He awoke to the Eidralith violating his vision.

[QUEST COMPLETED: Emotional Convergence Breach]

Reward: +300 EXP

Concordance Skill: Emotional Vector Observation

[QUEST ONGOING: Charm Offensive—Time Remaining: 53 minutes]

He rubbed his eyes, feeling the cool surface underneath him. Last he remembered, he'd been sucked into an aether rift alongside Severa. Now his body felt like someone had poured sand into all his joints and asked him to move anyway. His shoulder tensed with a gritty ache, and his spine protested even the thought of bending. For the moment, lying down was the most reasonable thing he'd done all day. He checked his status and sure enough, he wasn't doing too well.

[Status: Sore, Sluggish, Disoriented]

No signs of injury, at least.

He slowly checked what this new skill he'd just received did, and Eidralith spat out the result for him.

Concordance Skill: Emotional Vector Observation

Description: You can now perceive the emotional charge you release into your spells as measurable values. Each emotion is treated as a component in a multi-dimensional affective vector.

Example Output: Joy: 0.80 + Rage: 0.15 + Triumph: 0.05

Interpretation: A higher value means the emotion contributes more strongly to your spell's resonance

Okay? What does this do? It doesn't even have ranked progression. I guess if I'm supposed to channel joy into a spell and I know I could only channel 80% joy, I'd be able to better calibrate my channeling next time.

Before he could think further, something shrieked close to his ears. He swatted the system window aside on pure reflex.

A shadow dropped from above.

Fabrisse jolted as a Chasm Mantis large enough to be half his size lunged straight at him, mandibles splitting wide like a pair of hooked shears.

"What—" His hand shot to his satchel—

—but the monster never reached him.

A roaring fireball smashed into the mantis, engulfing it in a blooming sphere of golden flame. The impact blew it off its trajectory, hurling it against a stone outcrop where it curled and charred into black husk.

Fabrisse stared at the smoldering corpse before turning to the source of the fireball. A shadow stepped into the edge of the fireglow.

"Are you alright?" she asked tersely, and he realized it was Severa. She looked slightly disheveled, though in the Severa sense, which meant only that two strands of hair had escaped their immaculate arrangement and a smear of dust marked the edge of her sleeve.

He sat up, slowly and painfully. "How long have I been here?"

"I don't know. Possibly for as long as I've been here." She scanned the cavern around them. "I lost you on the way in."

"Did you try to find me?"

"I followed the bigger mantes," she said, already conjuring a corona of light around her palm. "They're attracted to human scent."

"You have human scent."

"I wear perfume."

"That's not how scent works."

"It is how scent works. The perfume masks me well enough," she said, brushing past him to check the corridor ahead. "Now get up. If that one has found you, more will follow."

Behind them, the crisped mantis carcass slumped off the wall and broke into brittle fragments.

The corridor ahead looked nothing like he imagined a dungeon should. In his head, dungeons were supposed to be damp stone hallways, maybe some glowing moss, maybe some ancient architecture he could at least point at and say, Oh yes, that structure makes sense.

This—whatever this was—did not make sense.

He felt like walking through a trapped storm. Wind roared through the enclosed passage, slamming against him hard enough that he had to lean into it just to stay upright. The walls had no seams or masonry; they looked grown, with smooth, spiraling ridges carved into a continuous helix like the interior of a giant seashell that had decided to reinvent itself as a wind tunnel.

"How is there wind inside a sealed structure?" he muttered, squinting as the air shoved grit against his eyes. "Where does it even go? Where does it come from?"

But Severa didn't answer. She was already ahead, controlling her sphere of light to cut clean lines through the turbulent corridor.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Fabrisse forced himself to follow, but his mind still lingered on the image of that half-human-sized mantis who had just tried to take a bite out of him three minutes after he woke up. Then he wondered if Liene was okay, but soon that thought was replaced once again by the giant mantis.

He clutched his satchel tighter, rounded the corner cautiously, and stumbled back with a strangled yelp, expecting another lunging Chasm Mantis—

—but there was nothing moving.

Only bodies.

Half a dozen mantises lay scattered across the floor and walls, all burnt to crisped charcoal husks. Some were still embedded in the stone, melted halfway into it from the force of impact. Others were split clean through, chitin flaked apart. The floor was littered with ash, blackened fragments and the smell of roasted beetles.

"Oh. They are already dead."

"Obviously," Severa said. "I cleared this section. Now we need to find your friend Ardefiamme. He's been sucked into the dungeon too, but I haven't detected any sign of him."

Fabrisse stepped gingerly over a cracked thorax before noticing the smaller Chasm Mantes skittering in clusters along the walls and ceiling. They neither attacked nor approached them, but instead veered sharply away as Severa stepped up, disappearing into cracks and crevices as if her very presence repelled them.

He muttered, "Aren't they supposed to be swarm creatures? Like, attack-first, think-never?"

"They are swarm creatures," Severa said without turning. "But these ones have been avoiding me."

"Avoiding you?"

"Actively," she clarified, sweeping her light ahead. The nearest cluster of tiny mantes recoiled from the glow as if it burned them. He watched one skitter to a ledge, glance toward Severa, then scramble the opposite direction.

"These creatures can think?"

"Mantises typically don't. Maybe they can feel fear, or maybe something's directing them. Like you said, this dungeon might have a mind of its own."

They walked in silence for another minute. Eventually, the spiraling walls widened into a small alcove, an indentation in the helix structure where the wind thinned to a tolerable breeze.

Severa stopped, lifted her hand, and tested the airflow with a small flame. It burned steadily.

"This section is stable," she announced. "We can rest here for a moment. I need some time to refill my Aetheric reserves."

Fabrisse nearly sagged with relief. Severa, meanwhile, sat with her usual irritating elegance and withdrew something from her satchel: the same silken cloth wrapping, pristine even in here. She set it on her lap and began unfolding it, but stopped as she noticed him staring.

Fabrisse watched her hands. He didn't mean to. His eyes just drifted.

And, just like last time, a thought he should've kept inside bubbled up. Why does she carry that thing everywhere?

Last time she'd said it was a bag of blood. Then she asked if she could suck his neck.

He still wasn't fully convinced she wasn't joking.

" . . . What now," she said flatly.

Fabrisse winced but pressed on. "I'm just . . . wondering what that is."

Her eyes narrowed the tiniest amount. Then, with lethal composure, she said, "It's my emergency ration of powdered arrogance. I consume a measured dose when I feel my standards slipping to match the people around me." Then she turned her back to him and unfolded the wrapping away from his prying eyes. "Now if you'll excuse me."

She was absolutely doing this on purpose. And yet he still wasn't entirely sure she was joking.

"Kestovar," she said, still with her back against his. "About how I knew about your Aetherrealm earlier . . . I have something to discuss with you," she stopped for a second, bringing the cloth to her mouth. Now he was sure it was some kind of consumable. "Do you recall the stone you examined for me, the one you said possessed Legendary properties?"

"Yes," he said.

"I must thank you for your assessment, albeit belated, if you'd forgive me." She apologized to him. She had just apologized to him! Albeit expressed out of pure courtesy, the phrasing sounded so alien to his ear that he considered that he might need a minute to decode whether it carried actual contrition, social decorum, or some hidden agenda entirely.

"It has," she continued, "granted me the ability to assess the capabilities of others, their strength, amongst other things. Should you possess some clandestine method for your . . . extreme carrying capacity aside from the Aetherrealm, rest assured I shall remain unaware of it. You need not concern yourself. All I am aware of is that you appear remarkably adept at the task."

Although she used way too much posh language, she didn't seem to be lying. Her tone was calm, precise, the sort of measured cadence that carried authority rather than deceit. And truth be told, her finding out about the Aetherrealm would have been impossible had she not had some type of unexpected ability like what she'd just told him about. Yet, that only made him more suspicious.

People like Severa, he thought, were only honest when they expected honesty in return.

And that was the part that bothered him.

Because if she really did gain an ability that let her 'assess capabilities,' then . . .

. . . did she have a system too?

She'd read his Aetherrealm. She'd known he had one. She'd made inferences he wasn't sure even he could've made. But Eidralith had warned him before.

It had explicitly flagged a conflict when he'd been near that knight. Yet here, with Severa practically shoulder-to-shoulder with him, Eidralith was silent.

The moment she wrapped whatever she'd been consuming back inside her cloth, she asked, "Kestovar, how much do you actually know?"

"About what?"

"The Voidtouched."

". . . Not much."

Severa turned and patted the floor next to her. "Come sit here. At least there's a wall to rest your back on."

So he did.

"Do you wish to know more?" she asked.

His brain, still sluggish from the rift and the Eidralith's interference, clamped down on the one question that felt safe. "What do you get out of this?"

The composure she wore cracked just enough. "Don't speak to me that way. There's nothing I could gain from you, Kestovar."

"You tried to take the Eidralith away from me," he reminded her. He didn't feel angry over it anymore, but it was still an undeniable truth.

"I asked for your full consent the first time," she countered immediately, "and I saved you from losing it to someone who actually intended to murder you."

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. She had him there.

Severa exhaled, the frustration so refined it might as well have been perfumed. "I know you don't have the best opinion of me," she said, "but do try to be impartial."

He didn't answer.

She drew a slow breath. "The Voidtouched wants to eliminate all artifact binders, Kestovar."

A cold ripple ran straight down his spine. He forced himself not to flinch.

"That," she continued, "makes us allies. And if we are to be allies, I wish to be on good terms."

He stared at her, and for the first time since this entire awful day began, he wasn't sure what emotion to look for in her face.

"I will tell you what I know," she said. "Believe me however you will. But I will say this now—and without shame." Her eyes, red and glowing, drilled into him. "Unlike you, I have never attempted to misguide you with lies."

When have I ever lied to you though . . .

"Tell me then," he said.

She frowned. "I will, but please spare me the attitude."

He was about to argue that he didn't have 'the attitude', but he figured that'd just spark another squabble, so he stayed silent.

Then she started explaining.

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