At Keri’s insistence, Liv sat in a rough circle – though with only four of them, perhaps the points of a square was more accurate – inside the shelter she’d created when they stopped to rest. In place of a fire, Keri’s glowing orb of concentrated sunlight rested in the middle of the shelter, illuminating the faces of her friends. She and Rose were dressed again, and all of them sat on their piled up furs, to keep away the chill of the stone floor.

“ – and then he told me that I’d have to watch my friends die,” Liv told them, coming to the end of her dream. “All about your bodies cooling, and the light in your eyes fading to darkness.”

“So you decided to just sneak off and go fight your nightmare by yourself,” Rose chided her, and Liv flinched away from the anger in the other girl’s voice. “Without even telling us anything.”

“It wasn’t just a nightmare. And I was trying to protect you,” Liv protested.

“Well, I’m just grateful Keri grabbed you by the ear instead of letting you go,” Rose continued.

“There was no grabbing of ears,” Keri pointed out. “I simply told Liv that I would not let her leave, and that she would need to fight me if she wanted to.”

“Which would have woken you all up anyway,” Liv grumbled. “Defeating the entire point.”

“Good!” Rose exclaimed. “For someone who’s so smart about magic, you can act like a complete fool sometimes, Liv.”

Liv bristled at the accusation. “Forgive me for caring what happens to you,” she shot back.

“I’d like to back up a few steps, if we could,” Arjun said. He was surprisingly calm, compared to everyone else, and they all turned to face him. “Liv, how do you know that this wasn’t simply a bad dream? After all, we’re camping inside a dangerous rift. It’s the same place your aunt died. And in the meanwhile, King Benedict is raising an army to attack the place you grew up. I think it would be understandable for anyone to have bad dreams, in your position.”

Liv was shaking her head before her friend had even finished speaking. “No,” she insisted. “I could feel the pressure of his Authority, and it was just like Ractia’s, when I saw her in my vision. Both of them are stronger than anyone else I’ve ever felt – stronger than my grandmother, than Calevis, even than Archmagus Loredan. It’s not even a comparison.”

Arjun considered that for a moment. “You’ve worked with Authority much more than either I or Rosamund have,” he admitted. “You were officially a journeyman, after all, before leaving, while we were only apprentices. If Sidonie were here, I would ask her opinion.” He turned to Keri. “Inkeris, I don’t have a good idea of your level of expertise in this matter.”

Keri seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking. “Not as much as you might be hoping,” he admitted. “I’ve always been merely competent with my family’s word of power. I’ve never felt lacking, in any sense, but I’m no prodigy. I make up for that by training to combine spearwork with casting, and I don’t think I’m boasting if I say that I have more experience commanding soldiers in battle than any one of you. But Savel isn’t the sort of word that demands Authority training, and I haven’t even settled on a second word of power yet. In this case, Liv probably has more experience than I do.”

“I think we need to take Liv’s judgement as the most likely conclusion, then,” Arjun decided. “Let’s proceed from the assumption that some portion of Celris has survived here. Perhaps a lingering manifestation of magic, like in the Well of Bones.”

“No,” Liv argued. “It’s more than that. Costia’s corpse had no authority. There was nothing of her there, just a shell of bone that was leaking mana. I couldn’t talk to her, and she didn’t fight back when I took that magic and used it. This is different. It feels more like Ractia. But if he was still alive, my family would have told me.” She laughed. “My father would never have agreed to let me come here – at least not without an army – if he thought there was any chance a Vædic Lord was waiting.”

“It also conflicts with what I know of the history of the war,” Keri said. “The fact you did not grow up among our people is showing, Liv, or you would have learned all of this as a child. Celris was killed. An army came to his fortress and destroyed him. There were survivors of the battle who confirmed this.”

“Right, but what does it mean to actually kill a god?” Rose asked. Liv was relieved to see that the mystery seemed to have distracted her from her anger. “After all, Ractia was killed too, and she came back. And we still don’t really understand how that happened.”

“If Wren were here, we could ask her,” Keri pointed out.

“She’ll catch up with us as soon as she can,” Liv assured him. “And I think it has something to do with the place between the waystones.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment after her statement. “The hallucinations, you mean?” Rose asked.

“I know that’s what everyone says they are,” Liv said. “But I’m not so certain. When we travelled from here back to Coral Bay, after my grandfather died? I could feel him in the darkness, and he spoke to me. And when we fled Coral Bay to Valegard, I could swear I felt Jurian. I even think I’ve felt Celris before. And he said something about the waystones, when we were talking about death, but he didn’t finish.”

“What is life?” Arjun mused. “Are we merely this physical form, that ages and decays, or is there something more of us? Cut off an arm or a leg, and we still exist. We are still us. What if – what if they came here and severed Celris’ arm, but thought they had killed him?”

“You think a god’s been playing dead down here, for over a thousand years?” Rose asked. “Just hiding?”

Arjun shrugged. “I understand human bodies, and I’m learning about Elden bodies. They’re both fairly similar. But remember what Elder Aira said, up in the ring?” Liv saw Keri frown, but the Elden warrior didn’t interrupt. “She said that the Vædim were mana, in a sense, and that you were becoming more and more like them. We know Ractia’s physical body was destroyed at Godsgrave, but what about her mana? Maybe Celris’ body was killed here - but not his mana.”

“The Cult of Ractia worshiped her even before she returned,” Keri said, after considering the idea. “They sacrificed to her at shrines, and believed that she gave them children. If she lingered, as some bodiless form of mana, than they may not have been wrong.”

“So Celris could be like that,” Liv said. “A formless mind, or spirit, existing only as currents of mana. He’s had no cult to help him recreate his body.”

“This is a whole lot of guessing,” Rose pointed out.

“It is,” Arjun agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it's wrong.”

“And it doesn’t change what I have to do,” Liv argued. “The three of you should leave. Go back to the waystone, and take it to Mountain Home. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”

“Blood and shadows,” Rose cursed. “You really think so little of us? After everything we’ve been through together, Liv, you think so little of me?”

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Liv shook her head. “No. I just want to protect you–”

“You think we haven’t been risking our lives this entire time?” Rose interrupted, her voice rising. “Arjun could have died at the Well of Bones. Either one of us could have, fighting Calevis. What’s different now?”

“I knew we could beat Calevis!” Liv argued back. “Of course this is different. A god just told me he was going to make me watch while he kills you! I can’t – I couldn’t take that.” She looked away, suddenly unable to meet Rose’s eyes.

“Could the two of you give us a moment?” Rosamund’s voice was quiet now, almost a whisper, and the anger had been drained away.

Arjun opened his mouth, as if to ask a question, but Keri took him by the arm and pulled him along toward the entrance Liv had built into the shelter. Only after both the boys had left did Rose speak again.

“You’re scared,” she said.

Liv nodded, though she still couldn’t bring herself to look up and meet the other girl’s eyes.

“Liv, you’re going to have to get used to the idea of losing me,” Rose said. “If we’re ever going to actually be together. I’m going to die before you. We always knew that, even if you didn’t want to think about it. What Aira said up on the ring forced me to really think about it, but I’m not sure you have. Whether I die down here fighting Celris, or in fifty years, you’re going to outlive me.”

“There’s a pretty big difference between the two,” Liv grumbled, but she finally forced herself to look up and meet her friend’s eyes.

“There is.” Rose shrugged. “I guess I’ve got it easy. I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to do when you’re gone. Come over here.”

Liv scooted over to where Rose was, a bit hesitantly, but when the other girl embraced her, she could feel her body begin to relax, in spite of herself.

“I don’t intend to die down here,” Rose told her. “But if I do, I’m going to go down fighting. And there’s no rusting way I’m going to just turn around and leave you here. And if you respect me – if you care for me – you’re going to have to accept that.”

Liv nodded.

“Good.” Rose leaned forward, and their lips touched.

☙

Under any normal circumstances, Liv would simply have melted the shelter, rather than crawled out. She had no waste heat to spare, however, and as far as she could tell the dome of ice might just stand there inside the Tomb of Celris for the next thousand years without melting. She could have reshaped the ice, shredded it down into shards and dust like she had the mirror-monsters, but there didn’t seem to be much point.

They ate a morning meal of jerky, nuts and dried fruit, and Rose even dug out a wheel of hard cheese she’d squirreled away in her pack as a surprise. Whether it was actually morning, Liv didn’t have the slightest idea. Between being underground, and the fact that there would be no true day during the winter this far north, she simply had no way of telling. Their days would last until they were tired, and their nights would last until they were ready to move on again.

They left the room that had once contained baths behind, and continued their explorations, with Liv sketching out her map at every turning. Most of the chambers they encountered were simply empty: whatever they had once contained was long gone, either from decay or looting.

One branching corridor, however, led to something decidedly different.

“That does not look like a good idea,” Rose observed, while the others remained silent.

A long span of gray stone, rising in an elegant arch, bridged an endless shaft down into darkness. There were rails rising from the sides, but from a distance they looked far too delicate to entrust one’s safety to.

“What is it with these bottomless pits?” Liv complained. “This is just like the Well of Bones.”

“There was no bridge there,” Arjun pointed out. “And it was open to the sky, actually, before my ancestors built a fortress over it. And this is smaller, I think.”

Keri stepped up to the edge of the shaft, with his globe of light drifting just behind him. A wave of his hand sent the orb floating out into the shaft, and it flared brightly enough to force the darkness back for a moment.

In that brief span of illumination, Liv saw that the shaft extended down a dozen stories, at least. Surrounding it were more openings, more hallways and rooms. There were balconies that looked like they might once have hosted gardens, and half a dozen more bridges, at least, criss-crossing the shaft at different levels. Far above, she could see another one of those vaulted ceilings Celris was so fond of, and the light from below glinted off more transparent panes of ice.

“There’s enough room here for an entire town,” Liv realized. “Maybe even a city. Imagine sunlight coming down from above, lighting this whole place. People using the bridges to get from one section to another, sitting on the balconies eating a meal and talking…”

“And places for mana-platforms,” Rose added. “Think about it. Anyone who knew Aluth could just float across, up or down, to wherever they wanted to go.”

“We could spend weeks mapping all of this,” Keri pointed out. “We don’t have enough food for that.”

“Down,” Liv said. “It’ll be down, just like Costia was. When they came for him, he would have made them fight their way to him. He would have worn them down as much as he could before facing them.”

“We want a mana platform, then,” Arjun concluded. “We should just pass all this by, and go straight down.”

“I’ll do it,” Liv said. She drew her wand, muttered the familiar invocation, and conjured a disc of shining blue mana just above the floor to one side of the group. They stepped on, one after another, and then she moved it out over the shaft. Keri’s light followed them, as once again, just like at the canyon outside the Tomb, she lowered them down into darkness.

To every side of them, the ancient balconies, windows carved into stone, and bridges passed as they dropped down. The silence was so absolute, so still and utter, that the slightest sound stood out in sharp contrast.

That meant all four of them heard something shift below at the same time – a scraping of metal against stone.

“Something’s down there,” Keri muttered, shifting his spear into a two handed grip and widening his stance.

“This is not a good place to fight, Liv,” Rose said, even as she drew her sword.

“I know!” Liv accelerated their descent, but there was a limit to how fast she could go without breaking all their legs when they reached the bottom of the great shaft. Arjun had drawn his wand, as well, and by common consent they arranged themselves back to back, all facing outward so that nothing could come up behind them.

“There!” Arjun said, pointing down.

Liv caught a glimpse of blue sigils below them, flaring to life. She felt cold, even wrapped inside of all her enchanted armor.

“Hostim,” a voice came, echoing through the shaft. It reminded Liv of Karis’s voice - metallic, somehow, a thing of grinding gears and hissing steam. It didn’t surprise her at all that whatever that thing was spoke in Vædic.

“What’s that mean?” Rose asked.

“Enemies,” Liv and Keri answered at the same time. They were close now – only a moment or two more, and she’d have them low enough that falling from the disc wouldn’t be a death sentence.

Half a dozen torches of blue flame roared to life in the darkness, and a great, monstrous shape flew up past them. It hung there for a moment, in the open space of the shaft, giving Liv just enough time to see the thing in a mix of Keri’s sunlight, and its own blue flames.

The creature, the monster, the construct – whatever it was, much of its body was shaped of dense ice, graven with Vædic sigils that blazed a cold, frozen blue-white. Liv recognized some of the same inscriptions that Karis had carried, for mana shields and blades, but there were more beside, at least half a dozen enchantments, perhaps more. The ice was layered upon an underlying skeleton of metal, like the Antrian war machines they’d fought before.

Unlike Karis and the other Antrians, however, or even Calevis, this foe was not shaped like a human or one of the Eld. Its shape was long and sinuous, like one of House Iravata’s great wyrms, and plates of enchanted steel armor protected the back of its long neck and tail. It had great wings, as well, three sets of them extending out to either side, and while they were also built upon a skeleton of metal, they were as much roaring fire as substance.

There were arms and legs, as well, muscled and vicious, with each limb ending in a set of great frozen claws. The blue glow of mana along the edges of each claw instantly told Liv what enchantment was being used: just like Karis atop the reef, the claws had been layered with dangerous mana blades.

The head was that of a predator, with a great jaw meant for biting, for rending and tearing and swallowing whole, with teeth that were jagged shards of ice. Two eyes, set above the long jaw, burned with the same blue-white light as the sigils spread all across the monster’s body.

The abomination of steel and ice, fire and magic, hovered above them for just an instant, long enough to be glimpsed in all its terrible glory, and then dove.