I yelp and stumble. Henna's arm has fallen next to my other leg, and it rolls as I step on it. I jerk my foot up and lose my balance, arms flailing around. Luckily, Rworg stands next to me, and I bump into him. It doesn't budge him at all. He only oofs lightly and grabs on to me, stopping me from falling.

"Great," Finna says. "Typical."

Rworg pushes me upright, and I notice it's not completely dark after all. Some light trickles in through the cracks in the wooden walls, and the Time Gem shines dimly in the middle of the room.

"Ah, just a moment. The lamp should be around here..." Hearn says, shuffling about at the other end of the room.

The lamp lights up again. Hearn stands with a finger pressed on its side. Henna lies on the ground, limp but breathing. I guess using the Time Gem does that to people. The sledgehammer looks exactly like it did before.

Rworg steps over Henna and picks up the hammer. He grabs it with both hands and tries to bend it, muscles bulging in his back and arms. The only sound is his grunting. The haft of the hammer already has a big crack, but it stays exactly as it was, even as Rworg presses it against his knee and pushes down on both ends of the hammer.

Hearn kneels beside Henna, tapping his cheek lightly. He pouts, whispering her name.

"This happen often to her?" Finna asks, crouching next to them two.

"Occasionally," Hearn says. "The ambient mana is running thin, so when channeling--"

"Actually, forget it," Finna says, standing back up. "Next time I'm going to listen to a lecture is in 30 years." Her voice falters, and she turns away from us, pushing her hands deep into her pockets.

"Oh, ok," Hearn says. He glances at me, but I'm too busy swallowing to explain anything.

Rworg's eyes roam around the room and the assorted things in it. The hammer sits in his right hand, while he's wiggling the fingers of his left hand, tongue pushed out from the corner of his mouth.

I wipe a hand over my eyes, sniffling. "Don't even think about it. Go outside if you want to hit something."

"I will!" he says, running out.

Finna sighs and turns around. "Any idea how long that will last?"

I shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine. But let's make her explain to you how she did it, just in case."

She nods as an explosive crack sounds from outside. Rworg shouts in surprise. I leap to the door and see him standing next to a collection of rubble. The last fragments settle on the ground, rolling to a stop. It looks like a huge boulder shattered in one blow. Rworg has dropped the hammer and is shaking his hands and grimacing.

"What did you do?" Finna shouts at him.

"Tested the hammer," Rworg says, clenching his fists open and closed. "It is excellent."

"Just one hit? You must be even stronger than you look," Hearn says.

"I am not that strong. The time hammer acts oddly," Rworg says, picking up the sledgehammer.

"No," Finna says.

"Time Hammer," Rworg says.

I notice Henna coming out of the door and leave them to bicker about the name.

She leans heavily on the doorframe, her other hand pressed on her brow. I rush over and offer her my arm. She lets go of the door and grabs onto it. Her palm feels coarse, like stone instead of skin.

Weird.

"Thank you, young Folke," Henna says. She has her eyes pressed almost closed but squints at the exploded boulder. "Seems it worked."

I nod, watching Rworg throw the hammer into the air and catch it again. He laughs, free and gleeful, as the hammer twirls around in the air.

"Headache?" I ask.

"Used too much mana. Before the gloom, the amount wouldn't have been that much, but now I pushed into it all I could scrape together." She waves a hand at the cave ceiling high above us, hidden by the flickering shadows.

I nod. The dark cave feels even darker. I look up and see that some lights in the windows of the building have dimmed or gone out. "Thank you. I hope we can help you, but..."

She watches as I lick my lips. "We might already be gone by the time you have traveled for an hour," she says, smiling. "Don't worry. We're asking you to try, that's all."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

We stand in silence for a moment, watching Rworg and Finna wave their hands at each other. Hearn stands near them, obviously holding back a smile.

"Oh, we got completely sidetracked earlier!" I say. "You were going to tell us about how to handle the thick mana?"

"Thick mana sounds like a nice problem to have," Henna mutters, then her gaze focuses again. "Right, the second option would be to bleed the mana into runes. We would have to pick suitable, harmless runes that would act like lightning rods for the mana, drawing it away from you."

I lean my shoulder on the doorframe and frown. "Hmm, knowing runes might be a problem. Lictor said that the mana might activate just the memory of a rune. It sounded pretty dangerous."

"You still trust whatever he tells you, do you?" Finna shouts. She stops to stand before us, putting her hands in her pockets.

"Well..."

"As I said earlier, it doesn't sound completely impossible," Henna says.

Rworg has the sledgehammer resting on his shoulder. His hand rests on the haft in a way that looks like he won't ever let go of it again.

"We decided on a name for it," Finna says, nudging her head at the hammer. There's a mischievous glint in her eyes, and her mouth draws into a smile. "Temporal Tapper."

"For real? Why?" I ask. "That's a weird--"

Rworg takes the hammer off his shoulder and twirls it in one hand. "Temppural Tap-urghg," he says, nodding and looking at the hammer like Durn looked at his prized hunting hound.

Finna's face tenses even harder, and there's a squeak as some air escapes her nose.

I sigh. "Whatever. We were talking about how to survive up there if the mana is as thick as it was before."

"Good. If you two start acting up again, I swear I'll leave you in the tunnels," Finna says.

Henna sits down on the ground next to the wall and leans her back on it. She presses a hand on her brow and closes her eyes. "Anyway, I can think up some runes and prepare some to go with you. Do you know how physical runes work?"

"Yes," Rworg says.

That takes me by surprise, but I guess he would know. He did say Kertharians can all channel, and he himself searched for runes when he was young.

"Good. I can find an iron container for you to keep the runes until you need them. Then you can pull them out one at a time when you need to thin the mana," Henna says, lowering her finger to touch her lip. "We can carve the runes into shards of the black stone, perhaps?"

"That is a good idea," Rworg says with a firm nod.

I have no idea what they are talking about, but I guess it's enough if Rworg does. Finna probably does as well, so we should be fine.

The preparations take some hours. We get dried provisions from the jonungaard. The woman who packages them smiles at me but still holds on to the package for a heartbeat before letting go of it. She turns her face away from me as I stammer a thank-you. They really must be short on food.

Henna mobilizes some people to bring her the black shards. Finna tests out using the Time Gem to freeze a chisel. She manages to do that and doesn't even fall unconscious. Henna seems pretty impressed by that, but Finna does complain about a headache a lot afterward.

Rworg spends time telling stories to the few children in the city. There's only a handful, but they all listen to him with bated breath, eyes wide like saucers. He looks larger than life, sitting dark tan and copper in the middle of a bunch of white kids.

The lake shines its blue light. I peer into it, but it's bottomless. The light comes from somewhere deep, reflecting off its walls that look smooth and almost polished. There are no fish in the clear water. Somewhere, animals moo and baa.

"Ready!" Finna shouts, waking me up from my thoughts.

She looks like she always has. Someone stitched the small holes in her shirt, but her hair is a matted tangle of dark, and her eyes are half covered behind it. She jumps a couple of times, testing the weight of her backpack.

"I'll tell you the ending when I come back," Rworg says and stands up. The children grumble and scream, but he just tousles the white hair of the nearest head. "Ready!" he shouts.

"Ready," I say, rising from the rock I've been sitting on. The bow is on my back, my quiver still full of the arrows Tenorsbridge supplied me with. My old backpack waits outside the Monolith, the new one lies flattened in the corridor, imitating a painting. I got a small pouch that sits in a sling on my shoulder, large enough to hold the supplies and water the jonungaard gave us.

"Take care, travelers," Henna says. "You have given us hope and told us stories from a world lost to us. For just that, we will be grateful as long as we live."

She speaks loudly, again making sure everyone gathered around the lake can hear her words. I walk next to Rworg and Finna, standing side-by-side facing Henna. Rworg and I bow at her, while Finna waves a hand.

Hearn steps to stand next to me. "Wait, I'll come too."

Rworg grunts approvingly and nods.

He's already turning around when Henna speaks up. "Are you certain? You know what it means."

Hearn rubs the back of his neck, looking at us three. "Yeah, well. I already got to meet everyone, and I got used to eating feasts. You know how it is. And if people respect me now, think how it will be when I'm a grand-grand-grand-grand-dad. And--"

Henna chuckles, waving him quiet. "Stop reassuring yourself, you old fool." She steps closer, arms spread wide, raising her voice to shout at everyone. "Hearn will return to the slow to guide the travelers. We thank you, once again." She grabs Hearn into a hug.

Rworg nods and smiles. He steps and places a massive arm to rest on the arms of the hugging jonungaard. "We thank you for everything, noble hosts."

"Let's just go," Finna says. "Always a damn ceremony when we're supposed to leave." Still, she speaks under her breath, low enough so mostly I can hear.

I chuckle and nod. Even if we never return, seeing Jonun, the legendary lost city, would have been enough of an adventure by itself.

I glance at Rworg and he nods at me, then nudges his head toward the corridor.

The jonungaard start to sing another haunting melody. It echoes from the roof of the cavern, mixing into a beautiful but confusing wall of sound.

Hearn's son sits on a rock at the edge of the city, his own toddler, Hearn's grandkid, sitting on his lap. He waves as we walk past. Climbing the slope up to the corridor is easy. I'm less harried and bewildered than last time. I turn back to take a final look at Jonun and see Hearn's son still waving at us. This is the last he will see of his dad. The toddler has pressed its face into his chest.

Just looking at him continuing to wave, even if we are nearly at the corridor's entrance, makes my vision blur and my throat clamp up.

Rworg jumps and grips on to the edge of the black stone. He muscles himself up and lowers a hand to Hearn.

The old jonungaard sighs and turns to grasp on to Rworg's hand with both of his. Rworg lifts the old man like a toddler, pulling him into the dark corridor.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.