In the small river town of Ghislain, a man named Caius awoke when he felt the ward over the Haderon Forest shatter into a million pieces.

He rose from his restless slumber and stepped out of the shack some old woman had let him stay in. He was a stocky man in his forties, with broad shoulders and a square, chiseled jaw. He looked older than he really was; his hair was grey, and lines creased the skin of his face. He was blind in one eye, a long, dark scar running over it like a trench, stretching from his hairline to his jaw. His other eye was perfectly functional, and he trained it down the road leading out of town. Across the river, he could just make out the trees, shimmering leaves fluttering in the evening breeze. His brow creased as he unsheathed the blade that was strapped to his back. It was a broadsword, simple in craftsmanship, nearly as long as he was tall, with an edge he made sure to keep razer-sharp at all times. He hefted it easily in one hand and pointed it in the direction of the forest, staring at the dark metal. In the presence of the Haderon Forest, this sword had always reacted to its ethereal magic by burning hot in his palm. Now, his hand remained blistering cold.

A smile stretched his lips to terrifying lengths, his teeth a white stripe of sinister joy as he sheathed his sword and returned to the shack. He reemerged with his breastplate and pauldron equipped. He carried little else; he didn't need to.

"Oi!" He heard an grisly fisherman call from the dock as he neared the river. The man wiped a spot of liverwurst from the corner of his bearded mouth, his other hand clutching the worn handle of a fishing rod. "Out for an evening stroll, old boy?"

Caius looked from the old man to the forest in the distance. "I'm going to see my family," he told him. A frozen fire lit his expression. "It would seem I've finally been invited."

888

The dark wasn't something Varian was afraid of. He hated the sight of blood, and nothing had traumatized him more than the sight of his father encased in amber, frozen in time, unable to move. But he'd never been afraid of the dark. He had never been one of those children who needed the door kept open ajar at night, and he'd never fled to his father's room (though that was more because his father's room was off-limits than anything else). The dark of this crypt was different, though; it was almost palpable, dank and cold on his skin, filling his lungs with an uncertainty and causing the hairs on his neck to stand on end.

"Well, uh, this place is festive," he said with forced levity as he felt his way down the stairs. He could feel Rudiger trembling with fear on his shoulder. He kept his free hand on the wall, his other hand extending the light of his staff into the crypt's ominous depths. "I don't suppose your mom has any notes or a map or something we could use in this place?"

"No," Shay answered firmly. "I've read my mother's journal countless times now. There's no map, and the only mention of the crypt was the one you found."

Varian stopped on the steps. Blue light from his staff spread over his face, mingling with the color of his eyes. "Can I see?" he asked.

Shay shook her head.

"Oh, come on," he insisted.

But Shay stood firm. "There are things in this book that even I shouldn't have read. Things that I wish I hadn't read. Private things. My mother poured her heart into these pages." She snapped her fingers, and the book fell out of the air in a flash, settling into her hands. She held it close to her, a melancholy expression on her pale face. "There's pain here, a terrible agony I'd only suspected she had."

Varian pursed his lips. "Can we at least look at the last entry again? There may be something I missed."

Shay thought about it for a moment. "Alright," she conceded, and she opened the book to the last written page. She held it out for him to see, but she didn't give it to him.

He stepped close and searched the words with his finger, Rudiger peering out over the collar of his coat. He could hear Shay breathing in the space between them, and he could feel her staring at him as he concentrated on her mother's writing. When he couldn't find anything, he propped his staff against the wall and took one of his gloves off. He fingered the tooth of the page, then bent over to sniff the paper. It smelled musty and yellowed, but he could just make out a note of lemon. He smiled; maybe the Crimson Caster wasn't so different after all. "Clever," he muttered to himself as he reached into his bag and extracted two vials. One was small and filled with a violet substance, and the other was a milky white. He took the violet vial and added a few drops of it to the white vial, then closed it and slipped it back into his bag. He shook the white vial in his hand, mixing the compounds together until it started to glow a bright purple.

"What are you doing?" Shay whispered.

"Just watch," Varian demonstrated, holding the corked vial close to the page. The purple light spilled over the blank footer, and an entire paragraph of words bled into view. "Your mom is sneaky," he praised aloud, reading the hidden entry. "It's written in Latin this time."

Shay's eye was wide in the darkness. "It must be a spell! What does it say?"

Varian peered closer. "It says, 'Per lux septem sororibus…By the light of the Seven Sisters, I invoke the seal of ages.'" He glanced up at her. "Sounds like Pleiades, the constellation. Does that mean anything to you?"

Shay suddenly looked grim. "Yes. Seven is a powerful number in magic. It has to do with raw energy. It's dangerous to call upon the Seven Sisters. It's a power that's very difficult to control. In the past, blood mages would abuse the Seven Sisters' magic and invoke it for their sacrificial rituals."

Varian's eyebrow twitched at the mention of 'sacrificial rituals.' He stepped back from the book and frowned. "If she was trying to seal something with blood magic-"

"Not blood magic," Shay interrupted, frowning sharply. "It's supposed to be used in very powerful spells. I only said blood mages would abuse the invocation."

"Alright," Varian said defensively.

Shay snapped the book shut and dismissed it into the air. Varian could have sworn he saw the flash of red behind her hair again. "My mother is no blood mage," she insisted firmly.

"I didn't say she was," Varian said quietly. The last thing he needed was to make everybody upset. He wasn't afraid of Shay, but he didn't want her to do anything reckless, either. After a few heated seconds, Shay's face softened, and she became passive again. "So," Varian continued as he put the vial away and retrieved his staff, "she used this incantation in a spell for a seal." It dawned on him suddenly, like he'd just been slapped in the face. He inhaled sharply. "A seal would mean…that seal on the door wasn't…She figured out a way to break the seal that was on the door before we came here, then placed a seal on the door herself!"

Shay considered it. "I…I suppose it…" Her jaw went slack. "I have an idea," she offered. "I've tried this before, but it never worked. Maybe now it will."

Varian shrugged. "Try what?"

She extended her hand out into the black air and traced a circle with her finger. She spoke a handful of Latin, and the invisible circle she'd drawn flared to life, red and shimmering. Characters wrote themselves within the circle, then began to peter out, like dying embers in a cold fireplace. Then Varian jumped as the light snapped into an otherworldly thread, and Shay quickly grabbed the end of it before it could disappear. The end of the string disappeared into the shadows, leading forward into the crypt.

"So," Varian stared as she tied the glowing string around her palm, "you mind explaining what you just did?"

Shay held up the string. "This," she said, her hand shaking, "will lead us to my mother. It's the first spell she ever taught me, so that I could always find her if I ever got lost." She started carefully down the stairs, Varian trudging slowly after her. "It was the first spell I used to try to find her, and it's never worked…until now." She swallowed. "For a long time, I was afraid it wasn't working because…"

"Because she could've been dead?"

Shay stopped again and turned to look at him. "Yes. But then, you considered it too, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah," Varian stepped onto the same stair as her. "But if there was a chance she was still alive, then it was a chance I had to take." I would do anything to save my father. He gestured to the string tied around her hand. "And it looks like she is. I mean, this wouldn't work if she was dead, right?"

Shay gazed at the ethereal red strand, and Varian could just make out her eye as it began to water. "Right," she whispered. "It must not have worked before because of the seal on the door." She clutched her hand tightly and started walking down the stairs again. "Thank you," Varian heard her say.

Varian frowned. "For what?"

"Because of you, now I know she's alive," Shay explained. "And that she's here." She sounded calm, but then Varian heard her sniff wetly. "You don't know how much that means to me."

Varian coughed uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, uh…don't thank me just yet. I mean, we still haven't found her, so…Le-let's just keep moving." He was glad she was in front of him, so she couldn't see how red his face was. "I don't like this place." He took the last step of the stairs and saw a wide corridor open before them, pillars flanking both sides. He couldn't see the ceiling, let alone five feet in front of them. "You see any torches anywhere that we could light?"

"Here," Shay beckoned towards his staff. He held it out, and she snapped her fingers three times. Each snap caused the glow from the vials to burst into brightness, blossoming colors spreading light into the corridor.

Varian brought the staff back, peering at the vials. "I still don't know how you're doing that," he breathed.

"I told you," Shay said gently. "Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't real."

"That doesn't explain how you're doing it, though," Varian muttered under his breath. Rudiger jumped down from his shoulder and darted over towards one of the walls. "Rudiger, don't go too far! We don't know what's down here." He followed the racoon past the pillars, and the amplified light of his staff illuminated something that gave him pause. It was a relief, carved meticulously into the stone, images fresh and polished smooth. The detail was so in-depth, Varian half-expected the depicted scene to come to life. It looked like the tale of a battle, a gruesome scene filled with swords and spears, arrows and broken shields, horses dying in the mud, helmets strewn on the battlefield – soldiers standing their ground against an army of the arcane. Mages commanded fire and ice, wielding the very earth against their foes, their eyes wide and unblinking as legions of the undead were unleashed upon their enemies. It was terrifying, and it chilled Varian to the bone.

"That's not something that will haunt me later," he said when he remembered to breathe. He felt Shay at his shoulder and tore his eyes away from the relief. "Looks like whoever was buried here had something to do with this."

"It could be symbolic," Shay suggested, though she sounded doubtful. "To be honest, I'm not sure who was buried here. Some say an army was interred, others say no one was."

"I doubt that," Varian turned away, walking further down the corridor. "This place was built for a reason. The craftsmanship alone is evidence of that."

Shay tailed behind. "You don't think there could be traps down here, do you?"

Varian chuckled and gave her a smirk. "Oh, there are definitely traps down here."

"How do you know?"

Varian stopped and pointed his staff at a spot on the floor before him. It was a pressure plate, barely noticeable in the dark. "If I had to hazard a guess," he looked around, "stepping on that will either cause the floor to collapse beneath us, or it'll release a restraint on one of these pillars and destroy this entire corridor."

Shay gaped at it. "Okay," she said weakly.

Varian stepped carefully around the plate. "Let's not find out which, okay?" Shay and Rudiger followed him out of the corridor and down a narrow hall. "Hey, look! Torches," Varian observed jovially. "And I bet you one of them's boobied. Lucky for us, we don't need them." He kept moving forward, ignoring the torches as he shifted his feet cautiously over the stone floor.

"You've had experience in a place like this before," Shay observed, "haven't you?"

"We-yeah-uh," Varian said quickly, "I-I read a lot. About stuff like this."

"You read about breaking into crypts?"

"Yep." Varian glanced over his shoulder at her. "Of course, not all crypts are the same, and it would obviously be easier if we had a map of some ki-OH MY-!"

He cried out when he stepped forward into open air, and he surged out over the lip of a massive divide; he hadn't noticed the hallway ended so abruptly into emptiness. He heard Rudiger scream, and he felt quick hands latch onto the back of his coat, yanking him backwards before he could plummet to this death. He fell hard on his rear, the impact jarring his entire body as he scrambled backwards, bumping into a panicked Shay. His staff clattered to the floor, the glass vials dangerously close to breaking. They sat there on the ground, waiting for the adrenaline to subside. Rudiger crawled into his lap, sniffing and pawing at Varian's heaving chest. Then Varian carefully stood, his legs still wobbling as he leaned against the wall. The stone was cold to the touch, seeping through his coat into his skin. He looked down at Shay, who was still shocked on the floor, and he offered her his hand.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

Shay nodded; she looked numb, like she had been the one falling instead of him. She took his outstretched hand with trembling fingers, and he hefted her onto her feet. She didn't say a word.

He took a more careful approach to the end of the hall and realized that it opened out onto a narrow shelf that skirted around the wide crevasse; Varian could see Shay's magic thread drifting across it. He steeled himself before cautiously slipping out onto the ledge. "Let's try this again," he said, trying to sound confident. He hugged the wall and started moving forward, telling himself over and over not to look down. He glanced over and saw Rudiger and Shay follow; the racoon was having an easier time, but Shay looked just as daunted as Varian felt. They inched their way across, praying with each footstep that they wouldn't fall. Shay's foot slipped once, causing her to cry out and freeze. Varian's heart lodged in his throat before she regained her footing and shakily pressed on. Even though they'd just met, the last thing Varian wanted was to see the girl fall to her death. He wouldn't sleep for weeks.

They finally made it to an opening in the wall, and Varian fell into another corridor, clutching his staff. "You alright?" he asked Shay, who nodded feebly. The magic string was still tied around her palm, and she held onto it tightly as she followed him down another flight of stairs. These steps spiraled, descending further into the belly of the crypt. Varian kept a close eye out for more traps, one of which he missed. It was a false step that caused the entire staircase to begin to crumble. They surged forward, and both of them lost their footing, tumbling head-over-heels to the bottom of the stairwell. Shay fell onto the last step as it crumbled to pieces beneath her, and she clung on to the flooring, her eyes wild with fear as she dangled above the abyssal dark. With her hair flung out of her petrified face, Varian could see that her right iris was red, and he could just barely make out the shadow of a dilated, terrified pupil. He quickly hauled her up before she could fall and waited for her to catch her breath. "Not that I was keeping track, but I think we're even now."

Shay looked near tears. Varian was under the impression that this was an off-day for her; he doubted that dangling from a deadly precipice happened to her very often. "How are we –" she coughed once, her small voice wobbling, "How are we going to get out now?"

"There's probably another passage," Varian reassured her, helping her onto her feet again. "You know, for whoever built this place. It wouldn't be very practical to have only one entrance to make all of this."

Shay nodded shakily. "You're right. I'm sure there is." She realized how disheveled her hair was, and she quickly raked it back into place, concealing her eye once more. "I hope we don't have much further."

Varian reached out for the string that was tied to her hand and fingered the ethereal thread. It felt warm to the touch, like a candle flame. "Can't this tell you if we're any closer? Does it have slack or anything?"

Shay shook her head. "I've tried tugging. She won't tug back. It scares me," she admitted. "This whole place scares me."

She certainly looked scared; Varian was sure he didn't look much better. The alternate passageway out was only a theory; since it was a sealed crypt, it was possible that whoever built the place had been buried down here along with everything and everyone else. On top of that, he wasn't sure how long they had been down here. It could have been an hour or it could have been a day. Rudiger circled agitatedly around his feet, his eyes flashing in and out of the staff's light. He would have loved to rely on what he knew about crypt layouts, but it had since become obvious to him that this was no ordinary crypt.

"Let's keep moving," he urged Shay forward. "The sooner we get going, the sooner we find your mom and can get out of here." As they continued down the next corridor, he decided to try to make small-talk again, to try and get his mind off of what they were doing. "So, Shay, have you ever, uh, been to the capitol?"

Shay took a moment to answer. "No," she answered in her quiet voice. "But I've heard it's a beautiful place."

"Yeah, it is." At least, it was when you weren't trying to escape from prison or attempting to ransom the queen. "I know you haven't been out much, but you do know that the princess was found, right?"

"Yes," Shay answered. "Even people in Ghislain spoke of that. I've heard she's lovely."

She was alright, Varian supposed, when she wasn't making promises she couldn't keep and deliberately ignoring your pleas for help. Varian realized how tense he had become and thought it best to change the subject. "Your mom writes in Celtic. I assume that means she's not from Corona?"

Shay shook her head. "She was born in Ireland, across seas. She was brought on board a ship, to be sold as a slave when she was a child. She escaped and found her way here. All she had was a spellbook, the one I was looking at when you came. I've been trying to learn all the different recipes she has in there. She came up with a lot of them herself."

Varian stared at her, wide-eyed. "Your mom was shipped off to be a slave? That's quite the bedtime story, don't you think?" He watched Shay's face burn and nodded knowingly. "You were right. Maybe there were some things in that journal you shouldn't have read." He helped her step over another pressure plate, noting dart holes in the wall as they passed. "My dad kept – keeps secrets from me too."

"Your father," Shay dared to ask. "May I ask what –"

"No," Varian answered harshly enough to make her jump. "Sorry," he said more gently. "It's better that you don't know. It's not you, it's just that…It's not something I like to talk about." His thoughts trailed off when they finally entered a large chamber, similar to the corridor with the sculpted relief, but much bigger. The chamber was circular, like a chapel apse, with large fluted pillars ringing the filed floor before them. As Varian took a step forward, a series of torches flared to life, bathing the chamber in a band of orange flames. Since Varian couldn't think of a scientific explanation for the sudden reaction, he assumed the lit torches were magic. The ambulatory of the chamber housed several sarcophagi, each sealed with marble stone lids. Judging by the material and relative size, Varian estimated that each lid was at least half a ton. At the center of the chamber was a monument carved from obsidian, the black glass carefully sculpted into the image of a hooded, robed man, with a medallion draped heavily across his neck. The man's gloved hand was outstretched, his arm casting a shadow over the largest casket of all.

"It's beautiful," Shay marveled, standing at Varian's shoulder.

"To make a place like this so deep underground," Varian wondered, shaking his head dazedly. "The effort it must have taken is…extraordinary." He remembered to keep an eye out for traps and glanced quickly about for tripwires or pressure plates. He didn't see any, but he did notice a series of gutters around the wide, domed ceiling. "We're not out of the woods yet," he cautioned his companions, gesturing to the gutters. "Those are probably rigged to something."

Shay nodded. The message was clear: look, but don't touch.

"Keep your eyes out for anything suspicious." Varian tucked his staff away, leaving both hands free. "Let's see if we can find any clues about your mom." He took the left side of the chamber, and Shay went right. Varian kept in mind that there were probably some things about this place that he couldn't see; it was possible that whatever could trigger the gutters might be magical. Varian was more concerned with what they could expel more than anything else – water was his first guess, but it could also be anything from acid to a gas to sand, or something else he couldn't think of. As he checked the walls of the chamber, he took note of where he stepped, what he smelled, what he could hear, and what he could feel. As he made his way towards the other side of the chamber, he spotted something that made his heart beat twice as fast: a steel door with an ornate handle and a keyhole. He approached it cautiously, touching the wall rather than the door itself as he brought his face close to the crack.

He could feel a draft.

"Hey," he called out to Shay over his shoulder, "I think I might have just found our way out of here. I think it's locked though, so we'll have to find the key."

"Varian," he heard her say. He looked over at where she was and saw that she had approached the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. Rudiger had somehow managed to climb on top of the obsidian statue, sniffing the volcanic glass with his black nose. Shay didn't seem to be paying attention to the racoon, though; her gaze was fixed on the casket before her. Varian came over to look at it and saw an inscription at the base, carved deeply enough that if stone could bleed, it would be soaking his boots. It was written in Corona's common language, clear and legible. Varian read it aloud:

"Here lies Haderon, Necromancer and Advisor to Magekind, Sealed for All Eternity with the Unholy Powers he Wielded. May the Wisdom and Terror of his Days Remain Buried here for All Time." Varian took a step back, staring up at the statue of the dead mage. "That's lovely. Haderon. So, the forest – this crypt – was named after him?"

Shay nodded, tugging her cloak around her so tightly, Varian heard a seam pop. "I always thought Haderon was just a myth, a story my mother would tell me to keep me from going to places where I shouldn't…I never thought he was actually real."

"Necromancer," Varian breathed. "He raised the dead?" The idea was ludicrous, but Varian had seen enough things just today to make him wonder. He remembered the mural they'd seen in the first corridor. "He used an army of undead to fight Corona?"

"I don't know," Shay admitted hollowly. "It could have been Corona, it could have been any army from the Seven Kingdoms. It could have been an ambition, an unrealized dream of his that never came to be." She stepped back from the casket, her expression a mask of worry. "This place houses a great, evil magic."

Rudiger made a tittering sound, unsure how to get down from his perch. Varian approached the statue and pulled the racoon down by the nape of his neck. "Did your mom know about this?" he asked as he set the animal on his shoulder. "Why would she come down here if a necromancer was buried here?"

Shay seemed to think about it for a few moments. It came to her slowly, and Varian watched her face change from worry to sadness. "I think I know why," she said bitterly. "I just hope I'm wrong. Oh, please let me be wrong." She held her hand up, the one with the magic string. Varian could see the thread trail towards the sarcophagus before them.

Varian stared at the lid. "No way," he said. "There's no way she's in there. She would be dead, it's airtight!" As if being trapped in a tomb with the bones of a dead necromancer wasn't horrifying enough.

"She is still alive," Shay asserted desperately. "She could have used a time spell. It's complicated magic, but she could do it. We have to get her out."

Varian frowned. "If there's one thing booby-trapped in this place, it's this coffin. Besides, there's no way we can move it." He liked to think of himself as a little less than scrawny, but not even his father could push a half-ton of stone. "Unless you have some way of opening it."

Shay conjured her mother's journal and leafed through the pages, searching for something. Her finger lighted on a passage, and her eye narrowed with determination. "This might work, but there's a ward on the casket. If I try to cast a spell, it might cause…"

"What?" Varian pressed. "What, it might cause what?"

"I don't know," Shay bit her lip; Varian noticed she did that often. "But I'm not leaving without her."

Varian sighed sharply. Under any other circumstance, he would have told her to let it alone…but he needed the Crimson Caster just as much as she did. For his father. "Fine," he conceded. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

He stood back as Shay began a series of intricate hand movements, her fingers tracing figures in the air above the casket. She spoke a few quick phrases, and a crimson band appeared around the sarcophagus, multiplying in a series of rings that pulsed with light. Shay spoke a command, lashing her arm upwards, and Varian watched as the red rings began to vibrate with energy. He was under the impression that something should have happened to the lid by now, but it remained firmly unmoved. A bead of sweat slid down Shay's temple, and she grimaced as she tried harder, her voice sharper as she repeated the command.

"Shay," Varian said warningly.

But Shay ignored him. As the spell continued to prove ineffective, she became more and more frustrated. She dismissed her mother's journal and reached out with both hands, and Varian could have sworn he saw a flicker of red arc through her hair. Her arms were shaking, and he could see her red eye start to glow white as her orange eye turned red instead.

Varian felt his skin crawl, a base, primitive instinct that told him to stop this. "Shay, that's enough!" He lurched forward and grabbed her by the waist, jerking her backwards. She was lighter than he'd expected, and she actually left the ground as he interrupted the spell. A blast of force knocked them backwards as the spell's energy rebounded, and Rudiger leapt from Varian's shoulder as they spilled out onto the floor. As they did, a flash of imagery flickered across his vision, like a series of watercolor paintings flung in front of his face all at once. He saw a stream, a tree, heard a little girl's laugh, saw his reflection in a window. He couldn't understand any of it, but the images brought with them a sense of nostalgia, a familiarity that Varian couldn't describe.

Shay squirmed, trying to break out of Varian's grip. "Let go of me!" she gasped, her strained voice echoing through the chamber. She reached her hand out towards the casket. "I can try again!"

"It won't work, Shay," Varian held fast, hauling her up with him as he struggled to his feet. She nearly knocked him back over as she continued to struggle. "You'll only hurt yourself. We'll have to find another way!"

"I can do it! I can try another spell!"

"No, you can't!" Varian retorted, whipping her around to face him. He shook her by the shoulders, his blue eyes wide and frantic. "I need you to help us get out of here, not pass out and become dead weight. We'll come back and try again after we make sure we can get out of this place alive. Not before. Alright?!"

"But…" Tears filled Shay's eyes, and she shook her head helplessly. The nostalgic feeling resurfaced for an instant, like a sputtering flame as he watched her face crumple. "She's right there. I can't just give up! Do you know what it's like, to be so close?!"

"Yes!" Varian shouted. He felt Shay flinch, and he realized that his grip was hurting her. He let her go and stumbled away. His entire body was shaking, and his skin had become clammy. He tried to fight the anxiety, the pain. He mashed one palm into his eye, and his other arm curled around his stomach. His father's face seared his mind. "Yes, I do," he whispered. He took a deep, clarifying breath, and his hands fell back to his sides. He looked up at her and set his jaw. "And I had to learn the hard way that you can't find the answer on your own."

Shay pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, holding back a sob. Varian felt like he was looking in a mirror. It hurt to watch. But Shay suddenly stopped, her eyes wide with fear. Her hand left her face to point behind him. "Varian," she warned haltingly, her chest hitching with hiccups.

Varian whipped around and saw what she was pointing at. It made his blood freeze, and all thoughts of his father immediately fled his mind.

The other caskets were opening, the lids sliding off. They fell to the ground in a series of solid blows, echoing through the chamber like thunder as skeletal hands emerged from their dead slumber. Varian watched in horror as they turned to look at the chamber's intruders, and they started to crawl their way out into the open. Each skeleton wore a suit of armor, the hollow sockets of their skulls glowing with eerie white light. They were all armed with swords, which they unsheathed and pointed menacingly in his direction.

Varian swallowed. "Oh."