“Hey,” Elion said, confused as his armor disappeared, and his buffs vanished. He tried to rearm, but nothing happened.

  “Manifest Armaments,” he said aloud, but received no response from Praxis.

  “— — —,” Keyla said, “— — —?”

  “What?” Elion asked. He turned to look at her.

  “— — — — — —?” Her mouth moved strangely, forming syllables he couldn’t understand. Her words were melodic, a lilting rhythm of sounds.

  The << Translation Active >> notification had disappeared from Elion’s vision.

  A noise from the tunnel behind them drew his attention. He turned, peering down the tunnel, and saw that all the lights from the arachnatronics and the wizards had disappeared.

  His legs shook. The ground seemed to drop away from him, vertigo rolling over his exhausted body. Too tired and overwhelmed to understand what was going on, he leaned against the wall. His stomach churned, like he’d been trying to read a book while riding shotgun.

  No chance he was going to fight warlocks without any of his abilities. He grabbed Keyla by the hand and pulled her deeper into the tunnels. She got the message, and ran with him.

  “— — — — —?” she said again, but Elion didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t understand a thing that came out of her mouth. They made it a half dozen steps down the tunnel when, with a woosh, the strangeness receded.

  Elion’s armor popped back into existence around him. He gasped, like he’d been splashed with cold water, and stumbled to a stop, astonished.

  He turned, and saw that behind him the air still shimmered, a strange kind of barrier blocking the way they had come.

  A spinning circle appeared in his vision.

  > << Reconnecting to Praxis >>

  > << Please stand by, temporary suppression detected >>

  > << Ascendency Path tracking interrupted, recalibrating experience spectrum >>

  > << You have persevered in developing your abilities. You progress along the Path of Dawn. 1 Experience Point rewarded. >>

  “Wha—”

  > << New level: 5 >>

  > << You have 1 ability point to assign >>

  > << Please visit the nearest Altar to select a new skill and assign your ability points >>

  > << Name: Elion James Walker >>

  > << House: Starhold >>

  > << Ascendency: Aurelian Path of Dawn >>

  > << Level/XP: 5/32 >>

  > << Abilities (Level): Manifest Armaments (4), Save a Friend (0) >>

  > << Boons: Translation >>

  > << Quests: None >>

  “What was that?” Elion asked, looking back at the odd barrier.

  “It seems like the distortion field,” Keyla said. “It’s suppressing Praxis somehow.”

  Elion grinned. “Hey!” he said, relieved to see << Translation Active >> hovering in his peripheral vision again. “I can understand you!”

  “Did—did you just get an experience point?” Keyla asked.

  “Yeah,” Elion said. “Unexpectedly. I just leveled up.”

  “Weird,” Keyla said. “I just got experience too. I wonder why…”

  “Well, we just pulled off an epic escape from those warlocks, and destroyed their ship.”

  “That might work for you, but I’m only supposed to get experience when I improve my craftsmanship.”

  “Huh,” Elion said. “That is weird. You weren’t making things back there in the rocks?”

  Keyla rolled her eyes at him. “Come on, we’d better keep running. This will slow them down but it won’t stop them.”

  “Won’t it have ruined their arachnatronics?” Elion asked. “Make them fall to pieces?”

  “Maybe,” Keyla said. “Maybe it didn’t get that far.”

  The shimmering change in the air was already weakening, fading away down the tunnel. Snickers mewed, and Elion picked him up, draping him over his shoulders.

  Deciding that he needed to conserve his Ascendency strength, Elion dismissed his armor. Besides, it felt odd to not be able to summon the knife. He’d grown used to being able to sense its presence.

  "Let’s go,” Elion said.

  For what felt like an hour they ran, Elion’s lungs burning. He wheezed, forcing himself along. He locked his gaze on Keyla’s faint form, as she urged him on, not daring to look back for pursuers. Unlike the last tunnel they’d come through, this one branched off at many points, holes in the ceiling, floors, and walls leading off into unknown corners of the earth.

  Keyla occasionally took a turn, and as they proceeded deeper into the network, the halls grew narrower, darker, and tighter. Their pace slowed, and Keyla produced a small penlight which helped guide them through the maze.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Finally Keyla stopped. Elion doubled over, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to suck down air.

  “Did we lose them?” he gasped.

  Keyla clicked off her light and they stood in darkness for a moment, listening. Elion could only hear the sound of his heart pounding in his chest, his breath as he gasped for air, and the faint dripping of water echoing in the distance.

  “I think so,” Keyla said.

  “It’s a good thing you know where we’re going,” Elion said. “I would have no idea how to get out of here.”

  Keyla clicked her light back on, enveloping them in its dim white glow. “I don’t either,” Keyla said. “I was just trying to get away.”

  She shone the light ahead of them and Elion saw why they had stopped. A massive metal grate obstructed the path forward. Behind them the tunnel dissolved into darkness.

  A brackish pool of water stretched through the grate and down into the void beyond. Snickers prowled over to the water and sniffed it, then turned his nose up in offense.

  “You mean we’re lost in here?” Elion said, the darkness around him turning cold and oppressive.

  Keyla turned to him, eyes brimming with distress. “At least we got away from them?” she offered hopefully.

  “I guess,” Elion said with a shrug. “What are we going to do now?”

  “We’ll have to backtrack to the last branching,” Keyla said. “I know some of these tunnels, and maybe we can find some place that I recognize…”

  “And risk running back into Venya,” Elion mused. “I think I have a better idea. We can cut through those bars.”

  He ascended, manifesting his armaments. His clothes vanished, replaced by the gold infused pants and shirt he’d pulled on over his loincloth.

  Elion inspected his ‘armor.’ He remembered pemalion claws tearing large holes in the shirt and pants. Somehow the armor had regenerated while it was in his ‘armor void.’ Most of the damage from the pemalion fight had completely disappeared.

  A wave of lightheadedness forced him to steady himself against the tunnel wall. Whatever well of strength the Ascended State drew upon had not recharged yet.

  Again, his knife did not rematerialize in his hand. He tried whispering “Manifest Armaments,” again, and felt a strange tugging in the direction they had come, but the blade remained elusive.

  “They took my knife somehow,” Elion said, feeling a pang of loss. “That machine that they had stole my knife.” Elion remembered how Uncle Zev had given him a warlock’s staff to hold, warning him not to let it go or it would evaporate. He wondered if a similar principle might be at play here.

  The last time he saw Zev had been less than a few weeks ago, but it seemed like ages. Elion dismissed his armor, along with the sickening sense of emptiness.

  “We can get you a new one?” Keyla asked hopefully. “Maybe you could use a laser gun as your weapon.”

  “It won’t work,” Elion said. “It’s not like the armor. There’s something special about that knife. It’s bound to me. It might lead them to me. Besides, the laserarm would probably fall apart.”

  Elion’s stomach growled, the noise echoing down the tunnel. A pain in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in ages. His eyelids drooped as the adrenaline of the fight wore off. He hadn’t slept since… well, he couldn’t remember. He needed to eat and sleep.

  All desire to run and fight seeped out of him. He plodded on, each footstep heavier than the last. He was starting to chafe in his left armpit, each movement making his skin there sting.

  “What language were you speaking back there?” Keyla asked. “You sounded strange.”

  “Um, English?” Elion tried. He glanced at his << Translation Active >> notification, and realized that he was probably the only one with that particular advantage.

  “Don’t do it again, it gave me the creeps,” Keyla said. “I like it better when you speak Kylian.”

  Elion didn’t know what to say.

  “Why didn’t you run away?” he asked. “I gave you the perfect chance to get away. They almost got both of us because you didn’t run.”

  Keyla stared at him, aghast. “Why didn’t you run away? You’ve had plenty of chances and you keep coming back. How come I’m not allowed to do the same.”

  Elion groaned.

  “I’m starving,” he said, flopping down on a narrow ledge against the wall. “And I’m so tired. I don’t think I can do this any more. If I’d have let them take me, you wouldn’t be in danger. And they probably had food on that skyskimmer.”

  He clasped his head in his hands.

  “I’m just causing trouble everywhere,” he muttered. “I wish they caught me. Or that I was dead.”

  “Let’s eat before you make any rash decisions. I have food,” Keyla said, unslinging her pack and setting it on the ledge beside Elion. She opened up the top pocket and began fishing through it, pulling out several packages of preserved foods; smoked meats, dried vegetables, and crackers.

  Elion gratefully accepted these. The vegetables were crispy, like they’d been freeze dried. The shape and color reminded Elion of broccoli, but they tasted nutty and sweet. Even though they coated his mouth with a film, he scarfed several of them down.

  The jerky was lightly seasoned with a peppery salt, and it had a slightly fishy flavor. It wasn’t tough or stringy like most jerky he’d ever had. He placed strips on the crackers and ate them together, the buttery flakiness of the crackers complimenting the dried meat. Food tastes better when you’re hungry, but this food was delicious.

  They sat in the tunnel together, legs dangling off the ledge. Keyla leaned back against the backpack, and Snickers sat beside Elion, mewing loudly when Elion didn’t feed him fast enough. A weak sphere of yellowish light revealed the circular tunnel around them, dampness leaking through crevasses in the stone. A small trickle of rancid water puddled on the ground.

  The metal grate that had blocked their progress didn’t seem to have any purpose. As far as Elion could tell, the tunnel was nearly the same on both sides, disappearing into darkness in either direction. An occasional inlet pierced the walls of the tube. Some of these dripped, a soft noise that echoed loudly, amplified in the silence.

  “So these are sewers,” Elion said, crunching down on another bite.

  “Yep,” Keyla said. “They served Kairn Tol. Don’t get much use these days, but creatures live down here. And sometimes scavengers come searching for things that might have been washed out by the city.”

  Elion swallowed and reached for another cracker. “Typical sewers.”

  Snickers mewed agreement.

  “What is this?” Elion asked, pointing to the meat. “It’s tasty.”

  “Human flesh,” Keyla said.

  Elion spat, gagging. Images from Gorman’s tower flashed through his mind, hearts beating in tubes, Gorman severing a man’s leg, the desiccated finger underneath a workbench.

  Keyla laughed, tipping her head back and clutching her sides, a rich, rolling chuckle.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” Elion said, tossing the rest of his food to Snickers. He groaned, leaning back against the dank wall of the tunnel.

  “It’s just dried fish,” Keyla said, still chuckling. Her laughs echoed through the cavern in the distance.

  “You can’t make jokes like that,” Elion groaned. “I saw how creative Gorman was with… leftover body parts!”

  Keyla stilled her laughing, though her eyes still twinkled, and her red lips curved into a smile.

  “Still feeling like you’d rather be dead?”

  “No,” Elion admitted. “But I am still tired.”

  Keyla smirked at him.

  Elion sighed. “How long is your light going to last down here?”

  “As long as I keep recharging it, forever.”

  “How do you—Oh.” Elion recalled Keyla’s ascended state. “You can power things in your Ascended State.”

  Keyla nodded and began packing up the food. Snickers stretched out contentedly in Elion’s lap, and he scratched the cat’s belly.

  Something splattered in the distance. The sound echoed through the tunnel, making it hard to pinpoint what direction it came from. A wet, slapping noise, like a fish flopping in shallow water.

  “What is that?” Elion asked.

  “I don’t know,” Keyla said, voice little more than a whisper. She turned off her light. “Just listen.”