I was pacing outside of the wall when I heard Tristan's voice behind me.

  "She'll be okay." I turned to see that Tristan was looking up at me with a small smile spread across her face.

  "I'm not worried," I lied. I'd been pacing for a while. I knew that she knew I was lying. Her little smirk confirmed it.

  "Yes, you are." She laughed at me with her beautiful, melodic laugh. "Alex, you don't have to hide how you feel. It's good to worry about the people you care about, and it makes people feel good when they know they're cared for. Be more open."

  Shaking my head, I replied, "You know, we've known one another for, what, a year and a half now? You know me too well."

  "Of course I do. Our roots are growing together." Tristan stretched her long legs out in front of her. "Also, you're not that complicated, and you're a terrible liar. Both of which are qualities I like about you."

  The roots thing again. "What does that mean, anyway? I always took it as a metaphor, but does it have some deeper meaning or something?"

  She gazed at me, her eyes filled with unspoken words. However, as her lips parted, there was a noise behind me. By the time I turned, Vral was already by my side. The little goblin was soaked in sweat.

  Wiping a stray strand of hair off her forehead, she said, "I found three of the nasty things in the keep, the smart bitey ones." She was already spinning a dagger between her fingers, looking bored.

  "Ghouls?" Tristan's voice was firm.

  "Yeah, ghouls. That's it. And at least a dozen zombies, but, like, old zombies. They're all in the main hall. It smells terrible in there. " She waved a hand over her nose.

  "Good job, Vral." I placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  She sputtered, her green face turning three shades darker, before continuing. "You should know that they have a captive. Some blonde woman in a nice dress. It didn't look like they wanted to eat her, but who knows how long that'll last." A mischievous look filled her eyes. "If we wait until they finish, they'll be more sluggish." When we didn't respond, she added, "That would make the fight easier. I know what I'd do, but it's your call."

  Tristan's brows scrunched together. "They shouldn't be animated anymore. Even if they're strong enough to survive, they should have fled when the spell took hold. Did they look bothered at all?"

  "Not in the slightest." Vral scratched the top of her head, causing a few of her thick red hairs to fly free. "The zombies were all kneeling and bowing to an altar, and the ghouls were just sitting in the corner mumbling to one another."

  "An altar?" There was concern in Tristan's voice. She tried and failed to stand. With a huff, she asked, "Was there anything on the altar?"

  "I couldn't see it clearly, but there was some flame thing above it. It kind of looked like fire, but it was black. Real weird. It hovered in midair, and there was some kind of black smoke pouring out of it. I've never seen anything like it."

  "So that's how they keep undoing our magic..." Tristan murmured.

  "What do you mean?" Her tone told me something was wrong.

  Tristan opened her pack and pulled out the book she'd used earlier. "The temple's cleansed this area many times. Every decade or so, a group of acolytes travels out here and performs the ritual to remove the corruption from the keep. But, inevitably, it comes back again." She opened the book and leafed through the pages. Finding what she was looking for, she read for a moment before her brows furrowed further. "Renard was the one who came out here last time. He told me he knew something was wrong when he was here last, but he couldn't figure out what it was. I guess this was it."

  "Which is?'"

  "It's called the Black Flame. It's... complicated to explain, but it's an energy connected to the Dark One and the Shadowlands. A few powerful mages in the fourth era could summon and wield it, and the most powerful could infuse it into their demesnes. Looks like Embermist was more important than we realized."

  "How did the others miss it then? Wouldn't they have noticed a black flame hovering above an altar in the center of the keep?"

  "They would have, but the flame is at least partially sentient. It likely sensed them and hid itself." She held up the book and showed the page to us. There was a detailed drawing of an altar surrounded by people praying. Above the altar was the flame. "Judging from its behavior now, it doesn't consider us much of a threat. Or, I wasn't strong enough to deanimate the petitioners. Their job is to pray to the altar to keep the flame summoned. Maybe the others destroyed the zombies before ever seeing the flame. If they never saw it, they wouldn't know to disenchant the enchantment keeping it tied here." She wiped the sweat from her brow. "If they have access to the Black Flame, we might need to retreat and return with more help. This could be very dangerous."

  Vral grinned wickedly. "Retreat? Not a chance. I'm not about to run from anything, especially if it's already dead." The goblin leaned closer to me. "Plus, you goody-goodies would never let that woman get eaten. I say we cut these fuckers down and burn the whole place to the ground. What about you, Alex? Think you can manage to channel some of your heroic stupidity and tell us it'll be alright?"

  I grinned back at her. "We'll be more than alright. With the three of us, they don't stand a chance. Plus, I'm not about to leave anyone behind. I say that we've got this."

  Vral giggled. "There it is." Standing up straight, she cracked her knuckles. "You heard the man, Tris. We can't lose."

  Tristan sighed. "You two are ridiculous, you know that, right?"

  "That's what you like about us." Vral wiggled her eyebrows.

  "Among other reasons." She thumbed through a few more pages before settling on one. "But I needed to hear you both say that because this is going to be hard."

  "Why? What do we need to do?" She'd never been this unsure before. It made me anxious.

  "Because I'm not coming inside with you." Tristan studied the book in her lap. "I'll need to be out here, doing this." She nodded to the book.

  "Which is?"

  "Casting a spell that's too powerful for me to handle."

  I shook my head. "Nope. That's not happening."

  "If you want to cleanse this place and save the woman, I have to." Her sapphire eyes met mine. "If the Black Flame is present here, it'll take a higher circle spell than「Hallow」to dispel it."

  "No. I want to save everyone, but our team comes first. No unnecessary risks."

  She was unmoved. "Do you trust me?"

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  I huffed. "Of course I do, but—"

  "Then trust that I can do this."

  A thought struck me. Reaching into my belt pouch, I pulled out a [Healing Potion], an [Elixir], and a [Rejuvenation Tonic] and handed them to her. "Farvad gave me these. Would any of them help?"

  "Very much so." She took them from me, uncorked the blue [Elixir], and drank it. Color immediately returned to her face. "Ugh, so much better."

  Something was bothering me. "I don't understand why your spell took so much out of you. Anytime I use a spell, it's a little tiring, but it's nothing compared to what you went through earlier."

  "Because those are skills, not spells. They're different things. Didn't Arden teach you magical theory?"

  "Those sound like the same thing. But no, he said I had no aptitude for it, so we focused mostly on history, monsters, politics, that kind of thing. Monsters stuck. History and politics not so much."

  "Well, I guess I'll have to fix that." Her gaze drifted upward as she chewed her lip. "Okay, here's the basics: skills and spells are similar in function but different in practice. Basically, skills are granted by the Goddess when a person meets certain conditions, like leveling up. they're granted when a person is capable of using them. More importantly, the Goddess puts limits on skills to prevent harm. Spells have no limiters. Like skills, they use the energy inside us as fuel, but when you try to use a skill too many times, it fizzles. When you do the same thing with a spell, nothing stops it from being cast. If you run out of mana, spells will eat away at you until there's nothing left."

  Freaky. "Okay, but why? Explain it like I'm five. Why does this happen?"

  "Yeah, I'm from here, and I don't get it at all." Vral was pacing beside me.

  Tristan tapped her chin. "How to explain... Okay, it's like this. Everyone's got two bodies: a physical one fueled by food and water and all that and a spiritual one filled with energy. One energy is life force, which we call vita, and the other is mana. There can be other energies in a person's spirit, but those are the main two. Together, vita and mana are called essence, or essentia if you want to get really old school."

  I could see the fluid vials from Diablo in my mind's eye. Red on the bottom left, blue on the bottom right. Or was it the other way around? "Makes sense. We have similar concepts back on Earth."

  I noticed Vral was eying me up and down. "So you're saying there's two of him? That could be useful..." Her eyes drifted up to me. When they met mine, she shook her head, smirked, and added," We could use one as bait."

  "Rude." I glared at her, but she only gave me her shitty smirk back.

  Tristan laughed. "Yes and no. Both bodies are separate but connected. It would take magic far stronger than anything I could cast to separate them. Our spiritual bodies are anchored to our physical bodies, but they also sort of bleed out of our skin. Weak people don't have visible auras, but as we get stronger, our auras grow. You can learn the skill with practice."

  "Impressive." I didn't know how hard that would be, but it sounded awesome.

  "Can you see my spirit? You can, right?" Vral puffed her chest out.

  "Yes. I can see all of ours now, actually."

  Vral and I exchanged looks. I knew exactly what she was thinking.

  We did it.

  We were strong.

  "Yes, yes. You're big strong heroes now." Tristan rolled her eyes. There she went, reading our minds again. "But to finish, our two bodies need one another. When injured or sick, your physical body, or corpus, pulls vita and mana from your spirit to heal. When your spiritual body, or animus, gets injured, you get sick more often and feel sluggish and weak until it heals. If both get badly injured, you die. That's when our soul, which is housed deep within our spirits, returns to the Goddess."

  Made sense. Wait, souls were real here? "So how does this all connect to magic? How are spells different from what we normally do?"

  "The skills granted by the Goddess have clear parameters, and the system never grants someone a skill they can't handle. Same with learned skills. It's hard to learn a skill you're not strong enough to learn, right? That's not the case with spells."

  "Why is that?"

  "Simple. We created spells by studying the Language of Creation, whose letters are carved into the Towers. But that was the language of the gods. It was used to create Reial and was never intended for use by us."

  "But we did it anyway."

  "Yep. And anyone can learn any spell. It just takes memorization and practice. Because of that, it's easy to learn a spell that's beyond our limits. That's why we arrange them into tiers called circles and restrict access. Even still, the circles are only loose approximations of power. It's not exact, and different people have different aptitudes. For example, I have an aptitude for holy magic. A strong one, in fact. I didn't learn that I had the talent until I finally unlocked the [Priestess] class, but that's what allows me to cast higher-circle spells than my peers."

  "Okay, but what happens if you can't handle the spell?"

  "I'll burn out."

  I didn't like the sound of that. "Which means?"

  "I'll die." Before I could protest, she continued, "But don't worry. That won't happen to me."

  "You better have a good reason why I should believe you."

  "Because the spell isn't a high enough circle to do so."

  "Explain."

  "Before the time when the Goddess granted us skills and when spells were being created, mages would crumble to ash all the time. It took centuries for categorization systems to be developed, and then many disciplines formed that specialized in certain forms of magic. This book contains one such discipline." She held up the thick tome in her hands. "The spells in this book only go up to the fourth circle. It's exceptionally rare for someone to burn out from spells under the fifth circle."

  I was beginning to be glad that I lacked any magical aptitude. This was nuts. "Okay, but what does that mean, burning out?"

  "Spells seem to use energy in a specific order. First, a spell uses mana. Once you're out of mana, a spell burns the spiritual body. Once that's burned up, it consumes the released vita, and when that's gone, it burns the physical body. If that's still not enough for the spell to cast, we die, our bodies crumble away, our energy turns to mist, and our souls return to the Goddess."

  "Mist?" Could the mist we'd been walking through all day have been magic?

  "It's thick, tangible, condensed mana. A little mist is released every time magic is cast, but failed spells, release far more of it. It acts sort of like a kind of wild magic. It can do anything from create random effects, to curse the land and the creatures within it, to form monsters. And yes, you're exactly right. We've been marching through the mist all day. One purpose of the Black Flame is to gather ambient mana and condense it."

  She answered my thoughts again. How did she do that? I froze as a sense of dread washed over me. If she could read my mind, even a little... I sincerely hoped she couldn't see what was in my head every time I saw her in her nightgown. Or the thoughts I was having when I walked behind her earlier.

  She grinned.

  Shit!

  Pushing the images away, I put on my sternest voice. "Casting that first spell took everything out of you, and now you want to cast another stronger one? I thought I was supposed to be the idiot, but you're proving to be my equal, Tristan. We don't need two of us in the Awesome Trio." I cringed at our updated party name. We hadn't had time to workshop a new one.

  "It may sound stupid, but, honestly? I have two reasons why I want to do this."

  "Which are?"

  "The first is simple: I want to see how strong I've become. I've been doing nothing but training since I got back to the temple. I owe it to myself to try."

  I could understand that. "The second?"

  "Lady Varga asked me to." She paused and looked sheepish. "Coming here to cleanse the keep is my test... If I cleanse it, I'll be a full priestess."

  As much as I wanted to throttle her for risking herself, I realized this was her moment. I knelt in front of her and gazed into her sapphire orbs. "Then that's what we'll do. We won't leave until you succeed."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course. It's my job to support you. And I can't help but believe in you."

  "You should. I'm pretty great."

  "You're damn right you are!" Vral chirped from behind me.

  "Sorry, she's wearing off on me," Tristan whispered before kissing me.

  I laughed. "It's not a bad mindset." I kissed her again, then stood back up. "But, when were you going to tell us? About this keep?"

  "I was planning to ask for your help on the way back to the temple. It just so happened to all work out this way." Her eyes lifted to the sky, and she whispered something under her breath.

  I understood the gesture. The Goddess did seem to nudge people along in a real way in this world. "Fair enough." Looking her over, I asked, "You promise you'll be alright?"

  "Yeah. With these potions and your confidence, I know I can do it." She held up the remaining vials.

  "Okay. I trust you completely." Leaning in, I pressed my lips to hers one more time. She reached up and pulled me to her, our tongues brushing for a moment before she broke away. Pulling her back, I bit her lip, causing her to gasp. Then, I broke our embrace and stood.

  "The big guy and I are going in. You sit out here and do what you gotta go." Vral turned and entered the stone archway.

  A nagging worry scratched at my heart. Would she be okay out here alone?

  "Go," she said, her eyes never leaving the book's pages. "I'll be fine, you big softy."

  With a nod, I turned away, but before I made it three steps, she added, "Alex. Whatever you do, don't touch that flame. I'll explain why later, but for now, just leave it alone. My magic should snuff it out once the undead are gone. Just make sure to destroy the zombies. Once they're gone, my spell will take effect."

  "Then that's what I'll do."

  "Be careful. And take care of Vral." Tristan murmured up at me. "I kind of like you two. Don't do anything reckless."

  "I'll try." Giving her a grin I didn't quite feel, I turned and followed Vral into the abandoned ruin.