I was wrenched from my thoughts by the duke asking how it was I came to be here. I'd explained, in a rough outline at least, my journey; how I'd been caught by the Crimson Lions in Colchet, how I'd journeyed with Francis, Sven, Rank, and Shavkat into the Dragon-Spines, how we'd been set upon in a barbarian raid, the screams in the night, the blood splashing everywhere, the terror.

  I'd done my best to channel the experiences I'd witnessed of the townsfolk in the Riverlands. I'd tried to imagine how terrifying it must be for someone with very little power to stand up for themselves. It wasn’t hard to do in the presence of the duke, honestly.

  He felt like Vera did during our spars – hard edges that would cut me if I got too close. Where she made the effort to turn off whatever threat she put out into the world most of the time, I picked up no such courtesy from the duke, and felt myself constantly walking a knife-edge around him. A prickling reminder that death lurked nearby.

  He'd asked at one point how I'd got to Colchet to begin with, but luckily, he was easily distracted. I knew there would be questions, but I hoped that I could avoid them for now. I only needed to distract them for a day or two, after all.

  We soon arrived at our destination, and I got the sense we were no more than four or five miles from the castle but deep underground, as all my worst adventures tended to be.

  The earthen tunnel had given way to what was clearly a more reinforced structure. Thick wooden slats bracketed the sides and roof, and mage lights hung at regular intervals to light the way. It then ended abruptly, and without any time to prepare, I stood at the top of a quarry, an enormous cavern opening out where the ceiling continued further on, but the floor dropped away beneath.

  This open space must have been hundreds of metres wide and long at the least, and it extended into a dark void so that I had no real idea of its true scale. As I looked down, I saw what appeared to be slabs of symmetrical rectangular rock, clearly cut by humans with intention. They were stacked, one on top of the other, reaching towards us such that I felt I was standing at the top of a pyramid of some sort.

  Perhaps a quarry was a better term. Wooden scaffolding descended from my position at the roof of the cavern, all the way down to the base some three or four hundred metres below. The duke wasted no time in descending, Estan following after him, seemingly unconcerned with the idea of me running. To be fair, I doubted I would get far before he caught up, even were I to break the amulet’s effects and use my full speed.

  I followed them, criss-crossing my way down the wooden planks scaling the side of the pyramid structure, and it was only once I was close enough to the rock to touch that I realised it was obsidian. Black glass, formed of volcanic struggle deep in the heart of the earth, spilling to the surface only after millennia of battle. I wasn’t even aware that it could be formed in such large shapes before, but I suppose that was likely the least surprising thing about these ruins.

  It wasn’t just a magnificent structure of volcanic glass though. There was something else here, too.

  I didn't know how I knew, but there was a certainty deep within my bones that something was below me, like a predator lying in wait. That feeling you have when in deep water, as if a shark could be below you at any moment. You get it at night in the forests, too; that desire to just look over your shoulder. Once you do though, even if you see nothing, you've confirmed its presence because you've acted on that fear, and now it stays with you and that compulsive need to check over your shoulder becomes an compulsive need to get away from whatever is stalking you.

  That was the feeling I had in that moment; that I needed to leave. That there was something below waiting for me, something hungry, and I needed to get out.

  I shivered in fear and then felt a snarling heat within my soul in response.

  “You feel it, boy?” The duke asked.

  His words helped ground me, and I realised the true danger here was not from the ruin. I tried desperately to contain the urge to let my path-bound skill roar its defiance at whatever aura was trying to convince me to leave. The first of many traps and defensive mechanisms that this ruin possessed, no doubt.

  “The Ashkanians were a remarkably advanced civilization, and this is one of their legacies. Stable aura manipulation by inanimate objects that persists long after such magic should normally fade. Impressive, is it not?” He asked again.

  I jerked a nod, still fighting my own instincts. As well as the sinking feeling of dread from the ruin, I struggled against my own body. I felt my heart starting to pound within my chest, beating faster, stronger, with an urgency as if it could protect me from whatever this feeling was.

  I fought back desperately, willing my body not to turn and run, and also equally willing my soul not to reach for the mana that even now swirled within my core. Activating End Of The Hunt would be a mistake, for while it was not necessarily the most powerful skill, the defiant nature of it would definitely clash with the image I was trying to put forward.

  I then felt a heavy blanket settle around me, spiritual rather than real. Nevertheless, it weighed me down slowly, a subtle pressure around my shoulders demanding subservience, but at the same time promising that so long as I was to serve, I would be protected.

  The duke wandered over, seeming to observe me for a time. “This vault is warning us away,” he remarked, as if out for a stroll in a field beneath a pleasant sky rather than miles underground in an ancient and decidedly ominous ruin. “Well, God-Touched; now is the time for you to prove your utility. Come.”

  I followed him as he strode straight-backed into the darkness. “We have managed to isolate the specific sequence that we believe to be causing this aura, and it would make things easier if you were able to silence it.”

  I nodded, though didn’t make any promises, a more interesting question occurring to me that I couldn’t help but ask first. “Forgive my ignorance, but is Ashkanian not a commonly spoken language in some academic circles?”

  He answered as we walked for a few hundred meters further into the cavern. I saw the evidence of excavation all around. Pickaxes and slabs of obsidian moved about haphazardly. Tools used for more careful and precise work; small handheld drills, delicate brushes and chisels, mage-lights and candles placed at areas of particular interest.

  “Ashkanian was not a single language, though they made great strides in political and cultural centralisation. I am given to understand that there are many dialects and sub-languages, especially so for the written word, within Ashkanian history. Unsurprising, given their longevity – it would be strange for two cultures separated by nearly a thousand years to be too similar, no matter their contiguity…or so I am led to believe by what little I’ve read on the subject.

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  “Regardless, most who do speak the ancient tongue speak High Ashkanian, supposedly from the 2nd Era at the height of their civilisation. This vault is not High Ashkanian, at any rate.”

  We came to a little cluttering of lights near a desk, filled with scrawling diagrams and images that reminded me somewhat of some of the scrawls I had seen Nathlan peruse on occasion. I did not have the theoretical and magical knowledge to understand anything hidden within them, but it was clear that this was the site of scholarly inquest.

  Duke Ryonic gestured broadly to a single massive slab, two meters wide and roughly a meter high.

  “Here,” he said imperiously. “We believe this holds the details. Can you read it?”

  “I’ll need some light,” I said, as I gazed at the strange patterns woven within the obsidian block. They were like charcoal lines on a black surface – just barely visible if you strained, but at a quick glance appeared to be nothing more than a trick of the light.

  “I have already sent word to Varice – she will join us momentarily,” was the only reply I received, and so I spent my time squinting in the dim light, a blank book in my lap in which I tried my best to note down the swirling patterns.

  Without seeing the whole thing, I couldn’t decipher it, but I could likely make a passable drawing of it over time and then read from that. Perhaps. The duke loomed behind me, a stalwart weight holding back the darkness of the ruin, but also a blade poised above my neck at the same time. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t the most pleasant working environment.

  Varice arrived soon though, and that is where my real troubles began. She was an unexceptional woman in many ways – average height, somewhat frumpy build and features that wouldn’t look out of place in a half-silver mine or servings drinks at an inn. Hey eyes were somewhat dramatic though, containing a faint hint to purple light.

  She wasted no time with introductions, instead waving a hand before the obsidian stone, which lit as if from within with a deep purple. The light bubbled up from the centre until it shone through the stone, highlighting the swooping patterns carved within the glass itself.

  I took a step back, my eyebrows climbing up my forehead, but I began to read aloud before the duke even turned toward me. The words were violent, filled with glottal stops and choking sounds rather than the lilting, musical language I had expected from an ancient, advanced civilisation.

  At least, that is what the faces of Varice, Duke Ryonic, and Estan seemed to say when I turned to them. We stared at one another for a few moments before Estan muttered in exasperation.

  “Well!? What does that mean?” he asked.

  I blinked a few times, before realising that I had been speaking Ashkanian rather than Escriban – the most common language in the Sunsets. The block I’d read aloud described a surprisingly simple mechanism for disabling the aura that permeated this primeval ruin. It was actually a shockingly simple design, and I suspected that it was only a defence mechanism in that it may warn off wild creatures and perhaps other sapients that were not Ashkanian from attempting to access the vault.

  Any who could read Ashkanian would be fine, since the block described in shockingly simple terms how to deactivate the aura. In such simple terms, in fact, that I suspected accessing the rest of the ruin and disabling any traps would be a trivial thing to do. Too easy, too quick.

  I thought fast.

  “Oh. Yeah, so it roughly translates to ‘find the repeating pattern of 3’. Not entirely sure what that means, but I would guess we have to look around and find-”

  “He’s lying.”

  Varice’s sharp voice cut across my rambling, and I turned to her in surprise, trying to look as innocent and confused as possible. She just turned to the duke.

  “He’s lying,” she reiterated, and I felt the icy glare of the duke turn my way.

  “Now boy,” he said as he took a step towards me, and I found myself unconsciously backing away in time with his movement. “Why would you be lying?”

  “I don’t…I mean, I’m not-why would you-” I stuttered as I looked frantically towards the unremarkable form of Varice as she stood with a hip cocked to one side and her brow scrunched in concentration. I then noticed the raven perched on her shoulder, looking at me from the side of its little head with a beady intensity.

  It clacked its beak suddenly, the sound cracking across the dark cavern and nearly making me flinch. “Lies!” it croaked, and I did flinch then, the action not entirely voluntary.

  “Sir,” I said as the duke continued to walk me down. “I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s what it says, I swear! Perhaps we just need to search the nearby slabs for the right pattern, and we can unlock…”

  But the duke wasn’t listening to me any long. He strode towards me leisurely, but there was no distance between him and the world any longer. A gleam had come into his eye, as if the world was suddenly, for a single moment at least, now more interesting and worthy of his full notice. I felt the aura around my shoulders pull away, the ruin’s dread intent taking its place and trying to strike fear into my heart.

  And then it was gone again, and the weighted blanket of the duke’s own intent was back, but this time it was crushing. Suffocating. A column of knives pressing into my back, forcing me down even as it cut through my skin, my muscles, my bones and organs.

  “You’ve been lying to me, in my own hall?” he asked calmly, though I could feel something bubbling under the surface. “Who are you, stranger? One of The Sultan’s men perhaps?”

  He caught my eyes darting around between the three of them and smiled a cold smile. “Oh no, there will be no escape now. You will answer my questions, and only once I am satisfied will you breathe once more.”

  And so saying, the pressure redoubled, and my lungs were suddenly empty. I gasped, but the duke paid no mind. “Are you even God-Touched? What was that language you spoke? Why are you here, boy?”

  I struggled to fight off the impending panic of being unable to breathe – even with my lowered attributes, my endurance was such that I could last far longer than a few beaths without air. I couldn’t speak though, since I had no air in my lungs to propel the words from my throat. He realised this after a moment, and I felt the pressure slacken, allowing me to raise my head from the pitiful crouch I’d been in.

  I saw Estan smirking from where he stood a few steps behind his father. “I am God-Touched, I swear it! And that was Ashkanian, as far as I can tell, at least.”

  He looked over to Varice, who was nodding along, her raven on her shoulder cocking its head this way and that as it examined me, though it stayed blessedly silent this time. I realised belatedly that it too had a faint purple hue. A mana construct then, or some sort of familiar. I was mostly ignorant of that school of magic and how it worked in conjunction with the system, though I knew it was much like ward-craft in that it had existed before the system and synergised with it.

  Still, whether the creature was purely the result of a class skill, or a true familiar, it was likely that they shared a telepathic bond of some sort, and so its silence wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  I heard the slapping of boots on wood in the distance, but the duke’s glare was unrelenting.

  I tried again. “Please, why-”

  “Why are you here, boy?” he asked once more, and this time he reached for a knife at his belt.

  Time for a final gambit. I looked him in the eye then and let him see my defiance. “Did you think you would be the only one with ambition to claim what lies within these ruins?” I asked.

  He looked momentarily taken aback, and I unleashed my own aura, letting the influence of the restriction amulet fall away like dust on the wind. End Of The Hunt roared back in defiance of the choking aura that even now pressed down on me.

  I was not just a weak little 1st tier that he could bully though. His aura was calibrated to restrain someone far weaker, and while he may have had enough power to restrain even me as my aura skill fought against his, he hadn’t expected it.

  I exploded from my crouch, slipping past him with all the dexterity and grace I could manage and sprinting towards Estan and the vast open cavern behind him. I watched his eyes widen, and he fumbled at his belt for the fencing steel, drawing it and swinging it towards me.

  There was no time to stop, but I had never intended to, and I dropped to the floor and skidded along the dusty ground the final few meters, feeling the swish of air parting above my head where the sword missed by mere inches.

  I spun at the last minute, rolling over the edge of the drop, and catching a final look at Estan’s enraged and bewildered face, Varice’s shock, and the duke’s mild look of surprise, before I disappeared into the blackness of open air.