Temple Bravo Pelrith Moonshadow swore as he watched the hunting party leave yet again. It was the first time the weather had been good enough for a hunt in nearly a tenday, and the weather was only going to get worse. That meant this was one of his last chances to do anything.

It also meant he was going to have to use the backup to his backup plan. His primary plan was long dead, but he'd really thought he'd be able to wear down his enemies before they even realized he was out here. He'd managed to keep them clueless, but the "wearing down" part wasn't working.

He knew he'd seen one of the hunters return with a broken arm from the last hunt, after he managed to drive a small group of icespike reindeer to panic before the hunt group reached them. Despite that, the man wasn't favoring his arm at all; it had clearly been healed, and not just with alchemicals. Someone down there was a true healer, and that threw off all of Pelrith's assumptions.

He was going to hunt down that healer when all of this was done and kill her. It almost had to be the mage that arrived with Los'en and the Aurora archer; Aurora Clan didn't produce healers and he knew what everyone who arrived earlier could do. A healer that was primarily a swordsman was ridiculous; he might be able to heal himself, but healing others meant that he had to project the power outwards and that wasn't how sword-based Vocations worked. The man wasn't even a spellsword.

No, the mage was definitely the healer. Pelrith wasn't just going to make sure she was dead; he was going to hunt down the informant when he got back to Izel and make sure that he knew that including important information like that was important for his future health.

Or maybe he'd just kill the man. It was clear he wasn't that useful anyway.

Pelrith waited, lost in daydreams of exactly how much the man who missed something as vital as healing magic was going to regret it, until the hunting party disappeared from view. The last thing he wanted was to be seen; he couldn't afford to be noticed, not yet.

It was a fairly simple matter to tracelessly make his way from the spot that overlooked the ruin to the small, secluded underground room he'd lucked onto when he was looking for a location for a cache. It would have been a good place, since it was a tiny underground bunker, but he'd carefully left it undisturbed. If he put stuff there and someone noticed it, it wouldn't just reveal his presence; it might reveal that the location was important. As it was, he was pretty sure they'd already found it and ignored it because there simply wasn't much there.

Well, there wasn't much there if you didn't know how to look. Having the Broken Lord's authority helped more than a little, too. Without it, there was no way he'd have been able to find the secret room in the back of the bunker, much less access the map it held.

The map included the ruin Pelrith's targets were hiding in, along with a number of other ruins. Some of them were probably close, but the only one that seemed to still be active was that one ruin. Pelrith could make it display the other areas, but they were entirely in gray and black and he knew that meant he couldn't do anything.

The ruin he was interested in was displayed in bright yellow, green, and red. The entire map was lit up, as well, which meant that it was as capable as the one for the ruins in Mazehold. Pelrith had only seen that map once, and it was smaller than this one. He definitely had to report this to the Hilt, but that meant killing his opponents.

There were things he could do with the map, but most of them either gave him a headache when he tried to interrogate them, which meant he didn't have enough of the Broken Lord's authority to even find out what they actually were, or they dimmed and then brightened without telling him anything. Pelrith knew that meant they weren't available. Either they were broken or they'd already been used.

The handful of things he could use were immensely useful. One of them was that he could tell how many people were in the place. It was a little troubling that the number was uncertain and seemed to flicker even when people weren't entering or leaving, but it would still tell him when they were all dead.

Pelrith set his hand against the symbol that represented the only functional access to the outside world. There were a number of different features that had once been there, but only one was still accessible. Fortunately, it was the one he wanted. He could bring the ceiling down on the stairs. That would seal the people down there into the ruin without access to water or food resupply. It would take them time to die, but they weren't going to get out. He could come back with a group of Templars if they survived the winter.

Just as importantly, it would isolate the hunting party from their supplies. He might not have succeeded at his goal of weakening them enough to have the world kill them because of the healer, but that didn't mean he hadn't gotten them to react in a way that would doom the hunters if they couldn't get to the supplies they'd cached underground where they were safe. He could pick them off slowly if he was careful.

He'd have all winter to do it, and winters in the Skylands were long.

The world seemed to shake and rumble in agreement as he made the ceiling above the stairs collapse.

The map went dark. That was unfortunate; he'd have to hope it came back up. If it didn't, he could deal with it, but he'd really hoped he'd know if they were all dead before he went for help.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"A rock that isn't there that blocks a hole to the space between places?" Xin'ri shook her head. "That's a lot more literal than I expected."

"Literal?" Sophia scrunched her nose at the word. She was pretty sure it wasn't a real rock, but it wasn't exactly imaginary either. It was weird.

Admittedly, that was normal for the Origin. It was just that she was used to being able to tell what was going on, because the Origin's weirdness was expressed with essence and mana and Sophia could see both. She was also very resistant to the Origin's secondary effects because of her heritage. Most other people didn't have that benefit. She'd had to protect Dav when they were thrown through the Origin; she didn't know if she'd still have to or not.

"Yes, literal," Xin'ri repeated, then flipped through the papers Othala had given them as 'records.' They leaked a hint of essence as she moved them, which told Sophia a lot about how they were made. "Here, in the records. 'The barriers against that-which-is-not are made of stone, for stone resists all. It shall lend its might if the conduit is pierced and seal the wound. Repairs in most areas may be deferred until my return, as the seal will be sufficient for even somewhat unreasonable periods of time.'"

Xin'ri chuckled. "I'd call sixteen hundred years an unreasonable period of time; I bet that explains the entire roof missing. Now, where did I see …" She flipped a few pages, then stopped. "Ah, here it is. 'The stone is strengthened near the actual conduit to provide an improved reality interface. If this area is damaged, it must be repaired immediately so that it does not begin to generate a false-rock seal.' Oh, no, that's all that's useful there, it talks about how to do the temporary repair and to send a message to her to get her help immediately."

"Huh." Sophia shook her head. She'd read through all of the material Xin'ri was quoting from, but she'd completely missed those two sections. She'd thought they were part of the repair instructions. Maybe they were, really, but they revealed more than just what to do. "False-rock seal. That's descriptive and definitely sounds like what we found, but is there anything else?"

Sophia was pretty sure she could find the same information on her own eventually, but asking Xin'ri was definitely faster. She'd had hours to look through the information while Dav and Sophia were in the interspace conduit. Sophia wasn't certain that's how Xin'ri spent her time, but whatever she did, she knew what was in the records. Sophia was pretty sure she'd read both of those bits, but she hadn't connected them with what happened in the weird tunnel.

"A little," Xin'ri answered, "But not as much as I'd like. This doesn't include how to make the conduits or even how to do the big repairs; those all say to contact Issvako. I've only found one other section on false-rocks and it's about how to do an emergency patch while calling for help. I think we're going to have to try it anyway. The good news is that we have the materials; the bad news is that I'm not sure we have enough materials."

"Any instructions are better than none," Sophia agreed. "What does it say?"

"Let's see … this is probably the best starting point. 'If you see a blank space in the ground lattice, do not touch it with unprotected flesh.'" Xin'ri chuckled.

Sophia tried not to blush; she'd definitely missed that particular note. "I'm fine. I can see why she wouldn't want anyone else to touch it, though."

"Right." Xin'ri sounded deliberately unimpressed. "That is why you went in ahead, but maybe don't touch things you know are there that you can't see?"

"Now you sound like my Mom," Sophia muttered.

"No whining," Dav whispered at her. "You're the one who poked it."

"I figured it was safe. And it was! And it told us a lot!" Sophia buried her head in her boyfriend's shoulder.

Dav chuckled. "Maybe think a little more next time. This time, it worked out, at least."

Sophia felt herself flush at the mild scolding. Why didn't anyone believe her when she said she'd thought through the possibilities and knew it was okay before she did things?

Okay, maybe she didn't always explain it well and sometimes she did move too quickly, but still. She really had thought it through this time!

"Issvako takes about a dozen pages to describe how to deal with a false-rock seal, but she's clearly put the work in to make it easy to follow. The stone rods need to link the two sides in a parasympathetic equiharmonious coherence that…"

Sophia's eyes glazed over before Xin'ri even finished the first sentence. It made exactly no sense, but Sophia was pretty sure that wasn't the words; she simply had no idea what Xin'ri was talking about. If she'd studied enchanting instead of combat, maybe she'd have a clue, but Sophia was happy to leave that to the people who actually liked it. She waited for Xin'ri to pause for a moment, then spoke up. "And that's why you're coming with us."

"What." Xin'ri seemed confused enough that the word came out as a statement instead of a question. She gathered her wits almost immediately. "I'm sure you can do it; why would you need me?"

Sophia shook her head. "I didn't understand any of what you just said."

"Poke the stone stick through where the rock isn't. Make sure it connects to both sides when it's on the ground; if it won't, you need a longer stick. In that case, use the black goop like glue; apply it to both stick ends then connect them. It will harden in a few minutes. Once it is connected on both sides, anchor the temporary spike, er, stone stick with more of the black goop. Leave the conduit and come back a few hours later; the lattice should have fixed itself. Repeat as needed." Xin'ri shook her head at Sophia. "There, that wasn't hard, was it?"

"Why didn't you say that the first time?" Sophia sighed. She knew Xin'ri had oversimplified it. "You're still coming with us."

"My shield's not as good as yours," Xin'ri answered dubiously. "Are you sure it'll hold out long enough?"

"As long as you don't touch the fake rock, yeah," Dav answered before Sophia could. "Mine was only down five points when we returned; as long as we don't wait there, you should be fine."

Before they could continue, the world seemed to shake and a series of large BOOMs came from the entrance. Sophia looked up just in time to see dust and dirt fill the stairway. As soon as it cleared, she could see that their way out was filled with rubble, just like the other stairs.

Just like the other stairs, the rubble didn't continue far past the stairs themselves. That was an odd coincidence, and Sophia didn't trust odd coincidences.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.