“I can’t believe we didn’t see this yesterday!” I said to Valentina. “It’s huge, and we were only like… what… twenty feet away from it? Maybe less! Let’s see how we open this temple, shall we?” That last part wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement I was making, as I opened the backpack Chaele gave me even before Valentina could turn to her sweet green.

The book was titled Everything About the Ethereal Temples. In page count it was far thicker than The Book of Love, but the former’s pages were only about half the area of the latter’s. It was divided in three main parts: History; Importance; Opening The Temples. I immediately skipped to the final chapter, which was – in turn – also divided in three smaller parts: Necromantic Ritual (Safest, but high costs), Sacrificial Ritual (Safe, but advanced) and Essentia Ritual (Unstable, but simple). I started reading the introduction for the Necromantic Ritual out loud:

“The Necromantic Ritual was the first ritual discovered that was able to reopen The Gate between Planes (also referred to as the Portalis Runicam in older books). It was the father of Necromancy, Ildroch, he who found the first Mortis Essentia, who successfully preformed the ritual for the first time. Out of the three currently known rituals, this one is the most consistent and safe to preform, but it is ill-advised, for it is most likely not worth the cost of doing it. Opening The Temples using this method requires severe amounts of Mortis and knowledge about Necromancy.”

That’s where I stopped reading.

“This is useless for us, Valentina. I don’t know any Necromancy, and I presume you don’t either.”

She blinked red, then green, then red again. She appeared to be confused by what to answer on the question, seeing how she needed to deal with a negation. I chuckled at her doing that.

“It’s alright, Val. I know what you’re trying to say.” I tried to reassure her. “Let’s skip the Sacrificial Ritual. I know it’s the only ‘safe’ way we still have, but I can already guess what it involves, and I don’t want to deal with dying animals just yet.”

I went on by reading the Essentia Ritual.

“It states here how this ritual is the only one known to this day which doesn’t require Necromancy or Forbidden Magiks, thus making it the only viable way of getting to The Ethereal Plane for Pure Magi. It is to be noted that this is an unstable ritual, though it won’t put any users in harm’s way directly.” That was the gist of it. Aside from some history about its discovery and some supplementary information, there was also a drawing featured, trying to visualize the setup for the ritual as well as possible.

The drawing was a rough sketch of the main temple in the center, surrounded by the five pillars. The only orientation we got, were three arrows pointing forward from three of the pillars: one towards The Tree of Life, one towards the settlement of Necromancers, and one towards an area I hadn’t heard of before: the Folks of the River. Though it tickled my curiosity, it wasn’t important enough to delay our task even further. Next to the pillars were several words written of what was to be placed upon the pillar. Going clockwise, starting from the pillar pointing towards The Tree of Life, there was written:

“Any canister holding Mortis Essentia; Crystal with at least 20% Primal Essentia; Crystal with at least 20% Secondary Essentia; Essentia-Imbued Object and lastly Crystal with 10% Primal or 20% Secondary Essentia.”

In the central, bigger circle – which resembled The Temple itself – was written:

“Catalyst – Object with high magical properties.”

At the bottom of the page was a disclaimer written in big, capitalized, scary, bold letters:

ANY NON-CATALYST OBJECT USED CAN BE DESTROYED INDEFINITELY DURING THE RITUAL!

Valentina and I took a second to investigate the drawing, although it was very straightforward. We needed to make a decision which Essentia Crystals we would use for the ritual, with the risk of losing that Crystal indefinitely.

We came to the conclusion we should probably best use the least directly useful Essentia Crystals first. We’d use the Machina and Bestia Crystal to fill the spots of the Secondary Essentia Crystals, and the Earth Crystal for the pillar of the Primal Essentia. We put the Mortis Essentia Stone on its proper place. The only things we were still missing were an Essentia-Imbued Object, and a catalyst.

“Do you happen to have any idea what we could use as a catalyst or magical object, Val?”

She kept floating purple for a little while, probably thinking along with me, but then she quickly blinked to a green, followed by her yellow excitement. She rushed inside the backpack Chaele had given us, and not much later she came out of it with a fair bit of struggle, somehow carrying the Ethereal Window.

“Valentina. You’re brilliant!” I shouted with glee. “Now for the Catalyst… Can’t we use The Book of Love?”

She blinked green, in agreement with me.

“There’s no risk in doing so, right?” I was hesitating, “The book said we wouldn’t lose a catalyst, right?”

She reassured me that the book did, indeed, state that, by blinking green yet again.

“What are we waiting for then? Let’s open this Temple!”

We placed the final piece of the puzzle – the Aehterunicae Fenestram – on its pillar. The only thing still left to place was the catalyst, but I couldn’t see any form of container or pillar or… frankly, anything to place it on; not from a distance, at least. It was only when we started floating up the stairs of the temple, leading up to the strange gate in the center, things started to become clear: the closer we got to the gate, the more the root-like sculptures coming from the top of the gate began to unravel themselves in a rectangular shape. Examining it further made me realize the unraveled vines had retracted into a locket shaped exactly like The Book of Love, so without thinking about it too much, I put it in between the obsidian vines.

The vines instantly started covering the whole book – as if growing like a real plant, but sped up to a massive amount – while I saw a red glow coming from the heart on the cover of The Book of Love, with the sound of a heartbeat starting to strengthen in volume. While I was busy looking at the pulsating red heart, I heard stones crack and move from all sides around me. Looking behind me revealed how the vines, which entwined the supportive pillars, started to tighten their grip on said pillars, before extending with massive force out to the five pillars with items on them.

The obsidian vines engulfed the whole pillar, causing nothing to be visible anymore from what lay on top of them. The only thing now visible was a high concentration of light coming from the bundle of vines, in which The Book of Love was also engulfed. Everything went fairly alright, until the light abruptly stopped shining and the vines quickly retracted to their proper positions. The vines around The Book opened up again, and I immediately took it out of the container. The only couple of vines that did not retract, were the ones bundled around the Machina Essentia Crystal. They just stayed on their spot. There wasn’t much time to gaze at this though; the gateway behind us started glowing faintly, but I didn’t see any major change when looking through the gate. I now just noticed how the very bottom – a little higher than the trio of legs that held it standing – had turned to the same marble-white color as the rest of the temple. Little by little – I’m talking quarter inches every five seconds or so – I saw the marble crack away, revealing the black obsidian hidden beneath it, accompanied by the silently present crunching sound of stones grinding.

I looked at Valentina. “What should we do? Do we go through?” I was worried about our chances of getting back here. “Should we go through? What if the gate closes behind us? Will we be—”

She pretty much cut me off mid-sentence by completely ignoring everything I was worrying about, and swiftly floated through the gate. She legitimately disappeared in thin air when she did this.

“Valentina?” I started worrying even more that I already was. “Valentina! Answer me! Are you there?” For some reason I can’t explain, I was actually awaiting a verbal response from her, letting me know she was still there. Obviously that didn’t happen, so I decided to follow her lead and float through the gate myself, after gathering my supplies from the pillars again, of course.

As fast as Valentina disappeared when floating through the portal, an entirely different world opened up for me when floating through. A world more beautiful than the previous, because the first thing I noticed was Valentina patiently waiting for me in front of the portal.

“Please Val. Never make me worry that much again… Promise?”

She blinked a long and honest green, though somewhere I knew this definitely wouldn’t be the last time I’d be worrying for her wellbeing.

What I saw from The Lands when looking through the portal, wasn’t an accurate representation of what actually lay on the other side. I realized we were now hovering inside a building, with the portal facing directly outside, through the entrance.

Stepping outside revealed that the open, green area from before was now much bigger, and a little less green, but more a greenish cyan color. There was a slight, very subtly purple-tinted mist hanging over The Ethereal Plane, which gave it a slightly eerie atmosphere – which, truth be told, was to be expected from a place where souls of the deceased come. Around this central building were no pillars to place anything on. In fact, the whole building was different: the way it was built; its shape; its height and radius. The only thing still left over from the original on The Forgotten Lands was the use of obsidian and marble as a building material, both contrasting, as well as complementing one another. The surroundings, however, were more or less the same; almost identical to The Lands.

“Is this The Ethereal Plane then?” I asked Valentina.

She blinked to an agreeing green, then to a confused mixture of her soothing purple, uncomfortably blue and excited yellow. She – much like myself – didn’t really know how to react to this place.

“At least Essentia usage is banned on The Plane, according to Chaele. We should be s—”

I stopped mid-sentence.

Crystal clear voices started talking to me. The voices felt near, as if they were right next to my sound receivers, but I couldn’t see anyone – or anything, for that matter – from whom they could’ve originated from.

“You can run from us…” A soothing, female voice whispered to me.

“…but can’t escape The Mark.” An aggressive-sounding male voice completed her sentence.

While they were saying that, I saw a hope-shattering image in front of me. Out of nowhere, a small ball of black fire began to form and grow in size. After reaching a reasonable – but still small, about the size of Valentina – size, it uncurled itself, revealing a white circle.

Quickly after, I saw Val finally deciding which color would be the prominent one: blue; a chilling, yet deep blue color. The same blue that could send shivers over your spine by just seeing it. I could see her franticly floating around me in panic. She, too, had seen how The Hunters had marked me. She, too, knew from this point onwards, my fate was sealed. I was destined to be claimed by The Hunters. We just didn’t know when.

“Val…” I was trying to hide the fear and despair in my voice as much as possible. “I know what this may look like, but listen to me: Don’t worry about this, alright? We don’t know how much time there is between being marked, and being claimed. Let’s make the best out of the time we still have left. Ok?”

Though I tried my best comforting her, she didn’t stop panicking.

“Valentina!” I grabbed her between both my hands, holding her in front of my face. “Valentina, girl, listen… There’s no use in being concerned about the inevitable. Neither of us will feel better with you panicking. So, please Val… Don’t deny the fact I’m marked, accept it; and embrace the moment I am claimed.”

Her frantic shivering between my hands began to lessen, and her cold, deep blue color calmed down.

“Now,” I let her go from my hands, though I reckon she didn’t mind being held. “we have a king to find.”

We started floating to the east, towards where The Tree of Life was located on The Lands.

Our travel seemed much, much longer than the one when we were still on The Forgotten Lands, but still filled with flora of various kinds. The several animals we found on the way were different however: their general form and shape was the same, but they lacked a skin- and bone-texture. They all looked icy blue, and were slightly transparent. Another thing I noticed when looking at a small bunny – I assumed it to be the spirit of a Hare – was that it didn’t feel like it was made of breeze and clouds anymore, though it looked like it was.

Upon arriving at the place where The Tree of Life stood, we saw The Tree was also present on The Ethereal Plane, but not nearly as colorful as on The Lands. In fact, it didn’t even have any leaves: it was a cold and dead, but still magnificently gigantic, tree in the middle of The Plane.

“The Tree of Life doesn’t look all that… well, lively anymore.” I said to Valentina. “I wonder what the purpose of this Tree of Life is.”

I didn’t get much time to think about it, because when we got closer to The Tree, we were stopped by two smaller vortexes appearing in front of us, so we backed off. The first vortex which appeared was brightly shining with a light blue color. The second one, next to it, was pure black, a color so black that even the bright light blue from next to it didn’t get reflected one slight bit.

Instead of something appearing out of the vortexes, like I expected to happen, they quickly reformed themselves into two strangely familiar figures. Before us were now standing a figure, seemingly female and made of pure light, who was wearing a bow on her back, with a Necromancer next to her, whose face was completely covered by black shadows – so I couldn’t even see their mouth – and whose hands were pitch black.

“Take not a step more,” the bright female said neutrally, while drawing her bow in my general direction, “or it will be your last.”

“Friend, remember our Laws.” A male voice coming from the Necromancer, to which his friend lowered her bow; “Yes, dear…”