The Duke's face was calm, unhurried, as if he dropped through dimensional rifts into unranked dungeons every day. His pale eyes swept over Kaelen, knee-deep in frozen mud, arms shaking, daggers buried in the earth, a smear of mud still drying on his cheek and his lips curved into something that was almost a smile.
"You," Lysander said, "have an extraordinary talent for finding trouble."
Kaelen's heart was still pounding. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. The mud around his legs was thawing, the golden light from the closing rift fading, and he could feel the cold seeping into his bones.
"Duke?" he managed. His voice cracked, he had began to shiver. "Lysander, how-"
"The usual method," Lysander said, crouching down to offer Kaelen a hand. His fingers were warm, dry, steady. "I felt the hum spike. Then I felt it vanish. Then I felt it again,clearly trying to annoy me." He let his mana flow warming Kaelen's body and then pulled Kaelen to his feet with an ease. "Then I received news that a dungeon had opened in the capital. My capital, do you know how hard that is to happen, combined with the annoying hum I knew you had to have done something."
Kaelen could understand why he would think that but he really had done nothing. He leaned on Lysander and looked around trying to find his poor spike.
"My informant told me you received a letter from the Veiled Chorus manor, so I knew you, were their, We walked the mana missing a wall and most of its inner sanctum and a beast was gnawing on two pieces of dead skin."
Silas and Theron.
Kaelen swayed, Lysander's hand stayed on his arm, steadying him.
"I am also a victim," Kaelen said. "The rift. It pulled me…"
"I know." Lysander's voice was quieter now. His thumb brushed once across Kaelen's sleeve, wiping away a smear of mud. "The gate is unstable, but it was clearly a premature dungeon break, clearly man made. You must have triggered something when you entered the sanctum."
Kaelen looked down at his hand. The black crystal shard was visible now, pulsing. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
"I almost got eaten," Kaelen said. "Thank you."
"Mmh, don't thank me thank the annoying hum." Kaelen smiled.
He released Kaelen's arm and looked around at the dead yellow sky, the brown grass, the distant horizon where the Swallower had vanished.
"Let's get out of here." Kaelen said.
"Yes we need to find a way out." Lysander said still looking that way.
"Can't we use the way you used?" .
Lysander reached into his coat and pulled out a small, flat disc of polished bone. No, not bone. Tooth. It was a tooth, large and yellowed, carved with symbols that seemed to move when Kaelen looked at them directly. The thing hummed a different frequency than the amber, the fragment, a sound that made his ears feel like they were filling with water.
"I had a one-way key," Lysander said. "It got me in. It will not get me out."
Kaelen stared at him. "You came through a rift into an unranked dungeon without a way back?"
Lysander's smile widened.
"You now owe me your life, do you feel indepted," he said and Kaelen almost puched him on instinct.
He clicked and mummered I though you were supposed to be smart
Sprite, who had been hiding behind a rock jumped and hissed trying to attack Lysander who caught it on air and held it by the scruff.
"Your pet survived," Lysander observed. "Impressive, it even awakened, quite rare."
"Sprite," Kaelen said.
"His name is sprite."
Lysander looked at him them said, " You have a naming…talent."
"Give him to me."
Lysander threw sprite recklessly and it landed on his chest claws digging down causing him to hiss.
Lysander's pale eyes flicked to the creature, and something passed between them a recognition then he pulled out something from his pocket and waved it around causing sprite to loosen it's claws and look at him he then took the thing and put it in sprites mouth causing Kaelen to move back and look at him warily.
"What?" lysander asked sensing his gaze.
"What was that?"
"Something good, look even he enjoys it."
Kaelen looked down and noticed sprite was eating something white with relish.
The ground trembled again.
Kaelen placed spike in his pocket then bent down, retrieved the crystal bow from where he had dropped it, and pulled the daggers from the mud.
"So," Kaelen said, "if you don't have a way out, what do you have?"
Lysander's smile sharpened. He reached into his coat again and pulled out a second object a small, faceted crystal, dark as dried blood, that pulsed with something ominous.
"I have a way to make a way out," he said. "But it will take time. And we will need to survive until then."
The trembling grew louder. The grass at the horizon began to flatten.
Kaelen nocked a lance of light to his bow. It came easier this time faster, brighter, the amber on his neck feeding the fragment in his palm feeding the crystal weapon.
Was he getting used to it?
"How much time?" he asked.
Lysander's hand found the small of Kaelen's back. A casual touch. Proprietary. Warm.
"Long enough," the Duke said with a smile, "For you to tell me how you ended up joining a cult."
Kaelen swallowed.
The first wave of Harvesters surged toward them, and Kaelen released the lance.