Corvis Eralith
The dawn's light, a slow, blood-orange stain seeping across the eastern peaks, was illuminating the world in tones of fire and old rust.
It was under this ominous palette that we departed for the Red Gorge.
A strange, surreal tension hummed within me, a cocktail of dread, determination and a profound, grating annoyance. The threat of Phoenix Wyrms, the reason for our mission, seemed to concern my companions less than the state of my fictional dwarven posture.
The Twin Horns, veterans who should have been checking their gear and muttering prayers, instead enveloped me in a cloud of suffocating, maternal attention that felt eerily familiar.
"Your shoulders are all tense, little Finn!" Angela Rose chirped, her voice like the trill of a bird.
Her hands, calloused from bowstrings, descended upon me, pinching my disguised cheeks, kneading my shoulders as if I were dough, and generally treating me like a prized doll.
Each touch was a violation of my precarious disguise and a mockery of the gravity I felt. I stood rigid, enduring it, a prince forced to suffer the groping admiration of courtiers, only these were battle-hardened adventurers whose affection felt more dangerous than any noble's condescension.
By some miracle of Olfred's craft—a magic I was coming to appreciate as deeply as any elemental power—the dwarven makeup held, a cool, unyielding mask over my simmering frustration.
We weren't even within sight of the gorge, and I was already fraying at the edges. This wasn't the respectful distance of Olfred, nor the chaotic but genuine love of my family. This was the proprietary, cloying attention of strangers who saw only a small, vulnerable body, blind to the century of terror and calculation screaming behind my eyes.
"I don't think Finn likes being cuddled like a puppy," Helen Shard interjected, her voice a lifeline of sanity. Bless her half-elven perception, even if it only scratched the surface.
"I am sure little Finn loves his auntie Angela," Rose retorted, delivering another cheek pinch that made me want to scream.
No. I do not. I am here to commit an act of metaphysical theft against a creature of living flame, not to be your emotional support dwarf.
Ahead, Olfred moved like a lodestone drawn toward grim metal, his silence a wall against the chatter. His broad back was a landscape of tension I could read as clearly as any scroll.
This many people—this much noise—was an ecosystem he was not built to tolerate. His discomfort was a quiet solace; at least one being here understood that our purpose was not a jovial excursion.
The path began to steepen, the air growing warmer, carrying a faint, acrid tang I couldn't place. Olfred had decreed I would take no part in the fight. The logical part of me, the cowardly part that remembered being a soft human in a safe world, whimpered in agreement.
But the core of me, the part fused with Corvis Eralith's destiny and a library of tragic futures, rebelled. I needed to be there. I needed to see the Phoenix Wyrm, to witness its death, to feel the release of its Beast Will, if such a thing even existed.
How could I claim its insight from a safe distance? Power taken without risk was no power at all, just another handout from a universe that enjoyed cruelly yanking them away.
Yet, the numbers sobered me. Adventurer's Guild classifications floated in my mind: an S-Class beast was considered a match for an SS-Class adventurer, meaning high yellow or even initial silver core.
I was a solid red, a bright, hot coal next to their roaring furnaces. The gap was not a gap; it was a canyon I could not leap. But a sliver of hope, cold and sharp, had presented itself. Gideon Bastius, the genius artificer, had not yet created his legendary revival pendants.
That meant the Phoenix Wyrms' cores were not the hunted, priceless commodities they would become. They were considered worthless cinders, as Jasmine had said. The flocks might be larger, less harried.
There might be an alpha, old and potent, whose will hadn't been shattered by constant persecution. My gamble, however insane, was playing out on a slightly less tilted board.
Then, I saw it.
The world seemed to fall away, the path curving around a final, massive shoulder of rock to reveal the Red Gorge. The name was a pathetic understatement.
It was a wound, not a gorge. A colossal, jagged crevice ripped between two titanic slopes of mountain, their faces a brilliant, layered crimson, banded with gold and burnt orange, glowing as if lit from within by the dawn's fire.
It was majestic in the way a lightning strike is majestic—beautiful, terrible, and utterly inhuman.
The scale vaporized my sense of self. From our vantage, I could see ant-like figures swarming at the gargantuan feet of the cliffs: the workers of House Wykes.
Quarries scarred the lower slopes, and a network of tracks led to dark mine entrances, mere pockmarks on the stone skin. And there, nestled in the deepest shadow of the cleft, was the dungeon itself.
A grand, architectural facade carved directly into the cliff-face, dozens of meters tall, its lines too straight, its proportions too perfect to be natural. Certainly Djinn architecture.
It looked like... Petra, from Earth. Only that this was a monument to murdered people, now repurposed as a mining operation and a hunting ground.
"Enjoying the view, kid?" Adam Krensh's voice boomed, too close, as he ruffled my hair, jolting me from my reverie.
"I-I don't see any Phoenix Wyrms," I mumbled, the first inane words that escaped my lips. I wanted to bite my tongue off.
The resulting laughter from the party was a wave of heat to my face. "Did you expect to see S-Class mana beasts flying here freely?" Adam grinned, not unkindly, but with the amusement of a man watching a child expect dragons at a county fair. "No one would be getting even remotely close if that was the case."
Yes. Obviously. Idiot. The self-admonishment was a whip-crack in my mind. I was getting sloppy, my awe and anxiety blurring the sharp, analytical edge I needed to survive.
We began the descent, a winding path that made me feel like an insect crawling down a giant's leg. The scale was utterly oppressive.
The sounds of industry rose to meet us—the distant clang of hammers, the rumble of carts, shouted orders swallowed by the immense space. Dozens, then hundreds of workers resolved into individuals, hauling tools, pushing laden barrows, their faces grimed and tired.
This was the economic engine House Wykes protected, the true prize. The dungeon was just the most volatile vein.
Olfred moved through this organized chaos like a shark through kelp, his gaze fixed ahead, utterly dismissing the human sea around him. His indifference was a kind of power in itself.
"What is his problem?" Adam muttered, glancing at the lone dwarf forging ahead.
"Not everyone likes working in a team, Adam," Durden rumbled, his voice calm and deep as settling stone. "So just be patient."
It was Helen who navigated the final perimeter, a zone thick with guards. Most were non-mages, but their eyes were hard, their hands on weapons. A few glimmered with the active aura of low-level cores.
They were the fence around the treasure, and their suspicion was a tangible wall.
"Stop there!" The voice that cut through the din was a bass grind, familiar in a way that tickled the back of my knowledge-riddled brain.
A large man stepped forward, a wall of scarred muscle in armor that seemed more for show than protection. Crimson hair, a face mapped by old violence… Drogo Lambert.
The name surfaced from the deep archives of the novel. A former adventurer, a future superior to Tessia in the war. Seeing him here, now working for House Wykes, was a disorienting splice of timelines.
Helen smoothly glided forward, placing a friendly arm around Olfred's rigid shoulders—a gesture that seemed to pain them both. "Drogo! Long time no see! I didn't take you for one to work for House Wykes."
Recognition transformed Drogo's face, suspicion melting into a rough grin. "Helen Shard and the Twin Horns. Here for the Gorge, I presume? I'm here as 'dungeon consultant,' or whatever that swanky title means."
"That's right," Adam said, his tone losing its earlier humor, becoming professionally cool.
"I heard something about an expedition funded by Elder Rahdeas Warend," Drogo said, his eyes shrewd.
"That's us," Olfred stated, his voice flat, devoid of any warmth that might encourage conversation. I watched closely.
The Twin Horns knew him as Damien Malaisson. Drogo clearly did not. Was the Lambert of this era not yet connected to those shadows? Or was Olfred's disguise as Damien so compartmentalized it had its own history?
Drogo waved off the other guards, his authority clear. "I need to know how long you intend to remain inside. And," he sighed, a sound of bureaucratic weariness, "I need to take a share of whatever loot you recover. Standard fee."
"Fees on the loot too?" Adam grumbled, only to be shushed by Angela's hand clamped over his mouth.
"He didn't say anything, Drogo," she said sweetly.
Drogo laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Just the rules. Nothing personal." He turned to lead us through the final gate, into the shadow of the cleft itself. The air grew noticeably warmer, the acoustics shifting as the mighty walls rose around us, muffling the outside world.
"How many people work here?" I asked, my voice small in the giants' hallway.
"Who talked?" Drogo spun, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion, peering around as if the voice had been a trick of the wind.
In a fluid, practiced motion, the Twin Horns closed ranks. Durden's immense frame slid in front of me, becoming a living wall. Helen cleared her throat, her grin widening. "Are you becoming deaf, Drogo?"
"Was that you?" Drogo asked, scratching his head before shrugging. "Anyway… about two hundred. Maybe more with the night shift."
I blinked, confused by the performance, until Jasmine leaned down, her voice a frosty whisper near my ear. "Drogo doesn't view positively kids in such places. He has… history. It's better he doesn't truly see you."
The insight was a gift. So, the jovial veteran had a soft spot, or rather, a hardened scar. Another piece of a person, not a character. I stored it away.
Then we stood before it. The dungeon entrance. Up close, the Djinn handiwork was undeniable. The orange-red stone was striated like a geological masterpiece, warm to the eye.
The facade was a temple front, symmetrical and imposing, though great chunks had fallen away, claimed by time or cataclysm. The tall, square entrance was a maw of darkness, framed by metal that was not steel but something darker, smoother, drinking the light.
Staring at it, I felt a hollow ache.
This was built by the Ancient Mages, a people of profound aetheric understanding, slaughtered to the last by the Asuras. Their greatest works were now our tool sheds, our mines, our monster pens. The sheer weight of erased history pressed on me, a melancholy deeper than my personal fears.
Drogo halted at the threshold of darkness. "You might find some other parties under my command on the first level. If they give you trouble, just say my name."
"Thank you, Drogo," Helen said, clasping his forearm in a warrior's grip.
"Bah, always happy to help old colleagues." He waved a dismissive hand at the party—at Olfred, Helen, Adam, Angela, Durden. His eyes passed over the space where I stood behind Durden without registering a thing. I was a ghost, unseen.
"Come on, we don't have all day," Olfred growled, his patience at its end. He stepped forward and placed a hand on the colossal, metal-bound door.
A pulse of earth mana, so refined and potent it was barely a whisper, flowed from him. The door, which should have required a team of men or a complex mechanism, swung inward on silent, unseen hinges, revealing a throat of darkness. The display of effortless power didn't go unnoticed. The Twin Horns exchanged glances.
"How strong are you, even, Malaisson?" Adam asked, his earlier bravado replaced by wary respect.
Olfred glanced back, his eyes glinting in the shadow of the entrance. "Silver core. Initial stage." The lie was smooth, absolute.
"I think I've never met anyone like you," Durden murmured, his honest admiration plain.
"My aunt is a silver core mage," Jasmine stated softly, and I knew she was thinking of Hester Flamesworth, another link in the chain of power I was tangentially connected to.
A reckless energy, a desperate need to act, surged in me. I stepped forward, aiming to slip past Olfred into the waiting dark.
A hand, large and unyielding as a stone bracket, clamped on my shoulder.
"What do you think you are doing?" Olfred's voice was low, a vibration in the still air.
"Going inside?" I retorted, trying to twist away. I looked to the Twin Horns for support, but found only the same, infuriating tableau of amused adults watching a child test boundaries. Angela's smile was pitying; Helen's was apologetic but firm.
"I-I am not to remain here, right?" I asked, the protest sounding weak and childish even to my own ears.
"That you are," Adam said, not unkindly. "We agreed on that yesterday. You'll remain at a decided position, and that position is the dungeon entrance."
Panic, cold and slick, started to rise. This couldn't be how it ended. Not after the desert, the disguise, the planning. "But… what if there are rogue mana beasts? What if something comes out?"
"There are no mana beasts apart from Phoenix Wyrms in this place, and they don't come to the surface," Olfred stated, his voice leaving no room for the fantasy of danger as an excuse. "You will be fine."
"It's child abandonment!" I hissed, a last, desperate tactic, playing the card I knew they all saw.
A quiet voice cut through. "I will remain with you."
Jasmine Flamesworth. She hadn't moved, but her statement was a door sliding shut. Her frosty resolve was a different kind of wall—not Olfred's unbreachable mountain, but a glacier, cold, patient, and infinitely more difficult to melt or circumvent.
I looked from her impassive face to Olfred's implacable one, to the varied expressions of the Twin Horns, all united in this one, sensible, unbearable decree. A storm of helpless rage and corrosive despair brewed in my chest.
I want to see you try and stop me from getting what I want, I swore silently, the vow a white-hot coal in my mind. With Olfred, the Twin Horns were safe. My absence wouldn't doom them. And Olfred knew my true goal. He'd seen the obsession in my eyes.
Perhaps, in the thought process of a Lance, he even understood it.
That meant my path was clear, and infinitely more difficult. I would have to get past Jasmine Flamesworth, a renegade mage of a legendary house, to chase a flock of S-Class monsters into a volcanic dungeon.
I let my shoulders slump, a performance of defeat more convincing than any I'd yet managed. My gaze dropped to the gritty stone at my feet, avoiding all of theirs.
"Fine…" I muttered, the word tasting of ash.
It was a surrender they needed to hear. But as I stood there, listening to the echoes of their final gear checks and Olfred's last, low instructions, I wasn't planning my obedient vigil.