The first hours marching in the dark of the Laon tunnels stretched quietly. The silence was an oppressive weight that numbed the adrenaline that had fueled their escape, and exhaustion quickly set in despite the alien surroundings. Their party cast strange twisting shadows in the blue and yellow light.

  Val led, Elias riding on her back once the old man had quickly grown tired. One hand was under his buttocks and her other held high to cast their light. Her axe hung sideways across her butt, bumping against the back of her legs as she walked, her harness strapped in an improvised manner around her hips to carry it. Bastian shepherded Dorius and Lee’to along behind her, both too shaken for any conversation, and Bastian respectful enough to not disturb them while they were still processing Til’wane’s death. Val was aware they were climbing, based on the growing burn in the back of her calves.

  The dank moisture that supported the strange bio-film of glowing blue dried out as they marched deeper, and the air began to grow hot and dry. Bastian passed around flasks of water at one point, but only let them all have a few mouthfuls to preserve the resource. They had taken almost nothing with them, trusting Lee’to’s drawing that this tunnel emerged somewhere in the Sacred Valley beyond High Haven. Above ground the walk would have been half a day, and so they hoped underground would not be much longer. Indeed, the tunnel mostly traveled straight, with only the odd bend around the natural formations which seemed to form the backbone of the passage. If it had a gentle curve, Val would not have been able to notice, her sense of direction was lost underground.

  “I cannot go on,” finally begged Dorius without warning behind her.

  Val turned, and spotted Dorius batting Bastian’s insistent pushes off him, “I cannot, can we rest?” he repeated. Bastian frowned, and released the prince, and Dorius sat against the side of the tunnel breathing heavy with exhaustion and massaging the back of his calves. Val glanced at Bastian, who scratched his neck resigned.

  “We will take a short break,” said Bastian warmly, and he then came behind her to help Elias slide off her back. The old man was drifting to sleep as she walked, and Bastian helped him sit not far from Dorius. Lee’to, who had been carrying his staff, leant against it for strength. Her hands had been still as they walked, and her face downcast.

  Bastian approached Val, distancing himself with her from their charges and stripped his jacket, fluttering the front of his shirt one handed. “Where is this heat coming from?” he asked, looking up the tunnel and rubbing the film of sweat that was gathering on his brow.

  Val followed his gaze, the light from her flare in her hand only carried so far and without the blue-glow the depths of the tunnel quickly faded to black. She could feel the fire slowly draining her, it burned with no discernable fuel other than her own energy streaming from her core. But the energy it needed to feed from her was nothing like the beacon had been, it exerted her less than the effort it took to carry Elias on her back.

  “You handling that okay?” asked Bastian quietly, a nod of his chin in the direction of the flame.

  Val nodded absentmindedly, “It is not like the other day.”

  But she looked back at Dorius worried. This was the closest he had come to death, unlike the two of them, and the shock of how someone would react could be unpredictable. Bastian frowned, his thoughts likely in similar places to her.

  “This would not have happened if I had stayed with Til’wane,” muttered Val guilty.

  Bastian held a firm finger, his brows tight, “No,” he instructed, “It’ll get you nowhere.”

  She sighed, knowing his advice to be true. But this weighed on her more than she liked. She felt a responsibility for the Laon that had been willed into her service, the unfamiliar responsibility of a trusted leader. She would not be surprised if Lee’to wanted nothing to do with her after this, and good thing they were returning to the Spine where she could hopefully be released from her service too.

  It had been a grisly death too. Wrapped in the layers of Dorius’ complicated relationship with his cousins and caused by nothing more than being present when they had accidentally and too publicly slighted Sylus. Val had no doubt in her mind the exact nature of his revenge was an explicit reference to the one strength Dorius publically flaunted in front of his cousin. Til’wane was an innocent in this feud.

  Finally, with considerable self consciousness, she was well aware the reason she had not been there to intervene in the death was because she had been childishly neglecting her duties to mope, and causing trouble for Bastian as well. A part of her mind tried to warn her that had she been there it would have made no difference. They had come prepared to handle Laon strength and overcome Til’wane, and the outcome may have been her death instead, like Sylus had apparently planned… A far worse outcome for Dorius. But the thought was little comfort.

  Unconsciously, her mind wandered to the words of the Prime Vigilant, who spoke of the weaving carrying Dorius here. Perhaps it was true, and this was her path alongside his within the weave. With a little shyness, she remembered her words to Bastian, and her promise to try and change.

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  Did the Watcher find them lacking for the tasks it envisioned for them? Was the Weaver bid to carve them this path of challenges to strengthen them? Surely that belief was absurd, for why would they be singled out to grow stronger and live on when others were sacrificed to their cause? It was a frustrating train of thought Val quickly stopped herself from following.

  Her thoughts and gaze drifted back to Dorius. This was certainly one of the most significant setbacks she had been present for. He had gathered the fortitude to push through their escape, and while she had seen him show great emotional resilience facing his own family - greater than she thought she was capable of - this was new.

  As she watched him, his gaze remained fixed to the ground and his attention distant instead of his ever-present curiosity that would have marked their discovery of the Laon tunnel and a lost history of Kal’fall.

  It was Elias who broke the silence of their group, “Let us keep moving, I will fall asleep where I sit otherwise” he suggested ruefully.

  Bastian bent to help the older man to his feet, “Easy enough for you, when you don’t have to walk.” There was no malice to his words.

  Dorius ran his hands through his hair, and raised his head from his stupor to look down the tunnel, “How long has it been growing hotter?”

  Bastian offered him a hand to help him rise next, “Hard to say, I can’t tell how far we’ve come.”

  Onwards they pressed into the dark. It seemed only moments later that a change to the lighting at the edge of Val’s vision caught her eye. With a grunt of concentration, she gentled the harmonics of her magic, lowering the flame in her hand. As her own light retreated, she noted a low red glow that remained, and she held her other arm out to stop the party behind her.

  They were obediently silent as she completely extinguished the flame, leaving them in almost dark - excepting the new glow ahead of them. It had an odd wavering unevenness to it, as if its source moved. Lee’to gave a gasp and suddenly rushed ahead of them, Val grunting with frustration went sprinting after her.

  The glow grew, the heat of the air was dry like an oven. Val felt sweat pouring down her arms and back as she jogged after Lee’to who nimbly ran ahead. And then a twist in the tunnel and the floor fell away to a gigantic cavern with a great canyon. At its depths, a river of something molten flowed as slow as honey. The surface was black, its texture indecipherable in the dark. As it flowed, cracks split revealing a glowing core before cooling to darkness again, twisting and closing as the liquid fire churned beneath the surface. It flowed from somewhere else in the mountain's belly, and meandered through the strange valley below them. Where it went was lost in the crags and twists of the subterranean canyon.

  Lee’to fell to her knees, prostrating herself on the edge, Val jogging to a stop at her side and staring around the cavern. Strange shadows danced as the surface moved, and she was aware of a melody she had never heard before as she stared hypnotized by the ever-changing shape of the magma below her. It was low, like the rumble of distant thunder, heard in the gut rather than with ears. Unlike the buzzing drone of the Spine above ground, or the almost conscious awareness the magic of the bells had of her, this magic was unconcerned with her listening ears.

  It sang a melody so slow she could barely hear the rise and fall of the notes. A slow, pondering and alien song unlike anything she had heard before. Her core shook, not with fear, but almost as if the sound of the magic was so deep it vibrated her insides. The harmonics of her own fire magic flirted with the mountain song, but its tune was overwhelmed and lost within its rumble. The surface of the magma churned slowly and flowed from the mountain. The heat haze above danced. Val breathed the hot air, and listened to the Mountain’s song.

  “I guess we know now why they said the Spine is the Mountain God,” commented Dorius, watching into the canyon with her. Elias, and Bastian helping, were not far behind, eyes wide and mouths open in awe.

  “We’d best keep moving,” urged Bastian nervously, “We’ll cook here.”

  Val nodded, and knelt to give Elias a ride. The path of the tunnel meandered up the side of the canyon, the chamber narrowing at the far end and continuing onwards away from the origin of the magma.

  Lee’to raised her head, tears streaming down her face, and signed something into the uncaring void above the magma that they could not understand, before following them again.

  It seemed many hours that they wandered onwards past the magma chamber. The quality of the air turned again, cooling and coming now with a growing freshness that quickened their pace and reinvigorated tired bodies.

  The artificial smooth edges of the tunnel gave way to uneven flooring and misshapen walls, the roof dropping so low at one point they had to crouch through an opening to continue - Val crawling on her belly, shuffling her axe ahead of her, while Bastian knelt at the other side and guided her horns under the protrusions of the low roof. Then they were through to a disused chamber with sconces and woven banners hanging here and there, all covered with dust or tattered with age. When Bastian stretched fingers to touch one, the fabric dissolved in his hands and left him sneezing. Val extinguished her flame, and it was clear there was light coming from ahead now.

  They emerged into the yellow dawn, peering down into the Sacred Valley from the other side of High Haven’s wall. The bright green and white of the valley was a welcome sight after so much darkness, and the singing of birds seemed to welcome them back into the world.

  Below them, on an overgrown mountain trail, there was a line of riders - many horned - on strange white steeds climbing to their cave.

  Val watched them, shading her eyes with one hand against the bright dawn sun, Bastian at her side with his mouth set firm. They had nowhere to run or hide, and the party of riders moved towards them with the steady intention of a greeting party. Exhausted from walking through the night, they sat to wait.