Ondun was no miner, yet he slammed a pickaxe into a mass of rubble again and again. All around him, allies he'd found in his travels were doing the same.

  When some of the stone shifted, he put down the pick and began to shift the stone with a hand clad in a purplish metal gauntlet. More and more stone began to loosen, so he shifted it out of the way as carefully as possible.

  Eventually, the light of the animatic lanterns was cast into a new room. There was a glint of some unknown metal. Ondun smiled at this; his legendary luck, or perhaps the All-Mother Herself, had come through for him yet again.

  "I've found a chamber," he called out, his rich tenor voice bringing all the other excavation and searching to a sudden halt. "I'm going to scout it." Without waiting for any of his fellows to join him, he stepped ahead. In all fairness to them, Ondun was by far the strongest warrior in the area, if not the continent.

  Besides, his other allies, his treasured friends, were, with one exception, lying comatose in the adventurer's city of Portalan, in the Knowing Circle's "hidden" base. For their sake, he thought, I've got to follow this lead.

  Ondun carefully inspected the room, from the edges inward. Years of being an adventurer had taught many harsh lessons about the value of finding traps. In a flash of indigo, his purple armor was replaced with black cloth, some blackened leather, and anodized chainmail. With cloth-clad tabi, he inspected the large room for about two minutes before coming to the educated conclusion that it was safe for his less combat-oriented teammates to come in.

  "It's safe!" he called.

  A number of shapes filtered into the room. Two were wearing odd masks that Ondun had become very familiar with only weeks into his adventuring career—these were masks that allowed a person to view and interpret the invisible currents of the world's anima, the force that was the basis of all magic, and more modern animatic technologies. Each person's dress, however, was the same, regardless of what species they hailed from. A massive Garlonic man strode in first, only for his much smaller Talden companion to bump into his shin from the rear.

  "Fool of a Garlon, do you even know what we're looking for?" the small figure asked, even as he was dusting himself off.

  The tall man, his fellow engineer, just shrugged. "I mean...this is at the base of the Allemandian Tower and hasn't been disturbed since the Third Age. Everything here is an unknown."

  One of the masked humans, his greying hair shining in the faint light, grinned and lifted his mask. "Found something...right there."

  Ondun followed his hand to what looked like a small metal device on the ground on some kind of plinth. It wasn't lying on it neatly; it looked like someone had dropped it while doing something else. Given Ondun's previous adventures into Allemandian ruins, chances are good it was dropped when the massive earthquake that destroyed their super-advanced empire forced its subjects to fend for themselves.

  So it was that Ondun, still embodying the stealthy grace of those Far Eastern spies and assassins, the shinobi, carefully stepped forward, weaving his hands into the mystical symbols known as mudra while drawing on the ambient anima and carefully attuning it to each seal. His anima-shaping done, he slammed a hand into the stone floor of the underground bunker, or lab, or whatever it used to be, which created a gust of wind that rotated about the odd device and himself with the engineers, scholars, and apprentice adventurers who were keeping guard outside.

  When dealing with Allemandian technology, there was a well-known rule: Expect the unexpected. So it was, he called out to his fellows. "I'm going to try to interact with it. If anything happens, get word to Aenora. Got it?"

  The grey-haired human, master engineer Kelse Skyward, owner of Skyward Industries, nodded, slipped the mask back over his face, and fiddled with some animatic devices on his belt. "Alright, I'm recording. Go on...Hero."

  With a grin at his friend, he bent down and poked the device. It lay dormant, so he picked it up and imbued a little bit of anima into the device.

  "Huh...yep, that waveform looks familiar. It's not quite one-to-one with the signature about the others, but it's close enough that I'm sure Aenora can do something with it."

  Ondun turned back and stopped filtering anima into the ancient device. He had a huge grin and felt a flicker of hope for his comatose friends. Even as he was about to dismiss the wind-based jutsu, as Far Eastern magical arts were named, the big engineer chimed in.

  "Hey, didn't you stop channeling anima into it? Also, why's the platform lit up?"

  Ondun turned back to see the familiar straight-and-angled glowing lines of active Allemandian tech at his feet, signifying an active device that was doing something. Ondun felt a familiar pressure, just like every time that he heard the mystery sorcerer's voice that presaged one of his friends falling comatose...but this time there was no voice.

  "Hey Ondun! Hey! Quick, someone gr-"

  The large Garlon held his human boss. "Boss, no, that's...a portal?"

  The Talden engineer began to say something, but Ondun couldn't hear it. It wasn't so much that he fell or was pulled by anything. He was simply more distant without anything physically moving.

  Then, he was no longer below the great tower that had once been the capitol and symbol of one of his world's greatest empires. Ondun didn't remember closing his eyes, but he opened them in a lush forest, sunlight filtering through the trees.

  Hmmm...this is definitely not the Goldtear Highlands, he thought. After all, there were none of the massive crystals that grew over the lands near the Allemandian Tower. He stood up, dusting off his dirt-besmirched leggings, but on his face was a grin.

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  Ondun was one step closer to finding his friends, and it was shaping up to be an adventure...just like the good old days.

  Ondun had been walking for a few hours now. At first, while embodying the arts of the shinobi, he'd stuck to the shadows, as he was in an unfamiliar place. His friend, Suzumi, the person who had gifted him the Memory Gem that had formed the basis of his forays into the shinobi arts, had once taught him to always regard unfamiliar lands as hostile by default.

  However, there wasn't anything hostile at all. Every once in a while, Ondun saw bushes rustle or a flash of motion, but these always seemed to be something fleeing him. Nothing he saw matched his knowledge of any monsters he was familiar with, though.

  In one case he saw a massive caterpillar-like creature with an odd gold and blue pattern across its body that had chirped something that sounded a lot like "Forepillar!" before dashing into the brush with deceptive speed. However, all the caterpillar-like monsters he was familiar with tended to either ignore the civilized races altogether and just keep eating plant matter until they began to metamorphose into the more beautiful Morpho-type monsters. The cocoons were always on adventurers' radars, as Morpho Silk was not only sought after by tailors for its beauty but also could be enchanted to create powerful gambesons or mage armor.

  In another case, he found two grey, wolf-like creatures facing off. To Ondun's trained eye, the two monsters were having a territorial dispute. Each one was only a little bigger than a normal dog, but their standoff came to a sudden halt as he drew his twin shouken, the paired shortswords favored by shinobi. The two monsters—they were definitely monsters; one had some odd dark energy dripping from its fangs—halted, and with a yelp and a cry like "Gloomcub!" turned their ears back and began backing away slowly. This caught Ondun's attention because normally monsters that caught sight of a human tended to attack. As a rule, monsters were stronger than a baseline human but not as intelligent.

  For Draconians like Ondun, even if his race was slightly physically stronger than a human, it was usually a good idea to take a monster's presence seriously. Yet, Ondun was able to walk to within five paces of the young wolf-like monsters and knelt. They only kept backing away before running in different directions with more yelps and oddly language-like cries.

  So it was that the third time Ondun ran into an odd monster, he stopped in his tracks and stood his ground. As the monster turned to see who the interloper was, the adventurer saw a much, much more familiar bloodlust in the creature's eyes.

  The creature that turned to face Ondun was about as tall as a Garlon and a green to match the leaves of the forest above and about it. Its arms ended in two long, straight blades that were an unusually close match for his own shouken; only these were made of carapace with a bright white sheen to them and were about as long as Ondun's arms. The monster was insectoid, beyond this, a lot like the mantises he was familiar with, only this one had two wings that looked like leaves on its back that flittered as if warming up.

  The ninjetti came into Ondun's hands immediately, and he assumed a fighting stance.

  The insect looked at him appraisingly, then crinkled its eyes in what passed for a nearly human smile.

  "Yeziblade!" it cried. While Ondun couldn't quite call it a challenge, it pulled at a power he had held secret for years, and he understood it to be one. Monsters don't use language...so why did the Wayfarer's Brand try to translate that growl for me?

  The Yeziblade dashed forward with a burst of superhuman speed, slamming into Ondun and knocking him into the shadow of a tree...where he promptly disappeared. The large monster looked around confused. "Yeziblade?" for a moment until a rain of four knives slammed into the ground around it and exploded.

  Ondun dove from the canopy of this forest, his shouken diving into the chitin that encased the large monster as it cried out in pain. With a backflip, he avoided the small fire he had set and retreated into the shadows of another tree.

  The monster flung one bladed arm out and clipped some of the cloth but otherwise did nothing to the adventurer. It got back to its feet, carefully avoiding the flames, and lifted off into the air, the downdraft causing the flames to grow a little bigger. A column of black smoke was wafting into the daytime skies as the Yeziblade carefully surveyed the shadows.

  Even as Ondun leapt from a tree, the monster shifted, and with the deceptively solid upper arms attached to those brilliant white chitin blades, clotheslined the adventurer. In a burst of dirt and leaves, he thudded to the ground but then curled into a roll to avoid the blade that plunged for him. With a small leap, he returned to his fighting stance a few feet away from the monster.

  "Huh. I've never seen a monster do that before. Just what the hell are you?" he asked.

  "Yeziblade!" it shouted in return. It flourished its blades, then tried mirroring his fighting stance. This caught Ondun off-guard; monsters, as everyone knew, were just anima-empowered animals. Sometimes they were the distant descendants of escaped Allemandian science projects that had been fruitful and multiplied.

  Monsters were not intelligent. Yet, here Ondun was, fighting with one that didn't just blindly rush and attack but was cognizant of environmental hazards, could handle ambushes from the shadows, and was even attempting to, in its own limited way, communicate.

  Ondun's eyes narrowed as he and the creature circled each other. He stopped, and the monster stopped too. He grinned.

  "You're a cut above the average monster. I think I'll have to take you seriously."

  Ondun's hand reached for his chest, where he wore a necklace. This necklace was hidden under his clothes but had three gems on it. By memory he reached for the first gem, the one that he had received from his first teacher only a few days after meeting the Knowing Circle.

  With a flash of deep blue, the light armor was replaced with a purple plate over a silk-and-leather bodyglove. On his pauldrons were crests like a dragon's wings, and his helmet had a crest like a dragon's head. All of this was inlaid with a silver filigree, and as he pulled a massive lance from his back and brought it into a fighting stance, an aura like blue flames flickered about Ondun.

  "A warrior's death for you it is, then." Even as he gathered for a mighty leap, there were two soft hisses, followed by two soft impacts. One hit the Yeziblade, who swayed, then fell. The other hit Ondun.

  Ondun was already preparing for a leap, though. He unleashed it and launched through the canopy, only to take a second dart in the joints between one shoulder.

  Even as the blue-uniformed human who fired it—he had some sort of odd, manatrigger-like weapon aimed at him the entire time—traced his ascent, he said something in an odd language. As usual, however, Ondun's hidden gift translated it perfectly, in real time.

  "What the hell, I thought he was a human! He looks like a Mon himself? He also just took a second dart but still hasn't gone down! I need backup!"

  He pulled at his belt and pulled off a small capsule that he pressed a button on. A flash of energy led to a bright yellow avian monster materializing above him, rapidly flapping its wings, as it cried out a mighty, "Leveagle!"

  The man pointed at him. "Wingsly, perp there, he has a massive leap. Whatever he is, he can fight a Yeziblade with knives of all things. Incapacitate him; we need to take him in!"

  Ondun had no intention of allowing himself to be taken in, of course. There were just two problems. First, changing his target in midair was very difficult and anima-intensive.

  Second, the sleeping potions on those darts were beginning to take effect. Even as he reached his apogee, he felt the feathers of Wingsly, the Leveagle, slam into him.

  Then, the world went black.