Pathway

"Abron!" 

Ju Feng called out, frantic, but there was no way for the dwarf to hear him. He shoved the yaoguai to the ground and forced it on its back. Ju Feng pressed his finger to the creature's throat, and growled. 

"What are your uamsters planning?" 

The creature whimpered and stared at him blankly, its face creased in pain. Lightly, Ju Feng punched the yaoguai. Bright blood welled up around the creature's mouth. It squeezed its eyes shut, tensing for another blow.

Ju Feng cursed, digging his hands into the creature's filthy tunic. He reached up and laid his palm flat against the creature's cheek. The yaohuai's eyes widened with fear. It expected violence, but that wasn't Ju Feng's aim. He felt his internal soul react to the creature's flesh. The yaoguai's heartbeat surged through him, strong, yet wild and fearful. Ju Feng gasped at the burning red pain he felt from creature's shattered arm. He pushed forward, past the pain, seeking—there!

A blemish spread throughout the creature's body, a creeping darkness in the shape of a spider's web—or perhaps that was merely Ju Feng's perception of it, compounded by his fury and dread. The ya owasguai going to die, but instead of slowly consuming him, the magic hovered like a growing storm, waiting to burst from the creature's body with violent force.

Ju Feng pulled back from the yaogua breaking the skin-to-skin contact. The yaoguai stared fixedly at him. Red light crept into its eyes, and suddenly, the creature smiled, exposing broken teeth and a mouthful of blood.

"You've touched your doom, human." 

It said. The voice that issued from the creature's lips was not the rough, animal rasp of a yaoguai, but a smooth, musical murmur that sent a chill crawling over Ju Feng's flesh. 

"The earth shakes, the heaven rumbles and the walls come tumbling down."

One of the dwarves grabbed the yaoguai's head between his hands. He twisted sharply, breaking the yaoguai's neck. The red light faded from the creature's eyes, leaving a blank, peaceful stare on the slave's face.

"Watching the gods damn you all. We'll take as many of you with us as we can." 

Climbing unsteadily to his feet, Ju Feng slowly walked toward Abron, gently waving his arms. His feet felt sluggish and clumsy. He tangled with a crowd of dwarves and yaomo warriors locked in vicious swordplay. One dwarf turned and almost took his head off with his short sword before he realized Ju Feng was an ally.

"Get in the fight or get out of the way!" 

The dwarf screamed angrily, shaking Ju Feng by the shoulder. Ju Feng reached for the dwarf, intending to tell him, to shout at them all to fall back. They didn't realize what was going to happen, that they were all doomed if they didn't move. The dwarf had already turned away. Ju Feng trod on quickly, determined to get to Abron without using any flashsteps. The runecaster would give the order. His booming voice could carry over the entire chamber, warning everyone that death was coming. For them, not for him.

A burst of orange and blue light erupted somewhere over Ju Feng's left shoulder. The cavern went silent except for a loud ringing in his ears and a distant pounding. Ju Feng had a strange feeling in his soul. There was a liquid flame explosion that rang in his head. He reached up, touching his ear. When he took his hand away, blood coated his fingers.

Turning, he saw the orange fireball spreading across the chamber in waves like bright, fluffy orange clouds. It was raining, too—chunks of stone fell around him as the cavern ceiling came down on their heads. Another blast came, farther away, or maybe Ju Feng just couldn't hear it. It shattered the stone near him and threw him a few yards backward. He looked up in time to see a third blast as a yaoguai standing not far away suddenly shuddered, bent double, and exploded in a brilliant flash of red and gold light.

Maybe, it was time for him to use his spiritual sense. Ju Feng was about to spread his spiritual sense when darkness covered him.

***

Chang Chang looked up and shivered as if a cold hand had touched her on the shoulder. Nothing appeared amiss—the tomes and scrolls stood silently upon their shelves, behaving themselves, and Gallazza sat at the table in the middle of the room, eating a bowl of stew the guards had brought him. Chang Chang shook away the sense of foreboding that had momentarily gripped her and turned back to her scroll. 

In front of her, suspended above a glass case, gold letters shaped themselves out of the air. As soon as Chang Chang stopped reading, the letters stopped forming. She removed a gold ring from her index finger and hooked it on a peg protruding from the glass. The writing began to fade, leaving only a faint afterimage on the air, but the memories of the text were forever imprinted in Chang Chang's mind.

The glass case contained one of King Laggarma's oldest tomes. According to the Lochal, the last time the pages had been touched by living hands was more than ten thousand years ago. No magical arts had ever been cast on the book, and the pages were too fragile now to be exposed to the air. The text could only be read using the ring to recall it from the book. The Lochal had drawn her attention to it because there was a physical description of the Arcane Script Sphere in the written words.

Mystra inscribed the Arcane Script Sphere with mystical arts known only to the divine, written across its surface in the tiniest script, unreadable to the naked eye. She'd intended to give them to worthy bloods. She placed a part of her memory, personality, and Silver Fire inside of it, so the artifact would seek out the bloods she wanted, bloods who would use the sphere, add their own arts discoveries to it, then pass it on to others who would learn from it in order for them to attain immortality. Just as the three pristine ones and the Adi-Buddhas did for the other energy cultivators. A cycle that went on for centuries. These bloods would feel their divine as they learned, her soft voice like a teacher's echoing in their heads, encouraging, guiding them. Although many would still die by the way. Only a few ever made it to true immortality. 

Chang Chang rubbed her chest, where a hollowness had taken root. Her own guardian was gone, killed by her wild mystical arts.

"Finished already?" 

Gallazza said, twirling his spoon deftly between his fingers.

"Or did you tire of reading messages on the air?"

Chang Chang sighed and rubbed her burning eyes. 

"Don't you think it's a little exciting? Mysterious? Words conjured out of the air—knowledge preserved with elegant magic."

Gallazza snorted derisively. 

"It's impractical. Why not simply cast a protective seal over the book and its pages?"

"Such means can fail or be dispelled." 

The Lochal's gentle voice echoed from across the room, making Chang Chang jump. She wasn't used to the dwarf woman's entrances and exits, which often occurred with little or no warning. At the moment, she sat serenely in a chair in the far corner of the room. 

"King Laggarma believes in preserving valuable objects for their own sake. Magical essence is not always the best way to accomplish that. It is a tool, something that should never be relied upon in place of natural skills and abilities."

"A lovely speech, but I have a difficult time taking you seriously when magic saturates this room. For a dwarf, your king seems to have a particular obsession with the arcane."

Gallazza drawl.

Chang Chang hated to agree with the yaomo, but he had a point. She had never seen such a collection of magical powers and magical knowledge contained in one place before. True, there were many texts on the dwarves' history, culture, and especially smithcraft, but Chang Chang was shocked at how much knowledge of the Art she'd found. Her thoughts whirled with all the information she'd acquired, so that she didn't hear Gallazza's approach until he was right beside her. Tensing, she tried to act natural.

"You have … an interesting smell." 

Gallazza remarked, standing at her shoulder. Chang Chang pushed the scroll she held back up on the shelf and selected another without replying. She resisted the urge to leave the place, to put the space of the library between them. 

"Are you trying to intimidate me?" 

She said, turning toward him. She didn't quite manage to look into his red eyes, but she had the passing thought that they were a bit like Ju Feng's, masking his emotions well. Stop treading that road, Chang Chang silently chided herself. Ju Feng and this creature were nothing alike.

"Why do you seek the Arcane Script Sphere?" 

He asked, ignoring her question.

"Why does anyone?" 

She countered, slanting him a look. 

"It's a powerful arifact for—"

"Precious arcane energy—I know." 

Gallazza dismissed her explanation with a wave. 

"That's what the sphere is. I asked why you want it."

"I'm a blood. All bloods are diviners." 

Chang Chang said as if that explained everything. But Gallazza waited bfore asking. 

"And?"

"And what?" 

Chang Chang was stalling, scrambling to decide how much she could tell him. She didn't want to mention the Silver Fire at all, if she could help it.

The yaomo saw through her tactics and asked in a teasing voice. 

"Why don't you want me to know? I'm harmless. I may as well be in a cage." 

"You're many things," 

Chang Chang said before pausing. She stated at the yaomo and shook her head. 

"Harmless isn't one of them."