The dark was hushed, save for the gentle crackle of a campfire. Flames danced and flickered, casting warm light outwards towards the cabin and pines — the outhouse and the river stream.

  Shadows leaped and swayed across the nearby trees; their gnarled branches stretched skyward like silent sentinels.

  The stream’s soft babble wove seamlessly into the background — into the quiet sounds of the night; its rhythmic flow a soothing counterpoint to the occasional crackle of wood from the fire.

  Smoke curled upwards in lazy spirals. It carried the faint scent of burning pine mixed with the night’s cool air.

  Far above, where the sky of stars was meant to be — where brilliant pinpricks of light were meant to drape over the horizon — there was, instead, nothing.

  No sky.

  No stars.

  No moon in the night sky.

  After his fourth attempt at hopelessly staring above, Bram looked down and returned his gaze to the campfire.

  He fiddled with a notebook within his lap, leather-bound and worn down.

  He shook his head and opened the book.

  It was a journal that belonged to the Duke. An old one — maybe forty years? It was when the Duke attended schooling, that much Bram could tell.

  Beside his father’s journals, the cabin was equipped with other things. There were more books, of course.

  Multiple plant and fungi encyclopedias, books that detailed how to manage farmland, what crops and which beasts belonged in which climates — there was also a collection of blueprints that resembled a steam powered engine, for some reason?

  Apart from the reading, Bram also explored his glass cage. From the cabin centerpoint, Bram had about half a mile in every direction. After that, the invisible wall barred him.

  The small stream ran from corner to corner and Bram assumed it was cyclical underneath the earth, otherwise how else would it never end?

  The landscape was filled with pines. There were bugs and lizards, worms slithered through the dirt, and beetles often approached him.

  There were no birds, however; and no predators to speak of. Bram had explored all of the cube and he hadn’t encountered a single carnivore.

  There were rabbits and squirrels, and salmon in the river, but that was all there was. Just enough to get by.

  Bram repositioned beside the fire.

  His day’s had quickly grown monotonous.

  In the mornings, he swam in the stream. It cleaned him off, woke him up, and provided him with breakfast.

  Every morning, Bram ate fish with rice.

  For the following three to five hours, he usually meditated or consolidated his mana, ran it through his circles — you know — mana training but for humans.

  When he got hungry again, Bram turned to the woods. Then, he ate rabbit with rice.

  After lunch, Bram did his chores. If he needed more firewood, he chopped it. If he needed more water, he boiled it.

  If his post-lunch schedule was free, Bram would read something from the cabin or continue his mana training.

  For dinner, Bram spoiled himself. Along the edge of the stream, underneath the pines that grew adjacent to the water, wild ginger grew. And on the other side of the cabin, near the invisible wall up North — a few bushels of huckleberries sprouted.

  Even beyond, there was mint all around. It grew along the pine’s themselves, underneath their sunny sides.

  With the huckleberries, mint, and ginger — dinner was always a rare treat.

  “Fuck me…” Bram snapped the journal shut.

  He leaned back against his makeshift chair and looked at the sky. It was black. Perfected in its form — as lightless as it could be — uninterrupted and undisturbed — vantablack come-to-life.

  Bram picked at his finger.

  He scratched at his cuticle with his nail.

  He did it unknowingly; a bad habit he’d developed since he was sucked into the artifact.

  He remembered the day vividly; for not a day had passed where he hadn’t recalled it.

  He remembered Lyra’s screech the most.

  It often woke him in the latter parts of the night with a cold shrill alongside a bead of sweat.

  The sound gave him goosebumps upon every recollection.

  Then, there was the light.

  Blood red and haunting.

  Her eyes — once brilliant and violet — turned dark and corroded. Blood seeped down her eye-sockets as her eyes bulged and rotated.

  He could hear the crack of her joints and bones as her fingers curled back and her neck stiffened — eyes locked onto something through the mist.

  Bram remembered when her hood flew back and her runes morphed from angelic to demonic; and from that moment on she became no more than a beast in a dungeon, waiting to be quelled.

  Somehow, though, even with all that Bram went through — there was one more thing that shook him even worse than that monster.

  After Bram was sealed within the artifact and tossed over the edge… well, he assumed that would be the end of it.

  But when the glass artifact landed along the canyon floor and Bram was met with a sight of foliage and running water, huckleberry bushes and shrimp — he was taken aback.

  There’s more to the dungeon than just the adventurer’s trail?! Bram realized.

  Then, something attacked the artifact.

  An invisible force slammed into the artifact’s glass casing and the whole artifact shook. The ground, the water, the air — even the blood in Bram’s veins — rattled as though space itself was threatened to be torn apart.

  The sensation appeared and disappeared almost immediately.

  One second, all was good. The next second, Bram could taste his ass and feel each and every muscle within his body constrict to an extreme he didn’t know was possible.

  When the pressure ceased and the world quit its rattling, Bram collapsed to the cabin’s bed, but the pressure that had assaulted him that day was already burned deep into his mind.

  As if a God had looked down on him, Bram had never felt so much like a fish in its bowl.

  When he next awoke, the world was gone and the sky was black.

  ***

  Erin’s attention sat alone in his hollowed out fourth floor.

  A sea of stone expanded around him. From the floor to the ceiling, even the walls around him, the stone was all there was.

  That and the darkness; the unassuming void. For no stars pierced the darkness, no faint glimmers offered their reprieve. The fourth floor was oppressive — it carried an unyielding emptiness that pulsed with its own weight.

  Above the stone and a few feet before Erin’s eyes, an orb shapeshifted through various forms.

  First, a solid rock.

  Then, the rock slowly melted. It grew viscous, then fluid.

  An orb of water coalesced above the ground.

  Then, the water bubbled. It evaporated into the air. Steam rose and reflected downwards until an orb of white mist hovered around.

  From mist to flames; the orb ignited.

  Then, it turned to light.

  Before it was snuffed by darkness.

  Finally, the orb steadied.

  It returned to liquid, clear like water, but not as transparent.

  The orb of uncolored liquid appeared weighted down as the very air around it was pulled alongside in tandem.

  Liquid mana. Erin told himself.

  A breakthrough, needless to say, in his study of mana and something that he had been striving towards for nearly a month now.

  And after a month, he had solved it.

  The trick — if there were such a thing — for the manipulation of mana’s density. In this case, Erin made the mana more dense and granted it form without elemental attachment.

  The results?

  Erin bobbed the orb of mana up and down. He squished it and squeezed it.

  He pushed it against the ground, threatening to pop it, but it never did.

  Erin’s control was too precise. Too strict.

  His grasp around the mana orb was absolute. Without his instruction, the mana orb served no greater function than as a mere paper weight.

  That is, unless Erin willed it to do something.

  With the orb of mana still squished against the floor, Erin commanded it.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Broadsword. Erin envisioned the weapon in his mind.

  From the levitating orb, a minuscule trace of mana seeped out and slithered into the ground.

  The mana circulated. It coursed through the stone and interacted with its matter. Then, the stone jiggled.

  It shifted from solid to gelatinous. The matter rearranged itself. The gray and blemished stone smoothened and sharpened until —

  *ting*

  The edge of the broadsword nicked the ground as it fell and an echo travelled throughout the fourth floor.

  Erin picked up the broadsword and it suddenly levitated above the ground beside the mana orb.

  With his mana-reinforced eyes, Erin saw into the broadsword; he studied its matter, he looked at its cells and electrons, he searched for anything and everything that may be out of place due its spontaneous creation.

  But ultimately, Erin discovered nothing.

  The sword made from stone appeared normal. The use of mana as a catalyst for alteration had little to no side effects — something Erin already knew, but he was unsure whether or not the mana’s purity would have an effect.

  Thankfully, it didn’t.

  Return to stone. Erin willed.

  From the orb of mana, a sliver released; it penetrated the sword’s handle and, within seconds, the sword started to rattle.

  From solid to liquid, the sword slowly unfurled and filled the small gap of stone missing in the floor.

  Next, Erin needed a test subject.

  To the right of him, he cut out the ground.

  He created a well within the fourth floor; a sizable hole that travelled deep into the depths. In his mind’s eye, Erin directed the passage.

  On the bottom of the seabed, half a mile East and beneath the sea’s drop off — another hole materialized into existence.

  The seawater rushed the well. Alongside it, Erin pulled.

  The water tore underground and soared towards Erin’s location.

  Before it arrived, Erin enacted more of his power. He glanced at the makeshift well and pondered.

  Before the seawater could explode out, it slammed into an invisible barrier. Delicate runes appeared around the well, carved into the stone itself — from nothing came something.

  Erin rummaged through the seawater with his mana-enhanced senses.

  He located a fish and dragged it through the underground tunnel that led to the well. In a moment, the fish would arrive.

  Erin pulled it from the water and the fish levitated above the ground in its own mana-enforced fish bowl.

  Almost identical to the mana orb, two orbs of liquid now bobbed side by side amongst the darkness of the fourth floor.

  One orb was clear.

  One orb carried a fish.

  After a month of hard work, Erin could materialize mana, but could he graft it?

  Runes, alteration, even creation — they all came natural to Erin. With his will alone, Erin could create and destroy, manipulate and tamper with.

  He could do all sorts of unimaginable feats, but —

  Erin focused on the mana orb and the fish.

  First, he formed a core within the fish.

  The core acted as a battery for magic. Without the core, magic was all but futile.

  Then, Erin flicked through his vision.

  Infrared. Ultraviolet. Mana sensitive. X-Ray.

  Erin stopped.

  He peered through the fish's muscles and scales with his X-Ray vision and observed the creature's core with unfettered precision.

  Water manipulation. Erin concentrated.

  A sliver of mana broke away from the mana orb and seeped into the fish.

  The mana coursed through the fish. It coated each of its cells and interacted minutely across all of them. Just before it reached the core, however, the mana stopped.

  It redirected itself towards the fish’s fins where it ultimately decided to settle. Under Erin’s watchful gaze, the fish’s fins expanded outward.

  They curved and twisted, becoming more bulbous, before the mana extinguished and the fish was left with oversized, floppy fins.

  Erin metaphorically scratched his head.

  This was his…

  What number was it?

  His twenty-seventh attempt at granting another creature magic and like all the rest of them, this one too was a failure.

  No matter how he worded it — how he willed it — Erin could not find a way to bestow magic unto others. No matter what he tried, the mana always conjoined with a physical feature of the creature.

  Erin could make them bigger and stronger. He could make them faster and softer. But all of those changes were bound to physics; there was a limit to a beast’s strength and that limit was directly tied to the size of its muscles.

  It worked similarly with speed, toughness, sharpness — there was simply a physical end that could not be exceeded due to the nature of matter itself.

  Magic, however, should be able to conquer all of these flimsy limits. The question was —

  WHY THE FUCK CAN’T I DO IT!??

  Erin kidnapped another fish.

  The twenty-eighth. Today.

  ***

  The thin path of stone seemingly led everywhere. The walls, meanwhile — also stone — towered around them, unyielding and cold.

  The air was thick and damp, and cold from the lack of light.

  It was heavy with the smell of moss and blood; an unpleasantly pleasant scent — natureful, green, yet slightly corroded.

  Up ahead, the unfocused imagery of five figures wandered about. Their shadows pressed faintly against the dungeon’s walls, weaker than normal — cast from lunar light instead of solar.

  Behind them, three more figures remained in the dark.

  They moved in silence. Their breathing was shallow and their steps were measured. At the front of their formation, a scruffy man with a wiry frame and a scar across his temple held his breath.

  He carried a short sword strapped to his hip while his dagger was already drawn and in his hand. His sharp eyes flickered across the dungeon’s every corner, alert for traps and signs of discovery.

  Behind him, a taller, broad-shouldered man clad in leather armor hefted a crossbow upon his shoulder; his knuckles already pale from the strain.

  Behind him, a lean figure draped in a dark cloak brought up their rear. The third man seeped into the shadows, his presence was almost spectral as he faded into the deeper depths of the dungeon’s crevices.

  Within the third man’s hands, he twirled a small vial of poison absentmindedly, as though already imagining its use.

  “They’re slowing down.” The man in front whispered, his voice barely audible above the faint drip of water from somewhere deeper within.

  The man behind him, the middle man, leaned forward to get a better view.

  “Probably trying to decide on a direction. The turn ahead forks.” He said.

  “They’ll pick the wrong one.” The third man murmured, his tone laced with cold amusement.

  “They’re nervous. They’re sloppy.” He added.

  Ahead, the five figures clustered together.

  One — a man with a hood draped over him — held a parchment map while he argued with the rest of his party. Their voices were fueled by hushed tones, their frustration already leaking.

  “Stay back.” The man in front said, his hand raised alongside his instruction.

  He pressed himself firmly against the wall and signaled for the others to do the same. Meanwhile, the group ahead continued their debate and with their frustration growing more evident — snippets of their conversation bled back.

  “…left… the markings don’t match…”

  “…dead end last…”

  “…someone… -hind us…”

  The third man grinned at that and his teeth glinted underneath the algae.

  “Smart, but not smart enough.” He nearly cackled.

  The man in front held up his hand again, signaling patience.

  The five moved at last. Their footsteps retreated down the path to the left, but the three followers waited until their footfalls were quiet.

  Only then, the trio crept forward. The cool stone pressed against their shoulders as they stuck to the walls. When they reached the fork, the man in front crouched down.

  He inspected the ground. There was some scuffed dirt and a fresh scrape on the stone where a boot must have dragged.

  “They’re getting tired.” He noticed. “Slowing down. We’ll catch them at the next bend.”

  The middle man nodded and cocked his crossbow.

  “Let’s hope they pick the wrong turn.” He added.

  The third man stashed his vial of poison. Instead, he flicked out a dagger and twirled it like he did the vial.

  “Doesn’t matter. Every turn in this place is the wrong one for them.”

  Time passed and exhaustion settled.

  The two parties continued through the second floor of the dungeon; one none the wiser.

  Then, the sound of leathery wings echoed throughout the underground labyrinth. The five ahead froze as a high-pitched scream pierced the veil.

  From the shadows above, a swarm of Batarangs descended. The sleek creatures torpedoed down as their black fur melded with the night and their crimson eyes locked onto target.

  The group of five scattered. Their lunar light wavered in panic and cast frantic shadows along the walls all while weapons were drawn and incantations were muttered.

  A woman screamed as she swung her sword towards the Batarang already upon her. The beast’s fangs latched onto her leather bracer and sank deep enough to draw blood.

  Another man jabbed upwards with a spear; he pierced a Batarang’s chest, then another, but more came — clawing, screeching, until the group was driven into chaos.

  From their concealed position, the stalkers watched.

  “Perfect!” The leader said. “Let them tire themselves out.”

  The middle man loaded his crossbow. “They won’t see us coming.”

  “Wait for it! Let the monsters soften them first!” The third man said, his predatory gaze stuck to the fight like tape on paper.

  The battle raged before them. A heavyset warrior swung a broad axe and a Batarang was cleaved in two, but another swooped in. The beast’s fangs ripped into the warrior’s nape and the man roared out in pain; blood burst from his neck, it splattered out of him and coated the wall's red.

  The others, meanwhile — fared no better. They flailed against the swarm like ragdolls. Their coordination collapsed further with each passing second.

  Then, the stalker’s leader raised three fingers.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  “Now!” He hissed.

  The trio moved as one; like ghosts, they slipped into the fray unnoticed. The leader dove forward, his dagger flashed as he drove it into the back of a man distracted by a diving bat.

  The victim gasped, and blood rushed his lungs sooner than expected. He crumpled to the ground and died without a chance to call out.

  The middle man raised his crossbow and fired. The bolt whistled through the air and buried itself in the chest of a woman who had just managed to fend off a Batarang.

  She staggered backwards and dropped her weapon. In the next moment, she collapsed to the ground — a lifeless heap of soon to be cold cells.

  At the same time, the third man danced into the chaos like a specter; his blade slashed the throat of a man who turned too late to defend himself.

  Blood splashed into the air.

  “Ambush!” One of the survivors yelled as his voice was filled with raw desperation.

  He swung wildly. Desperately.

  His sword caught the snag end of a Batarang and severed its wing clean off, but he was already within the leader’s sights. A blur of movement later, and a dagger pierced beneath his armpit.

  He felt a sharp pain then a growing burn. Warm liquid cascaded around the wound as he dropped his sword; he suddenly lost the strength to wield it.

  The remaining two — bloodied and battered — attempted to regroup, but the Batarang’s surged again and dove towards their exposed flesh.

  One fell under the swarm; his screams faded into gurgles as the creatures overwhelmed him.

  The last, a woman with a bloodied staff, turned to run; her face a mask of terror. From across the void, a bolt soared through the swarm and impaled her.

  Her body slammed against the ground where her staff clattered beside her.

  Meanwhile, the stalkers returned to the shadows. They hugged the dungeon’s walls and faded into the background — a spell, more likely than not.

  Since — when the three meshed into the shadows — the Batarangs retreated. They had their fill of blood from the still pooling five.

  With the Batarangs gone and the coast now clear, the stalkers secured their hunt, looted their prey, and disposed of the evidence.

  “Quick and clean.” The leader muttered. He wiped the blood on his blade along the cloak of one of the fallen men.

  Then, the middle man kicked another body over the edge. “Messy, but effective.”

  Meanwhile, the third man ran his hands through the bag’s of the women. He pulled a vial from one of the satchels.

  “Looks like we found something useful!” He grinned.

  “Good.” The leader sheathed his dagger. “Now let’s get moving.”