Bartholomew was exhausted. He had traveled nearly fifty miles, down steep descending tunnels, through well camouflaged cracks in the rock and up hidden stairways to caverns that, so far as he knew, no revenant or human had ever discovered. He began to pass by fields, gardens and orchards. There were homes, too, he knew, small farming communities, but they couldn’t be seen from the path. The Amoa’dan traditionally preferred to keep a low profile, and trogg farmers were, above all else, traditional.

Before long, he found himself on a familiar dirt path that eventually met an unnaturally smooth granite road that ran straight through the cavern he was in. Where it met the wall, the doors of a massive, intricately carved stone gate gaped open. The road itself was almost deserted except for a few troggs traveling on foot and a farmer bringing a motorized cart loaded with large sacks of produce to market—most traffic in and out of the Heavenly Chasm would be traveling along the rail tunnels, which were safer and much, much faster.

Instead of approaching it directly, Bartholomew took a well-worn path that led down a gentle slope into the woods. The sound of rushing water soothed his mind as he approached his destination. Rounding a bend, he was confronted with the sight of a waterfall pouring from the mouth of a carved face in the rock high above and crashing into a misty pool. It was a sacred site, a stopping point for entrants to the Heavenly Chasm, where they cleansed themselves of outside corruption.

So far as Bartholomew could tell, the place didn’t actually have any unique essential properties, but he needed a place to make himself presentable. He hadn’t been home in years, and getting an audience with anyone who could actually help him get the attention of Vitruvian, the Elder Regent, was a tall order. There were official processes and channels for reporting a lich, of course, but that wouldn’t work quickly enough to save Duskhaven, or, probably, Hasan and his revenants. For Bartholomew, that would be an unacceptable setback.

Besides, he had grown fond of them. He liked the humans’ curiosity and the tenacity of the young revenants that scratched out a living in the ghoul-infested upper levels of the Deep Paths. In some ways, their relative ignorance was a benefit, forcing them to find workarounds for problems that ultimately led them into entirely new directions.

For example, the humans hadn’t found a way to properly stabilize fragile fire crystals, which made it almost impossible to create safe and portable engines. Amoa’dan technology used a constellation of pressure crystals to suspend the fire crystal. Those pressure crystals, for their part, were mechanically reoriented by a system of counterweights to compensate for the force of gravity and changing momentum. If any part of the system failed, the engine would be destroyed.

Depending on how badly the fire crystal was damaged, it could even result in an explosion—all the more if the pressure crystals were damaged as a result. The failure rate was nearly non-existent now, but the systems had taken centuries to perfect and had cost a significant number of lives and limbs.

The humans hadn’t even considered trying to make them work. Instead, they’d found a way to synthesize magma crystals. These didn’t generate as much heat, but they were nearly indestructible.

Tired and lost in thought, Bartholomew didn’t notice the elf sitting by the pool until he’d already removed his shirt. He stopped in surprise at the sight of the little creature watching him with a steady gaze. It stood up, meeting his eyes. Elves didn’t reproduce sexually and took all manner of shapes, but this one looked like a tiny manling, even dressed like a human in a shirt and vest—a style that was currently popular on the surface.

While most of the revenants treated elves as a simple nuisance, Bartholomew knew that Charlie, in all his superstition, actually had used the more sensible approach when dealing with one. Elves were inherently magical creatures with sorcerous abilities. And they were notoriously mischievous. That, in turn, made them incredibly dangerous.

“And who might you be?” Bartholomew asked uneasily. He could guess, of course. Fully sapient elves were so rare as to be considered myths by many. It took decades for a mindless sprite to develop even animal intelligence in optimal conditions—the time it took before one reached a stage of development where it might consider wearing clothes was, so far as he knew, unknown.

Without answering or breaking eye contact with the trogg, the elf crouched down and picked up a small handful of dirt in one hand, wetting the other in the pool. His hands clapped together and he rubbed them back and forth a few times, wetting the dirt slightly before he carefully set it down on the ground in front of him.

Bartholomew stared, considering.

It was a ceremonial gesture, one traditionally performed by ancient Amoa’dan priests as a rite of passage. Having found or earned a soulstone, a young person would bring it to a temple, where they would be registered as an adult and a full citizen. The gesture was meant to represent Amoa, forming the first people from the essences of earth and water.

Curious, Bartholomew drew his soulstone out of his pocket and presented it to the elf. It looked like a piece of quartz, as thick as two of his fingers. When the elf reached for it, he pulled it back for a moment. If this was the same elf, then it could only be here if it had been following him—or if it knew where he was going. Either way, he should be more careful.

“Are you the one who escaped from the lich? The one who talked to the revenants, Charlie and Em?” He asked.

The elf’s eyes sparkled. “Ah, yes. They really did a number on that wight! A bit paranoid, though. Did they find the lich? Very unpleasant creature, that one. Oddly polite at the same time, though.”

“Ehm, yes. That’s why I’m here… What should I call you?” The trogg asked, carefully.

“You can call me Weland. Now, would you mind?” The elf waggled an open hand at him. “I believe your people normally approach this type of ritual with a bit more… gravity.”

Even more suspicious now, but not wanting to offend, Bartholomew handed the soulstone over to the elf. He’d lived a long time and explored far and wide. If the elf broke it, he had a few spares tucked away.

“Don’t do anything to it… what do you want it for, anyway? How do you even know about our rituals?”

“Come ooon!” the Elf said. “Rituals can be fun! Besides, I think we might have a mutual interest. If you play along, I’ll owe you a favor!”

Elves in stories loved bargains. Usually, those stories were about someone who was trying to turn an elf’s power to their advantage, often somehow angering the fae creature in the process. If you were confronted with the choice, Bartholomew wasn’t sure if it was more dangerous to upset an elf, or to make a deal.

In the end, he decided that whatever Weland was going to do with his soulstone couldn’t be more dangerous than incurring the ancient little creature’s wrath.

“Alright, but please be careful…”

“I’m always careful!” Weland cried unconvincingly. He hefted the stone in both his tiny hands and held it up to his face, as if trying to look inside it. “Ok, so, I want to do an experiment. I was watching the lich, and it occurred to me that he was, well, is it rude to say that he’s an amateur? I mean, it’s a pretty clever idea, don’t get me wrong, but the execution is just so crude!”

The soulstone began to glow slightly with a light of its own, and Bartholomew was starting to panic. He had definitely lost control of the situation now.

“Listen. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t think this is a good idea…”

“Oh, you’ll be fine! See, I’m just catching the stone’s ether and reshaping it to get a nice, continuous bidirectional stream. Then I grab the end of it and acclimate it to your own aura until it starts to attune a little bit, and then, we veery gently…”

Bartholomew tried to back away, but found that he couldn’t move a muscle. When the odd, glowing thread of essence touched his soul, he felt a horrifying sucking feeling deep inside him. For a moment, he was sure that he was going to die. Then, an indescribable warmth flooded into him instead.

“Ha!” Weland shouted, triumphant. “HAHA! I’m a genius!”

The soulstone in his hand was still glowing, though the color was slightly more yellow than before. A thread of essence now ran from it to Bartholomew’s chest. He scrabbled at his shirt, opening it to reveal bare skin, the glowing line simply disappearing through it.

“That’s… that’s not right…” Bartholomew managed.

Weland looked at the stone and then at the glowing tether.

“Yes, that isn’t really very subtle, is it? Also, you really shouldn’t lose this, now. That would probably kill you. I mean, you might survive it, but it would really totally ruin the experiment.”

“Uh… What?” The trogg responded. He was starting to feel hot and tingly. His skin was oversensitive and the light was too bright.

“Oh relax. You’ve kept that stone with you how long now? Four hundred years? Longer? You’ll manage just fine. I'll be checking in on you. Just break my statue when you’re ready to call in that favor. But don’t get greedy now!”

Bartholomew’s vision swam. He tried to answer the elf, to tell him that something had gone wrong, but he couldn’t form the words. Then, everything went dark.

–-------

When he awoke, Weland was gone. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, Bartholomew knew. He could still see the wet spots in the dirt where water had dripped from the elf’s hand earlier. Right in front of him, the mud that the elf had compacted as part of the ritual earlier had been replaced by a small clay statuette of an elf. Looking closer, he realized that it was actually a perfect representation of Weland himself. His tiny clay hands were making a rude gesture.

Grimacing, Bartholomew wrapped it in a rag and placed it into his pack.

The odd sensations from earlier were gone, but the line of light still ran from his chest down to his pack, where the elf had apparently stashed the soulstone before leaving. He would need to keep it closer to his body, maybe as a pendant, or in an inside pocket to hide the glowing thread. Whatever Weland had done to him, it was unlikely that other Amoa’dan would look kindly on it. Messing with soulstones just wasn’t done, especially if it had really been corrupted with his own essence. That was just a little too similar to what liches did, though he knew that this was different.

He didn’t feel any different, for one. If having his soul linked to his soulstone like this had any real benefits, it wasn’t anything he could use right now.

That meant the new plan was the old plan. He needed to make himself presentable, get into the city, and reach out to some old friends.