Location: The Inner Sanctum, Fortress of Aethelburg, The Wild Lands of the North | Year: 8003 A.A.
If you have ever walked through a house where the floor still trembles from a storm that has not yet passed—where the windows rattle in their frames and the beams groan like old men stirring from a long sleep—then you will know something of what Trevor Maymum felt as he sped through the winding depths of Aethelburg. The corridor trembled faintly behind him, a constant, rumbling reminder that somewhere outside, his friend was holding back the fury of a dragon and a shadow with nothing but light and will. The distant thunder of Adam's battle was a drumbeat, steady and terrible, and it lent a strange urgency to the monkey's silent feet.
But Trevor's mind was not wholly on the battle. Part of it lingered, like a tune you cannot shake, on the encounter with Iltaz. Those deep blue eyes. That sudden, unexpected smile. The name he had given at the end, as if it were a gift. The Shadow's ultimate defense. The young fox's words echoed in Trevor's thoughts as he ran, and he turned them over the way a jeweler turns a gem, looking for flaws.
He moved at a pace that blurred the stone beneath his feet, a living current of wind and purpose. The long halls of the citadel rushed past him in streaks of dim torchlight and dancing shadow, and the wind of his passage tugged at the loose fabric of his desert garb like a child pulling at a parent's sleeve. His eyes swept left and right, cataloging and dismissing and moving on, for a monkey on a mission has no time for sightseeing.
"So that's the story, is it?" he muttered under his breath. "An ultimate defense. He's surely referring to that rabbit."
If you have ever had a suspicion grow slowly in your mind, the way a shadow grows when the sun goes down—not sudden, but inexorable—then you will understand the frown that crossed Trevor's features. For a moment he considered the possibility that Iltaz had been bluffing, a final trick from a gifted young warrior playing his last card. But something in those blue eyes, so strangely reminiscent of Adam's, had rung with truth. It was the sort of truth that does not need to be loud to be believed.
Trevor shrugged to himself, and a philosophical acceptance settled over his sharp features. "Well," he said lightly, as if discussing where to have lunch, "I suppose I'm about to find out."
Ahead of him, the corridor widened.
The stone floor broadened into a long, vaulted passage, and at its end stood a pair of enormous doors. They were ancient things—twin slabs of dark metal framed in black stone, their surfaces etched with spiraling runic patterns that glowed faintly with the residue of old, patient mana. The air around them felt heavier and denser, as though the chamber beyond had been holding its breath for a very long time and had forgotten how to let it go.
Trevor did not slow. He was not the sort of creature who slowed for doors, however ancient, however imposing. His palm rose as he ran, fingers curling slightly, and amber light began to gather in his cupped hand like honey pooling in a spoon. The air around his fingers crackled with building pressure, a sharp ring of condensed energy forming into a tight sphere of destructive potential that hummed with a hungry, eager note.
"Let's not waste time."
He thrust his palm forward, and the gesture was almost casual, the way you might push open a door that had stuck in its frame.
BOOOOM!
The blast struck the ancient doors like a thunderclap given form. If you have ever been too close to a lightning strike—so close that the flash and the sound arrive together, and the world becomes a white roar that presses against your skin—then you will know what filled that corridor. Metal screamed, a high and tortured wail that echoed down the passage behind him like a living thing in pain. The hinges shattered under the force, their ancient metal snapping like dry twigs. The massive slabs were hurled inward, spinning through the air with a ponderous, dreadful grace before crashing against the floor of the chamber beyond with a deafening KRAAANG! that shook dust from the ceiling a hundred feet above and sent it sifting down like grey snow.
Dust rolled across the threshold in a low storm, a tidal wave of powder that obscured all vision, and for a moment the world was nothing but grey and silence and the settling of ancient stone.
Trevor stepped through it without breaking stride. His form emerged from the cloud like a spirit from the mists of legend—lean and amber-eyed and utterly unimpressed by his own theatrics. He was already scanning the chamber beyond, his gaze sharp and quick.
It was immense.
I do not use that word lightly, for I have seen many large rooms in my time. But this was not merely a large room. It was the sort of space that makes you feel small without quite knowing why, the way a cathedral does, or a cavern that has never seen the sun. It stretched wide like a throne hall carved into the very heart of the earth, and its ceiling rose into shadow so high above that the eye could not find its end. Massive pillars of black stone lined the chamber in solemn rows, each one carved with twisting sigils that pulsed faintly with dormant mana—warnings, perhaps, or warding spells left to slumber until some long-foreseen hour of need.
Between the pillars stood tall glass cylinders filled with softly glowing liquid, the sort of liquid that seems to have its own inner light. Within them floated fragments of bone and shards of crystal, and other stranger things that Trevor chose not to study too closely. The contents shifted lazily in their viscous prisons, catching the pale illumination and throwing distorted shadows across the polished obsidian floor. The floor itself was smooth enough to reflect the lights that hung suspended in the air—drifting orbs of captured illumination that moved with a slow, hypnotic grace, like moons that had been tamed and brought indoors.
And at the far end of the chamber stood another door.
It was smaller than the first, yet far more imposing, the way a razor is smaller than a club but far more dangerous. Its surface was carved with a single symbol that Trevor recognized immediately—the sort of recognition that sends a thrill through a warrior's heart, the recognition of an enemy's banner on the field of battle.
The Aktil crest.
It was a stylized, curved tail of a fox, rendered in a deep amethyst hue that seemed to pulse with a life all its own. The color was unmistakable. It was the same sickly, beautiful purple that marked the Shadow's Arya, the same shade that had haunted the nightmares of nations for millennia and would, if the Shadow had his way, haunt them for millennia more.
And standing before that door—hands tucked casually into the pockets of his impeccably tailored coat—was Jarik.
If you have never seen a rabbit in a suit, I must tell you that the effect is deeply unsettling. It is not that rabbits are frightening in themselves; they are, on the whole, rather timid creatures. But a rabbit who wears a tailored coat and a tilted hat and a smile that never quite reaches his eyes—that is a different matter entirely. Jarik stood precisely where Trevor had expected him to stand, his pink fur immaculate, his posture the very picture of insouciant confidence. His suit was as dark and as crisp as something one might wear to a business meeting in a world that had never known war, rather than the inner sanctum of an apocalyptic fortress. And of course—of course—he was smiling. Wide. Bright. Infuriating.
"Well now," Jarik said pleasantly, and his voice carried easily across the vast chamber. It was a voice made for drawing rooms and negotiations, for polite conversation over glasses of something expensive. It was not a voice that belonged in the heart of darkness. "Hazël #2 himself. Trevor Maymum."
Trevor stopped several paces away and brushed a few errant specks of dust from his sleeve with deliberate nonchalance. His eyes swept the chamber once, twice, cataloging every pillar and every cylinder and every subtle current of mana that lingered in the air like the scent of a long-dead flower.
Jarik clapped his hands together once in mock delight, and the sound was sharp and sudden in the vast space. "Marvelous entrance, by the way. Very dramatic. The explosion, the dust, the dramatic emergence. I do admire enthusiasm. So many of my colleagues these days lack proper theatrical flair."
Trevor's gaze settled squarely on the door behind Jarik—on that pulsing amethyst crest, on the promise and the threat it held. Jarik followed his line of sight and chuckled, a sound like silk rubbing against silk.
"Ah. Straight to business. No small talk? No catching up? We haven't seen each other in centuries, Trevor. I'm hurt."
Trevor folded his arms loosely across his chest, and his expression was unreadable, the way a closed book is unreadable. "So you were expecting me."
"Oh, of course." Jarik's cheerfulness was undimmed, a flame that no amount of bad news could snuff out. "I've been aware of your little encounter with Iltaz for quite some time. Did you think the fortress wouldn't notice an intruder? Every inch of this place is marked." He tilted his head, and the brim of his hat cast a shadow across one eye, lending his pink face a sudden, wolfish cast. "Between you and me," he added, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that somehow still carried to every corner of the chamber, "I never trusted that fox. Too quiet. Too thoughtful. Always looking at things a little too long, if you know what I mean." His smile widened slightly, a crack in a mask that was itself a mask. "The only reason he's still alive is that the Master wills it. For now."
Trevor hummed thoughtfully, a low sound in his chest. "Convenient."
"Yes," Jarik agreed, nodding as though Trevor had just made an excellent point in a philosophical debate. "Isn't it?"
The monkey took a few slow steps forward. His feet made no sound on the polished obsidian, and his amber eyes never left the door behind the rabbit. "That door," he said calmly, and his voice was as level as a frozen lake. "The Aktil Rune is behind it."
Jarik tapped a finger against his cheek in an exaggerated gesture of thought. "Well now… that's a rather direct statement. Most people would dance around it for a while. Feint. Probe. You Narn Lords are so wonderfully straightforward."
"Answer it."
The rabbit rocked slightly on his heels, considering. "You Narn Lords are terribly impatient. Always wanting answers now, now, now. Where's the fun in that? Where's the mystery?"
"Jarik."
The rabbit sighed theatrically, a great exhalation of put-upon suffering that would have done credit to an actor on a stage. Then, as if struck by sudden inspiration, his eyes lit up with a dangerous, manic gleam—the sort of gleam that makes you think of matches being struck in dark rooms.
"Tell you what," he said, and he leaned forward slightly, conspiratorially, as if he were about to share a wonderful secret. "Let's make a deal."
Trevor raised an eyebrow. It was the only indication that the proposal had registered.
Jarik lifted one hand, palm up, as if offering a gift. The gesture was almost generous. "A Mana Vow."
Now, if you have never witnessed a Mana Vow being proposed, I must explain that it is not the sort of thing one suggests lightly. The air in the chamber shifted as he spoke those words. The floating orbs of light dimmed momentarily, as if they were listening. Even the distant thunder of Adam's battle seemed to pause, the way a noisy room falls silent when someone important clears his throat. The world itself leaned in to hear what would be said next.
"If," Jarik continued pleasantly, as though he were outlining the terms of a perfectly reasonable business arrangement, "you succeed in laying a single hand on me—just one, mind you, anywhere on my person—" He gestured casually to the door behind him with his free hand, a wave that encompassed everything and promised nothing. "—then I will let you pass. And I will personally tell you everything you wish to know about the Aktil Rune. Its location. Everything."
Trevor studied him for a long moment. It was the sort of study that misses nothing—not the rabbit's stance, not the almost imperceptible tension in his shoulders, not the way his smile never quite reached his eyes. "A single hand."
"Just one," Jarik confirmed. "A tap. A graze. A brush of the fingertips. That's all it takes."
Trevor considered the distance between them. The vast chamber. The floating lights. The glass cylinders and their silent, watching contents. Then he nodded, and the nod was small and final, the nod of a man who has made his peace with a wager. "Fine."
Jarik's grin widened. It was the grin of someone who had just won a bet he had been planning for centuries—and who had never, for a single moment, doubted the outcome.
Their mana rose simultaneously. I cannot tell you exactly what that looked like, for mana does not always trouble itself to be visible. But if you had been standing in that chamber, you would have felt it: two opposing currents of power surging outward from their cores and colliding in the space between them. Trevor's mana was amber, warm, alive with the pulse of wind and sky—the sort of mana that makes you think of autumn leaves and high mountain passes. Jarik's was violet and cold, threaded with the gravity of collapsed stars and the patient hunger of voids. The air rippled where they met. The floating orbs flickered wildly, their light sputtering like candles in a sudden draught.
A sharp CRACK split the silence.
It was the sound of a lock turning, or a seal being pressed into hot wax—the sound of something binding itself into the fabric of reality. Invisible threads of mana wound around both of them in spiraling patterns, and then they sank inward, into their bodies and their souls and their very essence. The pact was sealed, and there would be no breaking it.
Trevor rolled his shoulders slightly, testing the weight of the vow. It sat on him like a second skin, a constant awareness of the terms and the stakes, the way you are always aware of a ring on your finger for the first few hours you wear it. "Ready when you are."
Jarik adjusted his hat, settling it more firmly on his head with a small, precise motion. His smile had not dimmed. If anything, it had grown brighter, the way a fire grows brighter just before it consumes itself. "Do your worst."
***
If you have ever watched a cat strike at a shadow on the wall—the paw swift as thought, the claws extended, the whole motion a poem of lethal intent—and seen the paw pass through nothing but light and plaster, then you will have some small picture of what happened when Trevor moved. The floor shattered beneath his step, and I do not mean that it cracked. I mean that the polished obsidian where he had been standing simply ceased to be a floor and became a spray of glittering fragments, and he was gone from that spot and in front of Jarik in the same instant, the way a thought arrives without bothering to travel.
His hand shot toward the rabbit's shoulder, fingers spread to maximize contact—and touched nothing. Not air, not resistance, not the ghost of a presence.
Jarik was gone.
"Missed me." The voice came from above, and it was light and conversational. Trevor spun, his eyes flashing upward, and found the rabbit perched atop one of the tall pillars several meters away. He leaned lazily against the black stone, one leg dangling casually over the edge, and his hat was still perfectly straight. If you had just walked into the chamber at that moment, you might have thought he had been sitting there for hours, waiting for a bus.
Trevor narrowed his eyes. He was not the sort of creature who enjoyed being made to look foolish, and he launched himself again without a word. This time he was a blur of wind and lightning, his lean form leaving afterimages in the air like ripples on a pond. He struck from the side, angling his approach so as to cut off any escape route that a sensible opponent might take, and his palm sliced toward Jarik's arm in a horizontal arc that should have been impossible to avoid.
Empty air. His hand passed through the space where Jarik's sleeve had been a nanosecond before, and the fabric of that sleeve—which he had been so close to touching—seemed to dissolve and reform several feet away, as if it were made of mist rather than cloth.
Jarik reappeared behind him, exactly where Trevor had started. "Tsk tsk," the rabbit said, shaking his head with a sorrow that was entirely theatrical. "Hazël #2? The legendary Trevor Maymum? I expected… more."
Now, if you have ever been mocked by a rabbit in a tailored suit, you will know that it is a uniquely irritating experience. Trevor spun on his heel and launched a rapid sequence of movements without pause—a swipe at the rabbit's chest with his left hand, a grab for his collar with his right, and a rising palm aimed at his chin, all three flowing into one another like notes in a swift melody. Three attempts to tag the rabbit. Three failures. Each time, Jarik vanished just as Trevor's fingers brushed the very edge of his coat, the fabric itself seeming to slip through his grasp the way water slips through a sieve, or the way a dream slips away in the moment of waking.
Now Jarik stood beside one of the tall glass cylinders, examining its floating contents with the polite interest of a museum visitor. He did not even look up as he spoke. "Surely you can move faster than that. I've heard stories, you know. They say you crossed the Great Desert in a single breath. That you once released a volley of light against a legion and cleared the area of captives in what would seem the three-hour equivalent of the speed of light—and everything took just a second in real time." He tapped the glass idly, and the thing inside shifted in its viscous bath. "Stories. So often exaggerated."
Trevor attacked again, and this time he brought lightning with him. A crackling ring of amber electricity erupted around his lean form as his staff flashed into existence—a length of dark iron wrapped in spiraling gold bands, humming with stored power and singing a high, fierce song. He swept the chamber with a storm of movement, the staff tracing arcs of lethal energy that crossed and intersected and formed a cage of crackling death. It was the sort of attack that left no gaps, no blind spots, no room for even a mouse to slip through.
And Jarik simply appeared behind Trevor once more, stepping out from behind a pillar as if he had been there all along and had merely grown bored of waiting. "Is that truly your top speed?" he asked, and there was genuine curiosity in his voice, the curiosity of a scholar who has been disappointed by a much-praised specimen.
Trevor paused. He stood very still in the center of the vast chamber, his staff humming in his grip, his breath coming in slow and steady measures. The floating orbs of light drifted around him like patient moons, and the distant thunder of Adam's battle was a heartbeat that neither of them acknowledged. Jarik stood a short distance away, his hands still tucked casually into his pockets. His hat was perfectly straight. His suit was immaculate. Not a single pink hair was out of place. And then he yawned—an exaggerated, theatrical yawn that showed his teeth and went on just a little too long.
Trevor stared at him.
The chamber fell silent. Even the distant thunder seemed to quiet, as if the battle outside had paused to watch.
And then, slowly—very slowly, the way the sun rises over a battlefield and changes everything it touches—Trevor smiled.
Jarik noticed it immediately. His own grin faltered for the barest instant, a crack in the mask that was itself a mask, and when he spoke his voice carried a note that might, in a less confident creature, have been called uncertainty. "Oh?"
Trevor's amber eyes locked onto Jarik's with a new intensity, a new understanding that had not been there a moment before. "You know," he said calmly, and his voice carried a weight that filled the vast chamber the way water fills a basin, "this is actually perfect."
Jarik tilted his head, and curiosity overcame caution. It is a dangerous thing when curiosity overcomes caution, but Jarik had never been particularly good at caution. "Perfect?"
Trevor rested his staff lightly against his shoulder, and his posture shifted. It was a small shift, almost imperceptible, but it was the sort of shift that changes the whole meaning of a stance. He was no longer attacking. He was no longer even preparing to attack. He was something far more dangerous: he was understanding. "Yes," he said. And then his voice dropped slightly, taking on an almost conversational tone, the tone of a scholar who has just solved a puzzle that had been troubling him for a very long time. "I've been waiting a long time for an opportunity like this."
Jarik's grin returned, though it was slightly less certain now—the grin of a gambler who has just noticed that his opponent is no longer playing the same game. "And what opportunity would that be?"
Trevor's eyes sharpened, and the amber in them caught the dim light and held it, the way a cat's eyes catch the light of a candle. "The chance to finally dismantle the nature of your Arcem."
A faint current of mana stirred around him. It was not the crackling storm of before, not the lightning and the thunder and the cage of electric death. It was something quieter and deeper, the way a river is quieter and deeper than a waterfall—and far more difficult to stop.
"You see, Jarik," Trevor continued, and his voice was still calm, still conversational, but there was a thread of steel running through it now, "I've fought a lot of opponents. Gods. Stars. Things that never had names in any language. And every single one of them had a tell. A weakness. A crack in the armor." He took a slow step forward, and his foot made no sound on the polished obsidian. This time, Jarik did not vanish. This time, the rabbit stood very still, and his smile had frozen on his face like water freezing in a sudden cold snap. "And the more I think about it, the more I realize—your speed, your vanishing, your little game of catch-me-if-you-can—it's not speed at all. Is it?"
Trevor's smile widened. It was not a cruel smile, but it was not a kind one either. It was the smile of a locksmith who has just found the right key.
"And if fate is kind," he added softly, and the softness was more terrible than any shout could have been, "I'll not only touch you and claim my prize. I'll finally get to rid the world of the Shadow's right-hand lackey while I'm at it."