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The staircase led down forever, moving ever closer to the abyss where there was no light, housing only the sound of insects and dank air to invade the senses.

Thankfully, I had a small glow stone lamp that came with my big bag o’ tools, so I activated it with mana, embracing the soft green light as it made Kline’s shadow the size of a tiger and then a house cat in regular intervals, waxing and waning, growing and disappearing.

We walked on.

About ten minutes in, we finally saw light at the end of the tunnel and when we entered the chamber at the end, we found a garden of glowing plants that made my heart sing. I wanted to identify them—but my Guide wasn’t working. There was no highlighting, so simply touching one could kill me.

I put aside my impulses and studied the garden. It was well organized, lit by an artificial glowstone acting as a sun, and crawled with an inch of creeping soul fog that drifted along the ground. In the center was a statue of a tiny plant and another crystal ball.

The final trial… I thought.

I took off my backpack and checked on Kyro. He was still breathing, but it came out in spurts, and his skin was deathly pale.

"Kyro… we’re here," I said. "I need you to tell me what plant’ll save you."

He didn’t even groan.

I shook him.

No change.

I slapped his little cheeks.

No stirring.

I looked around and felt waves of anxiety. I didn’t know what any of the plants were or what they did or how they would save me. I searched the entire space and found that there was no exit or placards with information on the specific plants or how to make resources from them. There was only one set of instructions—the one in front of the statue.

A tiny Omoxilian the size of a small dog perched on a podium made of vines that stretched down the mount until they touched and penetrated the grass below it.

And the script.

It was terrible. It had over five hundred characters—and 90% of them weren’t soul runes.

Jesus… I thought as I paced back and forth. I had less than five days and a multi-day trip to the Bramble. Even if we could shave a day off our return trip with Kline’s teleportation, I had a day—and it took a day to do the last task that almost killed me. What would happen this time?

I didn’t know and didn’t want to, but the problem was that there wasn’t a choice. Kyro was dying, and I had no idea how to save him. My only option was to go for it.

"Kline," I said as I pulled out a second water bowl and filled it with our dwindling Diktyo water. "I need you to watch over Kyro. If I’m not… deep into something, I want you to wake me up. Kay? Unless he says not to. Do you understand?"

Kline meowed.

"Good man." I retrieved the last food container we had and opened it. "Eat up. There might be another attack. Kay?"

He nodded and ate as I hesitantly ate a piece of steak, hydrated and sat in front of the statue and let the runes take me to a galaxy far from the crypt where soul runes reigned supreme.

That’s what I expected, but it was different.

The abyss was a formless abyss but teeming with white plants that shifted in the blackness like snakes, twisting and vining and growing all around me. They moved on their own, coiling around each other, building walls, and then collapsing, spreading ground cover on invisible planes below me.

Around them were the soul runes. The second I looked at one, it stabbed my mind and sent me spiraling into a disjointed state of consciousness. The trial was apparent from the second I saw it.

2.

The script was an enchantment that provided motion to a creature. It was the embedded equivalent of the arrays that I worked with outside—which was the clue. I needed to translate those arrays of connected runes into a spell made of concepts and bless the small monster to bring it to life.

The second passage of runes contained the enchantment, which triggered the same part of my brain as a chant, but they were more complex. One rune had the equivalent of ten or more words, effectively capturing concepts.

I was relieved by those aspects. I already had experience with enchantments from creating the Ilyndra Elixir and also with sigils, which were a different form of enchantment. I had worked with soul runes, and chants meant for demigods. Compared to an average individual, I was well suited for the task.

But.

What does this even mean…? I pondered as I looked at a large section that didn’t stab my brain. It didn’t even activate.

I melded back into the real world and called out to Lithco and realized he wasn’t there to help me read runes or practice enchantments or anything. So I just sat down cross-legged and pondered the situation to no avail.

So far, I have a spell that injects souls into objects and another that allows the objects to move with magic… plants are ideal because they’re flexible. A rock can’t walk or at least coil. It’s inflexible. But… that’s not even relevant here. I thrust my chin into my hands. Soul enters the object, the object moves—the object attacks…

I shot up and looked at the beast.

"There’s nothing preventing it from attacking me," I whispered aloud. "I got an angry soul in a moving body, and… it’s just gonna move around, right? So I gotta control it."

I sat down and studied the runes, focusing on the section I was missing and sure enough, needles pricked my brain, and I got lost in a trance. I sat for an hour and then two and soon I had lost all sense of time and disappeared into a void where I learned how to speak with souls. It wasn’t like speaking to humans. It was reminiscent of the first time I spoke to Yakana; it came from deep in the subconscious, in an area that the Oracle couldn’t reach. And when I was there, I heard words but the words were actually stories, like when Yakana morphed into different animals to describe what he was.

Only this was eerier.

Speaking to a soul was to take on its emotions and remnant memories, which were sometimes calm and cognitive and other times furious and angry. And the worst part was that, like Aiden, I needed to convince these souls to follow my will, and to do that, I needed to make an agreement with them.

Soul pact… I thought upon opening my eyes. I was surrounded by the same ambiguous lighting, but Kline’s water bowl was empty, and the food dish only contained one piece of steak. Kline knew how to ration, which concerned me.

I turned and found him sleeping beside Kyro, who was breathing heavily—sweating buckets.

"Hold in there," I whispered as I put a finger on his forehead to check the heat. He was burning up.

I stood and walked over to the crystal ball, but as I touched it, I felt a deep unease and decided to hold back and think things through for a moment longer—if only to delay the inevitable.

3.

Brindle had returned to pruning his garden when he got a telepathic link from Elana. He wanted to disregard her, as he did with everyone, but she was now tied to his pupil, so he reluctantly acknowledged her presence.

"Elana," he said without greeting, clipping a pink scallow bloom. It was a shame to clip, but it took too much energy for the other plants to survive.

"Brindle," Elana said dryly. "What’s the third trial?"

"For what?"

"What do you mean, ’For what?’ Don’t you dare tell me that you’re not watching the crypt?"

"Hmmm…" Brindle didn’t like that Elana could watch where she went. It made him increasingly grateful he had the foresight to set up Oracle suppression systems throughout the forest.

"Answer me, Brindle."

He stared at the blooms and considered her demand, wondering if he should prune her, too. He would get penalized by the Oracle for accepting her blessed subclass and then killing her—but he didn’t need the Oracle. He didn’t have the Guide when he was in Areswood. He accepted it because he needed a way to watch the forest and write his books to discourage people from entering the forest.

As for his Mira, the Oracle wouldn’t cut off his patronage if he killed Elana. The Oracle had begged him to spill forest secrets for countless millennia, and it wouldn’t stop now. It also wouldn’t penalize its star neophyte.

Killing Elana was an option—and he thought about it often. He clipped a bloom and said:

"It’s a golem enchantment."

Elana paused. "So it’s necromancy?"

"It’s incorrectly referred to by that name at times, yes," Brindle said. Mira needed to take a living soul and put it into an animated body—but it wasn’t as they made it seem. Souls were obliterated upon death, so only those with strong enough attachments could reattach in a soul stream unless a soulmancer seized someone’s neara framework before their body was destroyed.

"Did you teach her about soul pacts?"

"No."

"Why the hell not?" she screamed.

Brindle stopped pruning, and the roots underneath his cloak tightened. "I lack the patience for this questioning," he said. "I have chosen to mentor Mira. That’s all. I do not seek to pass on my legacy or establish a business with her. That’s where we differ. So refrain from your sentimentalities when you address me, or I will not address you."

Elana seethed. "Fine. I will respect that, but… Will you at least fulfill her reward?"

Brindle fell silent.

"The deadline’s approaching, Brindle. You need to commit."

Brindle turned to his sprawling garden, a multi-colored galaxy of flowers and herbs and trees of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Then he looked to the sky and waved his hand.

The ethereal form of Salan, the Soul Guardian of the god Real he killed, appeared before him. She stood a hundred feet tall, chains on her hands and wings on her back, blindfolded like an arbiter of justice in her transparent white armor.

She once had a personality—but now had none. Just the potential for consciousness. A rebirth born from the person she attached to.

He clenched his hand, and the woman dissolved into steam, losing soul force as she became smaller and smaller until she was as tall as he was, containing only the aura of a second evolution creature despite her neara being pure beyond anything mortals could fathom.

Real used Saslan incorrectly her whole life. True guardians were meant for psychomancy, and if Mira got one… she would gain immense power to protect the forest—or destroy it.

It was a powerful ally he was partial to providing her—but.

Giving it to Mira would force him to interject himself in a Multiuniversal request. And then it would give the Multiversal Council the legal basis to send a god-level resource into the forest and send independent guards to ensure that the people Brindle sent to deliver it didn’t use it for nepharis means. It would inject a legal pretext for sparking another conquer attempt.

It would also put her face to face with a minor conquer attempt when Mira was barely able to survive.

"Brindle," Elana said. "If you don’t provide it—someone else will. And I can’t find one. They could pick anyone and send anyone to deliver it."

"Assuming they can find one."

"They will find one."

Brindle spun his hand, and the ghostly angel and all the spare aura were drawn into his body into a vortex.

"If she survives this test without shattering her soul…" He paused. "I’ll consider it."

Brindle cut the connection before Elana could speak and returned to his pruning. The Oracle was making a play for the forest, and providing Mira her reward both aided and harmed her. It would all depend on how she did during the trial. The trial…

Brindle’s thoughts drifted back to his pupil. If I had warned her… it wouldn’t be a trial. But… should I have done it anyway?

Brindle wasn’t used to second-guessing himself. It made him feel uncomfortable. He clipped another scallow bloom and disappeared into his forest to clear his mind.

4.

I took a deep breath and activated the crystal ball in front of the statue. Unlike the others, it didn’t pull souls into one area. Instead, it summoned a soul from within—one vibrant purple with neara—that forcefully invaded my mind without warning.

A searing pain cut through my stomach and back and brain, and I felt blood and pain and stabbing all over me. Roars of a creature blasted in my ear, and the ground shook as my body lifted and smashed into the ground viciously as creatures ripped me apart.

"Help!" I screamed, trying to look through the silhouettes of bony bears ripping me to shreds.

I was living the soul’s death. I was certain of it, but I couldn’t handle it. It was too much, too violent, too traumatic for me to handle. "Please…"

"Please" will not save you from those who seek your death.

The sounds and sensations of ripping beasts suddenly disappeared, leaving me suspended in the darkness with the sound of a hollow male voice. And in the darkness above me, two glassy orange eyes opened and stared into my soul.