At home, Heln's room overlooked the garden.

He'd always found it too quiet compared to his place in the industrial part of the city with his mom; a tiny, cramped space right next to a buzzing and spitting light that was dim more often than not. His entire childhood could be mapped to the heartbeat of it running out of magic and the months it took for someone to refill it.                         

At his father's house, he could still feel the magic lamps, but they didn't make any noise and they were regularly maintained.

It wasn't until he was in the tunnel, the only noise the sound of two other people breathing, that he realized how much he was missing the sound of the wind through the trees, the crickets that would assault his room with noise as summer gave way to fall, the sounds of creatures moving quietly through the garden that his grandmother so lovingly maintained, even after she moved at the beginning of the summer to the senior community. His dad smiled and said it was just an excuse to see them. Heln hated gardening, but he would sit outside with her sometimes, listening to her talk about the way things used to be while she worked the soil with fingers that looked like old tree roots.

He shook his head a bit and broke himself out of the doze he had been falling into. With nothing to distract him here in the cave, silence pressed against his ears. He wanted to hum, or maybe even attempt to sing despite being tragically tone deaf, but even if Rhyss wouldn't have killed him, the sounds were still stuck in his throat.

Eventually he stood, taking his light stick and stepping outside of the barrier and sitting with his back against one of the larger tree roots. The barrier was safety, but the change in scenery was a balm against his raw nerves. Outside of the barrier he could see the glow of the strange little forest that had cocooned the tunnel. The whole place was alive with magic, even through his shields, feeding off of the scripts that had kept the tunnels preserved for possibly hundreds of years. He wondered if the roots had brought the moss, or if it had always grown there.

It was beautiful, in its own way, and when he had been sitting still and quiet long enough he heard little noises, a soft chirruping somewhere that might have been an insect. He would have given anything to feel a good, strong wind. A small part of him wondered if he ever would again.

The thought was too loud in such a quiet place, so he got to his feet and tried to walk around, hugging his jacket close and stamping feeling back into his feet when he thought he was probably far enough away to not disturb anyone. The chirruping paused for a long moment before it resumed farther away.

He looked back at the barrier, a gem that outshone any bit of moss in the area. It was a little rough, he could feel weak patches when he concentrated, but Bel had been tired and the barrier was probably more of a formality, anyway, with how deep they were in the tunnels. The magic was bright, warm and familiar, the feel of it soothing despite its choppiness.

And rather far away, now that he thought about it. He'd walked farther than he'd meant to, nearly back to the intersection. Even from here he could see the two arrows Rhyss had marked on the tunnel wall, dark strips cut from the vegetation. One for the first, two for the second, she'd explained when he'd asked. He didn't think it really mattered which one was first, but she was the survival expert.

One of the pillars jutted out of the wall next to him, its cross beam lost in a tangle of roots and moss. The other side of the tunnel was choked with vegetation, but the pillar next to him was relatively free of plant life.

He touched it and swore it felt warm for just a moment.

The moss enshrouding the stone was easy to tear away. For a moment he hesitated, then ripped it all off. There was no flash of light this time.

A fanged deer skull stared up at him with one gaping socket.

He crouched down a little so he was eye level with it. It looked just like the carving on the pillar that Bel had pulled him away from. The skull was in profile, the antlers jutting up and around the pillar, framing spidery runes that he couldn't read. The soft blue light from the barrier was harsh in the recesses of the carving, turning shadows into knife points.

Runic magic hadn't been used since the new city had been built in the aftermath of the Great War. A few Ihalins studied it, according to his professor of magical script, but it was a dead and frankly uninteresting art. The runes no longer held sway over magic, but there was too much superstition surrounding them and how they were abused during the fighting. Heln had never really had much interest in them; they were just another fact he'd had to know for a test.

The skull was another matter, the sign of the lord of the forest, or the bone peddler as it was sometimes called. Even small children knew about it. A bogeyman, a creature that had once been a powerful force, but had faded into shadowy myth and legend around the time that the new Ihale City was built. When he was very small his mother used to tell him that the forest god would swallow him up and add him to its collection of bones if he didn't eat his vegetables.

Despite the silly, childish threats and the obscurity of legends, it was common knowledge that the forest god should be avoided. That its symbol marked places of death and destruction. Legend had it that hundreds of years ago when a plague carved a swath through the population of the city a deer skull was used over the doors of the houses of the infected.

Heln dropped his shields slightly, extending his senses. The pillar contained magic, but as far as he could tell it was just to keep the tunnel from collapsing, old magical signatures layered on top of each other until they were a looping scrawl that he couldn't trace.

Not that it would matter, even if he could figure them out. All of the casters had been dead for a long time.

The thought made him feel off balanced. It wasn't that he'd never sensed permanent scripts before; his light stick was considered a permanent script, but the old magic had always been overpowered by any recharges or renewals. Or a new script all together.

This was different. Even the final layer of magic was ancient, older than any other script he'd sensed. His fingers felt like they had a residue on them, like he had been tracing the letters in old books for too long. He rubbed them absently against his pants. It did little good. Even with the cleaning script they were physically dusty and grimy.

Heln had never thought about what happened to a script after the caster of it died. Now he couldn't stop wondering if Bel's shield would stay without her to take it down, or whether it would slowly run down when his magic wasn't there to feed it any more.

He could tell that the tunnel magic hadn't been recharged for years and he had no idea what kept the scripts feeling strong.

Heln shuddered and looked back at Bel's barrier, trying to look anywhere but the skull or the walls. The light stick was smooth and cold in his hand. He hadn't activated it in hours. Maybe days. He slid his thumb over the activation script. The crystal came to life with a gentle, yellow glow and the tube warmed almost instantly until it felt hot in his freezing fingers. Shadows leapt away from him and painted themselves in dark lines against the bare patches on the walls and ceiling. His father had charged it before the Festival. It felt like him, if a little muffled from being filtered through crystal and carved script.

The chirruping noise stopped.                  

The stillness in the air thickened. Heln's eyes were drawn back to the skull carving. In the new light it looked darker and more defined. The raised ridges of the skull and antlers shone like they had been freshly gilded.

A sharp, bright light swung in the empty socket, jerking in his direction, and Heln made a noise that echoed off of the walls, jumping back and slamming up his shields in the same moment.

When he looked again there was no light, the socket was simply a slightly shadowed recess in the stone.

His heart was pounding out an erratic rhythm against his ribcage. He turned away from the socket to just breathe, ignoring the crawling sensation working its way up his skin.

Ahead of him the tunnel stretched on. Nearly every thirty feet, another pillar jutted from the wall. Most of them were covered, but on a few of them he could see the dark, tell-tale lines of runes and something else.

Behind him in the first tunnel was a soft noise, almost imperceptible above the still slowing beat of his heart. He held his breath.

It sounded like footsteps. For one delirious moment he thought it might be rescue. If Vin had survived, a fact Rhyss seemed sure of, it wasn't too far-fetched to think he had sent a team after them.

It was still too dark for him to see anything alongside the footsteps.

Heln switched off the light stick, holding it like a dagger and inching forward. Without the light stick it was even more dim, the plant life losing some of its luster until his eyes adjusted.

There was no light in the other tunnel. The unease already sliding across him rose, the hairs on the nape of his neck when he heard the noise again, closer.

A rescue party would be loud, despite the monster in the first chamber. Voices would be calling for them, lights would be everywhere and they would be sending out search scripts.

This had none of that.

It had to be something else, Heln realized, and he didn't want to find out what by running right into it. He backed away slowly, trying to keep an eye on the tunnel and where his feet were going at the same time, slowly lowering his shields.

Dead, empty magic.

In the darkness at the end of the tunnel, he saw two sparks of emerald light flared to life, much closer to the ceiling than he cared for. Heln dropped to the tunnel floor. His first instinct was to turn and run for the barrier, but the construct would catch him with ease and would likely toss him past a handful of pillars.

Maybe Rhyss could land that, but he certainly couldn't.

Heln felt vulnerable on the floor, soft moss pressed against his face, but at least he wasn't a low Ihalin cut out of darkness in front of the barrier. The barrier that the construct would be inevitably drawn towards while he wasn't there to warn his friends.

He heard it shuffling, its footfalls surprisingly quiet for something that must have been roughly twice his height. He glanced up and saw the outline of it looming near the end of the tunnel, blocking the two arrows that pointed straight at the barrier. As it turned he carefully got to his feet, trying to stay low. He was ready to press himself flat the moment he saw a hint of green. He was halfway certain that it didn't matter, the thing had to hear his pulse. It was hammering loudly enough in his own ears that he wasn't sure if he was making any noise trying to get back to the barrier.

Could they even hear? He didn't know.

His question was unfortunately answered when he tripped, stumbling backwards over a root he hadn't felt with his hands. The thing whipped around and made a horrible noise.

Heln gave up on stealth, scrambling to his feet and sprinting for the barrier. He nearly tripped again, this time close enough that he ended up careening into the barrier head first and stepping on Bel, barely managing to catch himself on the wall before he fell down.

"Ow!" Bel sat up. "Ow! What in the—?"

"Shut up, shut up." He slid down the wall and covered Bel's mouth with his hand, which earned him a muffled protest. "Construct. Right outside. Please shut up."

Bel went still at that, her one visible ear twitching slightly. Rhyss had also woken up during their exchange, staying silent as she rose to a crouch, her knife already in her hand. He wasn't entirely sure how she had done that. He was very sure that he didn't want to know.

Silence that seemed to last an eternity stretched around them. Heln realized he still had Bel's face in a death grip and pulled his hand away.

The silence was finally broken by a scraping sound just outside of the barrier.

Rhyss spoke first, her voice a low murmur. "Bel, can you create another barrier?"

"No." Bel shook her head. "Not this fast. It's this one or nothing for at least a few hours."

"That's fine." Rhyss did not have the face of someone who thought that it was fine. "I just thought I'd ask."

Heln tried to sense what it was doing, but all he could feel beyond Bel's magic was a vague sense of wrongness.

A giant hand slapped down on the barrier, near the top. The barrier should have let off sparks of magic, at the very least. Nothing happened for a moment, then the hand began to press in, like it was pushing against cloth. The top bubbled down violently.

The wrongness of the power outside intensified, invading Bel's magic.

"It's pulling the barrier down!" Heln used the wall to pull himself up. "We need to go!"

Rhyss didn't need to be told twice, she had their bags ready for them and they all stumbled out of the other side of the barrier just as it shattered like glass against the onslaught, sparkling and fading in the air. Heln stumbled, pain crackling around his skull. Rhyss shoved him, keeping him more or less on his feet, and they ran.

It would have been more reassuring, somehow, to have heavy footfalls behind them, but the construct didn't make much noise at all. There could have been one or twenty, and he wasn't sure if he would have known the difference. Heln felt Rhyss gathering magic and releasing it behind them, unformed and fast.

"Keep watch ahead!" she told Bel.

Heln nearly fell again and Rhyss passed him, snagging his wrist as she did and hauling him behind her, heedless to roots that seemed to reach out at them to pull on their ankles and snag at their clothes.

"There's light ahead!" Bel announced. Rhyss put on another burst of speed. Heln felt like she'd stabbed him in the ribs with her knife but he couldn't slow down, trying his absolute best to keep pace with her.

He somehow found more speed, somewhere deep down inside of him. There was light. It was faint and a little watery, but it wasn't the dim glow of the tunnel. He couldn't tell if there was a breeze or if it was just the air moving as he ran.

Bel stopped, silhouetted by light for a moment before Rhyss careened into her and they both fell, dragging Heln down with them.