Pirin and Gray flew back to the palace as fast as they could, then met Nomad at the terrace, where they’d landed the Featherflight.

  “Can I steal the old man?” Pirin asked Alyus. He and Brealtod were making preparations to get the ship back in the air.

  “Take him,” Alyus said. “If we’re just making short flights, we shouldn’t need a third hand.”

  “Short flights?”

  “If this is where we’re making our stand, then we’re going to do as much as we can to help out. We have a floating platform to rain down arrows from.”

  Pirin nodded. “You want more archers? I’ll send palace guards, and they can help out.”

  “It’d be much appreciated, Elfy.”

  Then, Pirin, Gray, and Nomad sprinted through the palace. They descended to the ground floor, all while sending any archer they stumbled across back to the Featherflight to help out. They took broad staircases and chilly, frost-lined hallways down to the underlevels of the palace, where kitchen staff toiled over stoves to provide for the lords and current guests of the palace.

  Pirin only stopped to speak with the head of the cooks—both to ask for directions to the store-caves and to instruct the elf to use up the palace’s extra food hoard. They had soldiers to feed, and if the city fell, the palace’s extra food stores wouldn’t matter.

  The store-caves were conveniently just beside the kitchen. A network of caverns led deep into the earth below the Sheercliff, and it was cold enough year-round to keep a healthy store of food.

  Of course, now, they were carting the food out of the caves as masons chiselled away at the cave entrance and supporting pillars, preparing to collapse it and seal off the palace’s vulnerability.

  Pirin, Nomad, and Gray ran into the caves, despite the head cook shouting numerous warnings at them. “We’ll be quick!” Pirin called back.

  The masons were only halfway through the supporting pillars—natural columns amongst the porous stone caverns. There was still time before Pirin had to be back up, and they wouldn’t have put the Charges too deep.

  “Be careful!” another guard shouted. “There could be Dominion soldiers down there! They broke into the lower caverns earlier this evening, and they’ll be finding their way up soon enough!”

  Inside the store-caves, the stone was greenish-gray, with a beige moss clinging to almost everything. The stone was slick with moisture, and though it was cold, it was just above freezing—no ice, but perfect for storing food and other items.

  Slippery, still! Gray exclaimed. She fluttered her wings to compensate for her talons slipping on a patch of moss.

  “Watch your step,” Pirin whispered back. He ran on the tips of his feet and took high steps, careful not to fall. As they ran, he glanced back at Nomad, who had pulled his staff off his back. “Any idea where the Charges would be?”

  “They’re imprinted into blocks of manifested wood-Essence,” Nomad explained. He paused as they turned a corner and jumped down onto a torchlit shelf of stone. Mushrooms covered the ground here, and conks hung from the walls. “Single use; imprinting quickly and precisely damages them. But they won’t decay.”

  “What about wraiths? Would wraiths eat them?”

  “Yes,” Nomad said. “I reckon the Sirdians of old would’ve kept them far away from the ambient Eane currents—or in a place of low Eane concentration.”

  Pirin snorted. That pretty much described the entire Elven Continent right now. But there were still some Eane currents, and, using his spiritual senses, he traced its flow over his surroundings. It was still easier to sense when he perceived the slippery stone as a threat, so the floors were clearer in his mind than the walls or ceiling, but he still understood where the Eane was flowing and where it wasn’t. Everything was just that much dimmer.

  He pointed down hallways and around corners, directing them in the direction of the dimmer Eane currents—as the cave allowed.

  The caverns narrowed, and the roof grew shallower as the Eane grew dimmer. There were no more torches to give light, and Pirin activated the Fracturenet in his hand just to illuminate the cave. They kept running until finally, in the deep alcoves of the caves, he nearly tripped across an overturned barrel.

  Its boards were rotten and bands rusty, and whatever it held inside it was long gone. For a second, he bit his lip, and a pang of frustration soared through him, until he held his glowing arm up and illuminated the nooks and natural shelves of the walls. More barrels rested on them, and each had a faint spiritual weight of their own. They had something valuable inside them.

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  Pirin pulled one off the shelf and cracked it open with a punch. Fabric pouches lay inside, each wrapping a chunk of pale brown manifested Essence. If Pirin hadn’t known any better, he’d have assumed they were wood. But they glowed faintly. Each was about an inch thick, and when he flipped them over, they had a circle of neat runes on the front.

  A Charge.

  Too thin and clean to have been carved by hand. Instead, embossed onto the surface of the chunk by a wizard’s manifestation ability.

  Pirin glanced at Nomad. “How hard was it to make a Charge? I don’t suppose many of them are being made anymore.”

  “Not ones that last this long.” Nomad crossed his arms. “I would assume that, if they’ve lasted this long at this quality, a Wildflame made them. That would likely be one of your forebears.”

  Gray shook her feathers and tilted her head. But how do you know what it does? If all the barrels are full of these Charges…

  She gripped the lip of a different barrel with her beak, then pulled it down and shattered it with a strike from her enhanced talon. More fabric pouches tumbled out, and a few spilled their Charges onto the cave floor. The weakest, oldest, and most useless Charges cracked, split apart, or disintegrated into Essence sparks.

  They wouldn’t have been useful anyway, though. If they broke upon a single touch. It narrowed down his search slightly.

  Gray lifted up a Charge with her beak. Gah, I can’t read it like this! Pirin, what does it say?

  “You wouldn’t be able to read it anyway,” he whispered. Even though he knew the symbol and function of some of the more basic runes, he couldn’t say what they did when chained in a big circle.

  Damn you and your fingers… Gray complained.

  Nomad picked up a different Charge, then held it up and said, “I can make out the vague function, but I’m no runesmith either.”

  “I have an idea,” Pirin said. “If these were all made by my ancestors, then I should be able to use the Memory Chain to tell what they’re for.”

  Nomad nodded. “Be quick.”

  They cracked open all the barrels and sorted out the strongest, most stable Charges, then laid them out along the floor. There were about ten in total candidates.

  Pirin had never tried to view the history of an object before. He hadn’t thought of it. But, if an Elven King before him had made it, then there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to.

  He held up the Charges, clasped them tight, without putting in too much force and shattering them. They had a faint weight, both physically and spiritually, but they also reeked of ancient power.

  He also considered that he’d never been staring at the object he needed more information about from the Memory Chain.

  Locking onto its feeling and presence, he drew his Essence up to his mind, let his soul colour it, then pulled the Essence through the Chain.

  To infuse his Essence with the idea of the Charges was easy. It began vague, but the longer he held it and focussed on it, the more he narrowed it down. Countless images of kings and queens manifesting Essence and creating Charges for their equipment distilled down to a single ruler's lifetime for each object.

  He distilled it further by focussing on the shape of the rune circle on each Charge, until he collected a mental image of each rune circle's intended function.

  One, a small stamp with rigid sides, gave an axe the ability to conduct and launch shards of Essence. From the impact point, it’d launch shards out in all directions. Another gave a cloak the ability to colour itself like its surroundings, hiding the user.

  Pirin gathered up ten Charges for armour. There was only room on his chestpiece for one charge, and the same went for his pauldron and vambraces. He’d have to pick four Charges.

  He cast aside five of them; they weren’t useful with his Essence types. They were specifically for wizards with mountain lion familiars. The remaining five were simple, but he could use them to his advantage if he played them right.

  One Charge created a gust of wind, which blew away from the rune circle. If he attached it to his vambrace, he could enhance a Winged Fist.

  Another Charge greatly enhanced the durability of the object it was on, and linked the object directly to the Eane. Even Reign would struggle to pierce it, but as far as Pirin could tell, Lord Three didn’t even use Reign. He just hit things really hard. It’d be perfect for his chestplate, for protecting his vitals at a critical moment.

  The third Charge was an Essence purifier. Imprinting it on the shoulder pauldron of the armour would temporarily clean and strengthen his Essence. If he was a Spark, it might temporarily raise his Essence’s stage purity, but it was only a small fraction of a stage where he was. But it had an important side-effect: it could remove the aspect-bend of a Familiar’s Essence. If Pirin needed more pure Essence mid-fight, he could convert gnatsnapper Essence back.

  The last two Charges were both candidates for his second vambrace. One aided in manifestation techniques, helping Essence condense into physical objects faster, and the other improved Essence channels’ abilities to handle fortification techniques. In his arm, they’d have a limited effect, but they’d still be useful.

  He eventually settled on fortification techniques. Manifestation was nice, but strengthening his sword was all he could do with it. He left it behind, and gathered up his four other Charges. “Alright, I think these are the ones,” Pirin said. “Hopefully they have the forge ready for us when we get back to the surface.”

  He tucked the Charges into his void pendant, then grabbed a few more assorted sword Charges and put them in as well, then sealed it and hung it around his neck.

  “Pirin, do you sense anything?” Nomad asked. His racoon-cat was pacing nervously across his shoulders, travelling from one side to the other.

  “I—” Pirin gulped. He’d been focussing on the Charges, and not on his senses.

  A presence was approaching from below. Mortals and a few Flare-stage wizards.

  “They found us,” he said. Flares might not be a huge concern anymore, and they still wouldn’t break through the collapsed store-cave entrance, but it was a nuisance he didn’t have time for. “Run.”