After breakfast the next morning, Matt watched Tess with an amused expression, while Ayden played with his shock spell. It looked like ball of electricity as he rolled it around between his hands.

“Hyper much?” Matt asked as Tess ran up a tree trunk and flipped over backwards.

She grinned. “Challenge gets me going. And I’m betting this cave will be better than the last,” she told him, then pulled herself up into a tree and disappeared from sight.

“Not worried you’ll get tired?” he called teasingly.

Ayden chuckled but didn’t look up. “I think you’ll find the word tired is missing from her vocabulary.”

“And I thought I had a lot of energy,” Matt mused. “Don’t know how you’ve kept up with her all these years.”

“Not easily,” Ayden admitted with a smile.

Matt lit a cigarette, then asked curiously, “Why do mages do that?”

“Do what?”

“Cast stuff when it’s not needed. I mean, spells seem pretty useless most the time anyway, but...”

Ayden instantly bristled and looked up at him, though the spell continued and let off a soft crackling sound as it grew a little more powerful. “How’s magic useless?” he asked edgily. “You have enchanted objects—your lighter, for one. Not to mention mages that create items, like some tailors, jewelers, furniture makers and such. All of which I’m sure you use since you obviously like expensive things.”

Matt didn’t seem the least bit affected by Ayden’s tone and answered casually, “I said spells are useless, unless used for fighting, and a fighting mage is very rare. Enchantments or magically made items, on the other hand, I like quite a bit.”

“Well, if we mages never cast any spells, regardless of how useful they are, than we would never build up enough mana to enchant things.”

“Planning on being an enchanter?” Matt asked skeptically. “Don’t see how you’d have the time.” He glanced meaningfully at where Tess had just been.

“No,” Ayden said, calming down now. “You shouldn’t try enchanting or spell-writing away from the proper resources, all of which are at the Enchantments Manufacturing Company or the Arcane University. It’s too dangerous to mess with that stuff otherwise. That’s how my mother died.” He mumbled the last sentence and looked back down at his spell.

“Oh.” Matt took a drag of his cigarette as he watched Ayden’s hands. “So,” he said, blowing out smoke, “if you’re not going to be an enchanter, or make anything magically... why do you do it? When you’re not fighting, I mean.”

“It’s like...” Ayden thought for a moment. “It’s like if you sit for a really long time. After a while, it really bugs you and you have to walk around for a bit. Or like a hunger. And if a mage doesn’t cast for a long enough time, then they go through withdrawal.”

“How long?”

Ayden shrugged and continued staring at his spell. He moved his hands a few inches further apart and then back again, stretching the size of the energy ball. “Depends on how much power you have, how long you’ve been a mage, and how much mana you use on average.”

“How long for you?”

“A few days... maybe a week, but I doubt it’d be that long, I use a lot.”

Matt nodded. “So what’s withdrawal, exactly? What happens to you?”

“Not much, really. It just physically hurts and you shake, maybe get sweats. It’s worse the longer you go without casting. It’ll go away after a few months, but that’s also when your mana starts decreasing.”

“Can you run out of mana that way?” Matt wondered. “How long would it take?”

“You’d have to be a pretty young mage, or barely ever cast any spells, to lose it completely. The decrease is at a very slow rate. You can build up more mana by casting more spells, but there’s nothing that speeds up the decrease.”

“So, how do you know all this? Why would someone go through it?”

“I know from books, of course,” Ayden answered as his spell ended and he looked up. “The people who have had to go through it are mages who got imprisoned. They have a special place for them that has the Farlon anti-magic enchantment on it.”

“Like Farlon rope.”

“Exactly.” Ayden stood then. “Well... we should go,” he said, then called to the trees in general, not knowing where Tess was, “Tess, let’s get going.”

It was silent for a moment, and then suddenly she jumped down behind him, landing lithely on her feet, and put her dagger to his throat. “You’re dead,” she told him happily.

“No, I’m not.” He moved so that the blade pushed closer to his neck—it stopped against a hard surface and the air turned blue at the touch, then faded. He whirled around and grabbed her throat. “Shock spell.”

She fell backwards onto the ground with a long dramatic “aaaaggghh” sound to show that she was dying.

Matt’s sudden laugh sounded uncharacteristically childlike.

“If you die from one shock spell, we have a big problem,” Ayden told her with a chuckle.

She kicked his legs out from under him, and a second later she was straddling him with her dagger to his throat again. “I was feinting.”

He smirked. “Okay, I give.” He waited for her to sheathe the blade, and then his hands shot to her sides, tickling her. She squealed and rolled off him to escape. He moved to a sitting position and looked down at her, shaking his head. “Hopefully no one will tell the monsters that all they have to do is tickle you.”

“Or you,” she returned, starting to tickle him.

He laughed and moved away from her hands. “Let’s go,” he told her as he got back to his feet.

She reached up to him. “Okay, help me up.”

He smiled. “I’m not as dumb as you look.”

She smirked and jumped up, then turned to Matt. “Ready?” she asked lightly.

Ayden glanced over in time to catch something in Matt’s eyes—he almost seemed sad. But Matt quickly pushed whatever it was away with a cocky smile. “Always,” he told her.

They walked north, though the sparse pine forest, and just a few minutes later they stood in front of a stone door that was set into the side of a steep, grassy hill. It was intricately carved with delicate swirling patterns and there was some writing in the center, more of the spirit language.

“What’s it say?” Tess asked.

Ayden studied it for a moment. “Enter this... place,” he read aloud, “and you may not leave, you will be doomed to serve as a... protector of what you seek.”

“You knew this language before you went to the library,” Matt accused.

Ayden smirked. “I did brush up on it, though.”

“Language is kind of one of his things,” Tess commented.

“Yeah, I’m seeing that,” Matt said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s not really that impressive,” Ayden said dismissively. “Gnome, Fairian, Woodlander and, of course, Canaran are all mostly derived from Ancient Presbelic, the language of the gods. So once you know that, then...” He trailed off as he noticed the looks he was getting. “Then apparently you get really bored,” Ayden mumbled and returned his attention to the door.

“Yeah, so how do we open it?” Matt asked.

Ayden pointed to another sentence further down. “Speak open to enter,” he answered. “Easy enough... ibaero.” When the door opened toward them in two halves, he cast his light spell and entered the dark cave. The others followed.

The passage led them down for a long time, until the light from the entrance was completely gone, leaving them in what would have been pitch blackness without Ayden’s spell. The rock around them grew increasingly damp, forcing them to slow their pace so they wouldn’t slip on the mostly smooth floor. This cave didn’t look man-made at all though—the walls were rugged, spiky stalactites hung from the ceiling, and some stalagmites protruded here and there from the floor. Most of which were flat and wide, like large mushrooms carved in cream-colored rock.

After a while, the tunnel started slanting uphill. There was much more climbing involved than there had been before, and Ayden’s progress was very slow. When they got to a particularly steep climb, Tess' impatience got the best of her and she went first.

“You know,” Tess mused as she reached the top of the passage and slid into a flattish cave, “I’ve got plenty of experience in trees and on the ground. I’ve even been in a few caves, but I’ve never done any actual cave crawling before.”

“I’m not loving it, to be honest,” Ayden said wearily as his foot slipped on yet another wet rock. He gave up for a moment and sat down to rest.

Tess could barely make it to her knees in the narrow passage. She turned so she was lying on her stomach and looked over the ledge, down to Ayden. “Why not? This rocks.” She laughed. “Literally. We should find more caves. Oh! I wonder what creatures live in places like this?”

He leaned his head back against the rock and looked up at her. “None. At least not this far in, it’s too dark for anything to survive. No plants can grow in complete darkness, for one thing, so there’s nothing to eat. Also—”

“Why the hell are we stopped?” Matt grumbled as he squeezed through the doorway and into the room with the rest of them.

“Resting,” Ayden answered.

“Rest later,” Matt barked at him.

Ayden rolled his eyes. “What’s the hurry?”

“It’s boring,” Tess answered for him. “Let’s go.”

Ayden sighed and turned back to the wall he was trying to climb. Tess moved back into the next room. It only took a minute for Matt to get fed up with Ayden’s slowness. He grabbed his ankles and pushed the mage up until he made it into the small pass where Tess could pull him through.

“Hey, why don’t you cast your lesser light on my bracers so I can keep going first? Then I can help you more,” Tess offered.

“Okay, I can give you the white light though.”

“No, the green’s fine,” she told him. “That way you can keep the full strength of the white spell and still see good to climb and stuff.”

Ayden smiled adoringly at her. “You’re awesome.”

She grinned while Matt commanded edgily, “Go already!”

“What’s your problem?” Ayden asked him curtly.

“I don’t feel like staying here all day,” Matt said tightly. “I want to get out of these damn caves and find something to kill.”

Tess nodded. “Can’t argue with that.” She held up her arms and Ayden cast his spell—half on one and half on the other. When he let go, her bracers were glowing green and she started climbing up the wall.

She reached the next tunnel quickly and was barely able to even turn around in the very small space. She pulled Ayden up, then turned back and continued down the passage. “Gets tighter up ahead,” she called back over her shoulder. “Gonna be a squeeze for you, Matt.”

Matt swore under his breath in response.

Tess and Ayden moved with ease through a tall pass that was about a foot-and-a-half wide and several feet long, but Matt had to push himself through and didn’t breathe until he was out.

After a while, Tess came to a small room, no more than five feet across in either direction. Ayden joined her a second later, and then Matt, who looked around with a deep scowl. His breathing was even shallower now. He ground his teeth together and forced himself to breathe evenly.

Ayden realized that Matt’s attitude was because of the small, enclosed spaces. It seemed Matt was claustrophobic. Ayden couldn’t help taking some pleasure in his distress and had to fight a smile.

“Dead end,” Tess told them lightly.

Her slightly amused tone got on Matt’s nerves. “No, it’s not,” he said in a voice that sounded like that of a stubborn child willing it to be their way. “Look harder.”

“I think we have to go up.”

“Great, then go,” Matt commanded.

“Yes, sir,” Tess replied dryly. She studied the wall in front of her for a moment. “Hmm... Ayd, give me your bag. You guys stay here. If I find a way up there, then I’ll throw the rope down for you.” She slung Ayden’s bag onto her back and then put her hands on the wall. “Watch me, this is pretty slippery.”

“Feather fall at the ready,” Ayden assured her.

She nodded and smiled. “Here I go.”

As Tess happily began to climb up, Matt took off his sleeveless jacket and then his t-shirt. He tossed the shirt aside and put the jacket back on, then leaned back against the wall and lit a cigarette.

“Can’t stand to keep clothes on?” Ayden muttered.

“I’m hot,” Matt said edgily.

“Everyone’s hot,” Ayden told him. “But you don’t see us stripping.”

Matt glowered at him. “I don’t fucking care.”

Ayden just rolled his eyes and they fell silent.

__________

Matt was on his second cigarette, and the small room was becoming extremely smoky when Tess called down, “There’s a ledge up here and then a large room, man-made I think. I didn’t get a good look—my light went out.”

“The green light spell doesn’t last as long as the white,” Ayden said. “I’m not even sure why, I mean—”

“Yeah,” Tess said impatiently, cutting him off. “Anyway, I think we made it to the main place.”

Matt stepped forward to look up at her. He threw his cigarette onto the floor, where it fizzled out in a small puddle of water. “Then toss the damn rope down.”

She did so. Ayden caught the bottom of it and sighed. “Ready?”

“Yeah, the rope’s tied around a pillar... or something,” she called back. “But it’ll hold no problem.”

“Move,” Matt told Ayden.

“I’m going.”

“No, I mean move aside. I’ll go first and pull you up.”

Ayden nodded.

Matt grabbed the rope and started climbing up, using small footholds in the wall and occasionally wrapping a hand around the rope for extra leverage. “Ready?” he called once he got to the top.

Ayden wrapped the rope around his left hand and foot so it wouldn’t take much strength to hang on. “Yeah.” He used his right hand and leg to keep himself from knocking into the wall on the way up. “Thanks,” he said when Matt grabbed his arm a couple of minutes later, and pulled him onto the ledge.

Matt just gave him a nod as he stepped back out of the way and lit yet another cigarette. “Glad that part’s done,” he commented in relief.

Tess shrugged. “Yeah, for now. But we get to go out that way,” she added with a smile.

He exhaled some smoke through his nose with a bit of a growl.

She laughed at his grouchiness. “I don’t know why you guys didn’t like that. It was fun.”

“Not so much,” Ayden disagreed. “Dark, dirty, wet, and exhausting doesn’t equal fun in my book.”

Matt chuckled. “Oh, yes it does,” he said, returning to his usual swaggering tone. “It’s just the wrong kind of cave.”

Tess shook her head but couldn’t help smiling. “And he’s back.”

“Miss me?” he asked, twitching his arched brow.

She just rolled her eyes. Now that Ayden’s light spell was nearby, she looked around the room. “Ayd, torches,” she said, pointing to some that were mounted on the walls.

He sent a fireball at one of them and suddenly the rest of them lit as well, illuminating the place further. The symmetrical room was about thirty feet wide and more than fifty feet long. The floor and walls were made from gray stone. The place was empty except for three doorways on both of the side walls.

Taking a few steps forward, they looked down the first set of doorways—one on either side of them—seeing that they led to long, narrow hallways that ended with a small room where a chest was visible. They crossed the main room, looking through each doorway and found the same thing every time. Returning to the set of corridors closest to the entrance, Ayden asked, “Well, which way?”

Tess took a gold piece out of the small pouch on her belt and ran her thumb over the dragon’s head on one side. “Heads left, tails right.”

“Why not just randomly pick?” Matt asked.

She shrugged. “No fun.” She tossed the coin in the air, then caught in and opened her hand to show the dragon’s tail on the backside. “Right.”

“Flipping a coin is fun?” Matt shook his head. “You really need to get out more.”

“Shut up and come on,” she said, taking the lead and heading cautiously down the first corridor on the right-hand side.

Matt flicked his cigarette back down into the cave, and then followed along with Ayden.

The room at the end of the hallway was small, only six feet square. The only thing in it, besides a torch on the wall, was a chest on the floor. “It’s a trap,” Ayden said. “I’ll go. You guys stay here.” He stepped up and crouched down in front of the chest, then moved his hands as though caressing it, his fingers hovering an inch above the wood. “Not magically trapped,” he reported. “Probably mechanical.” He glanced around the small room, and then pushed on the chest, but it was mounted to the floor. He nodded. With a deep breath, he opened the unlocked chest.

It was empty.

Suddenly metal bars fell down in the doorway with a loud clang, locking him inside. He stood and turned around, completely unsurprised. “And there it is. Look around on the walls for a button or lever.”

Tess nodded and started feeling the walls, but before she could find anything, Matt grabbed two bars and pulled up. Tess stopped to watch him. It took a good deal of effort, but he managed to lift the barred door a few feet so that Ayden could crawl out. “Damn,” she said. “Impressive.”

He let the bars slam back down and shrugged. “The doorway’s not wide enough, or tall enough, for them to weigh too much. They should have been locked in place, if the maker had any sense at all.” Then he looked at Ayden. “Just needed some might.”

Ayden rolled his eyes but gave a small nod, silently conceding the point.

Tess pushed past the guys, grabbed the bars, and pulled with all she had. After a minute, she gave up. “Damn,” she repeated. “Guess the maker wasn’t expecting you.”

Matt just smiled and they headed back to the main room. Down the left-side corridor, they found the same thing: an empty chest and bars. Unable to find any button or lever, Matt let Ayden out again. The rest of the rooms were the same—two of them had decaying bodies in them, people who hadn’t had the strength to get out. By the sixth and final room, Matt was sweating.

Tess let herself appreciate the sight. Now that he was only wearing his open, sleeveless jacket again, his thickly muscled chest, abs, and arms were exposed, and little beads of perspiration glistened on his skin in the light from the torches. He was dirty from the cave, but that only made him sexier. Her mind drifted, fantasizing about what she longed to do, about—

“Tess?”

Ayden’s voice pulled her out of her daydream and she realized he was handing her a piece of paper. “What’s this?”

“It’s from the chest,” he said, sounding irritated.

“Chest?” She took the paper. “Oh, right.” She looked at Matt for a second, and he winked back. Why did he always have to notice? She looked down at the note, mostly to hide her blush. She wished her hair wasn’t in a braid so that it could hang down like a curtain and shield her face from his penetrating gaze. Instead, she turned and acted as if she was trying to get more light on the paper. “Got you,” she read out loud, then abruptly started laughing. “Cool! Funny traps.”

“Not really so cool when you consider what a waste of time it was,” Matt said.

She fought a grin as she glanced at his body. Waste was debatable, she thought, then mentally shook herself—she had to stop that. She finally nodded and led the way back to the main room. “That can’t be it,” she said, looking around and only seeing the entrance and the six dead-end hallways.

“Hidden door, maybe?” Ayden suggested, and started feeling the wall on the opposite side of the entrance. As soon as his hand touched the very center of the wall, a large rectangular piece of stone slid down and disappeared into the floor, revealing a long room behind it. There was a single doorway on the far wall of this new room and a twelve-foot-wide area of floor that led over to it like a bridge, with four more feet on either side that just dropped off.

Tess looked over the edge, and the bottom was so far down that she couldn’t see it. “At least this walkway isn’t as small as the last,” she commented.

“Yeah, but this one has things to push you off it,” Ayden said.

The others followed his gaze to see the ghosts bleeding in through the walls ahead. There were four of them, all translucent gray, like smoke in the air. They were human-looking, except for their pointed ears. Their plain robes faded into nothing at the bottom, as if they had no feet.

Matt unsheathed his sword while Tess pulled out her daggers. Ayden touched them and cast his lesser light spell on them, making them glow green as her bracers had earlier.

The ghosts floated slowly closer, and said something in the spirit language. “They’re saying to leave or die,” Ayden translated.

“Tell them no,” Tess suggested. He shot two fireballs, and she nodded approvingly. “I think you said that rather well.”

“Thanks,” he told her, smiling. The two he hit were pushed back a few feet. They made screeching, otherworldly sounds before moving forward again. All four of them raised their hands at the same time, and a second later four spots of blue light appeared in the air just in front of Ayden and the others. The blue glow spread out into cracks and then shattered just before disappearing. “Wow, they’ve got some oomph,” he noted. He put up a new shield and then cast a fireball, hitting one of them.

Ayden had destroyed two of the ghosts when his shield broke again. Both he and Tess were suddenly hit by the other two spirits’ attacks before he could block. The energy force threw them back, slamming them into the wall behind them. Ayden shot two more fireballs, then stood up. They hit him again, but he used his personal shield this time and the force of their magic pushed him to the side, closer to the edge, before breaking. Matt grabbed the back of Ayden’s shirt and pulled him toward the middle of the walkway. Tess quickly took care of one of the remaining spirits, while Ayden shot two more fireballs and finished off the last.

“Well, that was a moving experience,” Ayden noted.

Tess and Matt both chuckled as they followed him across the room to the doorway. The next room was about fifty feet across and long and had a giant mirror on the far wall. There was a life-sized statue of a weeping woman in its center, a doorway on each of the side walls, and a bunch of decaying human bodies scattered across the floor.

As soon as they entered the room, they heard a sound like wind or maybe someone whispering, and a moment later the bodies on the floor began to move. Near the back, by the mirror, one in a long gray coat got up. Its clothes were tattered and so was its skin. Through a couple of the holes, they could see past the graying flesh and decaying meat, all the way down to the bone. It shot a fireball at the group and then ran, or rather quickly hobbled, through a side door.

Ayden threw a snowball spell and it collided with the fire in midair—both spells vanished with a soft sizzle and a puff of smoke. “I’ll get that one,” he told the others and chased after the undead mage.

Tess nodded as she looked around. “Yay, fun with dead things,” she said sarcastically, holding her still-glowing daggers ready. “Come get me, ugly,” she told the zombie nearest to her. “Not you, Matt.”

“That’s so far off it’s not even funny,” Matt said, rolling his eyes.

“Made me smile,” Tess replied and lunged at an undead guy whose nose had completely rotted off.

“I usually do,” Matt said as he took a swing at an approaching corpse.

“You’re such an ass.”

“A good-looking one.”

“But an ass nonetheless,” she said, slashing through a zombie. “You know”—kick—“these things seriously stink, like—”

“Rotting corpses?” Matt offered before swinging and beheading one.

Tess pushed another zombie off her blade with a foot to its stomach then turned to slash at another. “Well... yes,” she conceded, dodging a blow. “It really is”—swing—“gag-worthy.” She sidestepped a lunge and sliced off a leg. “And that last one made a squishy sound when I kicked it.”

He laughed as he turned to face another of the undead. He finished it quickly then commented casually, “I think that was just round one.”

She turned to see what he was talking about as her last zombie’s head fell off, and its body dropped to the floor. Skeletons were slowly filing into the room from both of the side doorways. Most were old, dry bones, but a few still had bits of meat stuck to them. Unlike the zombies, these had swords.

“Nice of them to give us a warm-up,” she said.

“If that was the warm-up, what were the ghosts?”

“Good point. Okay, round two.”

He nodded and stepped toward the skeletons on the left while she took the ones on the right. They were all human skeletons, it seemed—except for two who must have been trolls when they were alive because they were huge. Most of the skeletons weren’t very good sword fighters. The challenge was trying to watch their backs when they got surrounded as they hacked their way through the swarm—an arm falling here, a head rolling there.

The skeletal giants were all that were left when one hit Tess hard enough to knock her to the ground. The thing’s massive strength threw her to the side and caused both her daggers to slide several yards away from her outstretched hands. The skeleton turned away from her and headed toward Matt.

“Behind you!” Tess called as she got to her feet.

Whether Matt heard her or not, the skeleton he fought didn’t allow him any opening to look around. The one behind him drew back its weapon, ready to stab him. Tess darted for Matt and slammed her shoulder into his side, shoving him onto the ground and out of the way of the thrusting sword.

But the skeleton was too fast, or maybe she was too slow. She felt the sword pierce her back and drive through her midsection, but she didn’t feel any pain until she looked down to see the bloody blade sticking out of her stomach. The sword was pulled out, leaving a trail of searing pain. The skeleton pulled its sword out, slowly it seemed, and left a trail of blinding pain. As it slid the rest of the way out, she wrapped her arms around the gushing wound before collapsing onto the ground.