Felicity came back quickly and landed on Tristan's head, making her usual paw-claw biscuits. "I saw something interesting off to the side of the road when I got way high up. Some type of hole in the ground. A campsite was set up outside of it – tents, abandoned fire…a lot of blood on the ground. Soaked into the dirt."

Tristan glanced at Obadai, trying to gauge the man's reaction. He was quietly sitting, contemplating, before speaking softly. "It could be worth investigating." He glanced at Tristan, "Holes in the ground that appear…" looking up to Felicity, he inquired with her, "What was the hole like? Black in the center? Ragged edges?"

"Nope. It was like a big tube! Smooth circle. Totally black in the center. A rope was tied off to a rock and led down."

Obadai looked back to Tristan, "It is probably a Delve."

"Never heard of that," Tristan replied.

"Delves are phenomena that appear when a Lost Realm gets…squished, for lack of a better term, against the Mortal Realm. It creates something like an Incursion. But an Incursion is for an active, alive Realm. Delves are for Lost Realms." He looked at Felicity, "Lead us toward it."

"What is in there? Treasure?" Felicity asked as she directed Tristan by tugging on his hair, and he maneuvered Onyx in the direction she tugged.

"Perhaps," Obadai replied. "Lost Realms contain many things. Treasure, foes-"

Tristan interrupted, "The Matriarch told me that the Lost Realms don't have living things in there."

"I never said the foes were alive," Obadai replied. "Remnants of what once lived there. Think of them like echoes of the past – but they are indeed dead."

Tristan frowned, "How could you fight an echo?"

"Hit them," Obadai said with a chuckle. "It's just a lesser, hollow version of its former self."

Felicity giggled, "So we beat up a bunch of husks of things, get a bunch of treasure…will the hole close on us?"

Obadai shook his head, "No. Once this Lost Realm is 'squished' against The Mortal Realm, it is stuck in place until whoever the Realm Protector is decides to graft it on. And as for treasure? It depends on the Lost Realm. There might be nothing there."

That gave Tristan and idea that he voiced, "What if I grafted it onto the Fey Realm first?"

Obadai's eyebrows lifted in surprise, "I…I don't know. Your Realm Protector would have to do it. You would have to get her attention across Realms. I don't know how you would do that. Communication spells cannot cross between them."

Felicity frowned, "How would someone normally do that?"

"I only know what I've read. Realm Protectors have to travel to the Delve and then they can graft the Lost Realm onto their own."

Tristan sighed, "Then it's not possible, since The Matriarch would have to be here to do that, and she can't leave the Fey Realm."

"What could be done," Obadai said, "Is we go into the Delve and I use a Realmwalking spell to open a new Delve to the Fey Realm. Then, you could get The Matriarch to come over and graft it. But…that might piss off whoever the Realm Protector is over the Mortal Realm."

Tristan chuckled, "If there was a Realm Protector for this one? They would have dealt with that Incursion we dealt with."

"Could be that whoever it is didn't bother showing up since we were there," Obadai replied. "Maybe we were the people sent to close it?"

Tristan scoffed, "Please. I helped out of my sense of doing what's right."

Felicity scratched his head, "Yes, be the good boy we all know you are."

Obadai chuckled, "And to be clear – Incursions are from a living Realm to another living Realm. Delves are Lost Realm to any other."

Felicity cleared her throat, "No more lessons! The camp is just over the hill."

Tristan dismounted and led Onyx over to a bush, leaning in, he whispered to the mount. "If anyone except for me, Felicity, or Obadai comes back – run from them and circle back when the sun sets. Keep your distance from all except the three of us. Alright?"

Onyx whinnied and dipped his head in acknowledgement before munching on the bush nearby. Tristan repeated the instructions to Midnight as Obadai dismounted, and after the other mount acknowledged his instructions, Tristan drew his sword and began walking towards this campsite Felicity had spotted.

Over a small hill, and a few hundred feet away, he found what she had spied from the skies. A series of tents set up around a circle of stones, with brown blood soaked into the tamped-down dirt. "Hello?" Tristan shouted as he arrived at the campsite. No sounds met his ears.

He walked over to one of the tents and opened the front flap, finding only some incidental camp supplies. Checking each tent resulted in more of the same, and finally he forced himself to look at the object that stood out the most but gave him a feeling of dread that worked its way up his spine. A black pit. A perfectly round, black pit that was akin to a painted blot on the ground. A thick, braided rope extended out of the pit and to a nearby boulder.

Obadai walked over and tugged on the rope, "Feels like there's a lot of length left. Thoughts?"

Tristan walked over next to the man and felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise up. "It feels…wrong."

"It is a Lost Realm. They tend to have that effect – from what I've read."

"If we go in there," Tristan said as he began to spin his essence crucible and push the powerful substance through his channels, "We might be able to make another Delve to the Fey Realm?"

"We can try it."

Tristan looked up at Felicity, who was making paw-claw biscuits at a much faster pace. "What are we waiting for?" she asked impatiently. "I want to see if there's treasure!"

Right, Tristan thought. What am I worried about? I've got an Archon with me. He grabbed the rope, gave it a few tugs, and then sat down on the lip, dipping his feet down into the blackness. It felt fuzzy; that feeling he experienced when his foot was falling asleep – but only once he initially lowered his feet in. Once they passed some threshold about a foot deep, the sensation faded.

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Unintentionally, he took a deep breath before dropping down, gripping onto the rope as he descended. Felicity gripped down onto his head, her paw-claws digging in for purchase as he dropped through the blackness and was temporarily blinded. Only for his vision to return a moment later as he passed all the way through the darkness.

He could see for miles and miles out in every direction. Shattered land, torn asunder, floating in the vastness of a Realm filled with purple skies and orange streaks of slow-moving lightning that bolted through the endless expanse. A torn apart place of ruin, where cracks through the ground revealed massive chasms that descended into blackness without light.

He was hanging from the rope above a tower. The top was a massive spike with some type of metal emblem, and he lowered his feet onto it; finding it a sturdy enough surface. The rope was tied off to the top of the structure, and further down he saw a rounded rooftop the structure connected into. Clambering down, he glanced up as he heard Obadai huffing slightly as he climbed down after Tristan.

Making his way to the curved roof, Tristan found that the stone was almost bouncy with a little bit of give to it. As he cautiously made his way to the edge, following the still-descending rope, he saw that the length of cord was once more affixed to the building. Grabbing on tight, and lowering himself to his stomach, he peered over the edge with felicity hanging onto his head.

The rope descended, dangling, and was ripped on the end about thirty feet down. Directly under him, past the overhang of the roof, was an observation platform, an open trap door, and a wounded person. He couldn't make out their gender or heritage, as they were facing away from him. But they had bled, and he could barely see the slight rise of their chest.

"Felicity," he ordered. "Fly the rope into that place and tied it to the trap door so we can get down."

"You got it!" she flapped off of his head, flew down the length of rope, and pulled it back up as she darted under the rooftop and tied it off. "Ready!"

Tristan gripped the rope with both hands and took a deep breath as he flipped himself over the lip and used the momentum to launch his body to the rooftop. Landing in a crouch, he went over to the person and turned them over. The first thing he saw was the sigil they had on a braided, leather cord around their neck. The Pathfinder Company's symbol – an amber crystal wreathed in leaves and sticks, pressed flat.

They were human – or enough human that any heritage was suppressed. A young man with brown hair, no more than fifteen, with a few scars on his face from some type of wild animal. He had a wound on his stomach and had been patched up by someone else's hand, judging from the tied-off bandages behind his back that he could not have reached to without making his wound worse and bleeding out.

Tristan gently set him down and went back to the rope. "Obadai! Injured Pathfinder! Get down here!"

The man's head peeked over the rooftop lip, "I can't get down there! I'm not acrobatic like you."

Tristan looked around the ceiling, trying to find some means of egress to the roof. Not seeing anything apparent, he pulled out his sword and walked a little to the side of the injured Pathfinder. Stabbing up into the roof, he found that the material bent inward along his blade's edge – he could not cut into it. Sheathing the blade, he looked around for anything he could use.

Glancing down the trapdoor, he saw a ladder that was set up. Gripping it from the top, he pulled it up, set it on the ground so that the length was out over the fall to the ground below, and called out. "Use the rope, two hands, and use your feet on the ladder!" Tristan kneeled and dragged the injured Pathfinder over as extra weight.

Reluctantly, and slowly, Obadai squirmed his way over the roof's lip, got his feet on the ladder, and shimmied over to solid ground. Taking in a deep breath, he knelt and began incanting his spell phrase for Cure Wound in Demon's Tongue.

Tristan ignored him and glanced at Felicity who was busy peering into the trap door. "What's down there?"

"No clue. But I want to go check it out." She looked at him, and he saw a gleam in her eyes. The same gleam he had spotted a few times when she wanted to go off and do some mischief. "Mind if I scout?" she asked.

"Invisible, and yes," Tristan replied. She took off and flew into the tower, whilst he turned to face the now-waking-up Pathfinder.

The young man took in a gasping inhale and felt around his stomach, breathing rapidly as he realized he was alive. "I'm-oh, thank Albert the gentle. A healer answered my prayers!"

Obadai shook his head, "I didn't hear any prayers. You know the saying, 'a Pathfinder in need is a friend, indeed.'" He stood up and gestured to Tristan, "This is Lord Tristan, and I am Archon Grimtome. What brought Pathfinders to a Delve?"

The young man looked up at Tristan, then Obadai, "Well, mister Archon, sir, one of our Company members got word of some weird Incursion activity up north from headquarters in Jewel's Point. I'm William, by the way – Pathfinder in training."

"Well met," Tristan softly said, but with urgency. "Now, allies. Where are they?"

"Right! Me, Heather, Boris, and Nelly were sent off to investigate. We came across a pit in the ground, and Heather used an artifice item to talk with our Company leader in the city. Turns out it's a Lost Realm."

"Where are the rest? What happened to you?" Tristan asked as he lowered himself to the man's level.

"Well…we descended the rope, climbed down, swung ourselves in, and then spent some time in the tower." He pointed to the open trap door, "Down there. We found a lot of neat stuff! Small stuff, but neat stuff! Heather is holding onto it. We got done for the day, went back up to sleep, and were attacked in the night. I don't know much; I was cut in the guts. Heather yelled something about how they stole our loot, and Boris carried me back into the Delve while the rest gave chase…I blacked out after they set me down up here."

"Hold on a second," Tristan said to him as he stood up and waved the Archon over to the side, lowering his voice slightly. "Thoughts about his story?"

Obadai glanced at the young man, "Seems straightforward. I didn't detect dishonesty. Delves do attract some folk who seek fortune, but attacking Pathfinders? That's brash. They are often a cut above the usual folk. And why just cut one of them and steal the loot? They could have slit all of their throats and been done with it."

Tristan looked back at William, "Why did they only try to kill you?"

"Oh…I was on watch," the young man said as he stood up. "Minding the fire, and Heather's bag of goodies was at the center of camp as well. I…it's a bit fuzzy…I think they grabbed the bag, I tried to take it back, then I was stabbed – but it all blends together."

Tristan looked back to the Archon, "That makes more sense. They only gutted the guy trying to stop them who was on watch. And the lure of more loot must have been stronger than their desire to get away."

Obadai frowned, "It's risky. A single person, stealing from a Company of Pathfinders, and then going into unknown territory? Not unheard of, but the person doing that would be brash."

Tristan looked back to William, "Well, you have no equipment, so I can only presume that your allies took it with them. You are welcome to stay with us for protection."

"That's kind of you, sirs. But I'd rather sit up here, if you don't mind."

"I do," Tristan replied. "I want you with us. I don't trust you, and for all I know you killed all the Pathfinders, were injured in the struggle, took one of their symbols, and passed out up here." Granted, Tristan thought, someone else bandaged his wounds – but I want him to be on the back foot here and know he is under suspicion.

The young man frowned but nodded curtly, "I get it. Just don't throw me in front to find traps!"

Obadai replied, "You mentioned you were in the tower below us already. Would you lead us to where you left off your venturing?"

William nodded rapidly, "I'll do that, sure." He grabbed the ladder, moved it to the trap door, and began to climb down.

Tristan took his thumb, placed it in the crook between his middle and ring finger, folded those fingers over to pin the thumb, stacked his index finger on top of the middle finger, and the pinky atop the ring finger. Right, he thought, Lucky Instinct. Clearing his throat, he began whispering in Elvish. "Kunpa minulla olisi tästä huono tunne." (I wish I had a bad feeling about this).

He felt his essence surge through his fingers and then felt…nothing. I assume its working and not telling me anything is 'off', he thought. Moving through the motions for the Near Miss spell, he placed his hands face-down at his chest-height, extended his thumbs, straightened the fingers along his ribcage, and slowly moved his hands around his chest as he spoke. "Tämä ei voi mitenkään osua minuun." (There's no way this is going to hit me).

Taking the ladder rung by rung, Tristan descended into the depths of the tower, on a chunk of floating land, in a Lost Realm.

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