Morning never truly arrived in Veyloria. There was no dawn beneath the endless ceiling of stone — only the slow brightening of the crimson lanterns along the cavern walls, bathing the kingdom in a dull, blood-red glow.
In the throne hall, three of Veyloria's grand scholars were having a professional crisis.
They stood clustered around a little marble table that had been dragged to the center of the floor. Upon it lay a longsword, drawn from its worn sheath, which rested beside it. No crest. No maker's mark. The metal at the guard unmarred by rust or time — which was the first thing wrong with it, because everything in the Under-realm eventually rusted, tarnished, or gave up.
Elder Maren, the head archivist, bent over the blade with a magnifying crystal the size of a dinner plate. His white beard kept drifting into his line of sight. He kept blowing it out of the way. It kept coming back, as white beards do.
"Again," he said.
Scholar Tilda — twenty-three years old, and deeply regretting every decision that had led to this moment — adjusted the crystal. "The runes, Elder?"
"The beard, Tilda."
"Oh. Sorry." She propped the crystal against a stack of reference tomes instead. It slid off immediately and nearly took Mage Orrin's head with it.
Orrin caught it one-handed without looking up from his incense burner, which he was waving over the blade in slow, solemn circles. "Any arcane residue will react to the sanctified herbs," he intoned. "The smoke will turn black in the presence of dark magic. Observe." He leaned in. The smoke curled upward, perfectly gray. "You see? No reaction. The blade is—" He sneezed violently into the smoke. "—excuse me. The blade is clean. These herbs are extremely sanctified."
"They're making you sneeze," Tilda said.
"They're making me pious," Orrin said, and sneezed again.
Maren straightened, kneading the small of his back, and produced a small brass hammer from his sleeve. "Resonance test," he announced. "Every metal sings its own note. This will tell us the alloy."
He tapped the flat of the blade, gently.
The note that came back was not a note. It was a chord — deep, layered, wrong in a way that made Tilda's teeth ache and Orrin's burner rattle in his hand.
Maren went pale. He tapped it again, harder, as if the sword had misspoken.
The chord came back lower. Longer. Almost — almost — like a warning.
"Elder," Tilda said faintly, "maybe don't do that again."
"Noted," Maren said, putting the hammer away with great care, as if the sleeve might object.
Orrin, recovering his dignity, produced a silver divining rod and held it over the blade. It spun once, lazily — then bent. Actually bent, the silver curving away from the sword like a flower leaning from a flame.
"That's not supposed to happen," Orrin said.
"Nothing about this is supposed to happen," Tilda muttered, writing it down anyway.
On the dais, Lyra sat upon her obsidian throne, watching all of this with the expression of a woman revising her opinions about the education system. Half a step beside her stood Kael, arms crossed, watching the scholars the way a man watches a pot that refuses to boil.
"How long have they been at it?" Kael asked.
"Since the brightening," Lyra said.
"And?"
"And the beard keeps getting in the way."
As if on cue, Maren turned to the blade itself, spreading his hands. "Your Majesty. I have cataloged every written language since the First Age. Elven high and low. Ancient Dwarven. The salt-script of the Deep Cities. The Old World dialects, including the three that were only ever spoken by one extremely lonely monk."
"And?" Lyra said.
"And this is none of them." Maren gestured at the faint runes along the blade's fuller. "I do not recognize this script. I do not recognize the family of this script. In four hundred years of scholarship, I have never seen its like."
Tilda raised a tentative hand. "Could it be a cipher, Elder? A code?"
"If it's a code, it's one nobody taught me, and I know all of them, including the rude ones."
Orrin peered through the smoke. "The aura resting in the metal — it isn't active, yet it isn't inert either." He waved his burner for emphasis and set his own sleeve smoldering. He patted it out with great dignity. "It appears to be... sleeping."
"Sleeping," Lyra repeated.
"Like a hibernating bear," Orrin said. "A very large, very magical bear. Made of sword."
The great doors of the hall swung open. Two guards marched in with a prisoner between them — a tall man in a dark cloak, hands bound in iron, with a tiny fairy riding on his shoulder like a very small, very loud admiral.
Tilda, reaching to adjust the blade's angle for the light, curled her fingers around the steel near the guard.
"Careful with that."
The voice cut across the hall — quiet, flat, utterly unlike the prisoner's lazy drawl from the day before. Every head turned.
Maximus stood between his guards, eyes fixed on Tilda's hand.
"It bites," he said.
Nobody spoke. Tilda withdrew her hand very slowly.
Maren huffed. "It's dormant, traveler. Mage Orrin has confirmed — "
"It's dreaming," Maximus said. "There's a difference."
"Sorry we're late," Pip announced to the hall at large, sailing right over the tension. "Dungeon breakfast was terrible. Zero stars. I left a review."
"There is no review system for the dungeons," Kael said.
"There is now. I'm very influential."
Maximus stopped at the base of the dais and looked at the marble table. At the scholars. At his sword, lying bare under a magnifying crystal the size of a dinner plate.
"Having fun with my things?" he asked pleasantly, the drawl sliding back into place like a mask.
"Silence, prisoner," Kael said.
"He asked a question," Pip said. "It's rude not to answer questions. I don't make the rules of conversation, I just enforce them."
Lyra descended two steps from the throne. "Kneel," she said.
The room held her breath. Pip looked frantically at Maximus. Maximus looked at Lyra.
"No."
A gasp rippled through the handful of courtiers present. A guard's hand found his hilt.
Lyra raised one finger, freezing them all. "Why?"
"I reserve kneeling for people I intend to worship."
A murmur swept the room. Lyra studied him for a long moment — and something flickered at the edge of her composure, there and gone. She had seen that smile before. In the dark, behind her eyes, in dreams she had told no one.
She inclined her head a fraction. "Very well. Remain standing." She gestured, and a guard brought a plain chair. "Sit, then, if you won't kneel."
"Appreciate it."
"Don't push it," Kael growled.
"I'm sitting. That's the opposite of pushing it."
Maren cleared his throat with the air of a man reclaiming a conversation. "Traveler. Where did you acquire this blade?"
"It was given to me."
"By whom?"
"Someone important."
"Who?"
A pause. "An old friend."
"And where is this friend now?"
Maximus's eyes drifted to the dark ceiling far above. "Dead."
Something in the way he said it — flat, final, with no performance in it at all — made Tilda take a half-step back from the table.
"Can the script be translated?" Lyra asked.
"No, Your Majesty." Maren shook his head. "And as Mage Orrin says, the aura sleeps. I have never encountered a weapon that... rests."
"That's very good news for you," Maximus said.
"Why?"
"Because if it were awake, you wouldn't be standing here talking about it."
A chill ran through the hall. Orrin's incense burner gave a nervous little rattle.
"How long have you carried it?" Maren asked.
"Longer than this kingdom has existed."
The hall went dead silent.
"That is impossible," Lyra said. "Veyloria was carved from the deep rock three thousand years ago."
"Then it's been a long three thousand years." He gave a tired shrug. "Have your scholars examine it, if you'd like. They seem to be enjoying themselves."
"We are not enjoying ourselves," Tilda said faintly.
"Speak for yourself," Orrin said. "I've never been this pious."
Pip fluttered down from Maximus's shoulder and landed on the edge of the marble table, hands on her hips, peering at the runes. "I can read it."
Three scholars turned to stare at her.
"You can not," Maren said.
"I absolutely can. It says..." She squinted. "'Beware the fairy. She is small but she will end you.'" She nodded firmly. "It's a warning label. Very responsible sword ownership."
"Tilda," Maren said, pinching the bridge of his nose, "remove the fairy from the evidence."
"I am not evidence, I am a consultant!"
Tilda scooped Pip up with extreme gentleness and set her back on Maximus's shoulder. "Sorry," she whispered. "He's scary when he's scholarly."
"I understand completely," Pip whispered back. "Max gets like that when he's hungry. It's the same energy." Then, quieter still: "How long have you two been together?"
Tilda blinked. "Who?"
"You and the beard. The scholarly terror."
"Oh — Elder Maren's been my master for six years — "
"Not him. Me and Max." Pip swung her feet. "Since before your grandmother was born. He was much shorter then."
Tilda stared at her. Then at Maximus — six feet of scarred swordsman. Then back at Pip.
"...Shorter," Tilda repeated.
"Like this." Pip held her hands a foot apart. "Adorable."
Kael's patience, never abundant, finally broke. He drew his broadsword with a metallic shriek and leveled it at Maximus's chest. "Enough games. Tell us who you are. Who sent you."
"I already have."
"You're lying."
"Then why keep asking?"
"Because eventually you'll slip up, scum."
"Perhaps." No fear in it at all. "You think you're untouchable in this court."
"No," Maximus said, and all the irony dropped out of his voice at once. "I know I'm not."
Kael frowned, caught off guard by the sudden coldness. "Then why aren't you afraid?"
"Because I've survived horrors that would make your worst nightmares look like a bedtime story."
Kael raised the flat of his blade to strike —
"Kael."
Lyra's voice cut the room like a whip. He froze mid-swing.
"Lower your weapon. Now."
He obeyed, grinding his teeth so hard Tilda winced in sympathy.
Lyra studied Maximus for a long moment. She had probed and pushed, and found only a bottomless depth wrapped in a smile. "Take him back to the cells," she said at last.
Maximus rose from the chair and dusted his sleeves. "Gladly. The company's quieter down there."
"You seem remarkably comfortable being imprisoned."
"It's temporary."
"You sound certain."
"I am."
"How do you know?"
He turned back in the doorway, dark eyes glinting under the crimson lights. "Because I haven't decided to leave yet."
"Ooh," Pip whispered as the guards fell into step around them. "Very dramatic. Very mysterious."
"I was aiming for mysterious."
"Ten out of ten. The doorway pause really sold it."
"Maximus." Lyra's voice stopped him at the great doors. "What are you hiding?"
For several seconds he said nothing. The smirk fell away. The dry wit fell away. What was left was something ancient and lethal and perfectly still.
"More than you could possibly imagine, Your Majesty."
Her hand tightened on the throne's arm — once, hard enough to whiten the knuckles — before she forced it still. She had heard that stillness before. In the dark behind her eyes. In dreams she had never spoken of to anyone.
Then he walked out, and the doors swung shut behind him.
Lyra remained on the dais. Kael stepped up beside her, hand white on his hilt. "Your Majesty. Give the order. Execute him tonight. He's a threat."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I don't think he's the threat," she said quietly.
"Then what is?"
She turned toward the black cavern alcoves, and the thousands of miles of unmapped tunnel beyond them —
— and the floor moved.
It was not a sound at first. It was a sensation, traveling up through the soles of her boots: a deep, slow pulse, like something enormous turning over in its sleep. The lanterns flickered violently. Dust sifted from the vaulted ceiling. On the marble table, the magnifying crystal rattled in a slow circle.
And Abyssalfang — the sleeping sword — woke up.
Blue light kindled along the runes of the blade, crawling from hilt to tip like fire along a fuse. The "sleeping" aura Orrin had described came surging upright. His incense smoke went black as pitch all at once, and he dropped the burner with a yelp.
"Elder!" Tilda shrieked, stumbling backward. "Elder, it's doing the thing!"
"What thing? There is no thing! There was never supposed to be a thing!"
A guard lunged forward, hand closing around the sword's hilt. "Secure the weapon—"
The blue flame raced up his arm.
For one terrible second his silhouette hung in the fire, mouth open in a scream that never found air. Then the flame folded shut — like a mouth closing — and where a guard had stood there was only a scorch mark on the marble, and his helmet, rolling in a slow, empty circle across the floor.
Silence. Utter, ringing silence.
Orrin stared at the empty helmet. All the piety had gone out of him. "It's awake," he whispered.
From the doorway, forgotten by everyone, came Pip's small, unsteady voice: "I told you it had a warning label."
The tremor rolled through the hall a second time, stronger. A crack split the marble table down the middle. Guards shouted. Somewhere below, stone groaned like a living thing in pain.
Lyra stood motionless at the top of the dais, eyes fixed on the burning sword — and then, slowly, her gaze traveled to the great doors through which the prisoner had just walked.
"Something else," she breathed.
In the cells, far below, Maximus's eyes snapped open.
Pip stopped mid-flutter. "Max?"
He rose in one fluid movement, the lazy posture gone, replaced by coiled tension. He crossed the cell and pressed a bare hand flat against the obsidian wall.
"Maximus? What is it?"
Boom.
The dungeon lurched. Dust rained from the ceiling. Down the hall, guards shouted, boots pounding as panic broke out.
Pip grabbed a fistful of his collar. "Was that an earthquake?"
He didn't answer at first. His eyes had gone wide, burning with something she'd never seen in him before. Not arrogance. Not dry amusement.
Fear. Ancient, unmistakable recognition.
In all the years she had known him — and there had been a great many of them, whatever she had told the tollkeeper, whatever she had told the soldier, whatever she had told Tilda — she had never seen him afraid. Not once. Not ever.
"No," he whispered.
"Max, you're scaring me. What is it?"
His hand closed into a white-knuckled fist against the stone. "It can't be here. Not now."
Boom.*
A second tremor, stronger than the first. Deep beneath the mines of Veyloria, a sound rolled through the earth — low, molten, ancient, hungry.
"You know what that is," Pip said, her voice trembling.
"Yes."
"What is it?"
His jaw set into a grim, unyielding line. For the first time since she'd known him, Maximus looked like a man who had run out of jokes.
"The last thing I ever wanted to see again."
Far beneath the foundation of Veyloria, in a chamber untouched by light for three thousand years, an ancient, colossal eye opened in the dark, glowing like a dying star.
And across the miles of stone, it had already smelled his blood.