ADARA

The old toll of Prunal's bells heralded the sunset. It splashed a tawny shade across the rolling clouds sucked into the sea's might. It dripped through the horizon with the long moments, and she flinched when Yuven ordered for their escape to close behind them with a shuddering groan of wood against rusted hinges. Glyphs from the Storm Wardens created barrier walls in the broken corridors leading deeper into the hill-side monastery, with Fenrer himself taking a seat at the table over the empty basin. Memories dread filled her soul and stretched through her fingertips when Yuven placed her in a corner with an expectation to stand still and power the nearby protection runes — to create a cage for the wraith.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" she questioned when Yuven doused the lamps to leave the last shimmers of the sunset in the hall, with Storm Wardens sat at the ordinal corners.

"It is not my idea, Sazaka." He checked the tables and flat pews. "Warden Katau, is the area fortified?"

"Everything is set, Captain Traye."

Adara huddled in her corner and longed for the familiarity of home — a rare instance of uncertainty when Tebora gave her the expectation of hiding to avoid death. It was no way to live, but it was the life she led nonetheless, until a Derelict horde supped for her magick and her aurora of silver blasted them into stone. I've escaped that cage, but... Adara winced when Yuven eyed her with a sharpened glare. It seems I haven't gotten any farther than before. "I'm ready as I'll ever be, Traye, though I don't like this..."

Yuven nodded at Fenrer, who tipped his head forward and tugged a phial off the medicinal strap. Adara held her breath for fear, but there was a sense of calm overlapping her mind when Fenrer pressed his lips against the rim of the corked bottle of glimmering liquid crystal. In the drifting shade of the sunset, it slipped into his eyes and set them into a spiralling cosmic, emerald glow. He released the energy with a pop of the phial, and dumped it into the basin around him. Droplets turned into a cascading river, and Adara bit down a gasp of wonder when it filled to the brim and into the runes. It followed a path along the monastery floor and into the rafters, to the marked coils of the serpent of knowledge. Fenrer placed the phial back on its clip and sent a single green ember onto the silver candle.

It sprung to life in the pewter wax and bounced to the other two candles to set them alight. On his right, the candle carved with a wyvern in the wax, glowing frozen violet in the shadows. On his other side, a wolf howled into the wick and it burst into a deeper green, tilled with brown. Fenrer breathed deep, then brought his hands to his brow to shield his eyes as the smoke tangled into a silver mist.

"What's he doing?" Adara whispered.

"If he's smart, thinking about his next move," Yuven grumbled. "But, more than likely, praying to the Ancients for luck and their assistance..." His scowl deepened. "This is all Fenrer, I do not see why he bothers with this part. It will always be just him, the Ancients are not like to come down from wherever they are to make right the world." He folded his arms and took his own spot beside her. "Enough questions, Sazaka. You shall see for yourself. This is not like the Sending ritual you experienced in the Fields of Light. Pay close attention. We know not what shall show itself when he begins." He nodded at Katau. "As this is your wraith, you know what questions to ask — but be prepared to fight."

Katau nodded and stood closest to the table.

Fenrer lowered his hands and raised his head to the frayed ropes above their heads, where the smoke raised with its heat and swirled into them. An odd expression of satisfaction smoothed out his furrowed brow when he said, "Yuven, I need a living anchor."

Yuven puffed out a breath and approached through the aurora of mixed light beneath their feet. He knelt at the chair and reached out his hands around the silver candle. Fenrer rested his palms in them, closing his eyes. After another quiet moment, he nodded. "I'm done, Yuven. Get ready." He rolled out his shoulders and the tension went out of his hands and face when he leaned closer to the silver stream of smoke without shoving his face into the flames as he had with her. He straightened out the pile of papers and held the quill, with two unused ones at the other stacks of parchment.

Adara stepped out of his way, but stayed in her marked circle when Yuven returned to her. "What were you doing?"

"Question, Sazaka," he scolded.

"Just tell me."

"Fenrer is going to need a link to the land of the living," Yuven grumbled. "I mean to provide him with it. Is that satisfactory?"

Her heart squished against her ribcage at the unknown of the next moment. "Is he going to be alright?"

"He's only a vessel, he is not going to be moving around. I'd be more worried about what might show itself during the ritual."

The shadows expanded, and the shimmered sunset lifted off Fenrer's cheeks. His head tipped forward, and the bells went silent. Adara tried not to kick at the ground in agitation from the lack of action from the people within the hall. Yuven kept his gaze trained on Fenrer, and the rest of the lamps whispered into dead smoke. Mist slipped past her lips as the temperature fluctuated and doused her own inner fire. Yuven's thoughtful expression shifted into a scowl as ropes groaned in the rafters from added weight.

Fenrer's grip tightened on the quill, and his eyes opened.

It swirled his irides under a film of pale white. It lacked the light of a soul, empty as the grave. Katau clenched his fists and dragged a cautious step forward to cast his shadow through the candlelight. "I am Warden Katau," he said to the spirit anchored in Fenrer's body. "I wish to know what has caused you to be trapped in this part of the flow. I wish only to grant you peace and succor from the dark." In the silence, Katau glanced at Yuven, who folded his arms. "Is there anything you can tell me through this Aurus? Anything to return you to the flow?"

Flecks of ice settled on her lips, but the silence screamed without the bells. Fenrer sat there without moving an inch, and it was hard to discern if he breathed at all. Ropes swung in the last shadows of the candles, a whisper of truth. Fenrer's grip stiffened on the quill, but nothing lunged from the suffocating mist in the air. Katau breathed deep into life. "Are you particularly attached to this area? Do you feel we are intruding?"

Two fingers hooked against her sleeve with the smallest, gentlest tug, but when she turned around to investigate, the sensation disappeared off her shirt. Her heartbeat raced faster than a horse, and she tried to train her attention on Fenrer, who gave no reaction to Katau's questions. It dragged on with no hint of moonlight to tear through the shadows, and she bit down on a scream when a palm pressed against her shoulders from behind. Her hands scrambled for something solid and not made of air, only finding Yuven's forearm, who pressed his palm into her brow to push her.

"Yuven, I think something touched me," she hissed as Katau continued his questions with repetitive insistence.

"Relax, you'll make it worse," he mumbled and lifted his hand off her forehead.

"I'm serious."

"I figured."

It was hopeless to reason with an emotionally inept mushroom, but when the chill crawled around her neck with the glint of a headsman's sharp blade, she grabbed onto him again when claws dug into her throat. It dug into her windpipe, stealing her breath, but she tried to feel the flames in the tips of her fingers, to bring warmth to her own soul as she used Yuven for the steadfast tree. What's happening? Around his ears, Yuven's feathers perked with the breeze gathering in the monastery, but he gave no reaction, choosing instead to tug out his pocket watch to open it. It ticked with constant predictable moments, and she popped the icy bubble in her throat. Her drum of life faded from her chest, and she released Yuven. He shifted on his feet with one last scowl in her direction, but when she braced herself for a shove, he simply turned away from her with a click of his pocket watch, closing the tiny hands.

A world in motion.

Katau pursed his lips at the spirit's refusal to answer through the opportunity Fenrer gave it. "Can you at least tell us your name?"

The other unused quills stood up straight, tangled with misty twine stretching from a bubble around Fenrer. It stilled the breeze in the air as the croaking of the ropes continued unabated. Yuven's eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened against his neck. Her heart hammered with the distant screeching when Fenrer leaned closer to the paper in front of him and wrote. His hand followed the motion of the other two, or they were the ones following him. It tugged at her legs to flee from the area when the runes outside lit up in the ground to cast a faint aurora around the building. Glass cracked from a center point. Wood trembled and knocked with escalating ferocity. One of the tables tumbled off the stack close to her side, and she jumped back into Yuven, who no longer sent his hand into her brow, standing fast as a mighty tree. All the mist coalesced into the bin full of the phial's essence, a wispy tornado with Fenrer at the center, giving no reaction to the chaos.

"Yuven—"

Yuven put a hand on her shoulder and his lips tightened to reveal sharp canines.

Adara glanced at the papers shuddering as they sorted themselves to write on unused ones, with Fenrer showing no sign of slowing down or returning to the living. None of the Storm Wardens reacted to the pulsating of the building. The power in asking a name. Two magickae, alone in the tourney grounds, and when asked a name, the world trembled with them. Adara held herself back from rushing to drag Fenrer out of the tornadic swirl of spirits.

Yuven swung his head upwards, then snapped, "Katau! Get out of the way! We've got our wraith!" He raised his hand. Ice gathered into the glyph of fog, and she leaned when a sharp icicle grew out of the air, where the cold expanded it as Yuven pointed it into the rafters.

Katau twisted around.

The glyph whipped the icicle through the air to strike the broken likeness of the coiled leviathan. It bounced off another waiting ice glyph to tear apart the frayed ropes. It whispered into a clump onto the ground, stuck with fungal bulbs of translucent stars. It fell silent and the maelstrom whisked into a near nothing around Fenrer, who stopped writing as papers fell around him. Adara knelt close to the ground to pick one of the papers to examine it. Marked in red ink, she frowned at the twisting glyphs and diagrams on it, crossed through the heart of each and splattered with familiar ooze. Yuven eyed it, then drew out his crescent blade when the ropes shuddered.

Twisted features grew out of the gaps and raised itself on a floated surface. Two claws extended through boney arms. Behind it, Fenrer rested his temple in his hand with a shake of his head.

It screamed.

Nails scratched on wood and tore through her skin all around her. "Great," Yuven hissed with a wince then rushed from her side to Fenrer's, who tried to haul himself out of the chair. Adara held onto her own neck when ropes crushed its chest and spine straight around its own.

Katau motioned for the Storm Wardens to block the doors, with some activating runic expanders. Golden shields grew out of the circuitry to block their exits. "Steady yourselves," Katau snapped. "It has nowhere to run!"

Its jaw unhinged with another guttural, broken howl to send another crack through the glass. Fenrer dug his fingers into his temple, and Adara abandoned her post to rejoin him and Yuven. Her footsteps faltered when the wraith turned to her with the drawing mist. It drifted around, hung with the ropes Yuven shattered.

"Adara," Yuven hissed as he supported Fenrer. "Don't move."

Pearlescent blood slipped out of its jaws.

Crimson dusks rolled onto a page of a twisted drawing.

It swirled closer to her, but Adara held back a scream when a runic barrier crushed it back to the centre Fenrer created.

Fenrer straightened himself out and left Yuven to reenter the spirit's matrix, catching the attention of the spirit who possessed him. "It was a corruptor," he answered as the spirit writhed. "Unable to free itself from its crimson bonds..." Fenrer lifted his head to the rafters, where the green galaxy swirled. "I understand now. There is no need for violence here."

Some of the Storm Wardens took a cautious step back when Fenrer came closer to it, and Yuven sheathed his blade with a strange twist to his lips. It loomed over Fenrer, its fingers feeling the air around him, but he showed no fear and no hesitation. "I apologise for the pain you've experienced in life," he spoke, his voice echoing through a mirror. "But your soul will be cleansed if you pass through the twilight. What you seek here no longer exists, the trail of Evyriaz, and the gateway of Ojain — both will see you home, and will excise the corruption of the dark inside you." Magick vibrated through the air, and the wraith drew closer to the ground until the ropes untangled and frayed.

It popped in her ears until Fenrer broke the vortex with a wave of his hand, and the ropes fell into a pile.

Inside the hall, the air lost its stale touch.

Adara sank to her knees from the folding pressure. Gods, what it wrote on the pages. She gathered another one in her hand, a scraggle of red lines and tortured twists. It was...

Yuven picked up another piece of paper. "I suspected as much when I first walked in here." He headed to Katau to hand the paper to him as Fenrer lowered his head at Yuven walking past him. "I could smell that particular stench in the air."

"Huh?" Adara lifted her head and found her knees turned into jelly.

Yuven's lips formed into a toothy grimace. "You start to recognize it when it's in your own senses, after all." He shoved the paper closer to Katau's chest. "Find any Aurus in the area who can perform a sending of the area in case Fenrer's passage doesn't hold. Since this was a corruptor, there might be a Derelict around — but we must head onward down Draken's descent."

Katau examined the paper, then folded it with a grim nod. "Thank you for your help, Captain Traye." He nodded to Fenrer, who brushed a circle on his temples. "I am sorry for the pressure you must've felt."

"It was nothing." Fenrer closed his eyes. "May we take some time to rest?"

Yuven looked at Fenrer as if he grew three heads.

"Of course. Our camp and any of our supplies are yours to use within reason," Katau said with a bow, bringing his own hands to cover his eyes. "Thank you for releasing the spirit of its burden."

But Fenrer no longer looked at Katau.

It was Yuven he studied, collapsed in a battlefield of his own blood.

Adara dropped the papers to the ground, and they shimmered back into black ink with only a single string of letters.

Help me.