A Fallen Soul

Darkness.

Darkness surrounded him, obscuring all that might be. There was no Light here, no Sun with its gentle rays, nor even the dreaded moonlight. He could have still been falling and not even noticed it.

There was simply darkness, an absence of sight and all else in the world.

Is this what my death looks like, when the Goddess' arrow finally hits its mark and I am brought low into the lands of ghosts and memories?

He reached out a hand, praying for the Light to reach him, even there. And felt it slip from his grasp. Instead, his hand grasped something hard, coarse and yet smooth. Feeling came back to him, and his eyes fluttered open. Then he saw light of a different kind.

Green flames cast a dim glow across from him. Bright enough that he could even see stone bricks. He felt and saw the ground beneath him again, as his eyes tried their best to adjust to the surrounding darkness.

When he was able to move, however sluggishly, it clicked that he couldn't feel any fractures or broken bones, nothing worse than bruises or the wounds he'd already sustained before their fall. That shouldn't have been possible, even for him. He pulled himself across the floor to those green flames, those green horns, and felt at a cheek that should have been warmer.

"Alleria." He shook her, then pinched her neck and her wrists. Faintly, he felt a pulse.

She was alive, if barely, but he couldn't figure anything else out just by looking at her. He began running his hand over her, trying to figure out how he'd be able to feel any broken bones or internal injuries. He passed over a wound and, when he pulled his hand close to his face, could just barely see the blue blood and telltale smell of iron.

He felt her body shift, and he immediately leaned down to her. "Alleria, can you hear me?"

She grumbled, and if there were words there, they weren't able to escape her mouth. But her eyelids flickered, and he saw the barest hint of her eyes.

"… Ribs broken… Healing… too tired."

She's trying to heal the damage she took, but… agh, what did she say about it?

Energy. It took energy, and if she was tired… He clenched his teeth.

She doesn't have enough to heal everything.

It was probably taking all she had to remain close to conscious and in one piece. And from a fall like that…

He looked up and squinted. He could just barely make out the hole, if you could even call it that, in the ground above them. That was what he thought it was, but in truth, it was so far away it was hard to properly make it out.

Alleria had a backpack, his backpack, in fact, still strung around her. After rummaging through it, he pulled out pieces of dried meat and a half-crushed apple he'd left for himself on the off chance he got peckish. He put the meat against her mouth, whereupon it opened a fraction, and she began to chew. Slowly, much too slowly for either of them, but she was eating.

Not missing a beat, he pulled the hunting knife Velandus had given him out from his belt and cut the apple into smaller pieces that would be easier to digest, even the mushed parts.

His hand brushed against the surface of the ground as he laid them down beside her, and while he expected to feel stone or rough gravel, what he instead found was something smoother. Unnaturally smooth, in fact. Leaning as close as he could to it, and no doubt aided by his eyes adjusting to the light-

-Or lack thereof-

-he confirmed his suspicions.

"These are bricks, man-made. Which means wherever we are, it isn't a cave, or at least not anymore."

He looked around again, and now he could see flat walls surrounding them, creating some sort of room. The curled shapes were roots, breaking through the aforementioned bricks, withered with time.

"Thank you… for stating the obvious."

He snapped around as Alleria crawled herself into a sitting position, leaning against one of the walls. Her eyes struggled to stay open, but now he saw that, if only barely, their amber colour glowed.

She coughed, struggling to get another piece of the apple into her mouth, and he immediately came over to help her, gently placing it in her mouth for her to chew.

"I think this whole experience has ruined apples for me…" she half muttered.

He resisted the urge to grin. "Cherries then? If they are to your liking?"

"I'd take anything… at this point."

She coughed again, then groaned, one hand clutching her stomach. He followed it and pulled aside a torn part of her clothing, but only saw an open wound for a second before the flesh began to knit itself together, leaving only dried blood and raw skin.

"How bad is it?"

"I've seen… better," she grunted, "Left femur is broken. Same goes for the right tibia and… fibula. I'm putting all I've got into fixing them." When she caught the look on his face, the edges of her mouth twitched into what approximated a smile. "Don't look at me like that, only one of us would be able to survive that fall."

His brows creased. "I've had my fair share of them recently. But if I could just-"

His mind expanded, and he tried to take hold of the Light again, mana curling around him. When it still felt distant and fleeting, he silently offered a prayer.

Delassie of the Dawn, bringer of health and healing to all who live under your grace, hear my plea and I pray thee answer. Mend these mortal wounds and shattered bones so that we once more may behold your grace in the Sun. Bless it be.

When nothing happened, he sighed and sat down beside Alleria. The Demon tilted her head slightly to look at him.

"Problem with your magic?"

"The Light… will not answer me."

"That happen… often?" she asked quietly. "Thought I'd seen you use it before without issue."

"It comes and goes." His left hand balled into a fist. "I just wish I knew why… why then and not now, when we need it more… The Darkness."

He looked around, dreading the thought that the walls were encroaching on him. He could feel it. Something hovering just out of sight, a force and power that went against everything he knew. He feared it.

He wasn't sure when he nodded off to sleep, only that he eventually woke again and felt Alleria leaning against him. When he gently pulled her off, her eyes fluttered awake, and she looked a bit more aware. When he handed her the last bit of dried meat he could find, she was able to take it from him and eat it without help.

"You still can't walk?"

"Not an inch. In my current state, and working on minimal food, I can't say how long it will take until they're properly healed."

"And if they weren't, properly?"

"Then I'd risk them setting the wrong way, which might leave me with a permanent limp."

"Right." He pulled himself to his feet and tried to ignore his own aches and pains across his body. "Well, we are out of that 'minimal food' anyway, and I don't think it's wise to stay here. Not unless we both want to slowly starve to death. And besides that…"

He looked up at the distant hole in the 'ceiling' and wondered if there was any chance that they knew…

"If they don't see a body, they'll assume I made it somehow." Alleria finished the thought, as if reading his mind. "They know that, however small the chance is, that there yet remains a chance I can make it out of this-"

He nodded. "Even more of a reason to start moving."

"-but I don't exactly see how that's feasible." She patted her legs and winced, regretting it. "Not unless you have a wheelbarrow on hand?"

"No," he cracked his neck, "but I do have the next best thing." He stepped up beside her, making sure not to bump into her, and spun around so she was facing his back.

After a few seconds of silence, he heard her sigh. "You're not serious."

"If you have a better idea, I'm all ears."

When she didn't give him one, he reached his hands out behind him, and after another second of hesitation, he felt her pull herself up onto his back and wrap her arms around his neck.

"Your damn sword is in the way," she muttered, pushing it away from her face.

"I could say the same for yours," he replied. "Could you stop it from digging into my back, please?"

She tried to, and while it still bumped uncomfortably against him, it was at least an improvement. He did find solace in the fact that she wasn't that heavy, which meant carrying her for the indefinite future would not be as taxing as he'd thought it would.

"Are we just going to be bumbling our way through this, or do you have an actual plan?"

They both looked ahead, deeper into the all-consuming darkness.

"I was thinking we take it slowly?"

She grunted, "Just try not to trip."

He put one foot forward, then the other, and before long, they were making their way through what he believed to be a long corridor; the walls that he could make out weren't far apart. The only light he had came from Alleria's horns, and those barely illuminated beyond her face. So he walked slowly, making sure the floor was solid before he advanced, and praying silently that none of the bricks would give way to another sinkhole beneath them…

Huh. This was familiar. After only a minute or two of walking, he stopped, and Alleria muttered in his ear. "What are you doing? Don't tell me you're tired already, we've barely started."

"Could you do me a favour?" He shuffled to the right until they were a few centimetres away from the wall. "Lean your head forward."

When she did, he was able to actually see the stone bricks for the first time, which confirmed his suspicions. But even then, he wasn't sure what to make of their greenish hue. A familiar colour.

"Green?"

"That couldn't just be coming from your horns, right?"

She shook her head. "It wouldn't change it that much. You recognise it?"

"I do." He turned them away from the wall and back towards the hallway. If he had been weary before, now he felt fear creeping into his heart. "Beneath a ruin outside of Fordain, I fell into a room bearing stone just like it. It's where I found this." He nodded his head towards the hilt of the sword he carried alongside her.

"You mentioned it once."

"Yes. And that means that there's a good chance any room we find, or even this hallway itself, is trapped with magic."

"Trapped with- that's not possible," she spluttered. "I'm no mage, but I'm pretty sure spells don't linger like that, nor can they be left and 'activated' later."

"And I would agree with you wholeheartedly, if blood magic hadn't come close to taking my life. It's real, I assure you, and now…" he swallowed. "Now I've started to wish I had talked to Velandus more about it."

He began to walk again, this time even slower and peering onto the floor and walls as best he could.

"… Have you ever come across any other ruins like that?"

"No ruins, but I found a stone that seemed to be of the same sort. And in that room… there were engravings there, a record or a story, I couldn't be sure. But it didn't look Carathiliarian."

"No?"

He shook his head. "Not at all, and I'm sure it would look as foreign to them as it did to me. Which means, if this place wasn't made by the Carathiliar, then it was someone else, some other people entirely."

Alleria went silent, clearly thinking.

"But they couldn't have existed alongside them; there would be notes on that, an entire history, and we would know about it. Which means they have to have predated the Carathiliar, who've been here since the beginning of the First Age. That's… that's huge, someone has to have documented something on it."

He thought for a moment she was being delirious due to a lack of energy, but the more he listened, the more what she was saying made sense. She was… quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing, far more than he, in fact. The furthest extent of his foray into literature had been a brief read through on Carathiliarian law."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

And that had just been to make a point.

"You read a lot then?"

She broke off her explanation of lorekeeping and methods of historical backdating and turned her head to face him. "Surprised?"

"Surprised that the Demon takes an active interest in Human lore and history? You could say so."

"It's an idle hobby, that's all. For the downtime between hiding from Talradians and evading local mobs."

"That's it?"

She arched her eyebrow. "Does one need much to justify a hobby?"

"I suppose not."

He felt his eyes start to sting a little from the strain he was putting on them, trying to both see and examine everything, root and break in the bricks that they came across in the dark.

If I knew how, I'd try to extend my mana, maybe feel any lingering spell traps, or whatever they are.

His mind went to his sword.

Then again, could I?

He tried to apply what he thought was a basic concept in his mind. Extend his mana outward, try to envision it flowing out of him like… a wave, perhaps, sweeping across the never-ending hallway. But the more he tried, the more he attempted to force it out of himself, he was met with an invisible wall.

The sword. Of course.

He'd assumed this would happen, but testing it took him one step closer to properly understanding it. It blocked his mana, and dissipated magic when it came near, and so the obvious conclusion to be drawn…

"-Anti-Mana," he muttered aloud.

"What? Oh." Alleria's eyes fluttered open again – she'd been resting them – but after blinking a few times, she nodded, and he felt her nudge the sword, which he was starting to feel strain against the simple straps holding it in place, now that the blade was free. "I'd been…" she yawned, "meaning to ask you about that. You're right, though, the metal has some sort of attribute that repels mana."

"Do you have any idea why it shattered the rust and damage it had?"

She shrugged. Or at least, she tried to. "That was a lot of magic they threw at you back there. And there wasn't an Anti-Mana effect before then, right?"

"Not that I can recall, no."

"Well, I imagine that when it got close enough to the blade, the dormant effect that was nullified by the rust and coating reacted to the overflow of mana in the area. Maybe. Something like that." She yawned again. "But I'm hardly an expert."

"You have a better theory than I."

"The key word being theory. If you have selective amnesia, you should read more."

"Right."

Anti-Mana. Resisting magic and mana manipulation in an area or radius. Anti-Magic…

He paused mid-step.

"Sorry, can I put you down for a second. I want to test something."

All he got was a grumble in response, so he carefully lowered himself and let her slump down onto the floor. She barely reacted when he pulled his sword out and placed it beside her.

Her energy was coming and going. We're going to need more food soon.

He stepped away from her, using her horns for perspective and praying under his breath that he didn't trip and fall over a stray root. Then, once he'd decided he was well enough away. He reached out to the Light and drew on his mana.

And received an answer.

Light flickered in his hand, immediately illuminating the hallway they were in. It was bright, too bright, so much so that he flinched and looked away at the same time Alleria did. When he looked around again after rubbing his eyes with one hand, he saw greenish-grey bricks, giant roots, dirt, and a corridor that extended far before branching off in different directions.

His eyes stung, but the comfort it brought was well worth it. The darkness reaching out to him retreated, and he finally felt at ease.

However…

He turned back to Alleria, who was covering her face, and the sword that lay beside her. He already knew what would happen when he did, but nonetheless, he stepped forward, closer to them both, and saw the light flicker, his hold on the Light waver, and then finally evaporate, leaving them blind once more.

"You could have warned me, you know," she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

"Sorry. I wasn't even sure it would work." He sighed and rubbed his face. "Well, this is going to be a nightmare."

Light, but only when I'm completely unarmed.

He moved the sword farther away before kneeling beside Alleria. Resting his hands just above her legs, he drew on his mana and the Light, imagining the wounds healing, the bones clicking together perfectly.

The dim light grew, flickered, then faltered, and he felt it once more slip from his grasp. He thought he saw Alleria's mouth twist into a rueful grin.

"If only it were that easy."

"If only."

He sheathed his sword, she hoisted herself back onto his back, and then they were advancing into the shadows once more. With the brief glimpse he'd got from the burst of Light, he knew they were at least safe until they got to a fork in the hallway. Then it was a simple choice: left or right.

"Right," Alleria muttered in his ear.

"Why?"

One eye opened slightly. "Air feels fresher."

He turned his head right and had to agree. It was barely noticeable, but the air did feel staler to the left, dustier, if that was even possible.

He took them right, trudging across the ruined bricks and tripping over roots. Without the Sun, without even sight of the sky, it was impossible to tell how much time passed. Seconds could be minutes, an hour could be days, and they'd have no idea. The only thing he could use to gauge its passage was his rapidly emptying stomach, and the continuous growling coming from Alleria's. She stopped commenting, or even muttering, after a while to save energy, going so still that it was only her heartbeat that he felt pressed against his back, telling him she was still breathing.

Frankly, he was surprising himself. Though his arms wavered often, and his legs threatened to collapse, he kept pushing them forward, kept her as secure as he possibly could on his back.

Just keep moving.

When he paused for breath beside one of the walls, he was struck with an idea. A desperate one that came naturally to him, some knowledge that yet remained in his mind. He released one hand and, after drawing his hunting knife, began cutting into the smaller roots and what he thought were vines trailing down from the ceiling.

He passed some of them up to Alleria, who opened her mouth and began chewing without hesitation. He heard her grunt while he was cutting up more, then mutter, "Not exactly… my sort of meal."

"I would worry more that it isn't poisonous." He took a piece and put it close to his eye. "Doesn't look like it." He popped it into his mouth and crunched down. It was about as tasty as he expected roots and stems to be. "Food is food."

He gathered as many as he could grab and stashed them in their backpack, which he'd slung onto his left side. Then he continued walking, a little fuller, and with a little more energy to spare.

It certainly seemed to help the Demon on his back, who by every passing minute seemed a bit more awake, a bit more alert.

She nudged him. "I'm not sure if I'm hallucinating or not, but is that hallway glowing?"

He frowned and followed her hand, which pointed left, down a corridor he hadn't noticed, with his gaze so focused on moving forward. Then he blinked, rubbed one eye, and nodded.

"Definitely."

A green glow was radiating out of the hallway. As they approached, it was clear the source was lathered over parts of the walls and roof, even the corners of the floor. When he brought them closer to a patch, a memory resurfaced of a similar substance that he encountered what felt like a lifetime ago. Alleria leaned over his shoulder and poked the slimy substance with a finger, bringing it back to her.

"I've never seen anything like it."

"I have. And we're lucky I cannot call upon the Light now."

"Because?"

"It may have been a coincidence, but when last I brought it beneath the light of the Sun, its rays ignited whatever this is."

She immediately wiped the glowing slime over his cloak. "Next time, skip the flowery prose and start with that."

"We should be fine, I doubt any sunlight is ever going to reach us down here. And it isn't like I'm going to be producing us Light too use anytime soon." He paused. "Not that I think about it…"

A minute later, he'd cut a thin root apart and layered one end of it with the slime. He wasn't sure how effective it would be by itself, once they left the corridor filled with the stuff, but it was better than nothing.

"See those markings?"

He turned to where she was pointing and saw familiar murals etched onto the rock. Images of snakelike monsters, bowing Humans, maybe, and an entirely different history written in scripture neither of them knew.

"I do. I recognise them as well."

"Those are definitely the people who lived here before, who built this place."

"Or it's the monsters they fought." He pointed at the large serpent drawn on another corner of the wall. "If those things used to occupy these lands, then I feel I should give the Carathiliar more credit. They hardly seem easy to beat."

"Perhaps not… but these are the dragonslayer Humans we're talking about. Those aren't that far off from draconic, if you squint at them. And ignore the lack of wings."

"So hardly draconic at all."

"I was referring more to the spirit of it."

"That's hardly practical. What will the scholars think?"

He turned his head and caught a glare forming on her face. "You're being awfully charitable to the Carathiliar. I seem to recall some less-than-positive opinions of them and their beliefs before."

That made him go quiet, and briefly pulled him out of their situation, out of the dark and forgotten catacomb, and back to Tathlani. Back to Talradian and Carathiliarian blood on his sword. Back to a choice made in the heat of battle, and the heat of flames that followed thereafter.

"Why did you do that, putting yourself on the line for them?" She leaned forward to look at him, their faces close, and instead of anger or irritation on her face, all he saw were amber eyes filled with confusion. As if she were looking at a puzzle to be solved, but didn't even understand the pieces to begin with.

An apt metaphor indeed, and more than applicable.

"I…" he faltered, then continued, "I made a choice. They were innocent lives, no matter their faith or beliefs. I would not- not damn any to death unnecessarily for who they choose to pray to."

He felt like a weight had lifted off his shoulders, saying it aloud, and yet at the same time, he felt something new take its place. Guilt, worry that he was following in the same steps that had led to his banishment, and the stripping of his status as an Angelica. How was he going to learn from the past if it was a blank void to him? That led to a spark of anger, anger that he squashed with guilt again.

A simple motion brought him out of his spiral. A pat on his chest from Alleria, who was still watching him. Maybe it had been in the way his pace had increased, or she too could feel his heartbeat, but she was trying to look consoling.

At least, I think that's what she's doing.

"Thanks, Alleria."

"No problem."

Turning a corner, he brought them into a much wider hallway than the ones they'd been going down. Hallway might actually be an understatement. The more he squinted at it, the more it could actually be a massive room that stretched far off into darkness.

At a certain point, you have to consider where the line between room, corridor, and great hall intersects.

The glow of the slime also lessened here, growing from being quite a bright light to a dim glow. Which meant they're shadows stretched out, and he had to hold the root-slime torch higher to make sure he didn't fall into a pit again.

"Well, this is a bit excessive," she muttered.

"Whoever they were, they certainly aired on the grandiose side of things."

"Or they were big enough to need it."

She pointed left, and he followed her finger to see a hole in the wall, but unlike every other one they'd passed, this one hadn't been made by natural degradation or the intrusion of nature. It was perfectly round and lined with bricks like the rest of the room. It stretched so far that he couldn't even begin to see the end of it.

It was also taller and wider than both of them put together. Larger than a horse, even.

"Those murals showing snakelike monsters…" he began, not taking his eyes off the hole.

"I've read about a few that may match the description, but it was a while ago. And frankly, I didn't find them that interesting. I regret that now."

He nodded. "Keep an eye behind us, if you can manage it."

"I'll try."

They advanced forward, slower now than ever before, with his eyes fixed on the darkest patches, and the shadows were the dim glow failed, all the while feeling Alleria twist on his back to look behind them every minute or so.

It truly was a vast room, and he wondered what on Andwelm its purpose could have been for. Beyond its size, there was little else to differentiate it from the corridors they'd already passed through, save for a much higher roof. When he looked up, he could see a staggering number of roots cleaving through it, stone be damned. One even stretched far enough that it managed to touch the floor.

He sagged a little as the end of the room came into view, splitting off into multiple corridors indiscernible from one another.

"Getting tired?"

He nodded, "Consider us both lucky that you aren't that heavy, otherwise I would have called for a break sooner."

"I'll take that comment on my weight as a compliment," she snorted. "How much longer can you go for?"

"A few more minutes?" he guessed. "It depends on what's beyond those hallways, and whichever one we plan to go down."

"Fair enough." She looked around them again. "It is odd. I wonder what the purpose of these ruins was, way back when."

"It certainly does not seem to have the amenities you'd expect from a town or city. An underground fortress, perhaps?"

She idly bit her thumb. "Where are the armouries then? The gathering spots? The defences? And none of that even begins to explain what it's doing all the way down here. Were they subterranean? If that's the case, why would these be a fortress to begin with? What would they need to defend themselves from?"

He bobbed his head side to side. 'If those giant snakes were… somehow involved, as evidenced by whatever that tunnel was, then wouldn't this be natural? Many breeds of snakes burrow into the earth to make their dens. Though just as many will hide in trees or the brush."

Alleria turned to him. "You know a lot about snakes?"

"Yeah, I…" He frowned. "I do. Huh. Strange. Anyway, if there were giant snakes roaming down here, I would have expected more sources of heat. Do you feel how cold it is?"

The longer they were down there, the colder it was starting to feel, despite it being a Summer Year.

"Yeah."

They approached one of the hallways. "Well, snakes are cold-blooded, so if they did reside down here in any permanent or semi-permanent capacity, I would've expected there to be fireplaces, or other ways to heat up the area. And I mean, look at this room." He swung his arms out. "A place this big is going to take Light only knows how much fuel to heat it all up."

"Well, considering that, as far as we know, they've all been dead for several thousand years, I wasn't exactly expecting a warm fire pit waiting for us around the corner."

He walked around a corner and, much to his chagrin, saw yet another corridor, extending out until it turned away, well over a dozen metres in the distance.

"I might have to borrow that cloak of yours if it's going to get colder down here."

"And what about me?"

"You've got clothes, don't you?"

He raised an eyebrow. "So do you."

"I got cut up pretty bad, we have to make sure I'm decent, right? Wouldn't want-"

Maybe it was something in the air, but that was impossible.

Perhaps a feeling, a deep-seated instinct that hadn't been ripped away from him.

Either one, it didn't matter.

The moment he took a step forward, he felt something change. His eyes went alert immediately.

"-Danadrian? Are you okay-"

"Sword. Now."

He sensed her hesitation. Then he felt her awkwardly drawing the blade out while trying not to stab herself with it, before lowering it over his shoulder and into his hands. He raised it. Then he took another step forward.

A burst of mana erupted halfway down the hallway. He pointed the sword forward as a slithering beam of Light shot out. It met the invisible wall of his blade and shattered, bursting out into a million fractals that just as quickly vanished. The mana vanished.

He finally let out his breath.

"Danadrian!"

A hand swatted the root-slime torch out of his hand as the slime half caught fire in a tiny explosion. Around them, the remaining sources of slime likewise reacted to the Light Magic and began to catch fire. One caught, which instigated a faster reaction with the next, and so on.

Alleria kicked him, but he was already going forward, sprinting with all his energy to the darker side of the hallway, free of slime. He swung them around the corner and kept running. Only when he was sure they were out of the range of the fire, which might start to catch on the very dry roots and vines, and no more magic traps that were going off right that instant, did he slow down.

And when the adrenaline vanished, so too did his energy. He slumped to the ground, and Alleria tumbled off of him. He took one look at her, her face the only part of her illuminated now. She was panting, even though her feet hadn't touched the ground. He leaned back against the wall. It took a while before either of them remembered how to speak.

"Do you believe me now?"

"Yes. Do you think the Light Magic igniting the slime was by design?"

He shrugged. "No idea. Though ingenious in execution, I doubt the aftereffects were ideal."

"Right."

She struggled to pull herself forward until she was leaning against the wall beside him. Then she sighed and buried her head in her lap. "I don't want to state the obvious, but this is awful, even by my standards."

"Yeah…"

"At least Velandus isn't here. He got out of Tathlani, right?"

He nodded. "Last I saw. And with all the focus on the two of us, I think he'll have at least a day or two head start on them if they try looking for him."

"Good. Because they definitely will be." She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. "Now, if you don't mind, I think we deserve a little rest. Pray to your goddess that we aren't eaten in the night."

Danadrian reached over his shoulder and pulled his cloak down. "I will endeavour to do so," he replied, laying it over Alleria's chest.

"Hey, you know I was kidding, right? You don't need to-"

He shook his head. "You need it more than I. Get some rest."

She didn't voice any more objections and eventually went quiet. Then he reached into his backpack and, after rummaging around for a bit, pulled out the golden scarf he'd bought in Fordain, which was thankfully in there and undamaged.

Just touching the fabric, running his hands over it, made him feel more at ease. So, for the first time, he didn't put it back away afterwards. Instead, he carefully wrapped it around his neck and offered one last prayer before resting his head against the stone wall.

Elnuway of the Dusk, last to bear witness, I beseech you, for guidance and aid as we delve into Darkness unknown. Help us stand the tests before us and rise above to see the Light of your mother once more. Bless it be.

And sleep took him again.