The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now she and Aallotar have been sent to search an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator. As things have gone on, Mara and Aallotar have grown closer and closer. With feelings now in the open, they brave the depths of the workshop and the secrets held therein. They are not the only ones drawn by the earthquake, however.

***

The sight of a faint curl of smoke drifting up past the trees that screened their view of the ruins sent a current of worry through Mara's stomach. "Someone else is out here."

Aallotar looked around, but there was no sign of any tracks on the lone game trail through the woods other than those of a rabbit. "They must have come before the blizzard. Not Caliban, then. He was abed when we left and I doubt he would move any faster in the snow than we did." She inhaled deeply and then frowned. "I smell only the forest. We are not close enough. Is there a village nearby?"

"Not this deep in the woods. Barri is the closest thing to civilization, and that's well more than a day behind us."

The wildling's furrowed brow was a reflection of Mara's own worry. "Perhaps a trapper or woodsman? Or Sammael's spy?"

"I hope that's all it is," Mara murmured. "At least Sammael's spy would be an ally."

Aallotar's golden eyes considered the trees and then her nostrils flared slightly, another attempt to detect anything. "There is only one way to know. Let us not go straight in, though. We should approach from downwind." A steady breeze had been blowing from the north all day, bringing with it a bitter chill that left Mara's metal bones aching. Even Aallotar, usually a furnace, had opted to pull on an extra layer of fur over her mail hauberk.

This close to where Sammael's map said the ruin was, both of them had prepared for trouble. Aallotar was armed and armored, while Mara carried her bow across her back along with a borrowed sword and shield. The sorcerer wasn't certain her sword arm would be any good between the cold and the burns. Hopefully, there would be no need for weapons at all.

After spending so much of her youth as a hunter, Mara was in absolute agreement of the approach from downwind. She let Aallotar lead the way, breaking trail in the shallower forest snow for her. Here the pines grew so thick that the branches had kept the white death only knee-high, creaking ominously above under the weight of their burden. After living so close to each other, it was easy to move together, and the breeze through the trees masked the sound of Aallotar's armor moving, at least for now.

They made it through the bulk of the forests before the scent hit Aallotar's sensitive nose. "Smoke and beasts," she whispered. "There is something else. The smell of mennskr, but...not like the ones of the Red Mountains."

Mara kept her voice barely audible. "What do you mean?"

"They smell like Theudhar and his warg." Absolute certainty weighted every syllable from Aallotar. She frowned, concentrating, and pulled in another deep breath. "There is something else. Something strange."

Mara's heart sank. So the servants of the Princes of Iron had found this place before they had. "A demon?"

Aallotar shook her head. "I do not know," she said quietly. "It makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise."

"We'll be careful." The sorcerer wished her arm was in better condition. She would have rather liked to have use of her bow right now, just in case, but that sounded as painful as the sword. "If all else fails, we can fight, but I'd rather not."

"Not if they are even half the warrior that Theudhar is," Aallotar agreed, creeping north through the woods towards the trail of smoke.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, they managed to find a rise and a rock formation that gave them a view down to the ruin itself. The earthquake's damage was immediately obvious: half a hillside sheared away from the base of one of the Red Mountain's larger peaks, exposing an archway that gleamed in the sun like silver and the ruined remains of an outer wall. Behind it was a door set into the stone of the mountain itself, not unlike Sammael's home itself. Someone had excavated the stairs leading down to it. A short distance away was a camp, comprised of six wargs and their riders: tall, red-skinned men covered in furs and smoke-dulled steel.

"We would have to go upwind to reach that door, and the ground is open. During the day, they would see us. If we crossed under starlight, they would smell us," Aallotar muttered as she took stock of their surroundings.

Mara had eyes mostly for the door. A man prowled back and forth in front of it with the grace of a hunting cat, his hand resting on a cruciform sword. His armor looked different from that of the riders': it was black and seemed much lighter in construction. She couldn't make out much more than that from this distance. "Do you think they've opened it?"

"It is closed now," Aallotar observed. "Perhaps they cannot. Regardless, we will have to contend with them to reach it, one way or another."

Everything in Mara's most primal brain was screaming at her to avoid the prowling man. He didn't move like a natural warrior. It was too graceful, too effortless. She knew men who had trained for combat their entire lives who lacked such an awareness of their body. "I think we should try to find another door."

"Another?" Aallotar said quietly, not yet tearing her gaze away from the ugly scar on the hillside. "Do you think there is one?"

"Sammael's lair has many, and half of them even we don't know. Why would this sorcerer be any different? Only one way out would mean being trapped in a siege."

"Did they think of such a thing, though?"

Mara sighed, brushing some snow from her hair. "It couldn't hurt to try. I'd much rather find a back door than have to fight seven people and six wargs, and they look too bored to be diplomatic."

Aallotar shaded her eyes, surveying the scar on the hillside. "Let us stay downwind. It looks like it curves around the side to the south. Swiftly. I do not want to be caught."

The sorcerer gave her love an uneasy smile. "No argument here. Hopefully, their sentries don't come out this far, or they'll find our tracks."

Aallotar nodded and started moving as swiftly as she could while still maintaining some degree of stealth towards the southern edge of the collapse. They hid in the trees as far as they could, then used the debris and uneven ground to cover them as they dashed for the hillside in a crouched run. The damage to the hill continued, splitting several ridges in two. The cataclysm here had been a violent one.

Mara looked up at the slopes of the mountain. They had gotten a lot of snow in the past few days, even for the Red Mountains, and she didn't like the sight of it looming above them on the slopes. Aamu had taught her to watch for avalanches many a time, and she could see both glittering hoarfrost on the snow above and massive ridges in the snow on the slopes sculpted by the winds. They were much worse on this side of the mountain, too. "We should be careful," she whispered. "If there's too much more snow or any more earthquake, it'll drop a mountain's worth of snow on us."

Aallotar nodded and then pointed. "There. A cleft in the stone."

"If they've been here for days, they probably know about it," Mara murmured.

"Perhaps, but would you post a guard under a waiting avalanche?" the wildling asked as they approached cautiously.

Mara shrugged. From the very few stories Gaius had told when he was drunk late at night, the south had soldiers who would risk anything they were commanded to do. "Do you smell or hear anyone?"

"Not fresh. They were here, but they must have moved camp. That or their patrol has not come by in some time." Aallotar led the way with her shield, keeping low while taking a good look around. The only thing visible was a hollow in the snow where likely a campfire had once been placed. Feet had packed down the snow, but a fresh layer about an inch or two deep had formed. "A day since they were here, I would guess."

Mara stopped to make a torch with a pine branch and a bandage wrapping, then approached the cleft in the rock. It was barely large enough for Aallotar to squeeze through in her armor, and they would have to strip off swords and shields to manage it. It ran deep enough that darkness claimed the inside. "I'll go first."

"Mara..."

"If this place has sorcery to it, better I take the first step," the sorcerer said firmly. "Besides, the worst of the danger will have to come from behind us."

Aallotar paused, weighing that against her protective instincts, and then nodded. She unbound her shield from her arm and adjusted her sword so she could squeeze through after Mara. "I hate closed spaces."

"You do okay at the cave," Mara said.

"That is larger." Aallotar pulled in a deep breath as Mara stepped through sideways, then started her wriggle through the gap. "If I am trapped here..."

"I'm right here," Mara whispered as the cave echoed and amplified her voice slightly. "I won't let you get stuck. At least if there's an avalanche, I can probably get us out. It just might hurt me a bit."

"Then better we not have to do it." With the scrape of metal against stone, Aallotar struggled through the gap. It widened again and the wildling pulled her shield and extra gear through after them. Mara heard an audible sigh of relief from her love, even knowing that they would likely be leaving the way they had come. "I was afraid I would stick."

"We're fortunate you're not as big as Theudhar." A thought occurred as Mara sparked her torch, but died before it could reach her lips. The room they were in was small, but it was obviously construction rather than raw stone. The walls were smooth, as if carved into the mountainside with a precision no human craftsman could ever muster. The floor beneath their feet was polished as well, decorated with swirling script in the same ancient tongues that covered Sammael's most precious artifacts. Each character had been methodically graven into the floor and then filled somehow with a different colored stone: white and black characters on a grey surface. She knelt down and ran a hand over one letter. The different types of stone were absolutely flush, almost glassy in how polished they were after all this time sealed away from the elements.

"What does it say?"

The words formed a perfect circle at the center of the small chamber, half black and half white. "The white is the language of Creation, the God Tongue," Mara said softly. "It is still read in places in the Red Mountains, though mostly just my mother's workshop. This phrase, I've seen it before: speak only truth."

Aallotar looked down at the spidery black characters that seemed dark and crawling compared with the beautiful swirling white script. "And this?"

Mara knew the answer, echoing up from the deepest, darkest part of her soul. "Tell no lies."

"Why would they write the same thing?" Aallotar asked, her brow furrowing in the flickering light of the torch.

"They aren't the same," Mara said. A pull tugged at her. This. This was why Sammael had sent her and not come himself. He needed someone who could be both a living thing and use the power of Void to get through the door. He was only half of the puzzle, and if it had survived unopened, it had to be because sorcery alone was not enough. This place was sealed, and it had been sealed by one just like her.

She knew she was probably one of the only people who had lived since the Revealing who knew both halves of the inscription, who stood with a foot in each world. She faced the depths of the room, visible in the torchlight as a rough archway made from the two statues of a weeping man and a weeping woman with their foreheads pressed together. Then she stepped into the center of the circle. "My name is Mara Spell-Breaker. My companion and I have come to learn from the Eighth. I am Creation and Void. Open the way."

A sharp, actinic light flared around the circle, each character glowing to life one at a time around her. It completed before Aallotar could wrench her away, bathing Mara in glowing motes of light. With a soft sighing sound, the stone between the two statues melted away like water to reveal a dark hall that stretched beyond the light of their flickering torch.

"Thank you," Mara said as smoothly as she could, stepping forward. The circle faded, but the way stayed open. She looked at Aallotar and gave the very worried wildling a faint smile. "Seems like I'm good for something after all."

"We should hurry in before someone follows," Aallotar said, trying to take it in stride. "Can you close the door once we are inside?"

Mara caught the wildling's hand and together they walked through the archway, torch held aloft by the sorcerer. The air at the threshold seemed thick, almost like Sabine described wards, but Aallotar was able to pass through without harm. Once they were both past, the wall reformed behind them. Along each wall, dancing motes of lightning suddenly sparked to life at ceiling level, bathing the hall in a faded, grave-gray glow.

They followed the lights for almost a full minute before coming to an overlook. Mara's breath froze in her lungs. "Mother of all things," she whispered, eyes wide.

Below, row upon row of standing stone tablets filled a room the size of Sjaligr, each one probably ten feet tall, eight feet long, and three feet across. It reminded her of Sammael's shelves, but they were smooth, without holes for books or scrolls. The sheer size of it wasn't what left her breathless, though.

Mara could feel it here, hungry and waiting, just barely separated from their world as if an ocean held in check by a mere sheet of parchment paper: Void. There was so much power penned into this room—huge in comparison to her, but not even a mote of dust compared to the enormity of the nothingness—that Mara didn't know how the fabric of reality hadn't ripped.

Aallotar shivered and took a step closer to Mara. "There is something here. Something dark."

The sorcerer nodded, still unable to speak. She knew without knowing how that it was waiting for her. Waiting for an invitation, an opening of a door, inside of her. If her time with Sammael had taught her anything, however, it was that such doors could not be closed once they were opened.

A mageling could do a great deal of damage to himself and others with the power of Creation at his fingertips, that was something Mara knew well. That was why one was cautious with their power, why one studied, why one trained.

Mara had a sudden, terrible sense that in one way or another, she was in the presence of an ending of a world, something not even far-seeing Kalevi could have conceived of in his description of the destruction of the Red Mountains. Aallotar's presence at her side, hand around her own, was the only thing stopping her from fainting.

And then, like a dream, it spoke within her, resonating in every fiber of her being.

Welcome home, Mara Spell-Breaker.