“How exactly do you feel those marks?” I asked as she handed me my soulmark book yet again, now with two fresh marks inside it. “I was wondering if I could paint some Seer's body part to copy your ability, but—” I drew a breath to steady the idea. “—and don’t get me wrong, there seems nothing special about your eyes, ears, or whatever you use. Especially in the human form you’re wearing now.”

  “Oh. It’s definitely not done through eyes or ears, Lex.” Zoe shook her head lightly, hair shifting, stirred by a faint breeze moving the grey leaves around us. “I just… feel it. Something in the space around me wakes up.”

  “Aura?” I asked. “You sense it through your soul?”

  “I guess you could call it that. I’m no expert, but it feels close enough.”

  “That’s a bummer.” I sighed. “I don’t think I could copy it for myself. Not unless I paint a full artificial Seer, or paint myself as one.”

  “Can’t you just use body paint to do it now?” she asked.

  “Maybe, but my sense of verisimilitude wouldn’t buy it.” I tapped my brow. “If I painted myself as a human-shaped Seer, my mind would insist it’s just a human. And if I painted myself to look like your Tinkerbell-form, I still wouldn’t be as small as you. My anima is telling me it wouldn’t work.”

  “I don’t want you going on some adventure like that,” Peter said, studying Zoe up and down as if checking her stability. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

  “Excuse me?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You ran straight into that same jungle as a pure human not too long ago.”

  “Yes, but I was wearing armor, I have years of martial experience, and I was following a friend who needed help.” He crossed his arms. “This would be an unnecessary treasure hunt. I’m not budging on this.”

  “He’s right, Zee,” I said gently. “I won’t put you in danger while you’re wearing human skin. I’ll go myself. I’ll notice something unusual, and if I’m not sure, I can always come back for you later. Right?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “…Just be careful. I want to meet with you tonight, like we planned.”

  “I’ll be at Peter’s Domain at seven. Don’t worry.” I looked at her first, then at Peter, only to immediately avert my gaze, abruptly aware I was on the brink of triggering another resonant measuring contest. No, thank you. Not today.

  I set my hands on their shoulders and sent them both to my room, which by now had basically turned into a way station.

  [Maybe you should just get rid of the bed altogether and install some benches,] Anansi mused as I tucked the small soulmark book into my bag.

  I’ll think about it, Anansi, I replied, focusing on the painted image of Liora inside my spellbook. I reached for him and summoned to me.

  “Come, Lio! We’re going on an adventure together,” I said, letting Anansi whisper into his ears whatever context he needed. Liora brightened and shot ahead above the treeline toward the direction Zoe had given me.

  I followed the best I could, leaping from one grey-limbed tree to the next, then to another. Every jump demanded a tiny prayer not to slip and fall into the murk below.

  To my right, two more Troll Trees rose like watchtowers. Bloated shapes tangled in cables, pipes, and dangling filaments of artificial light. They loomed like radio towers and one of them was being approached by a hammer giant. I was sure that it wouldn’t end up good for the trolls, but they weren’t in my path, so I left them to whatever fate they were facing.

  The deeper I went, the harder it became to navigate. Visibility was terrible with eternal dusk thick as fog, broken only by a faint wash of fluorescent greens and purples bleeding from the cave’s ceiling above. Even with enhanced vision I could barely see ten feet ahead. Sprinting through this gloom meant risking a sudden collision with a tree trunk, a jagged rock outcrop, or—knowing this place—something that desperately wanted to eat my face.

  Fortunately, only a few minutes into the run, color cut through the gloom. Red and orange.

  Fire.

  As we drew closer, the glow resolved into a blazing column reaching all the way up to the distant ceiling.

  And then the shape behind it emerged: a wall of fire encircling a structure: a stepped Aztec ziggurat, swallowed by the blaze like an artifact trapped inside a furnace. The flames rose in a perfect perimeter.

  I stayed in the shadowed treeline, circling wide, while Liora swept around from the opposite side. We met again behind the structure.

  No openings. No gaps.

  Even twenty yards out, the heat baked the air, turning every breath into something that felt like inhaling steam from a boiling kettle.

  Fortunately, no other creature dared approach the strange structure I suspected was exactly what Zoe had sensed—close enough to the initial clearing to notice, yet standing out from the grey wasteland both literally and figuratively. For a thief, that was the best kind of sign. For an artist, though… maybe less so. It left no room for interpretation.

  I wanted to get inside, but painting a hole onto the fire was out of the question, so I decided to do the thing that I had just found out I could do. I took a black spray can, threw it three times into the air, juggling it easily, then took a wider swing and sent it hurling toward the wall of fire while I let it become nothing, as it was meant to be. Its trajectory adjusted immediately as gravitation no longer took hold of it.

  It flew toward the vertical inferno, but when it got near, it burst into small flames and was completely evaporated in a small puff of smoke.

  “What?” I asked myself out loud.

  It should have gone right through—it was nothing, after all—and yet it burned.

  [There was a clash of Authority. The wall recognized the can as an object holding a foreign one, despite it being nothing, and it won.]

  “If nothing can’t get through, then something is unlikely as well,” I replied and started thinking about my options. “Maybe Liora can fly up high and check if it ends somewhere, and he can go down from up there.” I asked, and Lio flared vibrant green and darted upward like he’d been shot from a slingshot.

  Unfortunately, the column reached the very top, and the flames sprouted around as they were thrust against the solid rock.

  I thought that maybe he could have phased through the rock and tried to go around that way.

  [Liora is afraid to get stuck in, as he doesn’t know what’s on the opposite side of the solid rock.]

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  That was understandable, and it crossed out going under the whole thing as well. I wouldn’t risk his life for that.

  There had to be a way in, right? Or maybe it was wishful thinking on my part. Why would someone capable enough leave a vulnerability for a thief like myself to abuse?

  I pointed my closed fist at the fire, infused it with my Authority, and let the light shine onto the moving flames. I hoped that with light strong enough I’d be able to paint with it on the fire itself, but unfortunately it didn’t work that way. The fire stayed in its red and orange coloration despite the outside source. Something Nick would have a physical explanation for, but I didn’t have him around, so I shut the light down.

  Maybe my initial dismissal of painting a hole was too hasty after all. I just needed something that would let me create a tunnel through. Like a fallen tower lying perpendicularly to the flames, allowing me to move through them. There were plenty of things that looked sturdy enough, but those looks were deceiving in here. Something that seemed made out of rebar and concrete could be soft and flammable like grass or a tree, so searching for something reliable in here was a fool’s errand.

  I sat down and painted the image of this temple surrounded by a firewall into my spellbook. I needed to come back here once I found a solution to this puzzle, and for that I needed outside help.

  When I was done, I focused on another destination within this very book and, with a flick of will, hopped there.

  I dodged the upcoming attack in the very next second. A clawed, long arm swung in a wide slash as soon as I appeared. I ducked under and hopped slightly back, catching the following attack with both my hands. The arm was semi-chitinous, strong, and would have ended me on the spot had I still been human at that point.

  “Hello, Victor,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh.” He replied and drew his arm back. “I forgot you can teleport in here as you please.”

  “You forgot?” I hissed as I looked around. It already looked nothing like the room where Malik professed his love to me, or where we staked the Shattered together with Caroline to formulate the plan for Jason’s retrieval. It was mostly emptied and looked a bit larger than it did before. On a desk in the corner lay the nautilus aperture Bohr took with him from the EoT’s fort, connected now to some kind of crystalline structure in the center of the room—looking awfully like a bunch of fragmented soul cores stitched hastily together with, I kid you not, silver duct tape, some cables, and wires.

  The room was cluttered with various hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools scattered on metallic shelves screwed into the walls. There were four big whiteboards in the other corner, filled with various mathematical formulas that reminded me of nothing in particular. And to top it off, there was one big—like really big—armchair set up so a person sitting in it could look through the window outside.

  Victor himself was wearing nothing but pants, an apron, and the glove I gave him. It seemed to be pumping shadowlight through the little tubes as we spoke.

  “Yes. It wasn’t on my mind. I have other important things to go through,” he replied offhandedly, turning his broad back on me and moving toward his workstation.

  “You remember that you promised me a compensation for the glove you’re wearing, right?”

  “Promise is a word I wouldn’t use, but yes. I will work on it as soon as I am able to. Were you expecting it to be ready?” he replied, finishing with a chuckle.

  “No, of course not,” I said. “I was hoping to pick your brain on something fire-related.”

  “Pick.” He replied while I observed the column through the eye painted on Lio’s forehead. He stayed behind and waited patiently.

  “I came across a column of fire with four walls, bottom to top, surrounding a temple inside the concrete jungle. I want to get in, but this fire burns anything I try to push through.”

  “Your teleportation doesn’t work?”

  “No idea. I’d need art inside to teleport to.”

  “Concrete jungle is a splinter that houses all this internet nonsense in a greyish flora of the jungle, am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this is probably a firewall-related phenomenon. Maybe you should ask a programmer or someone like that how those work.”

  “Thanks for the help,” I said, and teleported to my Earthly room, grabbing the phone and dialing Zoe.

  “Hello, Zee.”

  “Alexa? I didn’t expect to hear back from you so soon. We just left the house.”

  “I think I found the place that stores the soul mark, but it’s surrounded by a big firewall, and since the concrete jungle is kind of like a computer environment, I was hoping you’d explain to me how I could bypass that thing.”

  “Firewall meaning network security?”

  “I guess. It looks like a literal wall of fire, but it probably represents what you just said.”

  “Does it block everything from entering?”

  “I don’t know. I just checked my things.”

  “Okay, so firewalls are set up to block traffic based on certain protocols, which means they should let things in that are considered unharmful and ‘known.’ For example, normal Earth-based firewalls block traffic from suspicious sites but are less likely to block something that comes from big social media ones. It probably tagged you as something foreign, and everything marked by you or your authority is hostile and won’t be let in. But I bet that some things are allowed safe passage through. Find those things, and you should be able to enter.”

  “Thanks, Zee.”

  “You’re welcome. Just be careful.”

  “Sure,” I said, ended the call, and appeared beside Liora a second later.

  “Lio, not so long ago I came across a blue bird sitting on a perch with a cross pattern on its belly. I think it might be considered unharmful enough to be let in. Can you help me find it?” I asked, while I myself, with the help of Anansi, was going through various scents I’d come across since I got here, trying to match one of them to the creature I saw.

  [I am pretty sure it’s this one], Anansi said, as an image of something smelling like blueberry pie, granola bars, and some kind of soda mixed together appeared inside my brain. I sniffed around with my mask on, letting my faux rabbit nose try to catch the scent.

  **********

  It was Lio who found the group of birds matching my description, and they smelled nothing like my initial assumptions. Instead, contrary to their unassuming visage, their scent evoked a sense of dread, rotten fruit and the ugly underbelly of society.

  I, on the other hand, was hoping to be smelling of roses, but was probably closer to the birds if I was honest. I cradled my pink spray can in hand, which I had just asked to become a flower bed, hoping to attract the birds to me, but apparently scent wasn’t something like light, radiation, or force, and couldn’t leave my painting at all.

  [Maybe they will be attracted meta-physically speaking,] Anansi tried to cheer me up, but it didn’t work. Not at all. Sitting in those bushes, trying to catch a bird to enter some temple, I was constantly reminded of my failures. My brain just couldn’t give me a pause and played all of my greatest hits on repeat.

  My inability to open up, my constant need to control everything, my dismissal of other people and their needs; everything that led both to me breaking Jason and me letting Malik die.

  “Fuck!” I shouted out of frustration as the birds continued to chirp between each other. Of course they noticed my outburst, and in its violent nature it scared them off as they flew upwards—stopped briefly—and then flew toward me instead of away.

  “What’s going on, birdies?” I asked aloud, which prompted some of them to fly away. “Everybody’s a critic,” I sent their way with a heavy dose of sarcasm, which once more, to my confusion, attracted them back to me.

  “Fuck this shit,” I said to check out a theory my second thought-strand had given me. It was quickly confirmed to be true when the birds focused their heads on me and started trilling happily between each other.

  “You like that? You like vulgarities, don’t you? You cheeky little bastards.” I said aloud while moving back. The birds jumped with quick bursts of flight between branches, trying to keep up with me.

  [This is ridiculous.]

  “No, my dear friend. It fits, and I should have thought about it a long time ago.” I answered. “Come, come, I will show you a true den of depravity. It’s goddamn amazing, you won’t believe your own two eyes.” I turned to the birds while leading them toward the ziggurat.

  *********

  [Can’t believe it worked.] Anansi said to me, right after I teleported myself and Lio inside the walled-off space. I had handed each of the birds one of my cards to carry, telling them that these were letters containing the worst possible news and that dozens of the temple’s denizens in the distance would hate to receive them. Their tiny little birdy brains worked extra hard to grab as many cards as possible and flew right through the raging inferno without any harm done to them or the packages they were carrying. Oh, the wonders of modern society mixed with magical interpretation. I loved the absurdity of that.

  I waved the birds off as I collected most of the cards they left behind, while taking notice of the building I was on top of.

  The temple was massive, made of something similar to stone, granite, and petrified wood, but when I touched it, it was cold like metal, as if its real skin was something entirely different from what was shown publicly. I was in the middle of a long and wide set of stairs, and despite the closeness of the firewall, I felt no excessive warmth—no hotness—besides that of the jungle itself. On top of those stairs was a gate, made of the same material that the building was constructed from.

  I moved there with caution, pushing my feet only as hard against the ground as necessary, trying not to press any hidden pressure plates or other traps that my mind associated with buildings like this, thanks to all of the Indiana Jones movies.

  Fortunately for me, no traps sprung to life to send my head rolling down to the weirdly empty pool at the base of the pyramid, and I reached the top with ease of mind.