Everything rumbles. The floor slips out from under me, shooting backward and forward, stone rippling and blurring in my eyes. I run, even if my eyes can't follow what the floor is doing beneath my feet. Rworg stomps one step behind me. He would be faster than me, but he's also carrying Finna. He curses for the first time that I've heard. The word is in Kerthar and I don't know what it means, but the weight he gives it is clear.

The world flexes, bending in and bouncing out. I don't glance behind, I just run. I'm thrown off my feet, somehow upside down. My legs try to keep running, even if they are sticking up toward the ceiling. I fly, spinning sideways in the air. I land on my side and roll, trying to get even further from whatever it is that is happening to the corridor. Finna clatters next to me, clanking as she rolls to a stop on the stone floor. Rworg sails in the air, and for a moment, I fear he's going to land on top of me.

He wrenches himself in the air and lands next to me, only his leg grazing mine. I sigh in relief. After everything I have been through, it would have been a stupid way to die. Lying down, I lift my head to look into the corridor, or what's left of it.

The gentle bend at the end of the corridor, previously far away, is replaced by a tight corner only a couple of steps in. My backpack tilts, leaning on a wall.

Rworg picks himself off the ground and dusts his clothes. For once, they are not stiff with blood, as Lictor brought him a change and the bear didn't manage to bleed on him too much. "See? You worried about nothing."

I stand up and tilt my head. The backpack looks odd. I can't place my finger on it, but it does.

Rworg walks ahead and leans to pick up the backpack. He pauses and stands back up, rubbing his beard with his hand. "You may have worried about something."

I walk over. The backpack becomes thinner. Rworg nudges it with his boot, and it slides to fall on the ground, laying completely flat against the floor.

"But... my stuff was in there," I say, going down on all fours to peer at the flat image of a bag. I put my head to the ground and try to look at it from the side, but it lays completely flat, disappearing completely when I close my left eye. I wonder if it still weighs the same. Would I cut my finger if I tried to touch it?

"Well, material possessions are transient, Folke," Rworg says, lifting Finna up from the leg and starting to tie a rope around her ankle again. "Duty is not. Come!"

I run a finger over a crack in the wall. It's so narrow, it's almost invisible. In the middle of the line, there's an infinitesimally wider area where Finna's head cracked off the large pieces. "I'd prefer that most of our food hadn't just become transient," I mutter.

Behind the corner there are more black corridors.

"What next? Which direction should we go?" Rworg asks.

I glance back at the weird white rectangle on the floor. "Maybe I'd know if you hadn't flattened the instructions."

"Hah!" Rworg says. "We are on our own, as it should be! To the left, then."

"Wait, why?" I ask, but Rworg is already turning the corner, and I jog to catch up to him. If this place has more weird space stuff, I don't want to get separated from him even for a moment. Even if it might be the safer option, all things considered.

"Oh," Rworg says. The corridor ends in a large hall with black columns reaching up from the ground to the ceiling. They don't look as much built as grown, curving gently like the ribs of some great beast. At the end of the hall, something burns. It glows blue, too bright to look at directly. A beam of light cuts the hall in half, leaving both sides outside of it in relative darkness. The walls emanate their soft light, but they look matte black compared to the light shooting out from the other end of the hall.

I shade my eyes against the glare. "What do you think that is?"

"We will find out," Rworg says, stepping ahead.

I lunge to grab hold of his hand and wrench on it to make him stop. "You've caused enough trouble for a while. I'll go and take a look. Carefully. You stay here for now."

I jump over Finna and walk to behind one of the columns. I don't watch if Rworg listens or stays put. If he decides to march directly into the light and get blasted into dust, I won't stop him. I think he won't.

It's impossible to see far into the hall. It's almost as large as the Ride Hall in Tenorsbridge, stretching far into the distance. The Monolith has to be much larger on the inside in general. This hall alone would fit into the forest or could be hidden, no matter how much magic they pour into it. Animals would run into it constantly, birds slapping on a massive, invisible wall in the middle of a forest.

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I creep ahead. I don't know why. We haven't seen anything move inside the building. There haven't been any carcasses either. I thought there would have been some here and there, animals getting lost in the entrance tunnel and dying of hunger or thirst. So far, every corridor has been clean, like it was cleaned and polished only moments ago.

Something pats on the floor. The sound is faint, but now that I focus, I can make it out. I glance back to Rworg, but he's standing still, peering into the hall. Good. If he was dragging Finna around on the stone, there would have been no chance of hearing the sound. But what was it?

I lean on the column and move my bow into my hand, quietly as I can. If some animal has made it this far, they are bound to be crazy from hunger and the mana floating in the air. I can almost taste it, like tiny sparks on my tongue, the feeling of licking an iron nail.

I squint my other eye shut and sweep the hall with my gaze. On the edge of the beam of light, shapes move. They huddle and slink in and out of the darkness, vanishing into the black. Only by focusing can I make out that anything is there. It would be easy to mistake the movement as flickers of the light, too bright to look directly at.

I glance back at Rworg. He stands with hands on his hips, the sword leaning on a nearby wall. He carves a bright shape into the darkness behind him, standing directly in the beam of the light.

I sigh.

The patting of soft feet on stone continues. The papers didn't mention anything living in the Monolith. I squeeze the bow in my hand, suck at my teeth. My boots make no sound on the stone as I sneak ahead. There's nothing to stumble over, no loose rocks to kick. I lower the side of my foot to the stone, following with the rest of my foot, reaching the next column. They reach out maybe ten paces from each other, casting everything behind them in shadows.

The shapes move at the end of the hall, huddling close to where the light is coming. They are humans, or at least they have arms and legs. When the light hits them, they shine bright white, reflecting it. They tap the ground where the light hits with their hands, shuffling on all fours and crouched over.

Rworg's sword scrapes against the stone behind me. "Folke!" he shouts.

The shapes look like a school of fish when a rock is thrown in the middle of them. They scatter into the darkness, the pitter-patter of bare feet on black stone.

I'm going to strangle him. At least they didn't attack. Quite an improvement over the Kertharians, I guess.

"Folke, there is not anything here. I will come as well," Rworg says, waving his big hand at me.

I hiss and make a big X with my arms in front of my face, but maybe he's blinded by the light or too nearsighted to see it, and starts walking ahead. Finna screeches against the stone, pulled behind.

I look back to the end of the hall, but nothing moves. The light is an unwavering beam, shot out at an angle from something small on the opposite wall.

"Why the face?" Rworg asks as I get near to him. He tips the toe of his boot into the beam of light. "It is warm. Nice."

I clench my teeth, puff out my cheeks, blow the air out slowly. "Are you doing this on purpose?"

"What is adventure without adventure, eh?" he says.

I grumble, turning to sweep the hall with my gaze. The pale people are somewhere. What little I managed to see, they moved like animals. They weren't talking or working together, just basking in the light and fleeing from the sudden sound. "There's something in here with us. They looked like humans, but really pale. Maybe even white."

"Jonungard?" Rworg asks.

I have my bow in my hand. I nudge the quiver, just in case. At least my arrows weren't turned into a picture on the corridor floor. "What?"

"Jonungard, the white people," Rworg says. "I don't know why some would be here, though." He rubs his beard with his fingers, scratching at the skin below. "HEY! Anyone there?" he shouts.

I startle and nearly drop my bow. The shout echoes back. Under the echo, I hear the skittering of frightened things. To a hunter, the sound is familiar, but nothing else about the situation is.

"Maybe they are shy," Rworg says. "Come, we should investigate the light. Perhaps it is what we are searching for."

If the jonungard, or whatever they are, are not going to attack us, I guess he is right. I follow him, arrow nocked and ears trailed on any scratch or noise. The jonungard have fled the hall or stopped moving. Except for Rworg's steps and Finna's scraping, it's completely silent. There is no dropping water, no breeze, or bird calls. Out of the reach of the light, the hall is black, like Lictor's soul must be. I chuckle at the thought, and out of anxiety about what lurks in the dark.

Rworg walks with one hand before his eyes, the shadow stark and black on his face. The light is warm, as he said. I can't believe he just stuck his foot in it. It would have been completely right if the boot had burst into flames, but I guess the white things were touching the light as well. Like they were worshiping it.

We reach the end of the hall. The light blasts out from a circular window on a wooden door. Up close, the light is not quite as bright as it looked when seen against the otherwise dark hall. Still, after this, we're not going to be seeing anything for a while in the dim light of the Monolith. The door looks just like an ordinary door. Thick, wooden door with a handle and metal hinges bolted directly into the black stone. There's no door frame, only a door with light creaking out from the cracks between it and the stone wall.

"The wizards must have put this here," I say, touching the door. The wood is warm to the touch, the grain of its surface feeling more like stone than cracked wood. In the dim light, it's gray like the petrified trees in the desert of Kerthar. "Maybe we really are on the right track."

When I touch the door, something hisses in the dark. A long, rasping sound coming from multiple throats at the same time.

I spin around and poke a finger at Rworg's chest. He moves his eyes from the door handle to me, looking surprised. "Don't even think about it, mister."

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