I grabbed the slab from the pedestal and stuck it in my satchel. The monster itself was too large for the room. Another arm reached in, fast. It was stubby, too short to touch me. The monster kept wriggling outside, jerking and twitching. The arm inside got flailed around, its fingers slowly grasping at nothing as it was smacked against the walls of the room. It ripped off, spinning in the air as it flew in. I struck it while it was still in the air, the speed of it comprehensible now.

  ”Why is it both fast and slow? This makes no sense.” Finna says.

  Mandollel has his fingers steepled, staring through the triangle they form. ”It does, actually. Interesting. Very very interesting.”

  I have no idea what to think. Did he trip some trap after all? Did going into the vault enrage the dead? And what could make the light act like that?

  Quiet. I had what I had come for. It was time to go.

  I charged at the hulk, rushing into it with the flat of my blade. It had pushed one leg into the room and was working the rest of its body inside as I did. The light behind it was blinding blue, but I would squint my eyes. My inside lurched, a step missed on a staircase, vision blurred for a moment. I was prepared to crash into the monster, but I bumped gently against it. The strength of my charge vanished. We stood at the doorway to the vault and I muscled it back, nonetheless. As I pressed it away, the leg inside the room ripped off, like it had got stuck in the room.

  The light was as dim as it had been, a faint dark blue glow. The dead things moved languidly, if at all. The patchwork creature fell backwards, toppling over and pulling apart as it crashed into the muck. Bones pulling through the soft dead flesh.

  It was what happened. We already ate, so your appetite is safe. No need for that kind of face.

  The sun warmed my face as I stepped out of the tomb. I rubbed my toes into the blazing sand to warm them. My steed was where I had left it, water and food still before it. Judging from the sun, I had been down there for less than an hour.

  I had the slab that I had come for. They are written in ancient Kertharian, the language of magic. Many powerful runes have been found from studying them, even if the actual meaning of the writing is indecipherable.

  My hope was to use some of them. Maybe they would work, unlike the runes we knew of before. I laid my hand on the slab, sitting cross-legged on the black stone and emptied my mind like I had been taught. My steed whinnied and munched, the sun rotated in the sky.

  Nothing happened, because of course it didn’t.

  I remained, and remain, Rworg, the warrior. Hewer of dead, blade of the sand.

  After Rworg stops talking, I almost start clapping. I’m bristling with questions, tantalized by the white sand and him descending into the darkness of the tombs. It’s exactly like the stories of adventurers, but it’s not just a legend, it happened to him. I have no doubt it happened. He sits there, fitting the landscape better than any of us, almost like the sand has polished his skin. He towers over me, and his gaze is steady as he opens his eyes.

  He pats his stomach. “I could eat another. Folke, can you fetch us a new hyrax?”

  “I’m hungry too,” Finna says. “Go hunt, archer boy.”

  “What! I want to hear the rest of the story!” I shout. “Mandollel said something about time not running the same everywhere as well, so is that what the tombs are? And why does that affect the light?”

  Rworg shrugs. “We don’t know the answers to those questions. The tombs are what they are. Some people spend years in them, coming out as hearty as they went in. Some stay minutes, stumbling out weak and shivering and pale. Most don’t come out at all, obviously.”

  “Come on, it didn’t sound that dangerous,” Finna says.

  Mandollel waves a hand at Rworg. “You forget who we’re dealing with here. The only thing that rivals his strength is his luck. He has no right to be alive to recount such a cavalcade of dumb choices.”

  “Thank you,” Rworg says. “Still, you’re right. The slab killed a person once I brought it back to my tribe. He flung himself into the sky, landing a full hour later. It would have been hilarious, if it hadn’t been a tragedy.”

  “I don’t even mean that! You could have died multiple times, only crossing such harsh boundaries between areas with different speeds of time. People have limbs wither when they have to wait for weeks for fresh blood to arrive. Or their veins explode as their hearts pump too fast, empty one side of their body to glut the other! Be grateful you didn’t push your head into the room to take a look and faint for not having enough blood reach your tiny brain. Top half of you slowly regaining consciousness as your legs have already been pulled off by the undead a week ago.”

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  “Ha! I was brave enough to face the danger head-on and thus avoid it. Much better lesson than in your story about flirting with orcs.”

  Finna and Rworg grin and bump their fists together as Mandollel presses his face into his palms, groaning. The sun is still high and we have a lot of time to kill before we can leave the rotten egg spring. During the day, the heat is suffocating and the shade of the trees is a blessing. On the other hand, the nights are colder than I’m used to, the warmth vanishing into the matte black and the pinpricks of stars above. The orange of the sky reminds me of a thing I wondered during the story.

  “Why did the light change?” Finna asks. “Why was it red and then bright and then back?”

  Rworg shrugs, but Mandollel lifts his head up from his hands, eyes sparkling. “Time affects light the same way it does everything. It can get condensed, dim glow pressed into painfully bright glare for a slower observer. Or stretched out, a flash spread over a longer time. We don’t know for sure why it affects the color. Some think that certain parts of light are faster or stronger than others, and the change in the flow of time would allow you to see it. It’s all very interesting.”

  “It is nooooot,” Finna says. “You elves can play with time all you want, but leave us out of it. I’m sorry I asked.”

  I ignore her, the questions suddenly obvious. “Is that what we’re going to do to the Kertharians? Slow them down so much they stop?”

  “Precisely,” Mandollel says. “It’s truly a staggering proposition. The amount of mana required dwarfs any spell ever cast.”

  “But won’t it kill them all? If they’re slowed down, the sun would burn them to a crisp!”

  Mandollel slaps his hands together, face beaming. “That is an excellent observation! How did you think of that?”

  Finna flops back to lie on the ground, arms spread to the sides. She presses her eyes closed and her tongue lolls from her mouth.

  Mandollel pauses. “Fine. Folke, you wanted to craft more arrows? There might be something suitable to use here. If you’re interested, I can explain the plan in more detail while we work. You two can clean up and rest. We will need all our strength for the night.”

  Mandollel fells a thick sapling with a single swipe of his sword. He can’t put that much strength behind the relaxed swipe, so the blade must be sharper than a razor to cut through fresh wood. The arrows will be heavier and less straight than if they were prepared properly, but I’ll make do. I’ll save the real arrows for harder shots and use these for shorter distances.

  He splits the sapling into thin shafts. “I’ll teach you something very few people outside of Silloin know,” he says, waving his long knife at me.

  He peels the soft bark into strips and weaves them over one of the shafts, explaining the process as he does. The bark will dry and harden, turning brittle but helping to keep the shaft straight as it dries as well. Channeling mana into the bark makes it possible to fuse it to the wood, making the arrow heavier but also improving how it flies.

  “That can’t work,” I say. No matter how elven he is, adding an uneven surface on the shaft can only drag and make the arrows wobble in flight.

  “Ah, but that’s the trick. You have to get the weave right. It usually takes decades to master, so better hold on to this one. Try to replicate it.”

  I do.

  It doesn’t work.

  The bark isn’t pliable enough. It rips, cracks, tears into shreds. When it doesn’t, the arrow looks like a kid had wrapped a present, all tangled and lumpy.

  He talks as I work, leaning against a tree, whittling a piece of wood left over from the arrow shafts. “The plan isn’t to slow them down, but to stop them completely. Evict them from time completely. Kerthar will turn into a museum of nation, filled with statues, impervious to anything before the spell ends. The device is a funnel, a conduit. The stakes prepare the environment and lay the paths for the mana to flow into the device, feed the mechanism inside.”

  I snap another strip of bark and curse.

  “I’m not certain where the mana comes from or how they managed to gather enough for this in the first place. The amount needs to be earth shattering. It could leave large areas of land desiccated, so I hope they know what they are doing.”

  My tongue is sticking out as I aim a sliver of bark, trying to slide it under another without it snagging and bending. I miss, and it does. I puff out air and let the half threaded arrow hang from my hand, collecting myself before a second try. “Wait, using mana can do that?”

  “Yes, obviously. The power has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it?”

  I guess. How would I know? I take a breath and concentrate again on trying to get the weave right even once.

  “So, the aurora are the stakes shaping the ambient mana to form pathways, leading to the place where the device will be finally placed. It’s a delicately balanced web of interconnected elements. You were correct in assuming it would be impossible to create it in two days, even with the use of the Mountain Ride. This has taken years, actual years, for someone to prepare.”

  I wave the shaft at Mandollel. “How confident are you that I’m going to be able to do this?”

  “You won’t, but it gave me a moment to relax and talk. I’ll make you a few. Observe and try to pick up at least something.”

  He gathers the materials and starts pulling the strips of bark, weaving them effortlessly on the shafts. With each arrow, he runs his forefinger over the threads, leaving a faint blue glow on them. The thread tightens around the shafts and melds into them. The resulting arrow is beautiful, a work of art. Like it was grown, instead of being crafted.

  So annoying, but I have to admit I’m impressed.

  He passes the finished arrows to me and I add the arrowheads and fletching.

  “It was sensible for them to supply you with iron arrowheads. They punch through the shields of mages. Iron doesn’t like magic,” he says, imitating Rworg’s accent.

  So that’s why shooting the mages has been that easy. Lictor and Corum both had shields around them that stopped most things, but iron and getting close seem to be their weak points. Mandollel managed to crack Lictor’s neck and the blast of wind slammed him to the wall, even if the bubble around him stopped everything else.

  Finna stomps over. She can move so quietly, so why does she sound like Rworg at other times? “Are you done? I’m getting hungry and I want to try warming the pot this time. He can go and shoot us something new.”

  I chuckle. There has to be some prey around here, as the vegetation is so lush. I could use the break. We’ve been fighting and running and will be again soon. A bit of time for myself is exactly what I need.

  “Don’t let your silhouette show against the sky,” Mandollel says, pointing at the hills surrounding us.

  As if I would. I’ve been taught better than that.