Elijah watched the roiling energy play across the ceiling in an awe-inspiring display that sent multi-colored lights arcing across the surface. That storm of ethera pulsed with enough power that he knew that most people back on Earth would faint just from being so close. For his part, he only felt mildly uncomfortable.

  “We should move on,” said Hu Shui. “There is nothing more we can learn here.”

  Elijah sighed. He hadn’t learned anything. Not for himself, at least. Instead, he’d simply stared at the glyphs covering the floor and ceiling as if they would simply reveal their mysteries of their own accord. Predictably, they had not.

  Meanwhile, Hu Shui and Benedict had deduced that those runes were part of a much larger ritual circle – or whatever one might call a three-dimensional version of one – that encompassed the entire moon-sized Aureum. In fact, Hu Shui had posited that the labyrinth itself, with its many corridors, was the biggest feature of said ritual circle.

  When Elijah had asked what it was meant to accomplish, Benedict had provided the answer, saying, “I believe it’s meant to harness the power of a ley line directly.”

  “What’s the difference between that and, say, the Conclave Spires?”

  “Scale,” Hu Shui responded before explaining that the Spires were designed so that they only tapped into the barest minimum amount of energy to do what they were meant to do. “If we managed to integrate our network with off-planet Spires, it would take much more energy from the ley line.”

  Benedict added, “This is meant to take everything all the time. That it managed to hold together under so much pressure is a miracle.”

  “Or ethereal engineering on a level we’ve yet to see,” Hu Shui pointed out.

  “Definitely that.”

  Elijah shook his head. “This is interesting, but how does it help us?”

  “Do you know how much power is in a ley line?” asked Hu Shui.

  “A lot?”

  “That is the understatement of all understatements,” the man explained. “Ley lines are extensions of the World Tree. Like the conduits of its soul, stretched across multiple universes and dimensions. They are powerful beyond our current comprehension. Harnessing even a fraction of that power is enough to destroy entire cities.”

  “You speak from experience?” Elijah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You blew up a city, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head. “Not intentionally. And it was deserted, but yes. Mutare was large enough to accommodate nearly a quarter of a million people. It was the site of our first set of Spires, chosen specifically because the residents had either died or abandoned the city for the safety of Harare. It is also far enough away from where we eventually built Gatehold that only one ley line flows through it.

  “Because of that, one of our engineers underestimated the stored energy in the comparatively small ley line,” he went on. “Our safeguards were immediately overwhelmed. The Spires melted instantly, and an explosion on par with that of a ten megaton nuclear bomb followed.”

  “What happened to the atmosphere?” asked Benedict, oddly excited by the prospect. “Were there any side effects?”

  Elijah deadpanned, “Other than the destruction of a city, he means.”

  Hu Shui ignored Elijah’s comment, answering Benedict’s question by saying, “The area was unlivable for nearly three years. Then, it became an ethera desert. Our scientists posit that it will remain so until the ley line completely repairs itself.”

  “I…I would like to visit,” Benedict said. “For scientific purposes, of course.”

  “That’s all well and good, but what does it have to do with this scenario?” Elijah asked.

  “I think the djinn broke the ley line,” Hu Shui answered.

  “Broke it? I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Neither did I. We caused a tiny rupture that destroyed a city of two-hundred square kilometers,” he said. “This is much more serious. The only question is why there are different attunements represented here. Some of this energy is coming from different sources.”

  Elijah gestured to the gates ringing the room. There were nine of them, and the group still hadn’t explored them. “I’m guessing the answer is down those tunnels.”

  “I suspect you’re correct,” Hu Shui agreed. Then, he looked at Benedict and asked, “Have you gotten everything you can from this room?”

  Benedict shook his head. “I could spend years here and barely scratch the surface,” he answered. “But for now, I think it’s best if we move on.”

  “I concur.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I’ve been ready to leave for the past day,” Elijah pointed out. For all that he found it interesting – and he did – the room left him feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Part of that could be chalked up to the unruly ethera, but it was also because, try as he might, he just didn’t understand it at all. Intellectually, he understood what the ritual circles were meant to do, but when he looked at them, all he saw were incomprehensible geometric designs.

  It was like trying to understand advanced mathematics, and it reminded him of a time when one of the university mathematicians had tried to explain something called cohomology and derived functors to him. Elijah hadn’t understood a bit of it, and he’d ended up just nodding along until the conversation with the excitable mathematician ended.

  The inner workings of the ritual circles were like that, and he was eager to move on to something more tangible. Or, given his frustrations, something he could punch.

  “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a giant monster to fight,” he muttered to himself as they crossed the chamber to the first of the gates. The opening itself was about fifteen feet wide and twice as tall, a semi-circle ringed in yet more symbols he couldn’t interpret. “Does this feel like anything familiar to you all?”

  “Shadows,” Benedict answered.

  Elijah nodded. It reminded him of the Trial of Primacy – specifically, the Vale of Whispers, a shadow-drenched region where he and his allies had discovered the headquarters of an assassin’s guild.

  Over the next few minutes, Elijah and his companions circled the chamber and discovered that each gate coincided with one of the nine realms attached to the World Tree. Shadow was the strongest among them, but Elijah also sensed air, nature, ice, earth, fire, water, and magic. The final gate was slightly larger than the others, and it mixed each attunement into something Elijah could only refer to as normal, ambient ethera.

  “It’s meant to represent the mortal realm,” guessed Hu Shui. “In some guides I’ve read, Mortalum functions as the confluence of all the other realms.”

  “I really need to use your Librarians,” Elijah sighed, lamenting that he’d neglected the Branch’s Knowledge Base so completely. He used it every now and again, but the fact that Hu Shui was so much better informed than him was a little galling. It highlighted that, for all his strength, there were still plenty of gaps in Elijah’s power.

  In any case, there was nothing left but to explore, so they picked the shadow corridor and set off. Almost immediately, they were drowned in lingering darkness. After a hundred or so feet, Elijah sensed something moving along the ceiling. Without Soul of the Wild, he would have been entirely unprepared when a pitch-black spider launched itself at Benedict.

  But without the advantage of ambush, the creature was defenseless against Elijah’s reprisal. He didn’t shift into one of his bestial shapes. Instead, he simply grabbed the thing out of the air, then ripped it apart. In the aftermath, Hu Shui summoned a small lantern that pulsed with white ethera and banished the shadows for a few feet all around them.

  Benedict stared at the dead spider, which was still twitching.

  “I don’t like spiders,” he mumbled.

  “I don’t mind them,” Elijah said. “Did I tell you about the time I went on a Magical School Bus journey through a spider the size of a city?”

  “You…did not.”

  “Oh, it was a whole big thing,” Elijah explained, continuing forward. The other two followed. “When I say it was the size of a city, I’m not exaggerating. I could literally swim around inside of it. By the way, did you know that the liquid inside a spider’s carapace is called hemolymph and has the consistency of runny snot? Oh, it’s also gold in color.”

  “That…that is interesting,” Hu Shui said.

  “And don’t get me started on the lungs…”

  Elijah went on to describe his experience inside the giant spider he’d encountered back in the Broken Crown. In the retelling, it seemed a lot more epic than he remembered. And it definitely grossed out his companions.

  Most importantly, it served as a distraction for the more arachnophobic members of the party. In the meantime, Elijah dealt with a few more ambushers before, at last, coming upon another trap.

  That was when Hu Shui had an epiphany.

  “They aren’t traps,” he said with a snap of his fingers.

  “What?” asked Elijah, his gaze shifting back and forth from the Astral Duelist to the trap. “Of course they are.”

  “They’re regulators,” he stated. “You feel it, don’t you? The buildup. Ethera can’t get through when the walls are closed.” He paused for a moment as the pattern repeated itself. “Ingenious.”

  Then, he set his lantern down and a small notebook appeared in his hands. It was similar to the one he’d used to mark down previous patterns, though it was quite a bit thicker. When he flipped through the pages, Elijah saw that it was full of complex diagrams and densely packed with notes. He found an empty page and started writing.

  “We can’t stay here long,” Elijah told him. He could already feel another shadow spider approaching, and while he had no trouble killing the creatures, he didn’t want to chance something bigger coming around.

  “Just a moment longer,” Hu Shui pleaded. “Mr. Emerson, time the regulator, if you would.”

  Benedict nodded.

  For the next few minutes, they treated the regulator just like any of the other traps until, at last, they rushed through. Soon enough, they encountered another. And another after that, as the corridor twisted and curved. The shadows made things much more difficult, though Elijah’s senses helped to see them through.

  The whole time saw them ambushed by spiders, which further complicated matters. Still, they continued on without much more hesitation, and after nearly twelve hours, they found themselves in yet another chamber.

  Like the rest of the corridor, the atmosphere inside the room was pitch black with thick shadows. However, Elijah could sense two major characteristics that set it apart.

  First, there was a circular depression in the center of the room. Like the gate itself, it was ringed in densely inscribed runes. Troublingly, Elijah couldn’t feel the bottom of that depression, though he could feel that the walls of the cylindrical hole were covered in glyphs.

  Each one pulsed with subtle power.

  “What do you sense?” asked Benedict.

  “Shh.”

  “What? Why?” was the whispered response.

  Elijah breathed. “Because we’re not alone,” he stated.

  Indeed, there was a presence hovering just above the pit. Something many-legged, but unlike any other creature Elijah had encountered. It was organic, so he got a good sense of its shape. More importantly, he could feel that it was covered in sleek, grey chitin that would no doubt protect it from any attacks.

  But what truly troubled Elijah was the skin beneath that natural armor. It was rough, almost like it had been charred beyond all recognition.

  Before Elijah could determine anything else, he felt the thing shift, and he recoiled at the motion. It wasn’t completely unnatural, but it was just as obviously not of their world. A combination of gliding and skittering that sent a shiver up Elijah’s spine.

  It sounded like a slow-motion version of a cicada’s call, with a few clicks thrown in for good measure. After only a second, a tidal wave of answers – all the same sounds – came from within the pit.

  “They’re coming!” Elijah hissed, already transforming. “Get ready!”

  Then, a flood of limbs and chitin came pouring out of the pit.

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