fanned by Windwake’s wings as visible storm mana poured from him into the working. Again, Winoyah slammed a fist into the ground. The storm mana arrow hit the ground and vanished in a whiff again, like a breeze stopped by a closed door.

The power from the working was staggered. Kellen had never experienced so much mana in one place. His head spun from it. His entire body felt like he’d just fallen into a wind tunnel that suddenly turned off. At his side, Vex swayed from the pressure of it.

Winoyah fashioned a third working, then a fourth. After both, she’d done little more than kick up the dust around the rubble where the cavern mouth had been.

By now the murmurs in the crowd had grown to cries of fear and outright despair. It seemed the totem had defied the most powerful Beastcaller in the Storm Horse Nation. Winoyah straightened herself as dozens of Beastcallers rushed forward. She raised a hand to stop them as each gathered their storm mana.

“The earth will not be moved by mana,” she said. “Do not waste your strength. Shovels will serve us better now. Anyone who can help, form lines! We must move this rock.”

Her lightning-filled eyes found Kellen on the edge of the crowd. “You, I would speak with you further.”

Kellen followed the Paragon, still dizzy from the sheer force of mana Winoyah had used trying to blow apart the rock.

“I do not think even all the Earth Badger Paragons could open that cavern,” Winoyah said to him in a low voice. “It would seem the veil has fallen in place again, or there is another force I cannot understand blocking our mana. Tell me everything, again.”

Kellen repeated his story, even including the reason he and Kiypu had been in the tunnels in the first place.

“Everywhere that dead man goes, tragedy strikes in his wake,” Winoyah mused.

“With respect, honored Paragon,” Kellen said. The words felt foolish and clunky, but he didn’t know how else to address someone with the power to crush him with a snap of her fingers. “If I had to guess, the Snake Cultists are the ones behind this, not Kiypu. Nothing out of the ordinary happened to him before I left, not like when the cavern appeared, anyway.”

“Perhaps his role in the totem awakening really was chance,” Windwake said. “Regardless, we must find a way to get through to the totem. All of our Elders are trapped inside.”

“In our excitement to study and explore the secrets of the Great Horse, we made a mistake,” Winoyah said. “Or perhaps we were tricked. I do not know how these Snake Cultists could have made their way into the cavern or even into our camps undiscovered. You are right that they play more of a role than we know, spirit traveler. Is there anything else?”

For a brief instant, Kellen almost told her about Coyote Lady and her offer to get him inside the totem. He hesitated and then shook his head. Coyote Lady had not appeared to him again and he didn’t know enough to say that it could be an option. There was also the possibility that the Paragon would think he was crazy if he told her he’d been visited by one of the primevals.

“Mighty Paragon!” A female Beastcaller about ten years older than Kellen approached, panic on her face. “We have dug down to knee-depth and can go no further. There is only solid stone. It is as if the cave was never there!”

Winoyah and Windwake rushed back to the rubble. With nothing else to do, Kellen followed. Sure enough, the dozens of diggers had already cleared a sizable area of the loose rock and fractured crystals. Beneath was a seamless stretch of flawless stone.

“Go find the Earth Badger traders,” Winoyah instructed the other Beastcaller. “See if there are any Beastcallers among them.” She didn’t say it but Kellen thought he knew what she was thinking: it wouldn’t do any good.

A greater power than even a Paragon had sealed the totem. Kellen could think of only one way to open it again.

“Come on,” he said to Vex. “We’ve got to get Coyote Lady’s attention somehow.”

“Don’t you think she’s already up to speed on all this?” Vex asked as they set off at a brisk walk.

They crossed around the edge of the rubble to the northeast, where the crowd wasn’t as thick. With all the commotion caused by the cave-in, it didn’t take long for them to find a secluded spot beneath one of the rock spires.

“What are you going to do if her deal is the same?” Vex asked.

Kellen fell silent. What other choice did he have? Shani was gone, Kiypu was gone. Both of them could already be dead. Even Raiqo was dead or trapped beneath their feet. Other than Nokom, every person who Kellen had relied on as a safety blanket to pull him out of danger was gone.

“Given the circumstances, maybe Coyote Lady will let Winoyah inside,” Kellen said, knowing in his heart it would not be the case. If there had been another way, Coyote Lady would have offered it.

“So I guess we’ll throw ourselves into unknown danger to save the day, then,” Vex said, reading Kellen’s thoughts. “On the plus side, Raiqo is going to owe us big time if we pull this off.”

Kellen forced a grin. His subconscious would have rather barfed. “Yeah, if we don’t die a gruesome, forgotten death, we’ll be heroes.”

“Now that’s the spirit!”

They spun around to find Coyote Lady leaning against the pillar of rock. “I wasn’t going to give you another chance, you know,” she said. “But I am all-forgiving and merciful.”

“Plus, you need our help,” Vex said.

“You’ll be doing yourselves a bigger favor than you’re doing me,” Coyote Lady said.

“So you can get us inside the totem?” Kellen asked.

Coyote Lady nodded. “I can.”

“Anything we should know?” Kellen asked.

Coyote Lady gave them a sly smile. “I find you humans are best prepared if you assume the worst.”

“No worries there,” Vex said. “Kellen’s already thought of twenty different ways we’ll probably die inside.”

Kellen gave a dry laugh. Vex wasn’t wrong.

“If it makes you feel better, you’re gonna help me win a bet,” Raccoon Boy said, popping into existence next to Coyote Lady. “There’s no way you’re coming out of this alive. I’m counting on it.”

Kellen's stomach flipped. “And there’s no chance we can give our spot to one of the Paragons?”

Coyote Lady shook her head. “With all the Storm Horse Elders trapped inside, the Storm Horse Tribes are vulnerable. If the Fire Bison get word of what has happened, they may attack. Winoyah or Onaka won’t risk being imprisoned in the totem and leaving their people here defenseless, not even for all the Elders. They are already at a disadvantage. Part of the purpose of this gathering at the Wind Bones was for the Storm Horse tribes to raise up a third Paragon in place of the last. The Fire Bison know this. While the Paragons would not likely fight in open battle, they do many things to aid their people during wars.”

“That’s actually not helping,” Kellen said, turning pale. He leaned against the rock spire in an effort to make his head stop spinning and his legs from wobbling. “Let’s just get this over with. I’d rather not know how high the stakes are.”

“You can choose not to enter the totem, you know,” Coyote Lady said. “I can’t force you.”

“What will happen if I don’t?” Kellen asked. Even though he’d just said he didn’t want to know, his morbid curiosity got the better of him,

It was all the answer Kellen needed to see Raccoon Boy’s normally mischievous smirk go blank.

“I am being honest in saying that I do not know,” Coyote Lady said. “There is a real chance you may fail anyway or that it will not make a difference.”

“Does that matter?” Vex asked. “Aren’t we doing this for Shani and Kiypu and the others, anyway?”

Kellen nodded. Vex was right. Helping the Storm Horse mattered but it wasn’t the reason he was doing this. It was to save his friends, to be the one bailing the others out, instead of the other way around. Or at least attempting to.

He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, no more stalling. How do we get in?”