“Saving the world?”

  “Of course,” the blue-skinned djinn answered, their expressionless face somehow conveying sincerity. They cocked their head to the side, asking, “Why are you here?”

  Elijah frowned, then looked around. The stakes to which they’d been tethered were not arranged in neat lines or symmetrical rings. Instead, they formed a complex lattice that Elijah now saw for what it was – an ethereal matrix meant to harness the energy drained from the captives.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Elijah backed away and hurried toward the companions he’d left at the chamber’s entrance. Along the way, he couldn’t help but feel the subtle tremble crawling up his spine at the implications of the room.

  Upon reaching the spot where Hu Shui and Benedict waited, he found himself unable to articulate the feeling gripping his heart. Finally, Benedict broached the silence, asking, “What’s going on?”

  “These people are being drained,” Elijah answered after a few seconds. “They’re batteries.”

  “For what?” asked Hu Shui.

  Elijah shook his head. “I’m not sure. You see it, though, don’t you?”

  “It’s a matrix,” Benedict stated, confirming Elijah’s assumptions. Then, he asked Elijah, “Can you get me higher so I can examine it properly?”

  “It won’t be comfortable.”

  Benedict shrugged, saying that comfort had never been expected. After that, he climbed onto Elijah’s back – like a child getting a piggy-back ride from a reluctant uncle. Once he’d secured himself, Elijah approached the wall and, using the Absolute Grasp trait tied to the Handguards of the Wild Revenant and began his climb. Thankfully, it worked, and he reasoned that it only did so because it was a passive trait. If activation had been required, it would have failed.

  Like that, Elijah climbed, and he was reminded of the days when he took the Shape of Venom’s ability to skitter across walls for granted. Fortunately, he was strong enough that the act didn’t even strain his muscles, and it was little different than walking on a normal surface. It also made him feel a bit like Spider-man, which reminded him of Peter the spider he’d left back in the Hollow Depths.

  Hopefully, the arachnid was still alive, well, and thriving.

  Soon, they reached the ceiling and turned their gazes on the chamber below. As Elijah had already seen, it was miles wide and ringed by silver columns. From above, he could see a discernible pattern upon those columns, suggesting that they were a necessary part of the ethereal matrix that seemed to be the point of the entire space.

  But even more disturbingly, his previous suspicions about the arrangement of the captives were proved true. Elijah couldn’t make sense of what the design meant, but by this point, he’d seen enough to recognize them for what they were. By contrast, Benedict was more than capable of gleaning some information from the pattern.

  They remained in place, with Elijah clinging to the ceiling and Benedict hanging onto his back, for more than half an hour before the latter asked to descend. Once they reached the floor, Benedict retrieved a notebook from his pack and proceeded to draw the pattern from memory.

  While they’d been topside, Hu Shui had busied himself by examining the patterns on the closest columns, so he added his own notes to Benedict’s depiction. All in all, it took them a few hours to sketch everything out, and Elijah believed they would have taken quite a bit longer if he’d allowed for it.

  “So?” he asked when they’d finished.

  “I think you’re right,” Benedict answered.

  “So do I.”

  “It’s meant to drain them?”

  Benedict nodded, but it was Hu Shui who answered, explaining that the ethereal array wasn’t just meant to draw ethera from the djinn. Rather, it was also the core of the much larger array formed by system of corridors.

  “Where is all that energy going?”

  “I suspect we’ll find out when we reach the center of this chamber,” Hu Shui answered.

  That meant that, to learn more, they would need to venture among the captives. Normally, Elijah wouldn’t have cared about something like that, but he’d spent the past couple of hours studying the creatures, and he’d come away with an appreciation for just how creepy they were.

  Most races displayed some features shared by humans. For instances, dwarves and elves were largely indiscernible from Earth’s natives, save for superficial physical traits. Sure, dwarves were characteristically hardier than most humans, and elven variants like Nara’s people shared some characteristics with marine mammals that allowed them to survive underwater. But they still looked and acted in ways familiar to anyone who’d been born on Earth.

  The djinn did not.

  Mostly, they simply stood in place, unmoving and featureless. When Elijah spoke to them, they answered his questions, but otherwise, they remained completely unresponsive. Was that an attempt at energy conservation? Or was it a characteristic native to their people?

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  Elijah was also reminded that djinn weren’t necessarily a race unto themselves. Or rather, they hadn’t begun their lives as djinn. Even a human being could become one, so long as they met the requirements. Elijah didn’t know what those requirements were, but he suspected that, to reach the status of an elder race would be quite difficult.

  Perhaps that was why Hu Shui had come along.

  Or one of the reasons, at least. The man rarely seemed to act without a half-dozen plans motivating his every step.

  Not that it mattered much. Elijah trusted that Hu Shui had Earth’s best interests at heart, and he couldn’t blame the man for wanting to improve his power base.

  If that was what he was doing, which seemed likely.

  Regardless, once they’d established the nature of the room – and its willing batteries – the trio pushed further into the chamber. In most cases, the djinn didn’t even react to their presence, instead remaining completely motionless. Up close, it was obvious just how much of a toll their captivity had taken on them. That they could even hold themselves together was a minor miracle.

  “So much energy,” Benedict muttered as they passed a much denser clump of blue-skinned djinn. Elijah could feel it as well. Vast torrents of power flowed beneath them, tracing lines of the ethereal matrix. It was like a connect-the-dots pattern in a children’s workbook, and the controlled storm of ethera stood in stark contrast to the energy vacuum of the atmosphere all around them.

  Elijah felt goosebumps prickling his skin, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up in alarm. It was an unnatural situation, and one that left him supremely uncomfortable.

  And it only got worse with every step he took toward the center of the pattern.

  Given the curvature of its walls and the general scale of what he’d seen from above, Elijah estimated that the chamber was more than fifty miles wide, so their journey – undertaken with careful deliberation, so they didn’t miss anything important – took most of a day.

  During that time, they spoke sparingly. Neither of his companions were much for conversation, which left Elijah alone with his thoughts. Inevitably, they settled on his expectations for the Primal Realm. The Labyrinth of Dead Gods was very different from any of the others he’d visited, so he had no idea what was coming next.

  Acknowledging that he couldn’t plan for a future he couldn’t predict was oddly cathartic, and it allowed him to focus on other things. Like the odd feeling he got when he zeroed in on his locus. He knew the grove was still out there. He could vaguely feel it. But beyond the most basic of information – like a sense for how many people were on the island – he felt nothing.

  Or rather, everything blurred together into a conglomerate that he simply couldn’t pick apart. That was another thing that set The Labyrinth of Dead Gods apart from the other Primal Realms. While challenging the others, he’d seen everything in his domain with the same clarity as he had while outside. And he could only attribute the blurriness to the nature of the labyrinth.

  Meddling with space and time obviously muddled the connection he shared with his domain. And he suspected that had he not made it a priority with his first specialization, he might not have felt anything at all.

  That idea sent another shiver up his spine, only heightening his discomfort. He could scarcely imagine such a hell as being disconnected from his grove.

  “We’re close,” Benedict stated.

  “I feel it,” Elijah acknowledged. “Be on guard for enemies.”

  Both Hu Shui and Benedict nodded. After everything they’d been through, they both knew better than to relax. Even if they hadn’t been battle-hardened before entering the Labyrinth of Dead Gods, the Primal Realm had sharpened them to a deadly edge.

  Finally, they reached the center of the chamber, which was characterized by a hundred-yard wide spiral descending through the floor.

  “One-hundred-and-thirty-one meters,” corrected Benedict.

  “Point six-seven-four,” added Hu Shui. “Exact measurements matter. I suspect that the chamber is a hundred-and-forty-three-point-two-three-two kilometers.”

  “Fibonacci.”

  Hu Shui nodded at Benedict’s assertion. For his part, Elijah didn’t care about the mathematics behind the measurements. Instead, he was focused on the descent itself – or rather, the energy crackling through the spiral leading ever downward.

  “Does this feel wrong to either of you?” he asked.

  “Everything about this Primal Realm feels wrong,” Benedict answered immediately. He would come away from the experience with a significant load of trauma to add to the totality of his issues. Hopefully, he’d developed a means of coping.

  “I find it oddly comfortable,” Hu Shui countered. “I assume that’s because the entire thing has been twisted by space magic.”

  “What?” Elijah asked, surprised.

  “Oh. I thought you knew. From outside, the sphere looked to be a few kilometers wide. Perhaps the size of a small moon. In here, it is much, much larger. I suspect it is the size of Earth, at the very least. Perhaps even larger.”

  Elijah was about to reply, but instead, he closed his mouth. He had no real response to that assertion. But the longer he thought about it, the more it made sense. The first part of the Primal Realm had dealt with time, so it only fit that the second part would deal with space.

  In any case, the way forward was clear. So, without further discussion, Elijah led them to the edge of the spiral. It was made of the same subtly glowing gold as the rest of the sphere, though it was marbled with gleaming silver. It wasn’t an alloy. Rather, the two materials seemed wholly separate, though mixed. Like oil suspended in water.

  “Or pattern-welded steel,” suggested Hu Shui. He knelt, tracing one of the silver swirls with an extended finger. “You feel the energy?”

  Elijah nodded.

  “Let’s go,” he said, stepping forward. The soles of his bare feet tingled with every stride. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t pleasant, either. More than anything, he wished he could get back to more natural terrain. He wanted to feel moss and spongey loam beneath his feet. Not cold and oddly energetic metal.

  He led them down.

  The slope was gradual. Barely even noticeable unless he paid close attention. However, with the gaping hole descending in the center of the spiral, he couldn’t help but recognize it for what it was.

  Soon, they left the chamber entirely behind, and to the point where they couldn’t even see the top. After a little more than twelve hours, they found another such chamber attached to the spiral, which connected the floor to the ceiling. As they descended, they realized that it was identical to the previous one.

  For more than a week, they encountered much the same. Every twelve hours, the trio saw another chamber. But after the ninth, things changed. Instead of encountering another chamber filled with drained djinn, they found an entirely different scenario.

  Elijah stepped off the spiral to find himself confronted by hundreds of gold columns, each one surrounded its own spiral comprised of more than a thousand glass bulbs. They glowed with potent, blue energy.

  “There’s something inside them,” Hu Shui said.

  “I don’t like this,” Benedict added, glancing nervously from the chamber and back to the spiral. “We should keep going.”

  “It could be important,” Hu Shui countered.

  “A quick inspection. If we don’t find anything that affects our situation in an hour, we move on. Let’s go,” Elijah ordered.

  Then, he stepped forward, bathed in blue light.

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