Rhyss really wished that she had a larger weapon than her dagger.

Only full Guards working the border had actual swords. Her dagger was enchanted and the blade had a scroll of magic script along its curved length, but it didn't have much reach. If she had to stab something she really didn't want to be right in its face.

The stone spires ended up being towers. A castle loomed out of the trees, surrounded by a crumbling high wall that might have been white at one point, but it was encrusted with plant life. The glow above it ended up being a giant crystal that dangled above it like an immense chandelier, painting everything the blue of a winter moon.

Memories of the magic eater felt like they were crawling up her spine as they walked closer.

She had seen little bits of light in the trees, but Heln hadn't mentioned them so she hadn't asked. They looked like the fairy lights that were used at the Festival sometimes, so they hadn't really bothered her.

The way they clustered against the base of the wall made her uneasy, though.

"I forgot to ask, but those things are okay, right?"

"They're actually horribly dangerous and will rip the flesh right off your bones. I just thought I wouldn't mention it until now." Heln shrugged a bit.

She was fairly sure that he was joking, but his words gave her pause for a moment. "Really?"

He didn't even look offended as he spoke, just tired, though that might have been the poor lighting and her just not knowing his facial expressions well enough. "You think I wouldn't tell you?"

"Well, honestly, I have no idea." Rhyss fidgeted with her braid again. "I'd never talked to you before."

Heln did look offended at that, so at least she had broadened her knowledge of Heln's emotions. "Well, I wouldn't-"

"Heln has a bad sense of humor." Bel had to go on tiptoe to wrap an arm around Heln's neck, going flat footed again and pulling him down, ruffling his short red hair. "Possibly the worst I've ever seen or heard."

"You said you wanted a spider the size of your dog for a pet." Heln reminded her, pushing her arm off and trying to fix his hair. He was more or less successful since it had been a complete mess before Bel even touched it. "You can't say anything about anyone else's sense of humor."

"Oh, that was completely serious, as long as she got along with Mabi." Bel grinned. "Now. Building. Looks big. Heln, you getting anything?"

"It feels warm."

"Ooh, that will be a nice change."

Heln glared at his sister. "I meant in the magical sense. If you want to be warm, make a fire."

Bel sighed loudly, putting a hand to her forehead. "Alas, I have many talents, but lighting a fire? Not one of them. I assume our lovely friend Rhyss has that skill?"

"I can make a fire when we pick a place to stop." Rhyss was pretty sure that Bel was only calling her lovely or a friend because she was cold, but it almost made her feel warm anyway. Her own fingers were stiff and the rest of her was starting to ache. She would have given just about anything to take a long, nearly scalding bath.

She might not be a Guard Trainee anymore and her mother would be endlessly disappointed with her and she had no idea what she was going to do, but at least she would always have her bathtub.           

"I'll take it." Bel had tugged her sleeves over her hands. Rhyss was cold, but her armor and cloak were designed to keep her warm. Even if Bel and Heln had script on their clothing they had to be freezing even though it was warmer in the cavern than it had been in the tunnels.

Rhyss led them to the castle wall. Heln put a hand on it, and she thought his eyes glowed briefly, but he shook his head after only a moment. "Nothing. Well, nothing new. There are scripts to keep it intact, but they're unraveling so we'll have to be a little more careful."

"Could a magic eater unravel them?" Bel asked.

"No. I think they're just old and weren't as carefully woven as the script on the tunnels." Heln stepped back from the wall. "The air is saturated with magic, which I think is why these scripts are still here at all. It must have at one point been a pretty basic preservation script, so it would need to be renewed eventually, and no one has been down here for…well. It's safe as far as I can tell, just watch for falling ceilings."

It sounded like a joke, but Rhyss was starting to think that Bel was right. Heln's sense of humor was awful.

Besides, she would have rather dealt with monsters, if she was honest. It was harder to fight a collapsing building with a knife. Or even a sword, since she was fairly certain that the reach of her weapon wouldn't really matter.

They walked along the wall before they finally found an empty archway. It was easily three times Heln's height and it didn't even sstretch halfway up the wall. They passed through it and a different sort of silence fell over them.

She could still hear the trees outside, but they sounded farther away than they were, like waves on a distant shore. They stood in a courtyard, a huge one. It must have been lovely at some point in the past, but the immense fountain in the center was dry and the basin cracked. A nub of broken off stone thrust up from the center where a statue must have graced it. She saw an arm and part of a torso nearby. Lichen spotted every surface like rust, and some of the tiles had buckled upwards, tree roots snaking underneath them. Part of one wall had fallen with a massive tree, a glimpse of another courtyard visible through the ruinous gap.

The main building of the castle rose in front of them, huge and derelict, towers crumbling and windows gapingly empty. Buttresses of stone curved out from the main building, jutting out like an empty rib cage. The whole building moaned like it was barely clinging to life every time the wind blew.

"I don't think anyone's home," Bel stage whispered.

Rhyss gave her a nasty look, and she grinned right back.

The door must have been made of wood, at one point, but it was long gone. The stones in the empty doorway looked darker, like they were holding a record of some long-ago tragedy. Heln touched them, but just shook his head when she looked at him.

"If any magic happened here it was too long ago, there's not even a trace." He didn't bother to whisper. His voice sounded too loud and too quiet all at once.

It led to a long, tall room. Light from the crystal spilled through windows high above them, slanting off of the floor, highlighting silver dust motes. At the other end of the room was the biggest tree that Rhyss had ever seen.

It had a thick trunk; all three of them couldn't have hoped to encircle it. Wide limbs jutted out near the base, curving up against the walls. Its trunk was dark, but the leaves were a pale silver in the light that shone down directly from the ceiling.

Before Eleti, before magic became plentiful, it was said that Ihalins had worshipped trees. They considered them holy and possibly a source of magic. Now that magic was everywhere, trees that weren't a part of the Grove were considered with much less reverence. Her mother told her that the Grove was only important because of tradition. The Temple of Magic could exist without it, as could the Rising Stones, and those were the most important artifacts. The trees had never felt sacred to her.

This tree did.

It wasn't just the size of it, though that was part of it. It pulled at her, made her feel warm, and she wondered if that was how Heln felt when he sensed magic.

"I think this is the point where all of the magic in this place is anchored." Heln rubbed the side of his head and blinked, hard. "It's weird, the tree feels… alive."

"Most trees tend to be." Bel sounded distracted.

"This is different." Heln stepped closer. He was a little wobbly on his feet. "I feel like it could almost speak, you know?"

"I do." Rhyss knew exactly what he meant. It didn't feel like a tree, deep down. The only thing she could really compare it to was when she was small and she knew that her mother was home. A larger, protective presence that permeated their house, making it safe and warm.

"I feel it, too, and I'm glad we have some mysteries halfway solved, but we need to get moving," Bel said. "I don't know about you, but I don't think I can sleep next to the shiny silver wonder tree here, and we need food and water. Rhyss's canteen is nearly empty."

Rhyss shook herself a little bit. The world felt like it was tilting off of its axis. She was being sentimental about a tree, and Bel was being practical. Maybe everything had gone opposite of what it was supposed to be.

At least Heln was acting normal. For him, anyway.

"Right." Rhyss nodded. "The courtyard seemed safe enough, how about you two-"

"If you're suggesting that you're going to go off scouting on your own, I'm going to have to disappoint you." Bel said. "Heln was like… twenty feet away from us and he almost died. Like, this close." She held her fingers together.

"Your fingers are touching." Heln pointed out.

"Yes, because I still haven't decided if I'm going to kill you myself or not." Bel let her hand drop. "Look, I get the whole super Guard Trainee thing, I guess, not really my cup of tea but I get that you feel like you have to protect us. Well, you don't. Because guess what? I'm top of the class, Heln is top of his little class, and the two of us are perfectly capable of probably helping us all possibly not die."

"Is this supposed to convince me?" Rhyss stared at her.

"From now on, we stick together. We all have things we can bring to the table, we all can watch each other's backs, and, just because I feel it needs to be said, I'm not sitting in a creepy courtyard for god knows how long hoping you didn't get picked off by… I don't know… an evil giant… thing. Or something worse. Besides. Heln is my brother; we die together. You can be our honorary sister, if you want."

Rhyss was surprised. Maybe it was purely out of self-interest, but being nice was at least a new tactic. Bel was right, they all did have things to bring to the table, and Rhyss wanted to get out of the tunnels alive. Mutual feelings of hatred weren't going to get them anywhere. She was starting to think that hatred wasn't the mutual feeling, anyway.

She didn't think sisters was ever going to be on the table. Though if it was, it did bring up a pressing question. "Do I have to die?"

"Only if we do." Heln shrugged. His eyes were still a little glassy. "Clearly."

Rhyss tried to equate this Bel, with her ripped jacket, dirty face and determined expression with the girl that flirted with anyone at school except for Rhyss, all smooth smiles and composed lines. They didn't mesh together in her mind at all.

Though maybe Heln was a little right about the flirting. Not that Bel was ever serious about it or anything else in her life.

She seemed serious about staying together, at least.

"I already have fivesisters so I'm good there, but I'll take Heln." She turned from the tree, smiling at Bel's squawk of protest at being left out. Sisters, she wasn't so sure about. Friends sounded almost doable.

It was hard to leave the room, but Bel had a point. She didn't know why, but she felt that the room wasn't meant for them. It was certainly not meant for sleeping. "Let's drop our things off at the entrance and explore."