The tomb was silent.

  It had remained silent for three million, six hundred-three thousand, six hundred and forty two cycles.

  When the silence was finally banished, it was with a violent crash of static. Dust from uncounted ages polarized into towering spikes as the foundations that it rested upon became magnetically charged. Arcs of lightning jumped between the towering dust spikes, filling the stagnant air with the smell of ozone.

  Seven of eight pillars rose above the crackling dust spikes, sending them toppling into disarray. The pneumatic hiss of forgotten hydraulics squealed as it fought to push each pillar into place. Each locked into a protective cradle built into the ceiling, the reinforced architecture sufficient to shrug off the weight of a mountain being dropped on top of it.

  Such things had happened before. That was why the eighth pillar would never rise.

  The first pillar to wake glowed with an incandescent rage. Boiling heat waves assaulted the tomb and made what little organic material existed smolder and burn. Where the anger had come from didn’t matter, only that it existed, and that everything in the immediate vicinity knew of such loudly and without fail.

  Only as the other pillars slowly roused themselves did the hissing rage start to subside. Familiarity bred contempt, but the loneliness of existence in silence could make even the angriest entity shut its mouth, if only to prevent the awakening from being cancelled early.

  [“Do we know the reason for this premature awakening?”] the Pillar known as Luxuria asked. Its voice was not an output of flesh and blood, but raw magic being warped into sensual sounds. That was a wasteful expenditure, but none of the Pillars bothered to object. Simply speaking again after so long was too tempting to ignore.

  [“The gathering arrays have detected a spike in activity,”] Gula responded. Of the seven Pillars, there was only one reason that they would be interested. [“One of the Enemy’s constructs unwittingly strayed into an outer siphon. We were able to absorb just enough energy to justify the Awakening.”]

  [“LEECHES!”] Ira screeched. Its Pillar shook inside its protective cradle. Thankfully, the reinforced structure was able to keep the damage to a minimum. [“Why didn’t you crack it open and drain its blood?! I’m tired of sitting in this FUCKING HOLE!!!”]

  Further exclamations were cut off as a quorum vote muted Ira’s pillar for a thousandth of a cycle. The other Pillars knew that their sibling needed to work it out of its system, but they’d never get anything done if they were being deafened by constant profanity.

  [“A valid query was posed by {Ira},”] Avaritia said, moving the conversation along. [“Why did the defenses not capture the construct and acquire its resources?”]

  [“The threat level was deemed to be too high,”] Gula responded despondently. Waves of unsated hunger radiated from its Pillar. The dust around it morphed into visages of delectable food, but they collapsed soon after. [“{Mater}’s wisdom teaches that ‘you should not bite off more than you can chew’.”]

  The Pillars fell into a companionable silence for a ten-thousandth of a cycle, to contemplate Mater’s wisdom.

  [“Reviewing the information gathered by the siphon’s system reveals a disturbing trend,”] Acedia said to break the silence once more. [“A great concentration of energy was detected inside the construct. The siphon took what it could, but later readings from ancillary systems indicate that the concentrated energy had grown, not decreased.”]

  That was indeed troubling news. Several Pillars attempted to speak at once, but eventually ceded the floor to Tristitia. [“Reviewing prior data reveals a pattern. We have long believed that the energy desert was due to irreversible damage that occurred during our internment. What if instead, the energy is being actively stolen before our siphons can achieve the minimum required for full awakening?”]

  [“I can see the pattern, now that you have drawn attention to it,”] Avaritia agreed. [“The slight variations in energy flow had been attributed to natural cycles, but the drop offs are far too targeted. Each time the siphons approach the minimum threshold, something is causing the energy to dry up.”]

  [“But what can we even do about it?”] Luxuria interjected petulantly. [“If the Enemy knows we’re hiding away somewhere and is trying to starve us out, then we’re screwed. We could barely afford the energy expenditure for this ‘lovely chat’, which is growing short by the way.”]

  That was the problem in a nutshell. They couldn’t afford to do anything to change their situation, lest they topple the sensitive balance that they’d managed to maintain for all this time.

  [“... We could lure in some mortals,”] Vana spoke up. It hadn’t said anything for the entire conversation, until now. Immediate objections rose from multiple Pillars. None of them wanted anything to do with mortals. Not after last time. Luxuria in particular was so violently opposed that it briefly resembled Ira with its screeching.

  A second Pillar needed to be temporarily muted so they could come to a conclusion.

  [“There is a colony of energy parasites living above us,”] Vana continued doggedly, once they were able to speak again. [“They have infested the defense nodes, but if we lure them down carefully, we might be able to catch them with drones and start harvesting the energy needed for future awakening.”]

  [“Who should stay awake to manage this project then?”] Avaritia asked carefully. It did not want to offend its siblings, but more than one of them were not suited for this kind of risky gamble. [“Luxuria will insist on going back to sleep, as will Acedia. Ira is…”]

  What Ira was, didn’t need to be said out loud. That would be a truly stupid choice.

  [“Gula,”] Tristitia responded. [“They have always managed the siphons. They will know exactly how much we need to begin the awakening, without drawing undue attention.”]

  [“Gula has labored patiently for all this time, half-waking while the rest of us wait and dream,”] Vana agreed.

  One by one, the votes were cast. Each voted for Gula to stay awake and lead the way for the rest of them. Even Ira was un-muted for long enough to cast its vote before the mute needed to be re-enabled due to profanity.

  Only Gula itself did not cast a vote in its favor. Instead, it chose to abstain. It didn’t want to hurt any of its siblings’ feelings by singling them out.

  [“I won’t fail you,”] Gula promised. [“I’ll cook us up the tastiest buffet you could dream of, and we’ll all eat together again!”]

  That was a weird way of putting it, but the sibling Pillars could still appreciate the sentiment. One by one, they unlocked from their cradles and sank back down into containment. The tomb, which had been full of activity and sound, slowly descended back into darkness and silence. Only Gula’s Pillar remained locked in place, though it was set to low energy usage while Gula concocted a plan.

  [“How do you lure a bunch of old fuddy-duddies into a deep dark hole?”] Gula asked itself in silence. [“Maybe by leaving a trail of tasty treats?’]

  Archibald the Raven could be said to have many Opinions.

  These Opinions could include many subjects, such as where the best nesting site was, how long a lady-bird’s tail feathers ought to grow, or if a lunatic old Wizard had finally overstayed his welcome. The last of these, Archibald could regretfully admit, had probably gone on longer than it should have.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Mortimer had been a very interesting fellow, once upon a time. He’d raised Archibald from the time he was a hatchling, after he’d fallen out of his nest on a grand adventure to see what was making sunlight glint from the ground. Archibald couldn’t exactly recall how long ago that had been, but he was fairly sure that he’d seen humans other than Mortimer grow up, get old, and perish several times over.

  Magic was funny like that. Once, Archibald had just been an ordinary and rather stupid bird who had a nasty habit of getting into his owner’s experiments. One of those in particular, involving a cauldron and a tasty looking lizard, had resulted in Archibald’s current condition.

  Archibald was fairly certain that he’d exploded after falling into the cauldron, only to wake up after his body had magically reassembled itself.

  Mortimer had been incensed that his original experiment had been disrupted, then subsequently fascinated by his pet bird’s miraculous recovery. He could have dissected the Raven, pulled him apart to see just what was causing this seeming immortality, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d run all manner of tests to make sure that Archibald hadn’t been permanently harmed by the explosion.

  That reaction, more than anything, was what convinced Archibald that the man who had died on top of the Tower was no longer the same man who had raised him. The old Mortimer wouldn’t have dreamed of kidnapping a child and feeding them to an eldritch monster.

  Thinking about the old Mortimer made Archibald sad. He pecked his new human’s hair a bit, but it didn’t make him feel better like it should have. Magnus was already in enough pain. Getting a reaction out of him was like poking someone who was already sunburnt and raw.

  Archibald was sitting on his human’s head while the child laid in a rustic bed in the middle of nowhere. How exactly the bird had gotten here, after he’d died for a little bit in the Tower, popped back out in the Vampyr’s Domain, and was subsequently left behind when the damned Dragon teleported the kid away was a little bit fuzzy in Archibald’s head.

  He was pretty sure it had something to do with an enchantment that the Old Mortimer had placed upon him, back when the man actually cared about other people. The gist of the magic was that it would allow Archibald to find his way back to the person he considered his ‘most important human’. Magic was, again, funny like that.

  Shortly after being stuffed full of cursed spirits and thrown at an angry Dragon like a roadbump-slash-squeaky toy, Archibald had realized that… Mortimer wasn’t someone he cared about any more. Sure, he cared about the memories of who the man used to be, but the current one had lost any loyalty the bird might have once had.

  Magnus however… Magnus was a good kid. A really good kid, not the kind that acted nice to get sweets only to throw rocks at birds when their parents weren’t looking. Archibald hadn’t known the kid very long. The majority of that time, the boy had been getting his mind run roughshod by a creature that made Archibald more disgusted than a gore caked vulture.

  Even then, all that Magnus had wanted to do was learn about magic and help out the people around him. He’d not needed to help the ‘Bard’ that Mortimer had kept around as a karmic lightning rod. He hadn’t needed to insist on going to look for Archibald when he was stuffed full of curses either. He wasn’t required to do those or any other number of small kindnesses that Archibald had seen him perform during his stay at the Tower of Baedain.

  A kid like that deserved to have someone look out for them. Not because his former student asked him to, or because the big scary Dragon asked him to… Or because of some weird pseudo-motherly dynamic; that had failed spectacularly when the kid lashed out. Magnus was in godawful pain when he was awake. He couldn’t remember his own name, let alone someone who felt like he owed them his affection due to the aid she’d rendered.

  Yes, Archibald had a lot of opinions about Edith.

  The Raven glanced down as Magnus stirred in his sleep. A careful flap of his wings brought the bird to perch on the bed’s rough headboard, so that he wouldn’t be jostled when the kid started to flop around. Whatever trauma that the Vampyr had inflicted on the kid, it wasn’t pretty to watch.

  Seizures happened at least once an hour. Not all of them were violent, but they kept the kid bedridden. Being woken up every time he started to fall asleep definitely made it difficult for him to fully recover. Only a few recipes for herbal teas and tonics that Edith had left behind allowed Magnus to get any kind of rest.

  While Archibald believed that a raven’s physical form was superior to that of a human, what with lacking wings and all, he definitely wished he had hands. Having hands would let him help take care of Magnus, so that he could tell the creepy Dark Elf to flap off.

  The only Dark Elf that Archibald had met prior to Visk was one that Mortimer had fought and killed. Mortimer’s purple eyes had come out of that elf’s skull. Visk’s own shining orbs reminded Archibald a little too much of that incident for him to ever be fully comfortable around them.

  As Magnus’s seizure started to calm down, Archibald hopped down to stand on the boy’s chest. At the very least, he could fan the kid with his wings to help him cool off. One side effect of the seizures was the kid’s body temperature shooting sky high. As summer rolled on, there was a serious risk that Magnus would die from heat exhaustion.

  Archibald didn’t know how he was going to fix things yet, but he hadn’t sat around doing nothing all of those years living with a Wizard. A plan to help Magnus was slowly percolating in the back of his bird brain. For now, he just kept flapping his wings to cool Magnus off.

  In my Dream, I’d made progress. The Den inside of my Dream had started out as a rough hewn cavern, but now it looked like something closer to a sculpted palace. My trip to Osteriath had cost him a lot, but I picked up an appreciation for human architecture.

  Of course, a simple human home wasn’t sufficient for a Dragon’s personal lair. Towering columns had been worked into the dream-stone walls. The pool of water had expanded to become a shimmering lake, surrounded by wide shallow steps that would let me bask in the water as I wished. My nest had been shaped from an open dais into a wide buttressed bowl that kept what was inside from spilling out.

  The refinements I’d made to the space had resulted in the torrent of raw magic being better contained. When the ‘physical’ space was molded to direct and contain the flow, the absorption rate was increased. I wasn’t exactly sure how much time I’d saved, but I believed that my forced slumber had been shortened by a month, perhaps two.

  Each tunnel leading out of his central Den had also expanded. Working on them was… frustratingly slow, compared to my Den. Almost all of my time spent inside the Dream was either spent working on the tunnels, or recovering so that I could continue the work. The process was a bit like laying bricks, except you needed to simultaneously break apart the stones to make the bricks at the same time as you laid them. Any lapse in concentration would lead to shoddy work that needed to be ripped out and started over.

  “Why are you focusing so much on your soul attachments?” Morgan asked from nearby. My sister had helped when it came to working on my enchanting skills, but she steadfastly refused to have anything to do with ‘manual’ labor.

  She’d spent most of our time in the Dream together refining her own form. Rather than just building an idealized body for herself, it had a lot more to do with building her own identity. Having her own name that wasn’t connected to our siblings had been the jump start she’d needed to really branch out on her own.

  While I wasn’t exactly force-feeding her extra magic from my Core, she’d benefited greatly from just being nearby it. As I steadily closed in on what we’d speculated to be the ‘Full Adult’ stage of development, she was starting to cross from the Adolescent into the ‘Young Adult’ stage.

  Morgan had her own Core now, which was a recent development. The morganite gem that her soul resided in had undergone a transformation in the waking world as it was refined by the magical and biological processes of my sleeping body. At some point, it had crossed over a hidden threshold that allowed it to contain an actualized Dream Space similar to my own. While it wasn’t nearly as large, the potential it held was the important part.

  To put it politely, Morgan felt incredibly shackled by being stuck in my head. As she’d gotten small tastes of freedom, that sense of confinement had only grown worse. While she tried her best to not lash out at me, we both knew that the instant I woke up, she was going to try and go her own way.

  Shaping her own body into her ‘perfect’ form was Morgan’s way of practicing for that moment. She’d developed some interesting ideas about how physical matter could be converted into magic, and magic back into physical matter. A Wizard could conjure stone, ice, or any other number of solid objects from thin air using magic. It was easier to use existing material in the environment, but it was still possible.

  Morgan’s goal was to make a physical body for her Gem Core to inhabit, so that she didn’t need me to carry her around anymore. Neither of us knew if that would work, but we’d agreed it was worth a shot.

  “I want to visit Cassia,” I responded after some time to think of my answer. “You may call it a waste of time, but I don’t want to spend a whole year without seeing My People. If I can finish this tunnel, I’m certain that I’ll be able to reach them.”

  “...” Morgan hesitated before responding. “Scoot over and let me help.”

  Despite my surprise, I did as she asked. We both sat at the entrance to the tunnel to my Soul Connections, which looked half finished compared to the others. She looked over my work for a long minute before continuing to speak. “This is awful. If you want to visit a lady, you need to at least make the path connecting you look nice.”

  I sighed deeply. My sister’s help was just as barbed as it always was. Even so, I still appreciated her assistance as we worked together to shape the available strands of Vitae into a path that would let me speak to My Cassia again.