If I was grateful for anything I had learned during my time at Lun, it was for learning how to make werelights.

That had not happened at Lun exactly, but I would have never gone to Silkcradle if I had not become a moon.

When I had first been taken through a painting by the guard that I was hopefully leaving behind, I had not known how to even begin to cast away the darkness.

The moment after I closed the painting of the medery behind me, I formed my little azure light almost without having to think about it.

My blue flooded the narrow passageway and brought the memory of the first time I had been inside Lun's walls.

It had both been my first time inside the school and my first time inside the inside, but it did not feel that much different than it did following after my familiar.

Alexei wasn't a cat, my ears hadn't been pierced and my nails had not been painted, but very little had actually changed.

I was still forced to be Ire.

I still had The Mother's punishments to fear.

Any dream of being truly free was still just that.

What was different from the first time, was that I was not terrified of where I was being led.

Sam had come to me in one of the worst moments I could remember having, and following along behind him was enough to make me feel not quite so powerless.

I tried to keep some awareness of where we were relative to where we had entered in the inner halls from, but there were so many turns, narrow staircases, and long sections that doubled back the way we had just come that I gave up fairly quickly.

The further down we went, if we were truly going down, the colder it became. That cutting feeling that sliced through my cloak and uniform dress drove me to speak just after we left yet another set of stairs.

"Whe-" I started, trying to ask my familiar where we were going in a hushed whisper.

Before I could finish the first word of my question, he whirled around and smacked one of his too big paws against my ankle.

I covered my mouth with my hand to stop from yelping.

The blood that wet the tips of my fingers when I touched where I had been struck told me that Sam had used his claws. Knowing that he usually avoided using his claws when he thought I deserved to be hit told me that he needed me to stay quiet.

Or, maybe it was that I needed to be quiet if I wanted to stop bleeding any time soon. Either way, I closed my mouth and kept it that way.

Further and further we went into the azure tinted halls, Sam silently leading and myself silently following. The blood on my ankle had become a needling cold and I began to wonder if my desire to wear my sandals had been such a good idea after all.

By the time that we came to a dead end and stopped, it was a wonder that my teeth had not begun to chatter. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could risk being clawed again, Sam vanished from the blue glow of my werelight.

I reached out towards the wall he had walked through and found that it was as solid as either of the others beside me.

Am I the only thing that can't walk through walls in this place? I thought to myself as I opened my mouth to call out for my familiar.

Sam's too big paw appeared from the wall, his one fleshless claw gleaming in my light, and snatched the hem of my dress forward.

I went with it.

My eyes clamped shut and my whole body tensed. I had hit walls before, and I had hoped very much that I never would again, but my familiar had ruined that hope.

My brow did not break against the dusty stone. My cheek was not scraped against it and the impact did not make me bite my lip or tongue. I went right through the wall and landed roughly on my hands and knees.

Broken stone and mounds of dust were spread out across the dirty ground. The inner halls had been cold before, but once I crawled forward and watched the wall that I had been snatched through reform behind me, it was fully freezing.

I would have preferred taking a bath in The River Eae than to spend another second on the frigid ground.

Throwing myself up like I had actually fallen into the bitter deeps, I did not realize how low the top of the space was until I knocked the top of my head against it.

"Mmhhh." I growled in pain, one hand pressed against the sore spot on my scalp and the other clamped over my mouth.

Sam sat down in front of me. "You may speak, not even your ghost can hear you this far below the surface."

I rolled my eyes and let out a ragged exhale. "What is that? What are we doing? Where are we going?"

"A glamor. Although, it is orders more powerful than the black you darken your hair with. It is able to impress the feeling of being solid upon those who encounter it," Sam began as his eyes narrowed into a scowl. "But, in all this time that I have been speaking to you, you have heard nothing?"

My hand wandered back to the wall that I had thought I would smash against and found what my familiar said to be true. It felt real, but if I kept pushing my hand against it, I learned that the feeling was all there was.

"You haven't said anything? You hurt me for saying something." I said, not understanding what he meant.

His deep voice rumbled and echoed in the tunnel, and it was a tunnel because there was very little around us but hard packed dirt and the rocks that jutted out of it.

"Not in the present, child. In these weeks that I have been absent, you have not heard my telling of the way out, the crystal, or the study? Why did I lower myself to arguing with your mortal if you were not intent on growing our bond?" Sam growled, looking like he was going to hurt far more than my ankle in his obvious frustration.

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It was cold, dirty, and I had never enjoyed him referring to Anna with the same respect he would give my earring or the little vial that hung around my neck.

"I have no idea what you are talking about, and you argued with Anna because we were supposed to be training together. But, but, I have barely seen you," I lowered my voice to match his rumbling tone. "In these weeks. Have I complained? No. Have I listened to Anna when she said I should force you to come back? No. I have been waiting patiently because you have had better things to do. If I were you, I would remember that before you begin to question me again, my familiar."

For a long moment, all he did was glare back at me, but then he sighed and gave a slow nod. "Yes, My Lady. All I meant was that the failure does not originate with me. I can sense you from what seems to be impossible distances and have been attempting to speak into your mind as part of our training."

"Oh," I said and felt bad for getting annoyed at him so quickly. "So, I'm the problem?"

He stood, stretched, and spoke simply. "Yes. There is something in your mind that is preventing you from being open to my presence."

I hugged my knees to my chest and decided to stay inside that tunnel until I rotted into it. The last thing I had needed to hear was that something was so wrong with my head that my familiar could not even do what familiars were supposed to.

Sam did not let me rot.

"You are not well. Every moment that you are angered, saddened, or in pain, I feel as if it were me." The big blue cat growled as he threw himself against my legs.

With a painful combination of his teeth, claws, and bulk, he forced me up into a crouch.

"Follow. We are nearly there." He said and started walking quickly enough that I knew he expected me to listen to him.

I did.

Even if being commanded by my own familiar rubbed me the wrong way, the only thing that would be worse was if I was alone in the frozen tunnel.

Long after my legs had begun to burn and my hair was so full of dirt that I likely did not need my mask of ire to hide my red, the tunnel opened up enough for me to stand fully again.

On either side of us in the small open place we had come to, there were what looked like the mouth of other tunnels that had long since collapsed.

In front of us, however, was an old wooden door. Bright white light snuck through the cracks and worn places that built it, and terrible cold leaked through it like the frigid sigh of some great beast.

"Unlike you or your mortal, I have not forgotten the circumstances that have allowed you to be in this place. You are not a student, you are a prisoner, no matter how long they let your leash become." Sam growled as he stood before the door.

He was right, it hurt to hear from someone else, but he was right.

"You are unwell. You wish to be rid of the arrogant child known as Spring Tana, and even more so, you wish to become the apprentice of the crippled knight," Sam continued, streams of displaced dirt running off of the door as it began to open. "But the reality of your confinement prevents those wants from being made real."

Blinding light forced me to cover my eyes with my hands. I could not see, but Sam came around behind me and pushed me forward by ramming his big blue body into the back of my legs.

"This first discovery I offer you, My Lady," He growled as the air around me changed. "Is a way out."

Cold cut through my clothes so easily that I might as well have been wearing nothing at all.

Despite my attempts to open my eyes and see where I had been led to, all there was for me to see was a too bright white.

Eventually, that white proved to be the seemingly endless amount of snow that lay behind the cave I had stepped into. Once I understood that, all the other colors around me began to make sense.

The grey of the icy stone that formed the cave walls, the glowing blue crystals that looked identical to the ones in Radomir's pass, the mass of ashy fur that rose up at the mouth of the cave.

A horrible roar came from the creature.

It shook me down to my bones and instinct sent me cowering down to the ground as it took a ground shaking step towards me.

Claws that were each long as my hands, mounds of muscle that stood firm underneath its fur, and a gaping maw that could bite me in half with one go, Sam had brought me face to face with a monster.

"What is that?" I cried as I tried and failed to throw myself back towards the door.

"It is referred to as a phantom bear by your precepts. It will not harm you while I am here," Sam said simply as he placed himself in front of me and stared down the phantom bear. "Metus."

The last word my familiar spoke sounded strange in my ears. It doubled over itself and carried enough weight that I could feel the power within it weighing down in my mind.

The phantom bear must have felt much the same thing.

Just like it had made me do the moment before, Sam's strange word forced it down into a terrified crouch.

My big blue cat of a familiar took a single step towards the monster.

With a panicked yelp, it turned on its massive paws and tore out of the cave like a frightened rabbit.

I did not know how to feel. Proud? Impressed? Scared?

Phantom bears were so dangerous that they gave Alexei concern.

Sam had sacred it away.

"Have I ever told you-" A violent shiver ran through me and I had to start again. "-Have I ever told you that I am glad we are friends? You're terrifying. What did you do to it?"

Sam continued out of the cave of blue crystals as he answered. "I reminded it of its position on the hierarchy of this mountain while I am here."

"How? You've done that before, the magic word thing, with Auden, right?" I asked as I followed after him. He had scared the bear away, but the bear had scared me first, so I was not eager to be left alone quite so soon.

From jutting crystal to jutting crystal, Sam hoped from jagged top to jagged top with little to no effort.

Between the cold and uneven ground, he reached the mouth of the cave far before I did.

"I do not know. It is from before. In some small way, it has deepened my understanding for you. Having such immense power without an understanding of how to use it can be frustrating." He growled back at me.

I almost fell more times than I could count, and by the time I reached him my feet had numbed almost completely, but I did eventually manage to catch up to him.

A slope so dramatic that it might as well have been a straight drop came up to meet me all too quickly. Perfect white snow spread out in every direction and was only disturbed by the tracks of the fled bear, and a small town in the distance.

"You said this was a way out?" I asked through my chattering teeth as I huddled down and tried to disappear inside my too thin cloak.

Sam growled in agreement. "Yes. You are unwell, and if that continues, we should leave this place."

I stayed silent and thought about what that meant.

"From that settlement, following The River Eae to the coast is a small matter," Sam continued. "Once we are there, a port and gateway both offer means of escape."

I reached over and picked him up like I would any other cat.

"Unhand me!" He growled as his claws pierced through the back of my cloak and cut into my skin.

I didn't.

"Thank you." I said through the tears that spilled over my cheeks and into his mottled blue fur.

It would have hurt less if I had fought the phantom bear, but the pain was worth it.

I was not powerless, not as long as I had Sam.

With my familiars help, I could leave Lun if I truly wished to.

I just had to jump off a cliff to do it.

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