This barrier is beyond me. I cannot breach it. In as much as the Tempest is its weakness, it is also its greatest strength. There is hope, however. I have found but a single thread of fate on which I can tug, and at the strangest time! It will be interesting to see the manner in which things unravel.

  -Diary of The Reconstitution of Yeneb’Ex, Eighth Colossus of Yeneb.

  Upon hearing the rattlestone alarm, Evran jolted awake. Once again, their camp was under attack. He jumped to his feet and burst out from his little nook, nearly forgetting his staff resting against the wall. Everyone else except Indon was still within the campsite, having also just awoken. That meant the beastkin was still on watch. Had he fallen asleep?

  “Indon!” Evran shouted.

  No response. The remaining students ran to the wall to see what was happening on the other side. Once on the other side, Evran saw the unthinkable… another osteomorph.

  Indon’s unmoving body lay impaled upon the bone monster’s scythe-like arm, the tip of its blade protruding from his back. The creature had lifted his body off the ground. Blood ran down its bony arm, painting it red before pooling on the floor. Indon’s sword stuck in the ground beneath him, and next to it lay the other scythed arm of the osteomorph.

  The monster roared and threw Indon towards the group. His body tumbled lifelessly across the cavern floor. Without hesitating, Evran poured healing magic into Indon’s body. It was futile. He didn’t have the level of magic power to heal vicious wounds to organs, nor restore the extreme quantity of blood he’d lost. Moreover, he was leaving his friends to fight that thing down two allies instead of one. Reluctantly, he stopped healing Indon just in time to cast a quagmire before the charging osteomorph, halting its advance as it had with the other. Hopefully, he bought the kid a little time.

  Kaila cried out in anger. She launched a pair of stone lances at the monster just as Lerrum had done to kill the previous one. Unlike before, the osteomorph wasn’t fully immobilized, allowing it to move its head out of the way at the last second. The lances struck hard against its torso, knocking large chunks of bone everywhere, but the skull was undamaged.

  With solid stone in reach, the osteomorph took hold of the lance with its legs and attempted to extract itself from the thick mud. A barrage of stone shards from Lerrum and Evran knocked it back. It was too late, however. The creature had managed to free itself from the quagmire using the stone lances as leverage.

  By then, Narro was now within range of the deadly foe. Seeing how effective Kaila’s flames had been, he poured an immense quantity of mana into his swords, wreathing them in blue fire. He attacked the osteomorph on the same side on which Indon had risked everything to sever its arm. His first blade bit into the monster’s leg just as it had done before. Then, the second sword hit in the same spot. It exploded.

  The osteomorph’s leg shattered, throwing it off balance and sending Narro flying deeper into the cavern. Before it could recover, Kaila pooled all her remaining mana into a massive fireball and launched it at the monster.

  “Damnit Kaila, that’s too much!” shouted Lerrum, wrapping the three mages in a magic barrier as the fireball hurtled toward its defenseless target.

  Evran had precious few seconds to protect the spellblades from Kaila’s reckless attack. He hastily constructed an earth wall between the osteomorph and Indon. He could no longer see where Narro was, but he trusted in his barrier amulet to provide enough protection from the exploding bonemass that was about to come his way.

  The fireball impacted the chest of the osteomorph, not that missing its skull mattered at that distance. A second explosion filled the confined space of the labyrinth. A wall of immense pressure shot through the cavern like a dwarven cannon. Fiery bone was blasted every which way at immense speed. Lerrum’s barrier held, though it had countless cracks where the bone shrapnel struck it. The whole island seemed to shake, throwing the mages to the cavern floor.

  Smoke and dust filled the hall. Coughing, Evran summoned a torrent of wind to clear the air to the point where they could breathe again. He wanted nothing more than to yell at Kaila for using such an insane spell underground, but the girl was unconscious. Her mana had been fully exhausted from the fireball.

  “You get Narro,” Lerrum ordered through a coughing fit, then ran off to see to Indon.

  After quickly confirming Kaila was still alive, Evran dashed down the hallway past the place where the osteomorph had been. It was certainly dead, wasn’t it? There was another lifeless pile of bones, though much smaller than the last one had been. Most of its body was embedded in the nearby walls instead. He ignored the remains and ran toward a familiar voice. Narro was groaning in pain.

  “Damn her!” he screamed, pulling a splintered radius from near his own. “I just got this arm, too.”

  He seemed to be more or less alright, given that he could joke. His barrier amulet had shattered completely, rendering it useless. He had other bone shards sticking out from a few places, but none looked particularly deep. As much as Evran wanted to heal his friend, Narro could do it himself, and the boy had more that enough mana to spare. Evran did not.

  “Sorry, but can you heal yourself? I’d rather conserve mana.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Narro replied. “Is he alright?”

  “It didn’t look good. I healed what I could at the start, but…” he couldn’t finish the thought.

  After Narro quickly finished healing himself, he and Evran ran back to where Indon lay on the cavern floor. Lerrum leaned over the body, while a pile of ash lay on the ground beneath his hand. Lerrum looked up from Indon’s corpse with tears in his eyes.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “There was nothing I could do,” he stammered. “He was already dead… I wasted a scroll. That was stupid.”

  “You did right,” said Evran, embracing his friend.

  He helped Lerrum to his feet, while Narro closed Indon’s eyes for the last time. Narro reached under Indon’s broken cuirass and uncovered the beastkin’s barrier amulet. With his own destroyed, Narro must have felt naked without it. Evran couldn’t blame him. It was usually considered taboo to loot the corpse of a fallen comrade, but they were getting increasingly desperate. He was a bit stunned, however, when Narro started undoing the sheath from Indon’s belt.

  “One of my swords broke,” he volunteered after noticing Evran’s judgmental glare.

  Glancing back at the site of the battle, Evran saw a thin piece of blue metal laying unceremoniously on the cavern floor. Something else was bothering him about the fight. Evran gave Lerrum an encouraging pat on his back, then left to examine the bones of the defeated osteomorph.

  While it wasn’t out of the question for a powerful dungeon guardian to have multiple such servants at his disposal, how had both managed to come here? And neither had fought the adventurers who posed the real threat to their master. Kaila, for all her faults, took the overly cautious route and burned the first one’s bones. There was no way it could put itself back together after that, right?

  At that thought, Evran felt his staff tremble. The still-living Yggdrasil wood shifted in his hand, as if to communicate with him. It had done this before, when they had come close to suffocating in the ruins. Having already replaced the air in the tunnel after Kaila’s fireball, he wondered what it was trying to warn him about.

  Curious, Evran activated his aurasight, and what he saw terrified him. Thin wisps of black smoke were trailing off every single bone fragment in the area and collecting in a single tiny sphere of unending darkness. There weren’t two osteomorphs. This monster was resurrecting itself. No, the labyrinth’s guardian was. As long as it was alive, they would have to keep fighting this monster over and over again.

  “Shit!” shouted Evran. “Ler, Narro. The osteomorph… It’s being resurrected.”

  “What? Can’t we burn its bones like Kaila did with the last one?” Lerrum suggested.

  “This was the last one. In fact, burning it might have sped up the process.”

  “Gods, this is bad,” said Narro, panicking for once. “We can’t stay here.”

  “I agree. We need to go somewhere else. The ruins up north, or that false labyrinth you found,” said Evran.

  “Outside? Are you insane? There’s a dragon out there, if you recall!” Lerrum retorted. “We should push further inside and either find the adventurers or a safe room!”

  No, that was madness. They could avoid the dragon; they’d done it before. Evran didn’t know exactly how long he’d been asleep, but it didn’t feel like a long time. With this thing able to resurrect every few hours, it was only a matter of time before it would attack again. Could they even make it to a safe zone in time?

  “No… I can’t,” he said. After all, there was one reason above all others that he dared not venture any further. He was afraid — far more afraid of the depths of a labyrinth than a dragon. “You promised, Lerrum. You said you would never even ask.”

  “For once, I agree with Evran,” Narro chimed in. “We should be able to get to those ruins without it finding us. We made it here, didn’t we?”

  Lerrum glanced over at Kaila hoping for an ally, but the elf remained asleep. He cursed, looking completely defeated. He took a deep breath, then raised his head with a smile. “Fine, we make for the ruins. Ev, you carry Kai. I’ll take the food. Narro… just be ready to fight. We leave when it’s dark, if it’s not already.”

  “Thanks,” said Evran, gripping Lerrum’s shoulder.

  Gently, Narro slipped the hilt of his broken sword into Indon’s hand, apologizing for the unequal exchange. The three friends stood over their fallen comrade and said a few words to acknowledge his passing. Though he’d only known the boy for a few days, Evran mourned the loss of his new friend. As much as he wanted to give him a proper cremation, all they could afford at the moment was a modest stone coffin to keep his body for a time.

  “We’ll come back for your body when this is over,” said Evran. “Ascend, now and forever.”

  ***

  Evran set Kaila’s unconscious body down on the bench back at their camp. He was quite shocked when the jolt woke her up. Usually, running out of mana took a few hours to recover from. Were elves somehow different?

  “What happened?” asked Kaila. Though awake, the girl remained completely motionless.

  “Indon is dead. That monster is reviving,” Evran answered coldly.

  “Burn the bones like we did for the last one,” she responded desperately. “I’d do it myself, but I’m exhausted. How long was I out?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes. And that won’t work. It’s the guardian doing it, not a self-revive. We’re leaving for the ruins. Can you walk?”

  “Minutes? I shouldn’t even be awake after running out of mana. I can feel my legs, but I can’t move them. Maybe it’s only a partial exhaust? Check that amulet from earlier. It’s in my left pocket.”

  Evran wasn’t particularly comfortable reaching into her uniform, but he did anyway. He pulled out the amulet and found that all but the ruby and onyx were glowing. Was it a mana battery of sorts — one that could augment her own supply of mana, preventing her from fully exhausting? Such things weren’t supposed to be possible. The amulet might also have been responsible for Kaila’s fireball being as powerful as it was. Then again, Kaila was a talented mage in her own right.

  “The fire gem is depleted,” he said. “If you’re right, you’ll be up and walking soon enough. We’re still waiting for sundown before we head out.”

  After hastily packing all their remaining essentials into Lerrum’s bag, the four survivors sat around the camp waiting for the sun to disappear behind the horizon. It would be difficult to travel at night, but also much harder for the dragon to locate them. By now, Kaila could scarcely move her fingers, so Evran would still need to carry her for a time. They didn’t want to wait in the labyrinth a second longer than they had to.

  “I’m going to take a quick peek outside while there’s still a little light,” said Lerrum.

  Not wanting him to go alone, Evran accompanied him to the entrance. The sky was awash with orange and magenta, the sun having already set beneath the island. It was almost time to leave.

  As they got closer to the entrance, they grew more anxious. Reaching the threshold, they scanned the horizon for any sign of the dragon. Nothing. Evran stepped back into the darkness, while Lerrum remained in the fading light.

  “No sign of the dragon,” said Lerrum. “Ev, go get the others. Have Narro bring my pack while I keep a lookout. Let’s not linger here any longer than is necessary. And Ev?”

  Lerrum looked somber, the loss of Indon weighing heavily on his heart.

  “Yeah?” Evran replied.

  “Don’t blame yourself. I should have never led us here in the first place. We should have gone to the ruins right away.” He smiled, then messed up Evran’s hair like he usually did.

  Evran fixed his hair as he made his way down the hall back to their camp. He never particularly enjoyed the mild harassment, but this time it put him at ease. They’d already been through so much, and now they would have to traverse a virgin island at night, unable to use magic, all while being hunted by a dragon. Their situation seemed more and more hopeless by the second, but Evran had faith he’d make it through.

  Halfway down the tunnel, Evran heard footsteps behind him. He looked back to see Lerrum encroaching further past the entrance, trying to get a better look at the surrounding area. He only made it two steps.