Corvis Eralith
It took us a week to reach the northeastern coast and finally arrive at the Sea Den.
The journey had been long, the kind of long that seeped into your bones and made you forget what it felt like to sleep in a bed that did not rock with the wind. But we had made it.
We stood on the high black cliffs that characterized this area of the coast, and for a moment, none of us spoke.
To our left, the Elshire Forest's tallest trees were still visible in the distance, their tops like a green wall separating the known world from something older, something wilder.
But apart from that and the sea in front of us, the Beast Glades—as the name suggested—were barren.
A few bushes, some lonely trees, grass without end, wandering mana beasts, some weak, some strong, short hills, ponds, and creeks. It stretched before us like a wound that had healed wrong, all scar tissue and exposed bone.
The Beast Glades, if it was not for the dangerous active dungeons filling them and the potential of coming face to face with a lethal monster, were boring.
That was the thought that surfaced as I looked out over the expanse, and I almost laughed at myself for it. When I went to the Red Gorge, I had never actually arrived in the Wild East. That dungeon had been in the Grand Mountains, near Darv's border.
This was different. This was the real thing. The land that no kingdom claimed because no kingdom could actually hold it. The land that swallowed expeditions whole and spat back only rumors.
"Is that the Sea Den?" Albold asked, looking toward the inlet below us.
Beneath the cliff side we stood on, the coast protruded inward, creating a natural underground bay, its only access from the sea. The water was dark here, deeper than it had any right to be, and the shadows it cast against the rock made the entrance look like a mouth waiting to open.
"That it is," I murmured.
"How are we going to enter?" Ashton asked. "Do any of you know how to swim?"
Ashton's question, delivered with that usual even tone of his, caused both me and Albold to flush in embarrassment. The heat rose up my neck before I could stop it, and I saw Albold's jaw tighten out of the corner of my eye.
Two scions of Elenoir's greatest houses, standing on a cliff above the sea, and neither of us had ever learned to float.
I, too, had never learned how to swim. Not in this life, at least. It was unheard of for a Prince of Elenoir to learn how to swim—the forest was our domain, the trees our ocean, and the water that ran through our kingdom was shallow enough to wade or swift enough to carry you away before you could drown.
And throughout all my expeditions in the Elshire Forest these last years, I had never found myself in a situation where swimming would have been necessary. The creeks and rivulets were either too shallow or their currents too calm to be worrying.
The only true instance where I had "swam" was in the other river. The one whose waters would drown everything in the end.
"No," Albold said, and I heard the admission churning inside him, the particular humiliation of a warrior who had found something he could not do.
"Neither do I," I said, and the words felt heavier than they should have.
"I see," Ashton hummed, and for a moment I thought I heard something in his voice that might have been amusement. "So, what is the plan?"
"We can drop down to the shore using ropes," I said, looking down the cliff side. The drop was maybe ten meters, maybe more. Far enough to break bones. Far enough to end things.
"Can you use earth magic to make us a platform?" Albold asked.
"A moving one?" I shook my head. "No."
Albold looked down too, measuring the distance with his eyes. "We will need a way to get back up as well," he said. "I agree with using ropes to climb down."
With that said, we did so. We planted three nails into the earth, and with Ars Terramorph I made sure to compact the stone around them, reinforcing the cliff so that we would not fall while descending.
The magic flowed through me like water finding its level, and I felt the stone respond, felt it tighten and strengthen, felt it become something that would hold.
"Berna," I said, turning to my bond. "Can you take a fall from here?"
Ashton looked at me sharply. "Should that be something you can say about His Highness's bond?" he asked, and I saw the faint line of disapproval in the set of his mouth.
"Berna is stronger than she looks," I said. It was not a lie.
She was stronger than anything I had ever seen, and I had seen a Lance kill an S-Class mana beast with a swiftly conjured weapon.
We descended the cliff side, my boots finding holds in the rock that I had not known were there until my feet needed them.
The salt spray rose to meet us, cold and sharp, and by the time my boots landed on the narrow stripe of sand that separated the black cliff wall from the sea, my hands were raw and my lungs were burning.
Albold and Ashton followed soon after, their landings softer than mine, their breaths steadier.
A loud sound echoed behind us. I turned just in time to see Berna emerge from a cloud of displaced sand, salted water spraying across our faces as she dive-bombed from ten meters above.
She landed like a stone dropped into a pond, her mass somehow finding the softest part of the shore, and when she shook herself, the water that flew from her fur caught the light like scattered diamonds.
"I retract what I said previously," Ashton said, and there was something in his voice that I had never heard before.
"You just made a joke, Auddyr?" Albold's voice was as surprised as I felt.
Ashton blinked. "I did?"
We stood there for a moment, the absurdity of it settling over us like the spray from the sea, and then Albold shook his head and turned back toward the cliff.
"That is definitely a dungeon," he said.
Beneath the cliff side, hidden in the shadows cast on the inlet, an entrance of pristine material half-buried was barely visible.
It was the same stone as the Red Gorge, the same impossible smoothness, the same sense of something that had been made by hands that had learned their craft before the mountains rose.
"I barely see it," I said.
"The Chaffer family is known for their keen senses," Ashton explained.
Yes, I know that. But obviously I could not say it. I was Finn Warend now. Finn Warend, who had grown up in Burim, who had been brought to Zestier by his great-uncle's business, who had never seen the inside of a dungeon.
"Let's try something," I murmured.
With Ars Terramorph—how I called all my earth magic—I molded the nearby sand and the uneven rocks emerging from the cliff side into a sort of stone raft.
It was crude, lopsided, the kind of thing that would have made Olfred sigh and shake his head, but it was solid. It would float. It would hold us.
"Will this work?" Albold asked, placing a foot on the raft. "And how is Berna going to follow us?"
Berna growled, a sound that was almost laughter, and started to pad toward the Sea Den's entrance.
She ignored the sea entirely, simply letting herself be submerged, her massive form sinking into the water. Bubbles rose around her, catching the light, and she moved through the bay like something that had been doing this since before there were words for it.
"That is the strangest bear in the world," Albold murmured.
"I completely agree," I said, and the surprise of my bond never ceased.
We stood on the makeshift stone raft, and I tried to do what Olfred had done with his own stone constructs, fueling them with mana, willing them to move.
But there was something I still failed to understand. I was only able to make the raft float. It drifted on the current like a leaf, aimless, waiting.
"Let me help," Ashton said.
Then a gust of wind, shaped by Ashton's magic, caught the back of the raft and started to propel us toward the Sea Den. The stone beneath our feet scraped against the water, and I heard Albold's sharp intake of breath, the particular sound of someone who did not trust the element he was being carried across.
We landed in front of the entrance of the Sea Den, the light barely reaching us. Berna was already on the shore, shaking herself, spraying salt water across the rocks.
I retrieved from my storage ring a torch, and Ashton did the same. With a flick of mana, the torch ignited itself—it was a special ignition that needed only any kind of mana to produce a flame, perfect for our party which did not have fire mages.
"You do not need a torch, Albold?" I asked.
"My eyes are enough," the Chaffer replied, admiring the gloomy scene around us. "This feels like the Elshire Forest at night. Only with stone instead of trees. And a strong smell of salt."
I walked toward the entrance, illuminating the path. The door was huge, shining under the light of my torch. The Djinn architecture was familiar under my eyes, just like that of the Red Gorge.
Let's see how you react, Sea Den, I said in my head, giving a push to the monolithic door of the ancient Djinn structure. Destroyed and buried by the Asuras. Dicathen its grave.
The stone was cold under my palm. I expected anything to happen—a surge of resistance, a grinding of ancient mechanisms, the same violent awakening that had happened in the Red Gorge.
But the large metallic door, so typical of these dungeons, parted without a sigh under my touch. It simply moved, smooth and silent, like a held breath finally released, revealing the large tunnel leading inside.
I had been bracing myself for the world to shatter again. For the rock to scream. For the floor to fall away beneath my feet and the darkness to swallow me whole.
Instead, there was only this: the door opening, the dark waiting, and the cold, steady weight of Berna against my side.
"Be ready for... well, anything," I said, and I heard the edge in my own voice. I had not meant it to sound like that.
And as if the world had been waiting for me to say it, a loud, screeching noise pierced my ears.
It was not the roar of a Phoenix Wyrm. It was not the grinding of a dungeon coming back to life. It was something smaller, something meaner, something that had been sleeping in the dark above us and had just woken up hungry.
"Finn!" Albold's shout came from somewhere to my left, and before I could process what was happening, his arm was around me, hauling me sideways.
His Courtblade swept in an arc that caught the light of our fallen torches, and the mana beast that had been diving for my head crumpled mid-air, its body separating from its neck in a spray of dark blood that hissed when it hit the salt water pooled on the stone.
Behind us, from the dark corners of the underground inlet that housed the Sea Den's entrance, bat-like mana beasts with huge fangs awoke from their daylight slumber.
Their wings unfolded with a leathery rasp, their eyes—tiny, red and furious—opened all at once, and I realized with a cold clarity that we had stepped into a nest.
"Vesperkin!" I shouted, and the name tasted bitterly in my mouth.
Albold let me go, his body already turning, his blade already rising. The momentum of his rescue had carried us both into the center of the inlet, and now we were surrounded on three sides by darkness that was beginning to move.
Ashton summoned his Branchberd from his storage ring, the weapon appearing in his hand with a flash of light that made the Vesperkin above us shriek and wheel away.
"Have you not seen them, Chaffer?" he asked, and even as he spoke, he was moving—a pirouette on his heel, wind magic wrapping around him like a second skin, making him as agile as the gust that carried the salt spray up from the water below.
He avoided the fangs of a Vesperkin that dove at his face, the creature's jaws closing on empty air, and with his Branchberd he pierced its side, the blade sinking deep.
He retrieved it quickly, a sharp, practiced motion, and struck again at the head. Two fast, lance-like hits that killed the mana beast in a few moments.
"I have good eyes!" Albold scoffed, and I heard the particular heat in his voice, the need to be first, to be best, to be the one who did not need anyone's help. "I am not all-seeing!"
He launched himself back toward Ashton, his Courtblade already singing, and I saw what he was doing. He was not retreating. He was pushing forward. He was putting himself between Ashton and the swarm, forcing his rival to fight beside him, to match him, to prove that he could keep up.
The two of them actually gave each other a good push to fight at their best. I watched them move, Albold's blade flowing like water, Ashton's Branchberd striking like an hurricane, and I understood something I had not understood before.
Rivalry could also be a good thing. It could be the edge that sharpened both blades. It could be the fire that forged something stronger than either could become alone.
A horde of Vesperkin flew against us, their shadows elongated by the dim light reaching us now that we had to discard our torches. The sound of their wings was a thunder in the enclosed space, a roaring that made the stone and sand beneath my feet vibrate, and I felt the old panic rising, the old certainty that I was about to die again.
I reached down to clutch some sand in my hand, and an idea sparked in my mind like a match struck in darkness.
"Guys, duck!" I shouted, and Albold and Ashton dropped without hesitation.
I threw the sand in a wide arc, and with Ars Terramorph I reached for the atmospheric mana that hung in the air like a held breath. I did not have the power to shape stone the way Olfred could. I did not have the control to do anything delicate or precise.
But I did not need precision. I needed chaos.
The harmless grains of sand became a suffocating cloud of many little and irregular stone pebbles, and the Vesperkin above us screeched in pain as the cloud tore into their wings, their eyes, the soft membranes that stretched between their bones.
The Vesperkins were classified as E-Class mana beasts by the Adventurer's Guild, but they were actually more dangerous than your average E-Class mana beast.
They had a crippling weakness, however—their sight.
Something that could be well exploited by the many human fire mages of the Adventurer's Guild. I did not have fire. But I had stone.
I felt the repercussion of this usage of Ars Terramorph immediately. It required far more mana than I had thought. The drain was a physical thing, a hollowing out behind my ribs that left me gasping.
But its effects were clear. The Vesperkins screeched atrociously in pain as most of them crumpled, their weak eyes tormented by my cloud of stone dust.
They fell from the air like stones dropped into a well, their bodies hitting the stone floor of the inlet with wet, breaking sounds that I tried very hard not to hear.
Since when was I so good at earth magic? The thought surfaced unbidden, and I pushed it down. There was no time for questions.
Albold seized the opportunity. His Courtblade swept through the prone Vesperkins with an elegance that made it look like a dance, his blade finding throats and hearts with the same precision he used when he was sparring with me in the Royal Palace's gardens.
Ashton did the same, but less effectively, his senses not being as preternaturally keen as the Chaffer's. I saw his Branchberd strike a Vesperkin that was already dead, saw him waste a heartbeat on a creature that had already stopped moving.
More screeches echoed throughout the inlet, piercing our ears, and from my storage ring I retrieved the weapon I had chosen for Finn Warend. A crossbow.
The classic ranged weapon of dwarvenkind. I had asked Elder Rahdeas to provide it, which he had again conceded, his pockets bottomless.
It was heavier than I expected, the draw mechanism stiff with newness, but it fit in my hands like something that had been waiting for me.
With Ars Terramorph, I produced a stone dart from a pebble at my belt. The magic came easier this time, faster, as if the element had been waiting for me to ask it for something it wanted to give. I loaded the dart, aimed, and shot at the head of a Vesperkin approaching Ashton from above.
The creature's cry was sharp, cut off in the middle, and Ashton, hearing it, turned and finished the job with a thrust of his Branchberd that was almost perfunctory.
My eyes darted to Berna. She stood still, her massive form a shadow among shadows, and through our bond I felt that she did not want to fight at all. She considered the Vesperkins harmless.
I felt her certainty that these creatures were not a threat, that they would scatter if we simply waited, that we were the ones who had come into their home and started killing them for no reason other than that we were afraid.
I clicked my tongue. Between all people, I had to be the one with the pacifist Guardian Bear. But complaining was not a luxury someone like me could even think to have.
"Berna!" I called, and she turned her eyes on me. Apologetically.
I felt her pain through our bond, a deep trauma that made her unable to fight despite her wanting to. The corruption that had been forced into her, the years she had spent as a maverick weapon, the things she had been made to do—it had left marks that did not heal quickly. If they healed at all.
I tossed an unlit torch at her. It arced through the air, end over end, and she caught it with a gentleness that belied her size.
"Make us light!" I ordered, and Berna growled in confirmation, understanding perfectly.
Two of her sharp bear digits pressed on the tip of the torch, and... fire magic? lightened it up, illuminating the whole inlet in a sudden burst of orange light that made the Vesperkins above us shriek and scatter.
The sudden illumination confused the many Vesperkins approaching us. Now I could clearly see their coal-black bodies and ivory-white fangs, their wings traversed by red veins.
Were they corrupted mana beasts? No. If they were, they would not be fighting so smartly. They were just territorial mana beasts, and the entrance to the Sea Den—like the dungeon's name suggested—was their den.
I shot another dart at a Vesperkin, finding one of its wings, making it fall to the ground. I did not wait for it to recover. I conjured a heavy boulder above it and let it fall, and the sound it made when it hit was something I would try very hard to forget.
Albold's Courtblade hit the neck of another one, water magic making the blade flow through the flesh without attrition, his momentum unstoppable even as he continued to strike.
I saw the spray of blood, the way it caught the light from Berna's torch, the way it looked almost beautiful for a moment before it hit the ground and was just blood again.
Ashton threw his Branchberd like a javelin, his wind magic guiding it through the chest of a Vesperkin and then back to his hand in a single, fluid motion.
The creature fell, and he was already turning, already looking for the next target, and I saw in his face the same grim purpose that I felt in my own chest.
I took another pebble from my belt and morphed it into a new dart, aiming at the next vesperkin. My hands were steady. My breath was steady. The world had narrowed to this: the draw, the aim, the release.
The crossbow kicked against my shoulder, the dart flew true, and another creature fell from the air like a stone dropped into a well.
The torchlight flickered, casting long shadows across the walls of the inlet, and in the spaces between heartbeats, I saw what we were.
Three boys and a bear, standing in a cave that had been old when our ancestors were young, killing things that had only been trying to protect their home.
The Vesperkins did not know about the war that was coming. They did not know about the Djinn, or the Asuras, or the weight of history that I carried in my chest. They only knew that something had come into their den, and they were afraid.
I loaded another dart. I did not stop. I could not stop. Because if I stopped, I would think. And if I thought, I would remember. And if I remembered, I would drown.
The next Vesperkin fell. Then the next. Then the next.
And when the last of them had either fled or died, the silence that followed was louder than the screeching had ever been.