I move alone through the tunnels of brick and refuse. The dark is nothing to me right now, the power flooding through me sharpening my perception to the point that even the faint glow of the magic seeping out of my pores is enough to see by. The smell, the rot, are awful things, attacks on my senses so powerful that they should leave me gagging. Only, it is not so difficult to push those sensations aside, to compartmentalize the information in my head. That wasn't the only odd thing.

The feeling of magic running through my pathways continued. Before being locked in that coffin, I could only sense the pathways when I focused hard on them, when I stilled to meditate on the magical energies moving through my body like blood. It is different now; they are always there. I can see them if I look, somehow now able to look directly past my skin and flesh with my naked eyes to see the endlessly complex circuits of energy running beneath. Where before they had been indistinct, the channels like the shoddy and earthen walls encapsulating a river, are refined now. The channels look more like attuned wires, reinforced to the point that leakage of power or permeability in the membrane of the paths was a thing of the past. The speed the energy runs through the robust pathways far, far exceeds what it did before I entered my personal hell, and no matter how fast it races, there seems to be no leakage.

I realize that I have stopped in the tunnel, staring at my hand and admiring the power running underneath the same way that I might a genius work of enchantment. Were these pathways, these naturally occurring lines of power inside the body, the inspiration for enchantment's foundation? It looks that way to me. Staring at the strobing lights of power running through my body, I understand immediately the significance of the change.

Calling upon my power, a flood of mana converges in my open palm, the power swarming together like blood vessels racing to staunch a wound. It doesn't even take a second before a fully charged ball of Dragonfire glimmers in my hand, the roiling mass of orange and white fire promising that it can detonate the entire tunnel if I merely set it free. With a thought, the mana slips away, absorbed back into the magical capillaries abutting my skin. The change is almost instant, the power returning to the channel, circulating once more.

It isn't as if I am more powerful now. The dragonfire I can wield is the same strength as before if I discount the incredible boost from my new Avatar of War ability. The change is in the pathways themselves, my ability to call upon my mana magnified immensely, and I doubt that I am even scratching the surface of the potential. I can manifest the destructive power of nearly a thousand mana in an instant; that seems to be my limit. The thing is, I don't think that is the limit of the pathways I have created through days of intense suffering, torture, and sleepless strain. It is merely the limit of my current magical power.

The tunnels running beneath the city continue their silence as I move through them. When I had come this way before, there had been hundreds of people in the tunnels, entire families living in small and flooded chambers. Now, there is no one, no eyes turning to follow my dash through the maze beneath the city. My skin begins to crawl, a creeping dread stalking up behind me as I spur myself on faster and faster. The walls of old brick become a blur as I ascend. Small shacks of driftwood and curtained-off areas pass by, each slightly ramping passageway revealing more and more abandoned living areas in the tunnels.

Finally, a light shining down from the top of a tunnel heralds an exit. The gate above me explodes from a tossed ball of dragonfire, the metal wrenching and groaning as it is knocked skyward just ahead of me. Open air. The feeling of the cold wind brushing up against my skin draws me ever skyward, wings unfurling from my back as if on instinct as I soar. I take to the sky over Danfalla, so lost in the revelation of the open air that I don't notice the world around me until I am more than a hundred feet up.

The wind tugs at me, pulling my scarlet hair in its lazy breeze to flutter in front of my face along with the hem of my dress. I note the change in color, perhaps the time spent in a tank of my blood had dyed my hair somehow? It is difficult to tell with how the entire sky has changed. Coming out of the sewers, what I had at first mistaken for day appears now to be the night sky bathed in a sharp red color, the sparse clouds drifting past made into indigo blobs of cotton, the stars peeking through the red, sharp points of contrast in the sky. Over all of it, the full moon, a crimson orb, hangs overhead, radiating malevolence.

It isn't just the sky that has changed, but the city itself. Fires burn everywhere, a smog pervading the air as plumes of dark smoke snake upward from hundreds of points throughout. Entire sections burn, the buildings fully engulfed. People crowd the streets, caught up in either fighting their neighbors or fleeing from the madness. Only a few down below seem to be attempting to corral the chaos in any sort of way. Above it all, in the spot where the duke's palace once overlooked Danfalla, a dead tree towers high into the sky, the forks of its leafless branches seeming almost to reach toward the moon itself. The city itself cries, a moan carried on the wind, ten thousand fighting or fleeing voices giving it life.

"How long was I gone?" I ask.

A voice crackles in my mind, Galea. Words, like the spirit is trying to yell through a metal tube a mile long ring in my ears, and I see her begin to flicker in front of me. The message is garbled, but one thing is clear: this is causing her pain.

"Stop! Stop!" I yell, giving up on speaking to her just in my mind. The strange noises and flickering spirit subside, fading away again. In the quiet that follows, I hear my heart pounding in my ears. Whatever happened to her is far worse than I understood at first. She needs me to help her, and I don't know how.

The city beneath me continues to burn. This is Jor'Mari's home; it needs my help too. Simply turning my mind to the task seems to dampen everything else. For who knew how long, I have been trapped with only a single focus, pitting my will against that scrawny bastard's and finding a way out. That will had never wavered; even when my soul and my heart shook, my will never did. Training that iris of focus on the chaos below, a path opens up. Not a plan, nothing so concrete, but a list of priorities assembles and I begin acting on it without needing to consciously consider.

The tender touch of the wind turns into a gale as I spin in the air and dive away from the tree and the palace district. I have no idea where anyone is. Sure, the Duke looks like he might have his hands busy at the moment, but I need to find out where the 4th army is, where my friends are, where Illigar is. If they have already left the city like they were supposed to, then I would do what I could here, but if not, then I know of one place that could find them. My eyes focus on the Adventurer's Hall deep within the city itself, my destination. Unfortunately, it is on fire.

The building, a place that I have only ever entered a single time, shines like a beacon in the night, the fire burning on the roof taking up a third of the space. While my destination stands out ahead of me, a scream from below drives me off course. I am moving in the direction of the cry before I realize it. At street-level, peer through a broken door to see three people with table legs fighting each other in the first story of a cafe. The two men and woman race around tables, chasing one another with the broken furniture, swinging wildly at one another. In the back of the room, a woman huddles in the corner, a child held in her arms, watching the lunatics go at one another.

I dodge a lazy swing from a lunatic on the street before dashing inside. Even doing my best to avoid the crazed melee, one of the men runs at me with his makeshift weapon. A jab to the face puts him on the ground, cradling his broken nose and cursing at me through broken teeth. The woman in the corner stares up at me as I approach, clutching even tighter to the shaking child in her arms. I extend my hand, trying to offer some measure of reassurance on my face.

"It's okay," I tell her. "I'll take you away from here."

As she hesitantly reaches up to take my hand, I feel a thud across my back and the sound of snapping wood. Turning my head, I find the other woman standing near me, a broken length of wood in her hand and a look of unadulterated fury on her face. Her eyes turn down toward the woman and child, her fingers tightening on the weapon in her hand. She doesn't even have the opportunity to twitch before she is tumbling over the remaining tables, falling to the ground in a crash as I push her away.

I extend my hand once more to the woman on the floor, and this time she takes it. Once we make it to the street, I waste no time with subtlety, taking to the air while holding onto the two. I leave them in a more abandoned part of the city before turning back toward my goal ahead. If I could fly uninterrupted, I can make it to the Guild Hall in just a few minutes. It takes me fifteen minutes to reach the burning building after having to stop four more times due to similar events down on the streets. Despite not being the only one lending assistance, the guard seems absent. The few I do see appear immune to the strange chaos, none of them driven mad by the magic in the air. As far as I can tell, it is only the average citizens affected. Those driven into the city by the beast tide.

Arriving at the Guild Hall, I find the northwest corner burning, the banners hanging over the walls aflame. My cold dragonfire beat back the fire, the streams of dragonfire I unleash running like a waterfall of roiling flame. The exterior fire climbing up the side of the building is snuffed out in moments, leaving the place mostly intact. At least, that is what I believe, until I see the interior.

The first body is a man on the front steps of the Adventurer's Hall, a guard by the looks of him, but he is only the first. Entering, I find the whole place the scene of a massacre. The floor reeks of blood, and the bodies of men and women litter the ground throughout the building.

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I step lightly through the halls, my soul presence spreading out through the building, searching for any survivors or any of the culprits.

More than any of the pain I have felt, more than seeing pieces of me floating in stagnant rainbow-colored water, the revulsion that comes over me as my literal soul rolls across the corpses sends a shiver down my spine. I feel them, every part of them; there are dozens of dead. Things begin to stand out to me: that they all died from a single wound, that all of their eyes have been burned out of their heads, and that a single survivor still lives in the building.

I race through the halls, ignoring all else. My speed surprises even me, the shroud of power filling me from the inside, an incredible boon. It carries with it a feeling of invincibility, something it tries to impress on me, tries to coax me with, but days spent within the coffin have disabused me of any such fanciful delusions. In the end, I am still only a rank two magician, no matter what kind of connection I might have to some fabled throne.

I come to an ungraceful stop, stumbling forward and sliding on the stone floor in the last few steps, still unused to compensating for this new speed. A heavy door lies on the floor in front of me, a bloodstain seeping out from beneath, the blood itself mixing with a second pool stemming from the body of a woman. The room itself appears as some sort of office space, the finery set out amid the wreckage hinting at importance. Two things stand out to me at first glance, and I waste no time in grabbing the fallen door and hurling it aside. Beneath, a man, barely clinging to consciousness stares up at me with. His elven features are even more pale than usual, a wound in his side in the shape of an ornamental doorknob still leaks a trickle of blood.

Kneeling next to him, I reach out a hand and drag the first bit of cloth I can find out of my vault, a very expensive and thick lavender skirt as it turns out. "This is going to hurt a lot," I tell the man, ripping a length of the skirt and pressing it to the wound, trying to slow the bleeding.

He groans, his fingers fluttering a bit, and he needs my help to put his hand on the wound to help hold the makeshift bandage in place. His eyes turn to me, the apple of his sweaty neck bobbing as he tries to grasp at words. The man fails.

"Are there any bandages around here?" I ask. "Anything that can help?"

His eyes roll, turning toward the wall, where a painting sits crooked on a nail. A corner of steel stands out, set into the wall, and I find a small safe recessed into the wood. Faintly, the man on the floor begins mumbling something, numbers, I think, but I ignore his instruction, summoning balls of black sand to me. The sand moves forward, fusing with the powerful metal of the safe. I haul on the door with all of my magical intention; it does not immediately buckle. Even with my sand bonded to the metal, the door of the safe groans, buckling slowly, its shape contorting as it tries to hold in place. Finally, with the shrieking tear of metal, it breaks free, sailing across the room and embedding itself halfway into the opposite wall.

Inside the safe, I find several pouches of coins, some important-looking documents, and three bottles of a reddish fluid. A spike of pain rales through my head as I try to call on the eye to identify the bottles. My vision disappears for a moment, a noise like the ringing of a thousand brass gongs clouding out the world. I snap back to reality before I lose my balance and fall over, having learned very clearly that attempting to use the Eye of Volaash anymore while Galea is injured will be a very bad idea.

Not that I need to know exactly what the bottles are, that is evident enough. I have not come in contact with potions very often; they are incredibly expensive to make or buy, and for the most part, my natural recovery does essentially what they do, only better. But I can't lend my resiliency to others. Snatching one of the potions, I return to the man, feeding the red liquid to him while pocketing the other two.

The man on the floor coughs as the liquid pours down his throat, licking the dry skin of his lips, his eyes focusing on me far better than they had before. "Thank…thank you," he manages. The wound in his side still bleeds, the magic in the potion slowly working to close it. "I don't think I would have made it."

"You're welcome." I don't dare move the man. "What happened here?"

"I don't know," he says. "There was chaos. Everything happened so quickly. A woman came; she started killing everybody. She blew open the doors, trapped me underneath one. Gods…I…" He devolves into a coughing fit, splashes of red ringing the back of his fist. "Give me…give me a moment."

Nodding, I back away from the man, turning my attention to the other thing in the room that drew my eye. A large silver bowl sits upon a stone pedestal, the air around it buzzing with a silent power that moves the air. Attending it, I find a bowl, almost empty, just a small layer of silvery liquid resting at the bottom. In the liquid, the image of half a man's face stares up at me, as if I am looking into some bizarre mirror.

The broken face begins to shout silently as I stare down into the bowl, moving in an animated way.

"What is this?" I call back to the man on the floor behind me.

"It is an oracle bowl," he says, groaning. "There are more names for it…"

"If you are feeling well enough to make jokes, maybe you can tell me how to use it. There is a man in the mirror yelling something at me," I say back to him.

"You merely have to touch it to receive a message. Maybe the Prince has learned of what happened here somehow. There might still be time for him to save us."

I want to ask what he means by that, but one thing at a time. I touch my hand to the oracle bowl, and immediately hear someone shouting in my head.

"Hello! Touch the bowl! Hello!"

"I can hear you," I say down at the man in the bowl. "Something terrible has happened here."

"Who are you?" he asks. "I am speaking to you from the Adventurer's Headquarters in Ramacalla. How did you establish a connection from within the isolated duchy?"

His questions spark more in my mind, but I put those aside for a moment. He strikes me as someone trying to help, someone in the capital of the empire. If anyone could help with the craziness infecting the city, it might be someone there.

"My name is Charlene Devardem, and I am a silver-rank adventurer. I am here in Danfalla. The city is under attack by something, powerful magic. The citizens have gone insane, and the sky is red."

The man in the mirror blinks, taking in my words. "You are in Danfalla?"

"Yes! We need help, whatever help you can send."

He shakes his head. "That doesn't make sense. Give me a moment to confirm. Don't go anywhere." Then, he disappears, leaving me staring up at a glass ceiling lit by a soft and glowing white light. I give the man a full ten seconds before picking up the bowl and placing it down near the injured elf on the floor.

"Wait for him to return," I tell him. "There are things I need to do."

The man grabs my arm before I can stand. "Who were they? Is the prince coming?"

"They claimed to be a man from the imperial capital. I asked for them to send help. The city is on fire, and I can't stay here to speak with them. When they reappear, convince them to do what they can for us."

"That can't be," the elven man on the floor says, his grip on my arm tightening. "That simply can't be."

"The man in the mirror said something similar. Why?"

"Because." He pauses, licking his lips. "Because, communication outside of the duchy shouldn't work. The barrier created by the duke should block everything. The only way to reach the outside would be if the duke let down the walls or…"

"Or he died," I finish for the man. The true emergency of the situation finally begins to settle in. That massive tree I saw dominating the palace flashes before my eyes. "There was an attack on the palace," I say, more to myself than to the injured man. "They must have either killed the duke or driven him into hiding."

"Did you see them?" he asks me. "The ones who did this?"

"No." I narrow my eyes at the man. "You said you saw a woman before."

"She came here," he says. "A human woman, I think. I saw her stab a man with her hand, almost run him through, and then his eyes burned out, like his soul had been set on fire."

It feels so long ago, but it can't have been all that long. The isolation, it makes time feel as if it has been stretched, those final moments before I was sealed away made murky by bitterness. I remember it, though, seeing something like what he describes, that woman plunging her hand into Priscilla, killing the elven woman as she set all of her mana on fire. She tried to do the same thing to me as well; just a single attack, almost enough to kill me. Then, I recall all the bodies in the building, all killed in the same way, all killed by her.

Suddenly, the chaos and terror outside seems to fall away. It is like the fog of events in Danfalla parts beneath my narrowed attention. "Where did she go?" I ask the man.

"She was talking to herself, after…" he says, his eyes turning toward the corpse of the woman on the ground beside us. "She is part of a group, I think. She said that they are going to bring down the barrier around the city. The monsters will flood in. You have to tell the 5th army, you have to let the duke's son know."

Judging from what I saw of the palace and the ground around it while I flew toward the adventurer's hall, I doubt that the 5th can muster much of a defense for the city. If the duke truly was dead, I can't imagine that many of the 5th still live. "How do I stop her?" It is my turn to grab his arm. "Tell me!"

"Sometimes, the guild has to send supplies to the enchanters that maintain the barrier, to keep it active. There are tunnels beneath the walls, passages in some of the guard barracks near the gates of the city. That is the only way in."

"Where is the 4th?" I ask. Finding Illigar was the entire reason I came here in the first place. I didn't find him or anyone I knew from the 4th among the dead. Maybe there was still a chance to reach him, to tell him of what was happening if he didn't already know.

"The 4th?" He blinks, not understanding my question. The man appears like he might ask me about it before my grim expression makes him think otherwise. "They left the city three days ago. By now, they will be most of the way to Black Rock, I expect."

The news fills me with strange emotions. My friends are far away from this mess; they should be safe from whatever is happening, but I need to see them. In the darkest hours, the thought of them coming to help me tided me over for a while until I found the strength to go on inside myself. No, I push aside the feeling of longing; this is good news. It means that none of them are in danger.

I move to stand, nodding at the oracle bowl I set next to him. "When whoever it is in the mirror comes back, make sure they send help."

"The barrier can't come down," he says, settling back onto his back, a bloodied hand lingering on the rim of the bowl. "Even if the 5th can seal the city again, thousands might die."

"That is why I am going to stop it from happening," I tell him, already moving toward the exit. "We won't let Danfalla fall."

Besides, the woman who did this is one of the ones who locked me in that tomb. I promised myself long ago that none of them would be allowed to survive doing that to me, and it is a promise I intend to keep.

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