Lia stared at the gleaming expanse with wide eyes. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “When I woke up, it was just...here. The fire must have created it somehow. Whatever it is, it completely blocks mana from passing over it.”
“That’s...strange.” She knelt down at the edge of the crater and tapped her finger against the glass. “I know this is probably an uncomfortable idea for you, but we should try to take some of this to study, right?”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I looked back towards the road behind us. “Everybody in Mayaan already knows it’s here. If this stuff is dangerous, we should find out sooner rather than later.” I crouched down beside her and gripped the protruding edge of glass at the rim of the crater. My initial instinct to simply invoke the Shatter rune to remove a small, measured section of glass predictably failed when my mana refused to move past the edge of my gloves, so I resorted to cracking off a chunk by force. The task took a surprising amount of effort, requiring me to flare my Strength enhancement before a jagged, fist-sized section broke off beneath my weight.
I turned the glass over in my hand and examined its strangely smooth faces. Despite its sinister origin, it was an oddly beautiful artifact that seemed to greedily drink in the sunlight around us. I wrinkled up my nose and hid it in a pouch on my belt, then looked back to Lia. “A mystery for after we’ve returned home.”
Lia gave me a reassuring smile, and we returned to the main road. The mountains that lined the Maw loomed over us to the east about an hour’s run away from our position, which meant we’d arrive in Kaldan just before sundown. According to Elise, both the Lybesian and Kaldanic sides of the border had reopened to foot traffic, but they remained closed to wagons due to the ongoing repair of the Mountain Gate. A small part of me had worried about meeting resistance on our initial crossing into Kaldan, but the feeling was quickly dismissed as the wall came into view through my Detection. Despite months of reconstruction efforts, the gate remained entirely dislodged and unusable, blocking all but the smallest footpath between its massive metal prongs.
We approached the Lybesian gate hand in hand, smiling to the attendants that watched the road. As opposed to the towering, military-style Mountain Gate, the checkpoint on the Lybesian side was a simple stone gatehouse manned by four guards, all dressed in matching red and white enameled plate armor and wielding long, double-bladed spears. The lone man watching the road from Mayaan pushed off from the wall he was leaning against as we approached. “Ho there, travelers,” he called out. “A bit late to be crossing into Kaldan, don’t you think?”
“Yes, that’s my fault,” Lia laughed, raising her hand. “We had planned to leave earlier, but I was late coming back from the Mayaan markets this morning.”
The guard planted the butt of his spear in the dirt beside him and leaned lazily against it. “You know what’s been going on across the bridge there, don’t you?” he asked, cocking his head to one side. Judging by the curious look of his brown eyes behind his half helm and the relaxed tone of his voice, he was more curious about our travel plans than concerned for our wellbeing.
“Well, I’ve heard some stories,” she replied, “but you know how people talk. If I believed every story I heard floating around town, I’d never leave the house!”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” he countered, grinning. “I haven’t seen anybody pass through here with armor as fine as yours for a long while now.” He leaned his head forward and squinted his eyes. “Where’d you get that, anyway? No smiths in Mayaan could make armor like that.”
“Oh, this old thing?” she chuckled, poking at her chest. “I’ve had this forever; I think it came from—” She cut off suddenly as we both winced in pain. A familiar burning sensation rippled at the edge of our Detection, far off across the bridge beyond the Mountain Gate. Two individual circles of darkness advanced on the wall, giving us just enough time to watch the men manning the battlements begin to panic before they disappeared within the disrupting auras. Lia and I immediately sprinted forward in unison, disappearing from our conversation with the guard before he had a chance to react.
I felt the barriers around my consciousness fade away, and Lia’s presence flooded in, filling the empty corners of my body and mind. While the sensation was nothing less than euphoric, fear blossomed in my chest as I remembered the end result of our last merging. Lia instantly quelled the feeling as she surrounded me with warmth. We’re stronger together, no matter what. Despite my trepidation, I pushed the dark memory away and refocused on the task at hand. Our senses sharpened beyond our individual limits as we fully embraced our deepened bond, and our minds emptied of any extraneous thoughts.
The enormous stone bridge spanning the length of the Maw passed us by in a flash. Any guards that would have spotted our approach had abandoned their posts to face the monstrous threat on the Kaldanic side of the wall, and we reached the Mountain Gate unharassed. Although we were entering a country in which we were wanted criminals, we spared no attention for the soldiers on the far side of the gate; the only foes that could pose us any harm were the scythed beasts that burned at the forefront of our linked consciousness.
We slipped through the footpath beneath the massive, ruined portcullis and found ourselves at the center of a chaotic battlefield. Knee-deep snow covered everything
