Gath was still excited, as Euris hurried him out of the chamber. “We found the Book of Ages!” He whispered, as if to himself, and muttered about never conceiving of actually finding it. Euris could no longer swallow her impatience, and she dragged at Gath to get him to hurry. Whatever sixth sense Fallir had honed in her over the years of his careful training was now screaming at her that their time was up and they needed to leave while the getting was good. Could Gath himself not feel it, too? Or, perhaps, the book itself was magic and interfering with his magical senses. Not a cheerful thought.

“Let’s get out of here, then,” Euris urged, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She wasn’t going to argue with her own good sense, and when it told her something felt wrong, she preferred to be walking once more under the sun and not imprisoned in rock. The oppressive weight of the rock above them seemed to compress the air, making her breathing labored.

“You’re right,” Gath said, coming back to himself. “We have completed our Quest, and it’s time to get out of here, as fast as we can.” They would not complete the Quest until they were back in the capital celebrating, Euris wanted to remind him, but she checked herself. She now caught the first hint of tension in his voice, which worried her because he had been so steady up to this point. She could no longer pretend that she was merely jumpy, for no reason other than her own nerves, now that the formerly sanguine Sorcerer had sounded tense himself. He purposefully strode ahead with the light. Behind them, the dark gaped where the door stood open. Gath had not bothered to close the huge metal door, which was most probably unlockable. Euris strode after him, surprised at how fast he was now moving. Maybe his magical senses were telling him what she herself had felt all along, that something was wrong. Or, perhaps he was merely elated at finding the book, which gave him some adrenaline and a desire to get up into the light where they could look at it in detail. Not that the reason mattered, for Euris felt better that they were moving.

Gath stopped so suddenly that Euris almost crashed into him from behind. She pulled herself up, rocking back on her heels, and stared beyond him at a sight. There in the dark, beyond the edge of Gath’s magical light, a pale blue image stood between them and the passage that led back to the stairway which would lead them to the surface. Even squinting at it, Euris could not make out what it was, exactly, other than a hazy form the size and shape of a person. Whatever it was, to exit the gallery they were in, they’d have to get past it. Trapped! Euris’ mind whirled through thinking that the Quest had gone much to smoothly, and then the possibilities of a fight in the narrow passage. Fall back to the room? Wouldn’t help them at all, since there was no other way out of the room. Maybe a secret wall? A desperate thought, and not a likely option. The apparition ahead did not move, even a finger. It waited. They were trapped.

Gath caught a breath, then expelled it. His face was normally pale, so it was hard to tell if he was any more pale than usual, but his eyes looked sunken in the magical glow from his staff. “The presence,” he began, and stopped. “That is a wight. A concentration of magical power entrapping a dead person. Evil. Very evil. I felt a presence, but did not know anything like this existed. Masked from me. Evil. This will be a sore test.”

“What are we going to do?” Euris asked, sure that he had gone through the same sequence of options she had, and had come to the same despairing conclusion that they were trapped. She was uncertain of how to even approach fighting this apparition. What good was her sword? None at all, by Gath’s reaction. And he was already weak, so she worried that a sore test might be too much for him. Yet she wanted never to underestimate him, and that strong look in his eyes. Perhaps even this wight could be overcome by determination. She felt hot, sticky, clammy, and wished she had not worn her cloak.

Gath turned to face her, and she saw that determined look kindled once more, and her sagging spirits rose somewhat. He looked directly into her eyes, and said: “This is something you can’t fight. When I say ‘go’, I want you to run through the arch over there, the way we came, regardless of what happens. You must get through; do not stop. Close your eyes if you have to. Then run up the stairs, go all the way to the top, and wait for me. Don’t wait in the passage. To the top. Understand?” His eyes would not let her go until he was satisfied she would follow his instructions.

“Yes, I’ll go,” Euris reassured him. She saw the vision simply standing there, waiting for them, and perceived that it knew they were trapped. She had no idea if the wight were intelligent, or even self-aware, but could feel the power cracking around it. She knew, instinctively, that the wight was an abomination which should never have been created. Whatever force of renegade sorcery which had built the city of Morran and had been entombed here was responsible for that wight, and they should never have disturbed it. Euris felt a tickle of betrayal in the back of her mind: no one had told her about this. Could she have even come on this Quest had she known what lurked down here under Morran’s ruins? Or, did even Master Aeral not suspect the true depths of evil which could be found under Morran? The answer would not matter, unless they somehow got out alive.

The immediate, and depressing, tactical fact was that the wight stood between them and the stairs up. Maybe the room did have a secret passage, and going through it would lead to other ways to the surface, but Gath certainly didn’t like the odds of a headlong flight into unexplored regions of these catacomb-like ruins with a wight of this magnitude of power chasing them, especially since they were as likely to find a dead end as a way to the surface. Searching for a secret passage and fleeing down it with the wight in pursuit was less attractive than a direct confrontation. Whatever had created this abominable wight had imbued it with enough power that his own magic had almost no chance of breaking and dispelling the wight utterly. Gath believed that, for long enough to allow them to escape, he could stop the wight, but to do that he needed to be at the stairs. Any power he unleashed would collapse the passage they were in, destroying it completely, and he did not want to bury himself. That meant Euris had to get out first, because she was in the greater danger. He could think of no other available alternative to them other than for him to hold the wight long enough for her to slip out, and then hope he could slip out behind her before he ran out of magic. His plan would drain him to the limit, but if he did not succeed in buying them enough time to run for the sunlight, how much power he had left wouldn’t really matter, since the wight would simply drain all the magic he had in him and then kill them at its leisure. The two needed to get into sunlight, where the wight’s power would be weak, and perhaps even where the wight would not follow them. By this time, the afternoon sun should be high and bright outside. If Gath’s makeshift and desperate plan did not work, there wasn’t any other magic he could summon that could help them, or else he would have used here in the first place.

Gath concentrated, blocking out everything around him. Another magical power joined the latent currents in the air of the passage. Gath glowed blue, and Euris had to take several steps away from him because the power he was building up made her skin crawl. Gath held his arms out towards the wight, and the blue energy he had been building slowly began to come out in front of him. In a split second, the energy exploded across the gallery and surrounded the wight. The beam pulsed and flared, and then settled into a solid white cord of pure energy.

“Go!” Gath screamed. Euris swallowed hard and ran along the perimeter of the passage, only inches from the blue-white beam of magical power that imprisoned the wight. Although she was desperately tempted to close her eyes, she dared not because she feared tripping over the uneven floor of the outer perimeter of the passage, which was not as worn and smooth as its center. Falling into the path of the blue beam would not be a good idea, she was certain. She did not even want to be so close to this magic, since her skin could feel the power.

For a split second, she looked at the face of the wight close up as she passed it. She wished she never had, and found herself completely unable to describe the horror of the rotting flesh and the haunted, entrapped eyes, which was all suspended in a magical, glowing energy. Whatever had been trapped by the evil magic was in a state of suspended, perpetual rotting like a corpse left overnight on a battlefield. The look of the eyes bespoke a consciousness, an awareness, of the entrapment and horror, as if the wight knew what it was. Could that have ever been a human being? What could have created it? She had never realized just what the College of Sorcery meant to the kingdom, and the entire world, if that institution held in check the impulse to create such abominations. She would never muster enough courage to ask Gath what that thing truly was and how it had gotten to be that way. She wanted to shield herself, she wanted to close her eyes, she wanted to throw up, but she did nothing but keep moving towards the arch.

Then she was on the stairs, running up, not knowing how she had gotten there. She hoped Gath was behind her, and stopped before she got to the top. A glance down into the blue-lit archway below showed nothing but hazy reflections of the magical power. She went back down the stairs about halfway, and even there she could feel the energy below. Despairing of helping Gath in any way with this magical battle, she remained alert, even if it was just to carry him up the stairs. A shadow fell across the archway, and she heard an explosion echoing through the passage below, accompanied by a flash of blue light. An earthquake shook the stairs, causing her to lurch, hands out against the wall to keep from falling. The shadow became Gath, panting, looking exhausted. He puffed up the stairs, not stopping when he got to her, pushing her ahead of him.

When they arrived at the top, Gath leaned heavily on Euris. He mumbled indecipherable words, and pointed with his staff down the staircase. Another explosion, this time without any accompanying flash, sounded below, and rock began to crumble in chunks from the ceiling of the stairs. Soon the entire stairway was filled with rubble, blocking the passage completely, sealing it off.

Gath pulled her back away from the opening, and said: “That won’t stop the wight for long, run!” He urged her towards the next staircase they’d have to climb. He loped, as fast as he could, his breath becoming ragged and uneven. His light from his staff was still bright, but wobbled and flickered unsteadily, casting strange shadows all around them.

Behind them, all access to the vault which held the important books of ancient Morran had been sealed, along with an abomination. Whatever secrets remained behind would likely be there forever, or until unearthed by much stronger magic than a lone Journeyman with his Protector could bring to bear. Yet they had found the object of their Quest, still tucked away in a dark pocket of Gath’s cloak. The Book of Ages. If the wight were indeed trapped below, Euris thought they might have a chance.

On to ... Chapter Six: Above Ground Again