Returning to my childhood home again, for the second time. The first had been when the fire drove me out of the air vent of my chambers in the school. I wintered in this place, which had been well stocked, back then. No one came. No Solomonari, no other students. I left Spineback in order to find purpose. I'm still not sure I've found purpose, but I have definitely found things to do.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  There hadn’t been much to find. The little garden that sustained the cohorts in years past hadn’t been tended, and animals or rot had pillaged the rest. Dragos knelt on cold ground, dug with a stick to find a few sorry carrots and a turnip. The kale had been nibbled to stubs.

  Dragos squinted up at the sky, peering through the gap in the pine.

  He tugged his hood up to get away from the glimmer of late afternoon sun and completed his work. Eyes closed, he stood, and breathed in the familiar scents, but it brought no solace, only the flicker of memories that ached.

  Childhood was another life. Gone. As if it belonged to someone else, the memories filtered through his mind in incomplete shreds.

  He paced slowly back to the cabin, the weight on the vial in his pocket knocking against his chest. An elaborate trap he’d made for himself within. Oddly, he wanted to let Luci out. Something about her…

  He slammed his thoughts shut.

  There were other things to focus on. What was in the school, for one. He glanced up at the pines as he walked, the ever-rising slope, and the hidden trail that led to ?oloman??’s gates. Lavinia’s question, that day when they were walking, about the mountain spirit swam in his thoughts like a malignant fish.

  It seemed impossible.

  He counted the supplies he’d need. Torches, from inside, extra water, in case the reservoir was poisoned, and the food that he’d prepare before sleep. He had one iele’s spirit trapped in a scroll, another in his pocket, and a zmeu.

  Time would tell if that would be enough.

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  The next morning, fed and rested, Dragos took the trail he’d imagined. A smoky cloud drifted along beside him, the burn of orange eyes the only thing that differentiated it from chimney smoke. The narrow path was as uncared for as the cabin, barely readable, anymore. Nature had closed in.

  Brown needles littered the path where bramble hadn’t encroached. Fallen limbs altered the once smooth dirt walkway beaten by countless students and their teachers as they made the last climb into seven years of darkness.

  He was short, then.

  As a child, he’d had to look up to see Mirel’s chilly eyes. Sister ‘lula’s hand his. His brothers and other sister meandering along behind them, two by two. Mirel held Adrian’s hand, that day. The wonder of the smooth arches covered in sigils as they came into sight…

  Dragos looked up from the path, half-expecting to see it the way it was.

  As he rounded the last cluster of pine, he saw what he’d last seen, though this time snow didn’t fill the landscape with its muffling shroud. The massive stone arch lay as it had, broken across the entrance. The thick wooden door beyond, spotted in the gaps of stone, hung blackened and twisted. Bounders rendered the way up to the entrance impassable.

  There was no natural landslide that night. Something had collapsed the way in.

  That something was likely still inside. Dragos glanced at the smoke beside him. Without a word, it winnowed away, and he followed it along the side of the mountain. He picked his way across ragged rock and spotted the place where he’d fallen so long ago.

  He looked up, but couldn’t see the vent from that angle. Pressing on, he clambered over a boulder and around some prickly shrubbery towards the soft sound of water trickling over rock. When he caught up to the zmeu, he saw what he’d never noticed before.

  It looked like a shadow, nothing more, but the overhang and the wild scrub didn’t trick him, now that he knew.

  Zgavra’s smoky form disappeared. Dragos rounded the brush and saw it clearly. There was no door. It merely looked like a depression until he stepped inside. The corridor turned an acute angle and widened after he ducked into it.

  Dragos paused to light the torch he’d taken from the cabin. The cool scent of wind blowing from within rushed over him when he turned the corner. Sunlight was left behind for the inconsistent dance of flames licking light over uneven walls. The passage had only been cut in places, the natural gap of stone merely widened by hands long ago.

  The timelessness of ?oloman?? settled in as gently as the air in a mausoleum.

  Such things as time mattered little in a place with no seasons, where one pursued arts and interests, encouraged to forget such concepts as when. There was only surrendering to weariness or hunger, and endless studying. Endless practice. Endless meditation.

  Dragos winced at every little rattle of his box. When his steps whispered loudly enough to echo, it felt disrespectful.

  The tunnel wended along, often meeting the gentle flow of water that spilled from the reservoir deeper in. He walked beside it, and wanting more companionship, decided to let Luci out. With one hand, he worked the top off the vial and she flumed out, splashing right into the little stream beside him.

  When she rose, she was as she’d been when he first encountered her. As tall as he, and nearly as broad. Luci climbed out of the channel and beamed, “Ah! Much better!”

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  Her voice had ricocheted along the cavern walls, making him wince.

  “We’re in Spineback, now,” Dragos whispered.

  “I gathered as much from your chat with the zmeu,” Luci said with her full voice. She didn’t yell, but her conversational tone bounced along the corridor and into the darkness beyond the torch flame.

  The billow of smoke ahead whipped around and collected itself into the humanoid form Dragos thought of as its natural one. It strode toward Luci and Dragos, who stood by the softly trickling stream.

  “Call me Zgavra. Dragos named me,” it said smugly.

  Luci’s expression pinched. “So? He named me, too.”

  Tension clenched something in Dragos’s stomach. He glanced between them and hissed angrily. “You’re not seriously fighting about this? If you are, stop. We have things to do.”

  Luci’s hands rested on her hips. Zgavra mimicked her.

  Dragos glared at both of them and pushed past Zgavra, torch leading the way. He wasn’t about to stand around and watch them act like spoiled children. The dancing glow guided him along a corridor that ran parallel to the stream until a switchback brought him out to the edge of a vast underground lake.

  The dark depths at his feet stretched for a hundred meters to the other shore. Above, the ceiling soared, though long teeth of stone hung down, dripping into the black waters. A brief lip around the edge of the cavern ringed the large oblong pool.

  He’d never seen it from this angle before. Never knew the tunnel was even there. On the far side he’d fetched countless buckets of water for the kitchen and the baths, and never once really looked into the shadows at the far end.

  The placid waters promised nothing. A smooth mirror shining his torchlight back at him, they lay calmly as they always had. Gauging the lip, Dragos turned to face the wall and twisted the torch sideways so that he could use his index and middle fingers for balance.

  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled for a reason he couldn’t define.

  There had never been anything in the waters. Not even so much as a tadpole, and yet, a tickle ran down his spine as his fingers quested for a serviceable handhold in the rock face. Flicking a look at the empty opening he’d just left, and the bickering of spirit creatures beyond, he scowled.

  In a low voice, loud enough to carry around the bend, he called, “Stop arguing and come, if you’re coming.”

  Dragos stepped out, his heels suspended over the pool. His sturdy cavaler boot toes gripped the ledge wall, and his chest ground against the stone before him. A precarious balance was found, and he began the slow process of side-stepping along.

  He heard a splash behind him. Assuming it was Luci, he didn’t stop.

  It was lucky he kept moving.

  A thick, wedge-shaped head snapped at where his ankle had just been.

  Dragos yelped and, with no other course of action, sidled faster, trusting his goat-like balance not to pitch him into the lightless waters below. A mere second later, the reservoir trembled, splashing up against his heels.

  He inched along with all the speed he dared, the ledge slickening beneath his feet as, somewhere beneath the surface, a battle ensued. The placid pool went from glass-smooth to wildly turbulent, water sloshing up the backs of his legs. The clap and splash behind him drove his heart to pounding against the stone he scrubbed against. A wave rocked up, drenching his cloak, splattering his peddler’s box, threatening to snuff the torch he carried in a precarious grip.

  The far shore scuttled closer. He kept his eyes on it, focused on getting onto solid ground again. Luci, Zgavra, the creature in the depths… none of it mattered if he didn’t reach steady footing.

  The clash of water calmed as he got to the last gap. Dragos flung himself across it in a sidelong jump and stumbled to straighten, swinging his torch around. He waved it toward the pool. The splashing had muted into a lapping.

  What was that? Had they beaten it? What if Luci and Zgavra fought against eachother instead of the creature?

  For a long moment, Dragos was left with no answers.

  “Zgavra? Luci?”

  Luci surfaced first. A ripple in the surface took the shape of a woman’s face, and rose until she was standing. She walked along the pool’s surface with a smile illuminated by the guttering torchlight.

  “I have never seen anything like that!” Luci exclaimed, slashing a hand to point down.

  “Is Zgavra alright?” Dragos asked, stepping closer to look uselessly into the water.

  “I’m fine, thank you for asking,” Luci snapped, stepping onto the ledge. “Who cares how the zmeu is? The thing below is dead.”

  Something black surged up from the depths. Dragos took a cautious step back as Zgavra, in full dragon form, burst from the pool, something hanging long and slack from its claws. Instant fascination piqued as it hauled the corpse of the beast out of the water and to the smooth stone floor of the reservoir.

  Black blood smeared the floor to the water’s edge. The reservoir was contaminated. Probably had been for a while, considering how big that thing had seemed, from the size of its head.

  “What is it?” Dragos asked.

  “I don’t know,” Luci said, stepping over to where Zgavra unceremoniously dropped it.

  Dragos followed, holding the torch high. His curiosity overrode any doubt or fear. The zmeu shifted into its usual bipedal form and crouched beside the thing. Its head tilted, reminding Dragos of how a dog might when confronted with something curious.

  “Never seen this,” the monster’s orange orbs blazed briefly, and it looked up at Dragos.

  The torch showed something nightmarish. After seeing the bezgina, Dragos thought he’d seen the worst that cel?lalt t?ram could offer. Apparently, he’d been wrong.

  It lay along the floor, more a tail than anything. Its body had spiked scales all over it, but the curious thing was its limbs. It had them, after a fashion. Its head and belly clearly lay on the floor, but the four stubby, webbed limbs flopped over, its joints attached to its back. If the thing were on the ground, it would have been walking in an upside-down position. Small, crab-like feelers jutted from its belly.

  Dragos wished he had a stick to poke it with. He’d left his cavaler’s sword at the cabin. It was useless to him.

  He pulled out his knife to flick at the segmented leg things. They moved freely, not yet stiffened from death. He glanced at the head, its streamlined horns, the serpentine head.

  A realization struck him. It had wisps of spirit drifting from it. Not that of cel?lalt t?ram, but that of the living world.

  “Rest in peace,” he murmured, and stood from his crouch.

  He turned away with his torch raised. Luci clasped her hands together, teeth worrying at her lip. “Do you think there are more?”

  Dragos glanced at his companions and answered with a grim tone.

  “Let’s find out.”

  If you don't want to wait, the full first volume exists on my . Just sayin'.

  ?oloman?? (Shoh-loh-MAHN-tsuh): The Dark School, where Solomonari take moroi viu to learn their ways. It rests in the bowels of the Spineback Mountain, not far from the Embrace.

  Cavaler (kah-vah-LEHR): Knight of the Luminatori order

  Bezgina (Beh-DJEE-nah): A memory-sucking spirit creature

  Cel?lalt t?ram (chel-uh-LULT tuh-RUHM): The other realm where spirits spawn