Her prison was buried deep in the mountain, a pocket of air no larger than a coffin. Sanura woke with a start, despite lingering pangs from a crack to her head she received during her fall. She tried to sit up in the darkness, immediately damaging her skull again as it bounced off the ceiling right above her. A tidal wave of panic washed over her as she stretched out to explore the true limits of her confinement. The terror in her swelled and refused to recede.

            Screaming, the soldier clawed at the rock around her, futilely trying to remove the stone using her fingernails and boot tips. The sounds echoes deafeningly in the small area, sharpening her fear with every useless second. A small part of her watched her breakdown in stunned amazement. She could tell how irrational and useless her current response was but could find no better course of action. Furthermore, she was not sure she could stop her panic at all.

            :Sanura?:

            The rational part started at the alien thought that arrived in her mind, asking after her name. She wondered how many parts her mind was going to fracture into.

            :May I suggest you try to rein in your body? If you damage yourself right now, I’d have a bad time trying to fix you.:

            “Who?” she heard herself gasp, interrupting her screams.

            :It’s Arva.:

            When that didn’t stop her struggles, the Cheldean yelled in her head, :Soldier, control yourself this instant!:

            That penetrated her panic, and Sanura forced herself to stop, curling up into a shivering ball. Unfortunately, it also cost her the exclusive nature of that rational part of her mind, and Arva had to spend quite some time getting her calm enough to speak again.

            “Are you a ghost?” she asked him.

            :What? No, no-I’m quite alive. I’m in a hole like yours about fifteen feet away. If you worked at it, you could probably see me with your second-sight.:

            “I saw you get hit and fall down, and you were on fire.”

            :Einian certainly packs quite a wallop, doesn’t she? But I’ve been hurt worse. She didn’t even break any bones. I am a bit scorched, but these little prison cells of hers suffocated the flames quickly enough. Had to do some pretty quick singing to survive the bad air myself.:

            “Air? I’m going to run out of air!” she said, panic rising again.

            :No! I took care of that, too.: Arva said sharply. :You’re close enough for me to cast those kinds of proxies on you. We won’t need to eat, drink, or breath for quite a while.:

            “Why haven’t you just proxied us out of here?”

            :Because transporting from place to place is almost impossible, and Einian is better at shaping rock than I am. Every time I shift some away from me, she pours it back in.:

            “Why doesn’t she just kill us?”

            :Don’t know. Amusement value probably. Not only does she have a fresh set of prisoners, these seem to be capable of fending off passive attempts to kill them, like sticking them in small holes to suffocate them.:

            “Great. Trapped by a sadist.”

            :Again, I’ve been in worse situations. She hasn’t been actively torturing us after all.:

            “The dark’s enough.”

            :May I recommend using your second-sight? It’s not as if you’re completely blind.:

            Sanura looked around her using her gift. Not-greens and not-blues hung tenaciously to her cell walls. “I can’t see you,” she said after twisting to look in every direction.

            :You should be able to. People are easy to find by their true names at fifteen feet. I can hear yours quiet clearly.:

            “How are we going to get out of here?”

            :All over the place today, are we? I’ve tried moving the stone and talking to Einian, so I’m all out of ideas at the moment.:

            “What did Einian say?”

            :Nothing. Apparently, our host is a woman of few words. I must have argued, pleaded, and groveled for a hour, but she didn’t respond.:

            “Maybe she’s thinking about it.”

            :Do you really want to count on that?:

            “No.”

            :Neither do I.:

            “So, what are we going to do?”

            :I don’t know.:

            Sanura closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, trying to relax the tension of her body.

            From his cell, Arva listened to her actions and came to the conclusion that she need to be kept busy. :We’ll try other possible solutions as we think of them. In the meantime, you might be able to come up with something if you could see farther. Your second-sight is not actual sight and does not have the same limitations. You should be able to see me like I can hear you. So, we’re going to practice that until you can see the open sky from your cell. Are you ready?:

* * *

            Tyla pounded back into camp almost a week after she left carrying Celeres. Chadder was delighted to see her, although the Ai bruskly brushed aside his greetings in order to crash on one of the bedrolls. The bubble of warmth had burst several days ago, and Chadder’s inability to properly tie the flap had allowed snow from a second storm to drift into the tent. Tyla ignored the cold and snow and slept like one of the dead.

            The wasp fretted a bit as she slept but did his best to remain patient. The antelopes had abandoned the camp to head down slope when the bubble burst, leaving Chadder alone in the wilderness. It was not the first time he had been separated from Arva for far too long a time, but the anxiety of not knowing always made him a bit short tempered. Tyla slept for so long that Chadder found himself having to resist the temptation to sting her awake.

            When she finally woke, the Ai quizzed him a bit about what she had missed, but he had little to report. Tyla grunted and waded out into the snow, letting Chadder fly ahead to find the cave. She joined him at the entrance and set him on her shoulder before stepping into it. On her right hand, a white light sprang from a stone set in a ring, illuminating their way.

            They puzzled over the first room for a long time, trying to decide which way the first party had gone. Neither of them had senses strong enough to track them, so they finally chose one of the larger tunnels at random and started walking.

            Einian had laced her tunnels with all sorts of detection and warding proxies. Since they had taken no particular steps to hide from them, the Elder was aware of these new intruders almost immediately. Still, she did nothing more active than watch them. Her automatic defense were more than enough to deal with the average intruder.

            It quickly proved that these were not average intruders. While the proxies could see them well enough, the ones designed to hurt had a hard time reaching their targets. Fire washed over them, boulders crashed into them, and lightening bolts crackled around them. None of it could penetrate the white nimbus of light that enclosed them when attacked. Einian watched with growing impatience as the duo shrugged off three dozen attacks in the half a day they wandered her tunnels.

            Taking a more active role, the Elder dropped away the floor beneath them, hoping to entomb these intruders as she had the ones from the week before. Despite his wings, Chadder held resolutely to Tyla’s shoulder while she dealt with the matter. As if the collapse of the floor was an everyday occurrence for her, the Ai pushed off the unstable ground below her feet, deftly making hop after hop until the travelers were back on solid ground.

            Tyla looked over her shoulder at the gaping hole behind her. “Long drop,” she said calmly.

            Chadder hummed in agreement.

            Alerted by a minute shift in the air, Tyla dashed forward, narrowly dodging a section of the ceiling as it came down. There was no way to avoid the second section that came down in front of her. Instead, she reached out with the light from her ring, smashing the rock to dust. They escaped the room touched only by a heavy coating of the pulverized stone.

            “Let’s keep moving right along, shall we?” Tyla said, brushing the dust out of her eyes.

            “Yes,” Chadder said, shaking himself off like a wet dog.

            Einian was not about to let her intruders to thwart her will. Such insolence required a personal touch to teach them properly, as the very rarest of guests had in the past. Still, joints fossilized by decades of inactivity warmed slowly, and it was a great many minutes before she could begin to move to deal with them.

            The wasp and the Ai were not idle during that time. They pushed onward, shrugging off the effects of other standing proxies. They had inadvertently stumbled onto the path their companions had taken, although they did not know it. It brought them to the bowl of lava and the first living thing they had seen in the caves.

            The massive white-scaled creature twitched just a bit as it heard them. It reminded Chadder most strongly of a lion, although its stubby neck was masked in part by a scaled hood like a cobra instead of a mane of hair. Still, the wasp had followed Arva around long enough to know what Sanura had not: this was a dragon.

            Tyla had always had a healthy respect for the oldest creatures born on Tirannenmoordenaar’s corpse. Most of the Ai that had encountered the dragons found that their long lives and weak connections to the first universe gave the white lizards much in common with the Ai living in the ether ocean below. Certainly they had more than the Firstborn, Secondborn, and Elders of the first universe that endlessly struggled against each other instead of settling down to enjoy life.

            Despite the creature’s affinity for stone and fire, Tyla could sense the agony the dragon experienced trapped in his prison of lava. She could not help but wonder what had driven the Elder Einian to keep one of her grandchildren in such bondage.

            “Excuse me, could you help me?” Tyla asked the dragon politely.

            Reluctantly, the beast opened its eyes to regard them.

            “I’m looking for some friends who may have passed through here a week or two ago. Humans. A man with blue skin and a woman with green.”

            “Yes,” the dragon said dully. “They came through that tunnel and left through the far one. I could hear them face Einian a few caves along. I do not know if they survived. If they did, they did not return this way.”

            “Ah. Well, I guess we’ll have to ask Einian then. She’s a few caves deeper, you say?”

            The dragon narrowed his eyes at her casual tone. He looked beyond the gray dust clinging to her to the white skin underneath. “Einian is hardly a creature most would approach so calmly,” he said puzzled.

            “She’s only an Elder. I’ve handled her sort in the past. Apparently better than you.”

            The beast chuckled at her audaciousness, turning it into a hiss as the motion caused fresh waves of lava to lap his side.

            “That doesn’t look very comfortable,” the Ai noted. “Why don’t you get out of the pool if it hurts?”

            “My feet are chained to the floor. Punishment for pointing the dragonslayer Sasanam in Einian’s direction. She handled him easily enough, but Grandmother can be vicious when she wants to be. Apparently, Sasanam talked a bit too much before he died.”

            “If you wanted him dead, why didn’t you do it yourself?”

            “It wasn’t him, although we dragons understandable did not like him. It was his sword. Others opposed Zonneshin’s plan to put it into play, and Einian was judged as unlikely to use it herself and of sufficient strength to protect it. But Grandmother wouldn’t have accepted it. She’s been determined to stay neutral in our wars. I was given the task of getting it into her hands. Unfortunately, she discovered my duplicity while exploring Sasanam and decided to punish me. Given her reputation and my relative unimportance, none have bothered to rescue me and risk her throwing the sword back into play.”

            “Nameless Sword,” Chadder hummed.

            “That is what the humans called it,” the dragon agreed.

            “That’s what Arva was looking for?” Tyla asked the wasp.

            “Yes.”

            “So, dragon-I’m sorry, I never asked your name.”

            “Vancana.”

            “So, Vancana,” Tyla continued, “I think you’re going to have to find another place for your sword. If my friends are dead, Einian isn’t likely to survive the day. If they are, her death will still make our exit easier. In either case, she will no longer be able to guard it.”

            “You’re awfully confident.”

            “I am Tyla of the Nidani. I have reason to be.”

            Vancana drew back warily, despite the shock of waves and accompanying pain they caused.

            “Yes, rather,” the Ai said with a tight smile. “However, you can’t protect the sword like you are and my friends may still need it. So, in exchange for letting them use the sword, I am offering to free you and to return the blade when they are done with it.”

            “A Nidani. Yes, you might be able to achieve such a feat. The reputation of your people is formidable, although you are the first I’ve met.”

            “That’s hardly surprising. We’ve only been killing each other since we were created. There aren’t many of us left.”

            Taking his lack of refusal as an agreement, Tyla directed a beam from her ring deep into the lava, throwing up a small set of waves that jiggled across the liquid rock. The pool itself muffled the squeal and grind of the light as it punched a hole in the ground. The layer enclosing the pool was the toughest, hardened to resist the proxy-melted stone of the pool. The Ai ruthlessly pressed forward, finally cracking the surface with a thud that reverberated through the room.

            The dragon grunted but otherwise waited stoically.

            Below that hardened stone was a long layer of normal rock, shaped only by the pressure of Tiran. That rock parted, its substance crushed by the light. The lava followed Tyla’s efforts, sliding down the new tunnel and draining Vancana’s prison. When the light broke through to another cave, Tyla turned her attention to shoveling the lava into it as fast as it would go.

            The lowering level of the pool revealed just how much damage the dragon had taken over the years. The scales on his legs and belly were gone, eaten away by the scalding heat of the bowl. The exposed flesh was little more than bone and tendons, too tough to have been destroyed. Even as a Nidani, Tyla was impressed the dragon had survived the extensive damage.

            Clinging tenaciously to the exposed bones of his ankles were four chains of brilliant metal. Tyla turned her attention from the flow of the lava to these, attacking them with the white light from her right hand. She had snapped three of the free when Einian finally arrived.

            The Elder was furious to find the intruders freeing one of her favorite prisoners. Intent upon her work, Tyla missed the entrance, but Chadder did not. Prudently, he flew off, retreating to the dubious protection of their tunnel. That caught the Ai’s attention, and she managed to redirect her light in time to slap aside a green bolt from Einian.

            Vancana bellowed in fury and twisted around to attack the Elder. Fire sprung from a second set of nostrils on his snout, spraying across her body. From Chadder’s view, the details of the figure revealed by the flame was rather unappetizing. A drifting block of stone covered by squirming lichen that glowed with a sickly green light turned the stomach of the mostly carnivorous bug. Or maybe it was the building heat pouring from the room that made him so uncomfortable.

            The heat of the dragon’s flame did not seem to bother Einian. Instead, she simply tossed a green bolt back at Vancana. The same could not be said of Tyla’s attack. The Ai shaped her light into a narrow spear and drove it hard into the Elder’s body. It managed to sink into that block a whole two inches, more damage than anyone had managed to inflict upon the Elder in ages.

            Einian howled but charged the Ai, ruthlessly ignoring the digging light. Tyla jumped high into the air to avoid her, only to be crushed between two slabs of stone the Elder proxied from the wall.

            From his tunnel, Chadder watched the mass of stone and Ai tumble to the ground. Eyes stinging from the heat, the wasp tried to see if Tyla would emerge from the pile while the dragon and the Elder exchanged shots. The stifling air washing out of the room seem to be far too much to just be from Vancana. Driven by the excruciating heat, the wasp did not stay to watch the outcome.

* * *

            With nothing better to look at, Sanura spent most of her time staring at the blank spot in the room above her. She and Arva had practiced until she could see the not-colors of the celestial music above and the swirling ether below. Admittedly, the details became pretty fuzzy at any great distance, but she could see them. She had tried to locate Celeres on the surface of the mountain but could not.

            That worried her. She estimated they had been trapped over a week and a half, longer than the proxies Arva had cast to maintain her husband in his sleep were supposed to last. Arva was less concerned. Another proxy he had cast told him that Celeres was still alive but had inexplicably moved from the camp and headed north. They both agreed that left unattended, the young man should have already died. Arva just did not spend much time worrying about it until they were in a better position to check it out.

            To that end, both of them had tried everything they could think of to escape their coffin-like prisons. Einian had frustrated every proxy Arva cast that was overtly aimed towards escaping. For whatever reason, she seemed to content to leave alone the ones he used to talk to Sanura and keep them both alive.

            With fewer skills, Sanura had made fewer attempts. She had made several efforts to reach the Nameless Sword, but the blank spot above her had remained unresponsive. Now, reaching out to it had become a minor obsession that filled her long, slow minutes.

            With her attention riveted to the room containing Einian and the Nameless Sword, she was the first to see the Elder shambling off.

            “Arva!” she called out.

            :What is it?: the Cheldean answered within her mind.

            “She’s moving.”

            :Yes, she is, isn’t she? That’s new.:

            “Why?”

            :Good question. Look around while I take a listen.:

            Sanura leapt out with her second-sight, trying to anticipate where the Elder was going to. Several minutes passed uneventfully, until some of the true names in the middle distance began to shift.

            “I see something.”
            :Keep an eye on it. I’m going to start casting some proxies, just in case. Tell me if any explosions start.:

            Explosions were a good name for what occured after another uneventful eternity. She could see Einian reach the shifting names, and then a riot of proxies and true names flew back and forth.

            “There they are,” the woman announced.

            :Sit tight. We’ll see if this works.:

            Nearby, Arva started a another set of fireworks in her second-sight. The not-colors swelled up through the rock, pushing it aside and allowing air to flow in. Arva scrambled up the hole he had created and repeated the process over Sanura’s prison.

            “Sanura?” he asked.

            “Yeah. Good to actually hear your voice.”

            Arva sang a few notes, casting a ball of light over his head. The soldier flinched away, covering her eyes.

            “Sorry,” the Cheldean apologized. “Give your eyes a chance to adjust. When you’re ready, look for the handholds and climb up. Don’t wait too long. We still don’t know what’s distracting Einian, and she might come back.”

            Squinting hard, the soldier found the holes and climbed up. Her vision had adjusted enough to see just how bad Arva looked. His hair was wild, his clothes sooty and disheveled. Where the skin peeked through holes burned in his clothes, hard black scabs covered his flesh.

            “Oh, Arva,” Sanura said pityingly.

            “Hmm? Oh. No, it’s been proxy healed. I just didn’t bother to peel the scabs. Not my first preference, but the proxies were developed for a reason. Shall we get going?”

            The soldier picked up the Nameless Sword and headed for the exit Einian had left by. The hilt was unexpectedly warm in her palm. Unbidden, an image washed over her. Like a luminous ceiling, the light draped over the courtyard.

            “Sanura,” Arva called out, interrupting her reverie. “That’s the way Einian went. We don’t really want to face her while we escape, do we?”

            The warmth from the hilt spread through Sanura’s body, filling her with an odd calm. “At the very least, we can see what’s keeping her busy. After we know, we can leave.”

            Frowning, the Cheldean followed her through the tunnel.

            Unexpectedly, it was much warmer in the caves than it had been. As they neared the dragon’s cave, the air was positively stifling. The companions fought their way through the heat and peered through the entrance.

            Einian, in all her hideous glory, sat on the lip of the bowl, slinging boulders and green bolts down into the empty pool. Wounded and chained by one leg, the maimed dragon fought back the only way he could, raining fire on his tormentor. Also in the pool was a figure in sooty white, dashing among the remaining puddles of lava and lashing out with a white light. To Sanura, it looked like a woman missing her left arm and the better part of her torso. The soldier decided it must something strange. Nothing human could function with that much damage.

            The temperature was painful, tightening the skin of their faces, and forcing the companions back into the tunnel after a few moments. Arva was giggling uncontrollably.

            “Stop that!” Sanura ordered.

            “Chadder, you bad bug!” Arva sputtered between guffaws.

            “What?”

            “That’s Tyla! Cheldar only knows how he found her. Course, now we have to rescue her, too.”

            “How? It’s hotter than Celeres’ campfires out there.”

            “Didn’t you see it? It’s coming from the bowl. Einian must have been using it to keep the lava molten. Now the lava’s gone, so it’s heating the air instead. All we have to do is break the proxy.”

            “You’ve got a song for that?”

            “Actually, you’re going to take care of it. Consider it your first lesson on using the sword. Two lessons actually. Dealing with hostile environments and breaking proxies.”

            “Great. How?” Sanura asked sourly.

            “Use your second-sight. Identify the true names driving the heat. Push it away with the sword. Don’t overdo it, or you’ll freeze everything around us. When you reach the bowl, stick the blade into the proxy and direct the sword to stop it.”

            “You’re sure?”

            “Sure enough. Be careful. And try to limit the effects. We’ll fine-tune your technique later.”

            With a resigned sigh, Sanura brought up her second-sight. She compared herself and Arva with the air. She marched back to the entrance to watch the dragon’s fire and the proxy on the bowl for a few minutes. Her hunch confirmed, the woman concentrated on the cobwebs of not-red floating in the air, heaviest in the dragon’s fire and around the sides of the bowl.

            Sticking the sword out into the air, Sanura channeled her intentions through the blank spot within it. It responded marvelously. The cobwebs jumped back, leaving behind only the lightest web of not-red. The temperature plummeted to a more comfortable level.

            The soldier marched forward toward the rim, slicing through the heat with every step. She was dimly aware that behind her, Arva was singing and launching streaks of electricity into the nearby Elder. Crouching at the edge, Sanura concentrated on the proxy and plunged the Nameless Sword into it.

            The release of energy knocked around everyone in the room but did not slow the combat. Einian had backed up to sling bolts at the Cheldean as well as the others. When she noticed Sanura, the Elder threw one at her as well.

            Serenely, Sanura flicked the Nameless Sword through the green bolt of energy, destroying it. Barely aware of her surroundings, she strode forward, brushing aside bolt after bolt. Panicked, Einian dropped her attacks on the others and threw everything she had at the soldier. Bolts and boulders and exotic proxies rained down on her, only to be pulverized by deft twists and turns of the blade.

            Relentless, the woman reached the Elder and stabbed her. Einian was a mass of true names that dwarfed even the complexity of Celeres. It was child’s play for Sanura to reach into those not-colors and simply unravel them, slashing through not-yellow cords and not-blue lumps that resisted her.

            Einian howled and shuddered, but the solider pressed on, attacking everything with reach of the sword. With a jerk and a shudder, the Elder collapsed, spreading over the ground like a small hill.

            Sanura pulled out the blade, stepped back, and passed out.