Shadowsbane

by Emerald Viper

Born and raised in the dangerous city of Nexus, Sapphire is a gunslinging treasure-hunter with a long list of enemies. While working on an archaeological site, she uncovers a dangerous artifact that will either transform the world - or destroy it. This is the continuation of the story which began with "Alexander the Great" and "Godchaser". The next story is "The Well of Udr".

1. Chapter 1 - The Archaeologists

I still have the old versions of these stories, but I am uploading the second drafts with formatting and grammar corrections. I am not sure if all of the changes improve the story or not.

My reason for updating these old stories is in response to comments and criticism. Also, I have been writing lots of subsequent stories and want to keep the continuity as clean as possible from beginning to end. I really do appreciate critiques and I am sorry about inconsistency with spelling.

Thanks for reading, and I PROMISE I will finish Heaven Sent Sword!

- Emerald Viper

Chapter 1 - The Archaeologists

"A fine little circus you've got down here." A voice remarked casually.

I turned slowly at the sound of those words, suppressing the overwhelming desire I felt to sock whoever was making fun of Team Firewander right in the teeth. When I did see the arrogant jerk, my temper cooled somewhat. A hothead and a fighter I may be... but I am not an idiot.

The voice I'd heard belonged to a youngish Immaculate monk, probably an Air Aspect Dragonblood judging by the frosty color of his skin and the nauseating aura of pretentiousness that surrounded him. Of course, being the rightful Enlightened Princes of the Earth, Dragonbloods can get a little nasty around ordinary mortals like myself. Namely, they're liable to kill you if you make yourself too much of a nuisance.

To be fair, Team Firewander wasn't really at its best. Bruja, our "Purveyor of Brute Force" was picking her teeth with a knife clearly "made for killin' folk" while Little Fox, our Djala "locksmith" had just let loose a belch that absolutely boggled the mind and was scratching himself obscenely. Since it was insufferably cold on site, our mapmaker Mehmed and University-supplied lackey Kasashi were crouched together over a kerosene lamp warming their hands. They were both dressed in more layers of clothing than I had in my entire wardrobe and looked pathetic. Mehmed hated Nexus's winter weather, which consisted of rain, more rain, and gray slush the consistency of old porridge sloughing off rooftops.

That being said, we all smelled like a pack of wet dogs.

Though he scoffed at the lot of us archaeologists, I could tell that the Dragonblood was intimidated by the scale of the ruins he'd just entered into. The ceiling was a full twenty feet above our heads. Steel tracks etched with arcane symbols ran down the center of the floor, and an enormous dragon construct sat on them, glowering at all of us as we worked. When we finished clearing the rubble from around it, we expected that the construct would be nearly seventy feet long, a perfectly preserved piece of First Age engineering.

"You, noble monk, have just set foot upon the legendary Whispering Serpent. We call that ugly bugger 'Fluffy"." Little Fox jerked his thumb at the construct, though no one had asked for his input. The Dragonblood gave him a very condescending look, which didn't particularly surprise me. Fox wasn't known for his manners and didn't give a rat's ass what most Immaculates thought of him, particularly since they were generally complacent with the idea of his people remaining enslaved.

Mehmed gestured to the marks on the wall. "The Whispering Serpent is... well, it is like a tunnel for transportation. There are these great machines which fix themselves to the tracks you see on the floor and they..."

Of course, that was when the ground started shaking. Fox glanced up at me, obviously concerned.

"I'm sure it's quite fascinating, but I am here on much more important matters." The Dragonblood snorted, dismissing him. "What was that just now? A tremor?"

"A small one." I replied casually, as if it was nothing to be worried about. "People say that they're caused by all the explosives we use excavating."

"And you don't believe that?" The Dragonblood pressed, reading me effortlessly.

"Nothing we've ever used is strong enough to rock the city's foundation. We'd have no permits if it was. Personally, I think it's fae. We are halfway under Firewander after all." I watched for the Dragonblood's response.

He didn't try to lecture me about meddling in fae business or trying to put myself in a place higher than the one I was born into. The Dragonblood looked honestly concerned, and that worried me. "Do these ruins date from the Shogunate Era?" He wondered, pausing for a moment. It sounded a bit like he thought he was asking a legitimate question. The fact that he'd mistaken ruins from the High First Age for Shogunate Era ones surprised me.

I laughed despite myself. "If you think they were building stuff like Fluffy here during the Shogunate you are sadly mistaken! Nexus is thousands of years old, but built predominantly on a foundation of Yanazi River sediment. The original city has sunk hundreds of feet below what's now street level. There are Shogunate and Contagion Era ruins under every building in the Market District, but down here is where the real fun is. These ruins date from 1,500 to 3,000 years ago. High First Age. Palaces of the great golden demons, ancient armouries, hordes of treasure... and stuff like this."

I gestured to The Whispering Serpent. "Of course, the tremors are worse in this part of the undercity than they are anywhere else. You can scarcely feel them above ground, that's how far down we are. I'm sure you saw the Tomb of Night before you came in here. What you probably don't realize is that tomb was built on top of a building that was once taller than The Guild Hall. One of the first entrances to The Whispering Serpent was uncovered by an idiot kid poking around The Tomb of Singing Blades. A couple of monks found the way in when they came to clean up his body."

I paused, noticing two more Immaculates clumsily working their way down the narrow ladder which lead down from the Shogunate Era dig two stories above us. "Just who are you anyway?" I demanded, turning to the Dragonblood with my hands on my hips.

He didn't yell at me, though he definitely narrowed his eyes. My crew stared in shock, unable to believe that I'd just addressed a Dragonblood like I would any other intruder on our site. Of course, if our visitor had been any ordinary Immaculate monk, he would have certainly beaten me within an inch of my life for insulting him. As it was, his reaction... or lack thereof, told me everything I'd wanted to know about his identity. I started feeling a little sick to my stomach, knowing that I was about to begin what would have to be the cleverest misdirection I'd ever organized.

We'd been caught.

"My name is Summer Storm and I've been sent by Dean Peleps Nyubo of your University." The Dragonblood replied coolly, not even raising his voice. "Take me to your supervisor at once."

"Well, Summer." I smirked. From the looks of him, he surely went by "Storm"... but I wasn't in the mood to be cooperative, considering that I was about to lose my career and probably wind up back in jail. "I am the supervisor!"

"You are?" He frowned, surveying all of my tools hanging off of my belt and bandoleer. His eyes stopped for a moment on the pair of lovely antique firewands I wore holstered on my hips.

"Yup. Name's Sapphire Indari." I nodded, gesturing to my crew. "And these fine folks you see here are the red-headed stepchildren of The University of Nexus's Archaeological Department – colloquially known as "Team Firewander". Bruja Eisdotter, Little Fox, Mehmed Ismael Al-Mamun and Nellens Sotoko Kasashi." Each of them looked up at the sound of their names. If they were wondering why I hadn't mentioned Val, who was technically my supervisor, they didn't say anything.

"Oh." The Dragonblood smiled slightly. "So you're Sapphire The Heretic? Dean Peleps warned me about you. Where's Professor Valen Riverborn?"

"Val is working in the next section up ahead. I'll take you to him." I offered, not at all surprised that Dean Peleps had warned the Immaculates to steer clear of me. I was well aware that my "controversial" opinions and casual disregard of authority would have gotten me expelled from The University long ago if the Department of Archeology's most brilliant researcher did not stubbornly plead my case every time I came up for review. Val was a Fellow himself and a favorite of the University's most generous benefactor, the eclectic Master Adamant Quill, who was one of the richest men in Nexus.

I led Summer Storm and his lackeys through the series of finely-crafted doors that it had taken us months to blast open and then down the stairs into the main temple. Two more quakes followed, each a little stronger than the last. The Whispering Serpent track came to a stop before a glass atrium with patterns of the night sky etched in silver and gold above our heads. Before us was a massive marble white structure, easily eighty feet tall with a set of huge green brass doors. Like the doors of The Whispering Serpent's access corridor, they had been opened with the repeated and liberal use of powerful explosives. The shocking thing was that they were barely damaged.

"Neat, isn't it?" I smirked, noticing that Little Fox was following just behind the two silent Immaculates who had finally caught up with Summer Storm and myself. He had a wicked look in his beady little eyes and I motioned for him to get lost. The Djala caused almost as much trouble for Val as I did and I loved him for that, but I figured it wouldn't be wise to further test the patience of the Dragonblood I'd already been mocking, particularly since I wasn't going to lead him in to see our real treasure.

I could only hope that he already found me abrasive enough that he would not insist upon following me. "Wait here. I'll be right back." I gestured to a pair of makeshift benches near the Whispering Serpent's track. "I'd take you in further, but it's a little hazardous. Especially with the tremors."

That was a lie, but the Immaculates bought it... and their supervisor did seem to hate me as much as I hoped he might. I knew he'd be launching a formal complaint, but I'd deal with that when I actually had to and not one moment before. The three monks stared up at the mesmerizing star patterns of The Whispering Serpent's way-station and one of them gasped as the stars suddenly began to move.

I smiled slightly. I'd seen a lot of First Age ruins, and they never ceased to impress me.

As the Dragonbloods stared at the ceiling, I slipped through the brass doors into a very dark chamber, illuminated only by thirty-two panels of ever-shifting golden glyphs inscribed on pristine white marble. I smiled in satisfaction as I saw Val gnawing on his pencil, sitting on the foot of forty foot tall statue of solid orichalcum, a magical metal rarer and more valuable than gold.

The statue was of ancient God that had once reigned over even the Immaculate Dragons, a god called The Unconquered Sun. Excavating First Age sites all over Nexus, Val and I had run across him many times before. Usually he was depicted as a well-muscled, armored man with four arms, stern and serious in a manner that commanded respect. The massive idol we had discovered in this underground temple was singularly unique, and not only because it was the largest we had ever seen.

As opposed to looking down upon his worshippers with a haughty demeanor, the God had a very silly, endearing sort of smile on his face. Put simply, it was impossible not to like him, and the beautiful prayers inscribed on the surrounding walls only made him seem even more wonderfully benevolent. Thought the worship of the Unconquered Sun during the High First Age had been omnipresent, whoever had built the temple that Val and I had been working diligently in had captured something very rare in monumental architecture, a sense of pure, genuine faith.

"The Big Guy" as we called him was Team Firewander's secret. We'd known about him almost six months and it was getting more and more difficult not to reveal our spectacular find to The University. Fox and Kasashi were getting particularly impatient, hoping for better pay... but Val and I had other priorities. There were thousands of ever-changing inscriptions on the walls surrounding the ancient God, and once his existence was revealed, it would only be a matter of time before The Guild swooped in and arranged to have him melted him down for the exorbitant price his orichalcum body would fetch.

The ground shook beneath my feet.

The sooner we were out of our current dig site, the better too... because if the Immaculate Order knew that Val and I had actually translated ancient historical and religious texts that they hadn't had the opportunity to "edit", they would certainly seize all of our notes and probably execute the both of us. Providing, of course... that neither the earthquakes nor the fae killed us first.

Of course, I'd known that I was dancing with death from the moment that Summer Storm and his companions had first arrived. There'd been rumors around The University for months about a trio of emotionless Immaculates grilling certain Fellows to find evidence of religious "backsliding" within the teaching and research staff. I'd expected an inquiry myself, given my reputation as a troublemaker, but I hadn't expected Summer Storm to come all the way down to our dig site, the heart of our heretical machine.

Naturally, trying to dismiss the Immaculates outright would only have caused trouble for us. Though I was sure that my crew and I could have taken out the two junior monks on our own turf, we definitely couldn't fight a Dragonblood... and if we gave any sign of resistance, that would have given The University reason to launch a full-scale investigation, which could only end badly for Team Firewander.

Pretending that nothing was amiss and behaving as my usual sarcastic self was the only option. Raised by a god-blooded prostitute who ran a teahouse full of black-market dealings and did a brisk trade in thamaturgy on the side, I'd trained in the fine art of deception from an early age. The only thing that really made me nervous was knowing that Fox would never be able to keep his mouth shut if he was brought before Dean Peleps. Fortunately, because he was a Djala, there was a good chance they'd just ignore him.

I'd been standing over Val for more than a minute when he finally noticed me. He pushed his glasses back up on his crooked nose and grinned. I've known Val all my life. When we were children, our parents forbade us from playing together, which was perhaps why we became the best of friends. Val's father was an extremely wealthy member of The Guild who sold my mother the teas that she brewed only for her very best customers. Val and I were told that we were from different worlds, but I'd never been one to accept limitations and Val never lorded over anyone. He had a sort of insufferable sweetness to him, which sometimes makes me jealous of his adorable little wife.

Although we are almost exactly the same age, Val looks much older than I do. A lifetime spent in libraries and fussing around in ancient ruins has given him the classic "academic's hunch". His silvery hair is always a mess and his eyes have such thick, permanent dark circles that some of his students at The University have taken to calling him "Professor Badger". Personally, I always considered him more of a ferret. One minute he's stern and serious, the next he's bounding around gibbering and clapping like a child in a room full of exciting new toys.

"Sapphire!" Val exclaimed, in fine "ferret" form. "Finally! I could use your help!"

His eyes drifted towards the ledge that surrounded the entire main chamber about twenty feet above the floor. There were sets of inscriptions far above ground level that had once been accessible via a set of moving marble steps, but since neither of us possessed the Essence to activate the ancient machine, our preferred method of recording them was for me to climb up the wall and recite aloud to Val so he could write down the information. We were both fluent in Old Realm so the process went fairly quickly... but as we had learned over our tenure at the site, the inscriptions were subject to change without warning.

Although I spoke Old Realm with less effort than Val did, since my God-blooded mother had always spoken it at home, his penmanship was beautiful and mine looked like a dozen bent nails driven into paper. "The inscriptions have all changed again! Could you climb up to the first panel on the west wall and start for me there?"

"I could." I replied, speaking in Old Realm. I didn't see the monks, but that didn't mean their leader wasn't listening in on us. Although it was possible that one or more of them knew the ancient tongue, it wasn't terribly likely.

The Immaculate Order had little use for the small, insignificant Gods that were everywhere in the world, insisting that they be given their due feast days and no attention at any other time. Naturally, most people continued to provide for the Gods who looked after them, citing that it made more sense to thank your local cattle goddess who'd show up in person to bless your herds rather than the distant Dragons who'd put their "Enlightened" offspring in position to oppress the rest of us eternally.

"Except that you know, with three Immaculates waiting outside... it might not be a good idea for me to start reciting prayers to our lovely demon-god here. They'll think we're Anathema." I finished, using the Immaculate Order's more-popular name for the Exalted of The Unconquered Sun, incredibly powerful beings suffused with divine sparks that had once ruled all of Creation. They, not the Dragonblooded of the Shogunate, were the builders of all the treasures that we unearthed.

What exactly "Anathema" ought to be called was a subject of much contention amongst the Team Firewander. Mehmed was a dyed-in-the wool heretic like me, but he'd been an soldier once and virtually every curse word he had in his repertoire was "bloody, explicative, demon something". Bruja, heavily entrenched in her own particular tribal superstitions, referred to the Anathema with an Icewalker word that I could barely pronounce. Fox actively hated Dragonbloods and referred to anyone who gave them trouble as "the good guys". The son of a Dragonblooded provincial governor himself, Kasashi paid lip service to the Dragons... but he was still young and sore about not Exalting himself. As true students of history, Val and I were likewise disinclined to let religious propaganda get in the way of solid research.

Though I wouldn't dare admit it to anyone - least of all Val, I'd developed a strong un-academic fondness for the ancient sun God and had begun leaving him small offerings when no one was looking. Being in his shadow made me feel safe despite the increasingly violent tremors.

"Anathema? As opposed to run-of-the-mill heretics?" Val laughed slightly, though I could tell that the news I had just delivered did not sit well with him. Either that, or he was observed with the tremors which had started up yet again.

"You and I are far too spectacular to be ordinary heretics!" I retorted. Val picked up his notes and quickly put them back inside his satchel.

"Well, let's not keep our fine Exalted company waiting!" He proclaimed, his voice absolutely dripping with sarcasm. The two of us linked arms and marched out to meet Summer Storm and his companions.

"Professor Valen Riverborn, I presume?" The Dragonblooded observed. He did not seem impressed by Val's permanently-flustered, disorganized appearance or the gratuitous amount of cheap sepia ink that stained his fingertips and clothing.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage." Val admitted.

"My name is Summer Storm. I am evaluating your Team Firewander at the behest of Dean Peleps. As you've doubtless heard, there have been whispers of anarchic behavior and heresy amongst certain members of the Department of Archaeology. My intention is to root out such... undesirables." He explained.

"Well, my team may be a bit "rough around the edges" but they're good folk. We dig mostly under Firewander, you understand, so sometimes we run into patches of Wyld or fae monsters. Not to mention the tremors. They've been getting worse lately and there's no telling when a big one will tear out the very ground beneath our feet " Val explained. "In the past ten years, a dozen researchers have been killed on this portion of The Whispering Serpent alone. Myself, Sapphire and Kasashi are the only ones technically in the employ of the University. The others you met are mercenaries. They're here to protect us and do most of the heavy lifting."

"Except Fox." I replied with a smirk. "He's our locks and traps expert." Fox had been my personal pick and I lost no opportunity to remind Val of that fact. He was smarter than anyone gave him credit for and reminded me a bit of myself. "And you know, if we are attacked maybe he'll hold off the fair folk with one of those roundabout stories of his, like he did last time?"

Val laughed at the memory. The Immaculates looked confused.

"That's something else which confuses me. If there are fae and earthquakes, not to mention Anathema traps... why are you mortals down here?" The Dragonblood pressed.

"We're cheaper to hire than you Enlightened folks." I replied without thinking.

"Sapphire, that's enough!" Val scolded me. "For the most part, sir, we're salvaging magical materials. The oldest ruins have the greatest quantities of them."

"Surely some of these things are better left alone?" It was the first that one of the other monks had spoken, and the look that Summer Storm gave him was absolutely paralyzing. His murderous gaze was broken only barely by yet another earthquake. I'd lost count of how many there had been. A lot, probably. More than there ever had been on days or months previous. They were getting worse. Building up to... something, I didn't know what.

"The University doesn't think so. And might I add, The Heptagram agrees. They purchase most of our salvage." Val informed the Dragonblood, who looked somewhat subdued upon hearing that we were at least marginally employed by the Realm's most exclusive school of sorcery to supply their Dragonblooded students with a good quantity of magical materials necessary for crafting artifacts and weapons, like the white jade staff that Summer Storm carried himself.

"All the same." The Dragonblood replied. "It is necessary that we speak with the members of your team."

"Well, then let's go speak with them! I'm sure that you very busy gentlemen have much more important things to do than waste your time fussing around down here with the likes of us!" Val began to head back in the direction of Fluffy, obviously eager to get Summer Storm a solid distance away from the temple and The Big Guy.

"Oh no, not so fast!" Summer Storm interrupted him. He stopped just inside the first door. "We want to talk to each of them individually. In a civilized environment."

"What do you mean by civilized environment?" I frowned.

"At the University. Where we may open and close doors instead of blowing them from their frames with explosives? Where we may sit in chairs instead of on piles of rubble? Where we may breathe air which does not reek of mold and urine?" The Dragonblood paused, waiting for Val to respond.

"Well, Mehmed and Kasashi are probably freezing to death anyway." Val sighed in defeat. "I was hoping to work until sunset, but I suppose we could call it a day."

"Yourself and your extraordinarily rude assistant are not needed, Professor Riverborn. Dean Peleps has personally vouched for your character. It is the integrity of your... hired men that is of concern to us." Summer Storm finished. "We'll take them all."

"And bring them all back?" Val hazarded a guess. "I've paid them partially in advance, you understand? Due to the hazardous nature of the job."

"Everything will be settled by tomorrow." The Dragonblood said. But the way he spoke that final word made it sound more like a well-rehearsed lie.

"Very well. Though I will warn you, Little Fox doesn't mean what he says... well, honestly I suspect that he does, but he was denied a proper education and surely you must have some sympathy for the poor and ignorant?" Val rambled.

"You are a Professor, are you not?" Summer Storm turned to Val with a scowl. "Master Riverborn, it would be advisable for you to stop excusing the behavior of your charges and begin educating them. You will find that not all of my peers are as... forgiving as I am."

Without another word, the Dragonblood swooped past the both of us, followed closely by his men.

"So, are we really calling it a night?" I asked.

"Of course not." Val replied, his eyes fixed on the darkness that the three Immaculates had vanished into. "We're working until they drag us out of here. Besides, I've got to show you the door that I found!" He whispered.

"Door?" I immediately covered my mouth, hoping no one had heard my expression of shock. Every door we'd encountered so far had required a pile of explosives to get through and probably more time than we had left, but it was hard not to be enthusiastic about another new room, another glimpse into a lost world that was almost too beautiful to imagine.

Once we could hear the sounds of everyone climbing up the later, Val and I dove back into the temple. While he scribbled in his notes and murmured about where he'd left off, I snuck into his bag and found the two peaches that his wife usually stowed with his research... one for each of us to eat as we worked. As kind as Lily was, it wasn't difficult to see why Val was so loyal to her.

Not that he hadn't had... other "offers".

Resolving to be less of a bastard in my future lives, I set the two peaches in front of The Unconquered Sun and quickly mumbled one of his prayers that I'd memorized from reading the walls of his temple over and over again.

"What are you doing?" Val demanded.

"Nothing." I lied, moving to the left just a little so that I was standing in front of the peaches I'd taken out of his pack.

"Talking to "the Big Guy" again?" Val laughed slightly. "I thought you didn't have any use for Gods?"

"Well, we both know that Immaculate Philosophy is basically bunk. Any archaeologist can tell you that, and most Gods aren't worth the incense you've got to burn to get their attention." I replied.

"Most Gods?" Val laughed again.

"Burning Feather is easy enough to find if you've got a bottle of good sake." I remarked, naming my own grandmother... better known as "The Goddess of Intoxicants". She often nursed her ferocious hangovers at my mother's tea house and in some ways, I was closer to her than I was to my own mother. "This is different." I finished, knowing I probably sounded as defensive as I felt.

"Oh yes, this is serious heresy! Because you mean it, don't you, Sapphire? You've grown attached to this place." Val rolled his eyes. "Is that why you're leaving this great golden demon our lunch?"

"I don't know." I muttered. "It seems like the right thing to do. You said so yourself. The tremors are becoming more frequent, there's still the fae and now we've got no crew and those Immaculates breathing down our necks. We're finished here. We can only pray we're not also finished at The University. I don't want to go look for a real job."

"And you think old Sol Invictus will protect us from Dean Peleps?" Val sighed.

Together, Val and I both stared up at the God.

"I dunno." I paused. "A God like that might protect you from anything."

Val laughed. "Including over-zealous Immaculates, fair folk, and all the fiends of Malfeas, eh?"

Clearly amused by my silly confession, he sauntered around behind the enormous idol and I followed him. Val stared up at the inscription on the slab of stone that made up the sun god's throne with his hands on his hips. It was one of the few that changed frequently, almost too fast to watch. Val studied it for a moment, his fingertips hovering a few inches away from the glittering lines of gold that ran through the flawless white marble.

"So where's this door of yours, Val?" I wondered, anxiously tapping my foot. At first I wasn't sure what he was waiting for, but then I saw the pattern myself.

"I never was, am always to be,
No one ever saw me, nor ever will,
And yet I am the confidence of all,
To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball..."

Oh!" I exclaimed. "It's a riddle! I know this one! The answer, it's..."

Before I said "tomorrow", the glyphs lined up precisely in the order that I had expected they would. Already ahead of me, Val pressed the correct glyph firmly with his thumb. The rest of the glyphs stopped moving, and behind us I heard a strange sound. The wall which had appeared seamless had opened with little more than a whisper, revealing a beautiful orichalcum door covered in what appeared to be living roses. The white blossoms were flawless, despite being hidden from light for so many centuries. Either they were artificial or there was some serious sorcery involved in their preservation.

"See the door now?" Val smirked, gesturing up to the inscription that he had asked me to read to him earlier, the first one on the west wall. I noticed that it had stopped moving also. Apparently Val was really onto something. "Now get up there and read me that panel, third section, followed by the third panel, second section!"

I sighed in defeat and put my right foot in the crack of the wall, seizing the nearest handhold I could, an irregularly shaped brick with barely enough space for me to dig my fingers in above it. Another two holds of similar size and I was on the first ledge. I studied the panel for a moment. It had not changed since the last time I'd read it, so I recited it quickly, almost completely from memory.

"You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! Because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance,say not that there is no God."

I smiled slightly. The long-dead priest who had composed the passage had clearly possessed a flare for the dramatic.

"Slow down!" Val ordered, furiously scribbling in his notebook.

"Complain, complain! We don't have all day, Val! It's probably almost dark already. If we're here too late, someone will come back looking for us!" I protested.

"Nobody can write Old Realm as fast as you speak it! Not all of us have Gods in the family, you know!" He reminded me. Ignoring his teasing, I leapt over to the ledge in front of the third panel, slipping just a little as a small tremor rocked the temple. "Oh, do be careful!" Val winced.

"Want to switch places?" I taunted, looking down on him.

"Don't be ridiculous. Your handwriting is illegible! I'd call it chicken scratch, but a chicken couldn't read it!" He replied.

"C'mon, Val! This is why you bring me on these excursions of yours, remember? I'm here to climb because you can't." I put my hands on my hips and waltzed backwards and forwards along the ledge. Heights made Val nervous, and it was always funny to watch him squirm a little.

"I could get up there!" He protested.

"Eventually!" I teased. Though my mother had considered my passion for history a waste of time, she had diligently put me in dance lessons from the time I'd been able to walk. As a teenager, I'd traded my dancing shoes for a grappling hook after discovering how much money a "roofwalker" thief could make. I tied my scarf over my nose like a veil, made sure I had a good grip with my toes and then did a little southern "shimmy" that would have impressed even my mother, the perfectionist.

"Stop goofing off, you'll fall and break your neck!" Val groaned. "What's the fifth word in the second section?"

"Fate." I replied.

"Right." Val returned to his "door" and pressed the glyph for "stars" followed by the glyph for "fate". The door immediately slid open with an audible hiss, revealing a staircase. Rose vines curled up the steps, and a faint white-gold light illuminated the way up.

"Wow. I guess we won't need any more dynamite." I stared in disbelief as I climbed back down to the floor. Val waited for me at the foot of the stairs.

"Going up?" He teased and then started up the steps.

Without hesitation, I bounded after him. We'd made our way up about four or five flights of stairs when we reached another orichalcum door. I immediately went for the handful of explosive charges I still had on my person.

Val stopped me. "I've got this, remember?" He watched the door as he had the wall we had passed through and waited for a series of glyphs to line up. This time, the one he pressed read "compassion", "conviction", and "valor".

"How did you crack the code?" I wondered.

"It just came to me." Val admitted with a shrug. "I sensed there was something to it from the first time we noticed the inscriptions moving. And while you were occupied with those Immaculates, I sorted out what it was. The last part eludes me, however. But there's one more character I'm not seeing."

He studied the pattern again. The doors had not budged after he selected the glyph for courage, but that glowing glyph was holding steady while the rest continued to shift and change. Seeing a glyph I recognized, I immediately pushed it without considering the possible consequences of my rash action. The orichalcum door began to open slowly, with the sound of a great number of locking mechanisms churning inside of it.

Val stared at me in disbelief. I smiled slightly, noticing that I'd impulsively selected the glyph for "temperance".

"It came to me." I informed him. As the last lock disengaged and the door rolled open, Val and I stared in awe at the room we had discovered. The walls were lined in white marble columns veined with gold and a faint glittering of energy above our heads showed the presence of some kind of arcane net designed to hold up thousands of tons of dirt. We'd entered into an exquisite little garden with a stone well at its center.

Hedges of moon-white roses and lilies lined the walls and a little curling path of silvery granite made a circle around the well. The ceiling was low enough that the medium-sized fruit trees were almost touching it. There were a dozen of them, all in need of pruning, appearing to thrive despite the absence of sunlight and the amount of time that had surely passed since they had been sealed inside the vault that Val and I had just opened.

"How is this possible? There's no sun, there's scarcely any water... it doesn't feel like the Wyld has intruded into this place!" Val wondered incredulously, dunking under the boughs of a fruit laden pear tree.

"Um, my bet is on that. It must be some kind of First Age device." I pointed to the well. It radiated light and the air churned around it, like a stormcloud in the moment before a lightning strike. "Who knows how long it's been running? There's definitely a lot of power in here. What if we've found the real source of the tremors?" I wondered. As if to confirm my guess, a massive tremor shook the floor beneath our feet. It was worse than any I had felt before, knocking me clear into Val, who also fell on his rear end.

"So the device is still working, yes... but what exactly is it doing?" Val whispered, awed.

"Keeping the plants alive? Val, how should I know? I've never seen anything like it before! Maybe we'd better go get those Immaculates." I paused, biting my lip.

"They'll never let us down here again if they see this!" Val protested. "They'll steal all our research!"

"I know... but you said so yourself, Val. The tremors are liable to kill someone." I sighed heavily in defeat. "I hate the thought of giving this place up as much as you do, but if this machine the cause of all the shaking... what if it stops working? What if it's already failing? What if it stops doing whatever it's been doing for the past 1,500 years?"

We stared at one another in silence. Val chewed his pencil.

"Honestly, it might be worth sacrificing our careers to get it turned off." I sighed in defeat.

"We have careers? You mean to say, outside of being unwanted stepchildren of second-rate University and employers of heretics and anarchists?" Val exclaimed. Being sarcastic was his way of saying that he saw my point and was with me, even if he didn't particularly like the conclusion I'd arrived at.

"I won't pretend I like this, but you're right. Neither of us can use Essence and that must be how this thing is controlled." Val paused as he noticed that I had taken several steps closer to the well.

"Sapphire, stay back!" He reprimanded.

"I won't touch it!" I protested. "I just want to look inside!"

If Val said something more, I didn't hear him.

The light pouring from the well made it almost impossible for me to get close enough to see whatever was glowing so powerfully, but as I stood there for a moment amid all of the tremendous rumbling that had started up again, I began to make out the shape of a woman in the water of the well. It was not my own face, which Val most often described as "obstinate"... but that of a staggeringly beautiful blond woman with eerie green eyes.

There was someone inside the well, someone looking back at me... but what was more terrifying still was that I knew that woman, though I couldn't remember when or where we'd met. A deep sense of dread welled up in the pit of my stomach as her pale hand reached for me, breaking the flickering surface of the well! When her fingertips brushed my own, an invisible force caught me by the throat.

Attempting to fight the ancient sorcery, I instinctively put both of my hands down on the stone sides of the well. Pain racked my body and I collapsed to my knees. I caught a reek of something burning and suspected it was probably my own skin. My palms were seared black where I'd touched the well. I was convinced that I was about to die... but I couldn't bring myself to stand.

Only Val seizing my arm and wrenching it nearly out of my shoulder socket saved me. The rumbling was uncontrollable and all around us, the lines of energy that had held up the crumbled ceiling were flickering and fading, causing huge chunks of stone to come crashing down on us. "Run!" Val ordered.

While usually I was faster than my old friend, my feet moved like they were weighted down with lead and my head still throbbed uncontrollably. Val was a few steps ahead of me when the staircase collapsed and managed to escape past the first door before it fell out of its frame and tumbled past us with a sound like a thunder.

Trying to evade the falling door, I slammed into the wall and knocked the wind out of myself. Still, I had very little time to wonder about the condition of my ribs or my still-bleeding, burned hands. With no stairs left in front of me, I stared in horror at the twenty foot gap between the spot where I stood and the remainder of the staircase, a pit black as pitch and similarly immeasurable. Val stared up at me.

He was shouting "No!" but I couldn't hear him, not over the roar of the collapsing rubble.

I jumped without hesitation, leaping from one piece of stone to the next as they teetered and fell in front of me. Shogunate Era machines from the excavation to the east of us came crashing through the wall opposite of the entry to the temple. Piece of marble the size of rickshaws rained down from above and Val caught my eye just once before a massive boulder forced him out the temple doors and back in the direction of the Whispering Serpent. I was sure that he hadn't been crushed, but there was no way he could make it back to me, not once that exit was blocked. I dove after the only exit myself, hoping to make it through before the falling rubble closed it permanently.

I'd never taken such a risky leap before, more than forty feet between myself and the ground. I prayed that I would land in a manner that didn't kill me. Not breaking any bones would be impossible. Of course, the moment I threw myself headlong into oblivion, the well behind me exploded in a world-shattering burst of light.

I should have died then. Some people might say that I was lucky. But it wasn't luck that saved me.

It was an act of God.

One moment I was falling like a stone, pummeled by a shower of dirt and rubble too thick to see through, and the next I caught a faint glimpse of a glowing human figure, reaching out for me. I lunged for my rescuer with all of the strength that I possessed, not knowing if I was entrusting my life to Val or to the monstrous green-eyed woman who'd tried to kill me. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes and prayed to the Unconquered Sun.

A thrill raced through me as I caught hold of a warm metal surface, smooth to the touch but not slippery enough that I couldn't grasp it. I didn't know what I'd seized upon at first, but whatever it was, it was stable. I was still wincing from the impact of falling rubble and holding my breath so as not to swallow worlds worth of dirt, but I wasn't fast approaching the death anymore.

At first I didn't even consider what I'd caught hold of or why it was so warm when everything else was as cold and foul as the muck of the Gray River. I was too glad not to be falling. The floor still rumbled somewhat, but everything that could collapse in on me had already done so. Against all odds, I was still alive.

Far above my head I could see the hole that had formed right through the Shogunate excavation site all the way up into the middle of Market Street. The sun had just set and the stars were peeking out. It should have been dark, with all of our lamps smoldering under tons of rubble... but a beautiful whitish gold light filled the temple.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Everywhere I looked, the shadows where Val had feared that Wyld-mutated monsters might be hiding were obliterated. The ancient inscriptions flickered with life and the temple looked bigger and more spectacular than ever before.

Of course, most everyone with any sense had run away from the site of the earthquake, but once the tremors stopped completely, it wouldn't be long before curiosity drew them back to look at the damage. I'd have to move quickly if I didn't want to be caught before I could help Val. Feeling the building strain in my wrists, I took a deep breath and swung my legs up so that I could sit instead of dangling in midair. When I saw what it was that I'd seized upon, the thing that had saved me from certain death, I stared in shock.

I was in the hands of The Unconquered Sun.

The God was holding me up with that same smug little smile on his face and the light that I saw all around me was bleeding from my own skin. Even if I hadn't spent the last fifteen years of my life traipsing around First Age ruins, I would have known what had happened to me.

In the words of the Immaculates, I'd become Anathema, a baneful, child-eating, village-burning demon.

If I'd still believed anything that my mother had painstakingly drilled into my head, I would have gone running for the nearest temple and begged for someone to swiftly execute me. But it had been a long time since I'd last subscribed to her philosophy. Grandmother Burning Feather had always said that my mother was completely mad, and though I didn't really care for my grandmother either... she did have a habit of calling things as she saw them.

I'd spent far too many hours buried in books and basking in the grandeur of First Age ruins to believe for more than a heartbeat that Solars were monsters. If anything, I'd begun to see them as precisely the opposite.

I'd never held any hope of Exaltation. Though many of my mother's clients were Dragonblooded, the man she'd claimed was my father was an insignificant mercenary from Chiarascuro, only notable in that my mother had loved him somewhat, at least in her own way... and that I carried his surname, Indari. By graduating from The University I'd escaped the life of a thief and a whore, and in heading Team Firewander I'd found the opportunity to do all the things I loved best. It was the most I'd ever wished for.

And suddenly there was more. I was no longer surrounded by the bones of a nearly mythical lost civilization. I was standing in the heart of a place that I could remember from a lifetime that wasn't my own.

I fell to my knees and stared up through the collapsed street at all of the stars in the night sky. Terrified as I had been only moments before, I couldn't bring myself to yell for Val. If he was on the other side of the wall that had gone down, he wouldn't be able to hear me anyway... and standing in full view of the street glowing like I was would be something akin to signing my own death warrant.

I eased myself down from the palm of the God's hand, the ground wasn't shaking as ferociously as it had been... or maybe it was, but my feet somehow found a safe path through all of the rubble.

I saw the well still flickering faintly and something in the back of my mind told me exactly what I had to do. I leap effortlessly over the collapsed portion of the staircase and made my way through the ruined garden to the well, which could no longer force me away. I put both of my hands on the searing hot stones and told the device to stop.

The green-eyed lady didn't appear, but in the well I saw my own reflection... an empty circle of glowing white light branded right between my eyes. According to the Immaculates, that meant I was one of The Wretched, the worst kind of rogue imaginable.

Despite how new and uneasy I still felt, and despite the fact that I was terrified that Val was dead, I smiled slightly. Of course, I knew what The Wretched had been called in ancient times - names that were only marginally less damning.

Hidden Suns. Iron Wolves. Night Caste.

Yeah, "Tthe Big Guy" apparently knew me pretty well.

I focused again on the well and I put something that came out of myself into the stone... Essence, I guessed it was, but I'd never imagined what it would really feel like to possess the same power that my mother and my grandmother did. I was surprised at how easy it was to control, nothing at all like my mother had described the rigorous training she undertook in order to work even the simplest thamaturgy. With only my touch and my willpower, the well flared brightly again and then went dark.

For the first time since our excavations began, the ground beneath my feet felt solid and stable. No more tremors, never again!

If the power had departed me then, I think I would have been thankful... but if anything, the light around me had grown even brighter. Trying to smother it with my mind, I discovered I could mute the glow somewhat. It would have to be enough.

Without considering how impossible the feat I was about to attempt should have been, I leapt back into the hands of the Unconquered Sun. Val often commented that I'd been "starved for affection" as a child, caught between my demanding mother and my itinerant grandmother, who like most Gods, viewed the world with a degree of indifference, because nothing in it could really affect her. The only person who ever hugged me was Val's wife Lily, and that always made me uncomfortable considering the way I felt about her husband. But in the presence of that great golden idol, I felt blessed. Loved, maybe.

All of Creation could call me a demon, but I would never believe that I was one. I'd been Chosen. A handful of prayers and two peaches had somehow endeared me to the most powerful God in existence.

With another tremendous leap, I landed effortlessly on my feet in the middle of Market Street. I'd have to go back around and try to reach Val through the main excavation site, or, failing that... through the ventilation that we'd installed. No one could see me, most especially none of the young Immaculates who were currently interrogating our assistants. When Dean Peleps had assigned the monks to us, Val had promised that they wouldn't find any real heretics on Team Firewander. He'd meant those words too, when he'd spoken them less than an hour ago.

But since then... everything had changed.