Shani and Inferi were lost. Well, not lost in the sense they didn’t know where they were—both could say with relative surety that they were somewhere inside the Great Horse Totem. But lost in that, they did not know how to get anywhere else inside the totem, aside from the dark cavern they’d wandered around since the cave-in.

Never one to admit defeat, Shani cursed herself for a fool. She’d been a fool for the past several months now, but her foolishness had taken a turn for the worse since being bonded with Inferi. Or maybe she’d always been a fool and Ezlu had just hidden it from her.

Ezlu. Her husband’s absence still ached like the bite of deep winter. Killing Ubira hadn’t eased the pain. Inferi hadn’t eased the pain. If anything, Inferi had made it sharper. At times, everything about her felt sharper, her anger, her temper, her recklessness. She’d never been known for her cool head and patience. Now she didn’t even know herself.

Following the fight with that mouthy Beastcaller boy, she’d wandered through the camp alone, not wanting to go back to hear another lecture from Nokom, hoping she didn’t run into Kellen. She knew he’d come looking for her. He had that habit of wanting to make sure everyone around him was in harmony as much as possible all the time. She felt bad she’d threatened him—the words had poured out, like hot blood from a fresh cut. That anger, the rage that sometimes gripped her. It was Inferi’s, not hers, but that meant little. They were bound together now. They shared the same curse and carried the same demons.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help me search for a way out of here,” Inferi said, pacing back and forth along the far wall. A change had come over her since Shani had openly despised her. Inferi had always felt it in Shani’s heart, but hearing the words out loud was a different blow. There could be no ignoring it, no pretending anymore.

If both of them hadn’t wandered toward the cavern below the Storm Horse, Shani wondered if Inferi would even be speaking to her. They’d both been drawn there, both drawn to the same allure of the power that waited inside. That was the answer: strength, power. They didn’t need to get along. Before she left this tower, Shani would never feel weak again. People might still mock them, still be afraid of their abominable bond, but at least they would respect them.

Neither had spoken in the shadows at the cavern entrance. No words needed to be said. You couldn’t apologize for hating yourself, after all. Shani had just been contemplating how they would sneak past the guards when the Snake Cultists had attacked the sentries, not from without, but within the cave.

It had all happened so fast that by the time Shani crossed the open ground, the guard in front of her was already down. She’d stopped just long enough to take a pulse. He was alive. Lucky for a non-Beastcaller warrior. Why hadn’t Beastcallers been watching the cavern? It seemed like the kind of job even the fools assigned to patrolling the edge of the camp could handle.

Shani had never considered raising the alarm. If there were Snake Cultists inside the Great Horse Totem, she would find them. She would hunt them down herself and make a name for herself. Prove to her mother and the Storm Horse Elders that she wasn’t a freak. Inferi came along. She never missed the chance for violence.

Except they’d wandered around in the dark for a half a day and never found the cultists or another living soul. And then the cavern collapsed around them. Just when she thought her story would end with her being crushed beneath the rocks, a crack had appeared, a broken doorway just wide enough for Shani and Inferi to squeeze through before the outer cavern fell.

And here there were. Two days later. It had taken Shani half a day to realize she wasn’t hungry or thirsty. Which was good, because she only had a few dried strips of meat and a half-empty canteen of water from their patrol. More important, she had her weapons: a pair of obsidian knives and one of the stone spears, all taken from Kiypu’s shrine, plus her Earth Badger sword and iron knives. She also wore the fiber vest armor from the shrine, though it would do little good against a mana attack.

As glad as she was to have them, they didn’t do much storming good for someone trapped in what could very well become a tomb of stone.

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” Shani snapped back. “What do you want me to do? We’ve searched every corner of this room. We’re trapped.”

“With that attitude, I guess we are,” Inferi said.

Shani threw her hands in the air. “What else would you like me to do?”

Inferi ignored her, resuming her pacing on a different wall this time. Shani slumped against a pillar and let her head fall back against the rock. Chances were they’d kill each other before anyone dug them out, if anyone ever dug them out. If that was even possible. As far as Shani knew, no one had ever entered into a fight to the death with their bonded Mana Beast.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Inferi said in a condescending tone. “You could at least have enough faith in me to know that.”

Shani didn’t answer. Deep down, she knew she had only herself to blame for Inferi being Inferi. Nokom speculated that it had something to do with the eerie well in the cultist chamber, that the bad mana had done something to the bond. But Shani knew the hate and anger twisting inside of her. That was bad mana enough, no matter what her grandmother wanted to believe.

Sighing, she pushed herself to her feet. She’d go mad if she sat there, letting her mind wander down those dark paths again. And perhaps it would keep Inferi from snapping at her if she at least made the effort to wander around the chamber searching for a way out that didn’t exist.

“I heard those thoughts.”

Shani snorted in response. Reaching one of the chamber walls, she followed it around, fingers trailing against it. Based on the flickering glow of the red and orange mana crystals, the chamber was roughly square and of rough-hewn rock, not human-made at all, or at least not based on appearance. There were several pillars scattered throughout the middle of the chamber, but those too looked natural.

Shani paced around the room, feeling much like the cage animal Inferi portrayed. Sitting around waiting to be rescued would be worse than never being found at all. There had to be a way out.

Frustration boiled over in her and she growled, thrusting out her hand and hurtling a spinning dust devil across the cave at the wall. It struck the rock with a whoosh and disappeared. Either her Companion strength attack wasn’t enough or the rock itself was resistant to mana as an extension of the totem.

“I thought for certain it was going to work that time after it didn’t the first dozen attempts,” Inferi snickered across the room.

“What do you want me to do?” Shani asked. “I do nothing, you complain. I do something, you complain.”

“A little gratitude would be nice,” Inferi said, bearing her rows of sharpened teeth in a threatening grimace. “Without me, you would still be just a plain Storm Horse girl going nowhere.”

Shani let loose a cold laugh that echoed across the chamber. “Instead of this?” she asked, spreading her hands around. “Yes, how useful you’ve proved to be, Inferi.”

A low growl built in the hyena’s chest. “You made me this way. Why should I be the only one to suffer?”

Shani narrowed her eyes. “You were supposed to fix me. You’ve done nothing but make things worse.”

Letting loose a snarling bark, Inferi charged across the chamber, purple shadows swirling around her. Shani stood her ground, clapping her hands together to form a powerful whirlwind that spun across the chamber toward her Mana Beast. A version of Inferi made of purple smoke split ahead of its owner, bounding for the whirlwind. The two mana workings collided and exploded.

Both Shani and Inferi were thrown off their feet as the chamber shook and dust and bits of rock sprinkled down on them. When Shani sat up, she saw the attacks hadn’t canceled each other out. Instead, they’d merged together to form a swirling nebula of shadow and storm mana. A purple whirlwind of thick smoke swirled in the center of the chamber as if waiting for a command.

“Look at the ceiling,” Inferi said, point up with her nose. Above the new mana working, a spiderweb of cracks spread out from a point of impact where mana workings had collided and vented upward.

Shani’s eye widened. She didn’t know if there was a chamber above them or if they’d only succeed in bringing the whole cave down on top of them. Yet it was progress. How their attacks had smashed together into one, she didn’t know. If it was a freak accident—which seemed likely with the pair of them—then this might be their only chance of escape.

Raising her hands, Shani stretched her focus out toward the shadowy twister. She focused her intent on the working. Once she had a grasp on the storm mana within, she thrust her hands upward. The whirlwind wobbled, then vanished in a gust. As Shani let her hands fall to her side, she looked at Inferi.

“Our mana…”

“Combined,” Inferi finished.

Shani hadn’t thought that possible. In the months since she’d begun training as a Beastcaller, Nokom had drilled into her over and over that while she and Inferi shared a mana pool, as soon as one or the other drew on it, that mana would change to storm or shadow. And according to Nokom, different types of mana did not blend or combine with one another. Yet there had been proof right before their eyes. The whirlwind had been both shadow and storm mana, Shani had felt it through her mana sense and seen it with her eyes.

“Let’s try to do it again,” Shani said, their quarrel forgotten. This could change everything, but only if they could replicate the feat.

Inferi pulled her maw back in a closed-fang snarl, purple shadows leaking from between her teeth. Shani held both hands slightly apart and palms up, forming a more condensed ball of wind mana. At her nod, both of them released their workings at the same time. A barking hyena head of smoke cackled as it leaped from Inferi’s mouth. Halfway between them, it collided with Shani’s storm mana. A crackling filled the air and purple lightning flashed inside the new orb of spinning storm and shadow mana. Shani couldn’t believe what she saw. She’d more than half counted on it not to work again.

The blended orb of mana pulsed with the power of two Companion strength mana workings. Shani had nothing to measure it by but sensed this combined working might have the strength of a Guardian attack. It certainly seemed more powerful than the combination of Kellen and Vex’s sun mana working.

Once more, Shani reached out and grasped the storm mana within the working. Instead of throwing it at the ceiling, however, she waited for Inferi to do the same with the shadow mana. Feeling one another’s intentions through their bond, they coordinated to move the swirling sphere of mana up and down, then left and right. Shani’s excitement grew as they pushed it farther away from them to test the boundaries of their control.

“Now which wall are we going to bust down to get out of here?” Inferi asked.

Shani closed her eyes, reaching out with her mana sense, hoping to catch any hint that might give them a direction of fellow Beastcallers. Storm mana permeated the chamber, just as it had the larger cavern. Yet there seemed to be a gentle flow of mana, almost like a breeze drifting through the chamber. That certainly hadn’t been there earlier. Shani followed its flow and discovered it was drifting down through the cracks in the ceiling caused by the explosive combination of their first two workings slamming together. She couldn’t be certain, but she believed there might be another chamber above them. The storm mana had to come from somewhere, and it couldn’t move through solid rock.

“Up,” Shani said. She returned her focus to the storm-shadow working that Inferi had held in place while she’d reached out with her sense. They navigated it back between them until it hovered directly below the spiderweb cracks.

Sensing Shani’s thoughts, Inferi backed up several paces.

“If this backfires we’ll be crushed,” Inferi said.

Shani gave a grim nod. “There is only one way to know.”

At once, both of them shot the working upward. The orb of blended mana struck the center of the original impact with a burst of raw energy. The stone ceiling cracked and chunks of rock crashed down. For a moment, Shani thought the chamber would collapse. She threw her hands over her head and knelt down, waiting to be crushed. Instead, the sound and cracking, falling rock ceased. When the dust settled, she approached the spot they’d focused their working on. Looking up, she saw a hole outlined by the flickering of mana crystals above. A breeze of cool air tinged with storm mana brushed across her face. They’d found a way out.