The grand hall was an enormous room with a vaulted ceiling, decorated with colorful frescoes depicting mages, kings and queens, dragons and other magical creatures. Giant stained-gss windows continued these themes on either side of the hall, with the sun shining through them in multicolored lights on rows of long tables made of polished wood. The floor was made of a simir polished wood, with an ornate red rugs draped across the center of the room, leading to a raised dias upon which rested a heavy book.

  The effect was something like a church, Emily felt, though its ck of crosses or any other symbols she associated with one made it feel deeply unfamiliar, reminding her just how different Thesson really was from her world.

  Thaddeus led them to a small, inconspicuous door set into the wall on the right side of the dias, which he rapped his knuckles against sharply. "Abbess Althea! I have with me a group of visitors who seek the aid of Paja Abbey. They are lead by Emily, who calls herself Stoneshell Bearer."

  Instantly, there was a click, and the door opened to reveal a bald woman dressed in flowing orange robes—Althea, the Abbess of Paja Abbey. She stood perfectly still, surveying the travelers. Then she stepped forward and grabbed the Stoneshell.

  Emily felt a twinge of fear, and the Stoneshell glowed red with heat. But rather than pulling her hand back, the woman merely smiled and looked Emily in the eye. Though her demeanor was not aggressive or forceful, Emily got the distinct sense that the best she could do just then was take a deep breath, rex and let the Stoneshell cool off. She did so, and the pendant returned to its usual gray color.

  Althea then leaned her head closer to Emily, cocking it to one side so that she could pce her ear against the pendant's surface. "The ocean," she said in a sharp, matter-of-fact tone, holding it up to Emily's ear.

  Emily's eyes widened as she too heard the ocean through the stone. And not just the illusion of waves, as one might with a regur seashell, but the sounds of seagulls calling, dolphins chittering, and then, as she listened closer still, the deep, sonorous boom of a whale call. She wondered why it had never occured to her to listen to the Stoneshell before.

  "This is the genuine artifact," said Althea. "The st time I saw it was in this very room. Please enter."

  Althea stepped backwards into the small room at the back of the grand hall, and Emily followed, with Aria, Talyndra, Dorian and Thaddeus entering behind them, making the small room quite crowded. Dorian and Aria had to duck to make it through the doorway, and crouched awkwardly beneath the room's low ceiling.

  The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves and held a few low chairs and tables, at which everyone was encouraged to find a seat. Even Aria obliged, preferring to sit than to stoop.

  "The Stoneshell used to sit right over there, during its season at Paja Abbey," said Althea, pointing at an empty red cushion on a lectern between two overflowing bookshelves. "It was shared between the four great magical abbies of Thesson, in those days, spending a quarter of every year in each one's custody. Until Arctulus stole it, of course. I never trusted him."

  Aria's stone brow furrowed. "You... knew Arctulus?"

  Althea nodded.

  "But that would make you..."

  "Five hundred and twenty seven years old," Althea said proudly. "I celebrated my birthday just st week."

  Emily gasped. "But you don't look a day over—" She paused, staring at the strangely ageless woman, unable to think of how to finish that sentence. "Uh, you don't look, um, as old as all that."

  "Abbess Althea is a master of time magic," Brother Thaddeus expined.

  "It has allowed me serve Paja Abbey for far longer than any previous abbot or abbess," Althea said, a note of weariness in her voice. "It has allowed me to wait for the return of the Stoneshell, an event that many a long-dead mage assured me would never come to pass. But here it is, home at st."

  Emily furrowed her brow. For an instant, she wanted to argue with Althea, but then thought better of it. "My friends and I have come a long way to ask for your assistance in breaking the curse that Arctulus cast on the Stoneshell," she said. "The one that keeps Aria and the other statues of Castle Elid encased in bodies of unfeeling stone."

  Althea nodded. "That was not a sanctioned enchantment. Arctulus was among those tasked with moving the Stoneshell to Hargan Abbey for the winter, but he turned on his companions and stole it for himself, to use for his own purpose."

  "He was a horrible, hateful man," said Aria, her voice dripping with bitterness. "The mages of Castle Elid were quite bad enough on their own, casting temporary petrification spells on servants and visitors for amusement or vengeance, but he came in and made it permanent."

  "Flesh to stone, bronze and cy, castle sealed, key hidden away," Thaddeus recited. "Shell bearer, wear it well, shell bearer, break the spell."

  Althea regarded Emily with a steady gaze. "Arctulus was afraid of the Stoneshell Bearer. He sealed Castle Elid to prevent the Bearer from acquiring it. But it would appear that he failed. Tell me, how was it that you were able to enter the castle? Over the centuries, many of the most powerful and learned mages have attempted to breach the castle's seal, but all have failed."

  One side of Emily's mouth curved into a small half-smile. She gnced at Aria, who gave a small nod, and then said, "That's actually something else I would like your help with. I don't know how I came to be there. You see, I'm not actually from Thesson, or any part of this world at all. I'm from somewhere totally different, where we don't have mages, or elves or goblins or any of that. One moment, I was reading a book in the bath, and then the light went out. When I stepped out of the tub to investigate, I found that I was no longer in my bathroom, but a cold, empty room in a pce I ter found out was Castle Elid. I had no idea where I was or what had happened. And I don't know how to get back to my world."

  Althea steepled her fingers in front of her nose. "That... expins a few things."

  "It does?"

  "Of course," excimed Thaddeus. "The window!"

  "Window?"

  "Please do the honors, Brother Thaddeus," said Althea, motioning to a dull gray cloth that hung on the wall behind the cushioned lectern which once housed the Stoneshell.

  Thaddeus jumped to his feet and sprung across the room, carefully taking cloth in both hands and lifting it from the wall-hanging it concealed. "The windows in our great hall dispy prophecies. This used to be one of them, but it was destroyed by Arctulus. Only recently have we been able to restore it to nearly its original condition."

  There was a collective gasp as the visitors to the abbey took in the scene depicted in stained gss. It showed a stone bathtub full of soap bubbles, in which a woman stood, looking serenely out at the viewer, arms held out to her sides, palms facing forward. Long, chestnut-colored hair fell about her shoulders, and the air around her was suffused with soap bubbles. Around her neck hung a simple neckce with a gray pendant shaped like a seashell.

  She was entirely naked and hairless below the neck.

  "The resembnce is uncanny," said Aria, after a long moment of silence.

  Emily felt a blush creep up her neck, heating her skin almost like the Stoneshell. "It's... accurate," she admitted, her gaze darting between the stained-gss depiction of her nude self and the staring faces of her companions.

  Aria, her stone features unable to quite conceal a smirk, patted Emily’s arm sympathetically. "As soon as you wandered into our hall in Castle Elid, I knew you had to be the subject of prophecy."

  Dorian, after a quick gnce at the window, had the good grace to look abashed, his cheeks turning a dull shade of red beneath his beard. He mumbled something about the craftsmanship of the gsswork and busied himself examining a particurly detailed fresco of a griffin battling a hydra on the far wall.

  Talyndra, however, dissolved into a fit of giggles, her ughter echoing through the small chamber. "Oh, Emily!" she wheezed, clutching her sides. "It must be like looking in a mirror!"

  Even Abbess Althea cracked a small smile, though her expression quickly turned serious again. "This window," she said, her voice taking on a reverent tone, "depicts the arrival of the heiress to Evangeline, the second Stoneshell Bearer. Arctulus destroyed it many years ago, for he believed that by sealing the Stoneshell in the depths of Castle Elid, a pce impenetrable to the outside world, he had prevented the prophecy from being fulfilled."

  She turned to Emily, her eyes sharp and appraising. "But it seems that he failed," she said. "For clearly, the prophecy refers to you."

  Emily frowned, her brows knitting with perplexity. "Why was Arctulus so concerned with preventing this... prophecy? And why did he have to curse Aria and the others to do it?"

  "That I do not know," said Althea. "But perhaps another could expin."

  All eyes in the room turned to Aria. A funny feeling rose in Emily's stomach as she thought back over the many long conversations she'd had with Aria since they emerged from Castle Elid, an event which felt very long ago. Aria had told her much about magic and the world of Thesson, but little about herself or her past. Emily knew she'd had a sister, that she'd been a friend of Era's ancestor Isolde, and that she'd studied magic, but little else. Somehow, even as Emily had told her all about her own life in Greenville, Aria had avoided sharing anything substantial about herself.

  After a long pause, Aria spoke. "It was mere opportunism on his part. Arctulus exploited deep grudges and bad blood to turn the castle mages of Elid against the castle's servants and defenders. The king's father had been favorable to mages, but the new king was more comfortable in the company of warriors, and this led to immense friction between the two groups. Arctulus came to the castle mages with a pn of vengeance. I know because I was one of them."

  "How was the spell cast?" asked Althea.

  "Creating a long-term seal at the scale of an entire castle requires not only an artifact of immense power, and a rge assembly of mages, but also lifeforce," said Aria. "Arctulus hypothesized that turning people into immortal living stone would provide an almost permanent source of lifeforce. He needed near fifty victims to turn to stone and the castle's whole complement of mages to cast the spell."

  "Including you?" asked Emily, looking Aria directly in the eye.

  "Yes," Aria said, looking away. "I... I helped. I was so... so angry with the castle's defenders... but I didn't go all the way! It was Jivaro, really, who stopped me. His heartbroken look of betrayal, etched in stone. I... I broke ranks with the other mages, mid-ritual."

  Thaddeus and Althea gasped in unison. "To leave a ritual of that power incomplete would have unimaginable consequences."

  Aria looked down at her stone feet. "Most of the other mages didn't make it. The magic got out of control and... well, I wish that it was still unimaginable for me."

  "What happened next?" asked Emily.

  "Arctulus survived. But he was furious. Before I could process any of what happened, while I was still watching my fellow mages fall, screaming and writhing in pain, all because of me, he turned the spell at me. I was petrified instantly."

  "I am surprised it was only that," said Althea.

  "The spell was out of control," Aria replied. "Much of it had already diffused once Arctulus realized what had happened. And, of course, much of the magical energy had gone back into the other mages, bursting their hearts. But I don't know anything of what happened after I was hit with the petrifying bst. When I woke up, I was standing in Castle Elid's dispy hall, unable to move, and one hundred years had already passed."

  Aria was clearly trying very hard to maintain a neutral expression, and a clear, dispassionate tone, but it was clear that telling her story had caused to mentally relive it. Emily scooted closer to her and pced an arm around her shoulders.

  "Very curious," said Althea, a strange expression on her face. "That casts a different light on the events at Castle Elid so long ago. Arctulus was eager for us to believe that his spell had worked fwlessly, and that he had cast it all on his own. But he died not long after those events, and I suspect that this had much to do with it."

  "Then there is one life, at least, which I do not regret taking," Aria said coldly.

  "From what you've told me, I believe that your actions may have served to weaken the curse." Althea put a hand to her chin. "Not by very much, but perhaps by just enough."

  "That is cold comfort to me, beside the anguished faces of my friends. They were wrong, of course, but so was I. Perhaps you are correct that I weakened the curse, but had I refused to participate, it never would have been cast in the first pce."

  Emily didn't know what to say to her friend, or how to feel, so she just rubbed her back a few times, wishing she had pressed Aria for this story sooner. To learn it only now, in the company of absolute strangers, felt wrong.

  "As a lifelong student of time magic, I know not to dwell overly on what has been," Althea said. "The past can inform our actions in the present, but only in the present can we take those actions. My concern now lies with lifting what remains of this curse."

  "How do we do that?" asked Emily.

  "The curse Arctulus wove is deeply entwined with the Stoneshell itself. To break it, we must perform a ritual of restoration, a harmonizing of ancient magic and potent elements."

  Emily leaned forward, her gaze fixed on the Abbess. She had come so far, faced so much, all for this—to break the curse, to free Aria and the other statues from their stone prisons. "What kind of ritual?" she asked, her voice hushed with anticipation.

  Althea nodded, her expression turning somber. "The ritual requires three key ingredients," she expined. She gestured towards a worn tome resting on one of the tables. Thaddeus hurried to pick it up, carefully pcing it before Althea. The Abbess opened the book, revealing pages filled with intricate diagrams and spidery writing.

  "The first ingredient," Althea said, tracing a line of text with her finger, "is a shard of True Reflection, found only in the heart of Shimmerwood Forest." She looked up at Emily, her gaze intense. "The Shimmerwood is a pce of illusions, Emily, where light pys tricks on the eye and reality itself seems fluid. To retrieve the shard, you will need to see past the deceptions and discern the true reflection from countless counterfeits."

  "I always thought Shimmerwood was a story Grandma made up to scare me," said Talyndra. "To find out that it's real is kind of... exciting."

  Althea raised an eyebrow at Talyndra's words before turning back to the book and tracing another line of text. "The second ingredient," she continued, "is a vial of Azure Essence, the purest form of the pigment used to create the legendary sky-blue paints of the Azure Coast."

  "The Azure Coast?" Emily echoed. "Where is that?"

  Dorian spoke up. "It's a treacherous journey, far to the south. A perilous voyage even under the best of circumstances."

  The Abbess turned back to the book, her finger hovering over a final passage. "And the third ingredient," she said, her voice taking on a grave tone, "is the most elusive of all. It is called the Heartfme, a fragment of solidified fire said to burn with the intensity of a thousand suns."

  Emily shivered involuntarily. Unlike the other two, this ingredient felt dangerous.

  "Where do we find this... Heartfme?" Emily asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Althea closed the book slowly, her gaze fixed on Emily. "The Heartfme," she said, "lies dormant within the Crucible, an ancient volcano hidden deep within the Cinder Wastes. It is a pce where fires burn eternally and all else turns to ash."

  "The Stoneshell will protect Emily from the heat, and I will feel nothing through my stone skin," said Aria.

  The sides of Althea's eyes crinkled up with her smile. "It seems that each of you has chosen a journey. Emily, of course, must undertake all three."

  "Why?" asked Talyndra. "Surely it would be quicker if we split up and each gathered one? I could go to Shimmerwood, Dorian with the Azure Coast, and Aria could go with Emily to this volcano pce. Then we all meet back here with our ingredients and break the curse!"

  "No," said Aria. "We cannot split up. These are all dangerous pces, and all will require long and arduous journeys to reach them. I will not abandon Emily on any of them. But I understand, Dorian and Talyndra, if such a prolonged quest proves too much to ask of you. Emily, I—"

  But the rest of Aria's words caught in her throat as she looked into Emily's eyes. "I—I don't know if I can ask all of this, even from you."

  Emily smiled. "I made a promise to you, Aria, didn't I? I think that I was brought here to help you and the other statues, to break this curse. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure that happens." She gnced nervously over at the prophecy in the stained gss window. "I think... I think that's the only way I'll ever be able to return home."

  "It is a noble thing you do, Emily," said Althea. "Arctulus was not the only mage to use the Stoneshell's enormous magical capacity for evil. Over the centuries, many others have tainted it with their own twisted spells. By completing this ritual and fulfilling the prophecy, you will end all of that, restoring the pendant to what it was in Evangeline's time."

  Emily gnced down at the pendant resting serenely against her chest. What other curses did it py a part in?

  "Now, to return to the matter of ingredients," Althea said sternly. "Aria, I understand your perspective. But you have failed to take into account the Stoneshell's power of teleportation. Each of the ingredients lies at an intersection of leylines, close to our three sister abbeys, G, Tiedavon and Eyri. In each of these abbeys, as in our own, an eternal Stoneshell fme is nurtured, allowing instant passage for the Stoneshell Bearer and a single companion. Taking this into account, Talyndra's pn is clearly superior."

  Emily's jaw dropped. "Wait, what? I can... teleport?!" Eyes wide, she shot a bewildered gnce at Aria, who appeared just as surprised.

  "The Stoneshell Bearer can travel, at will, to any currently burning fire originally produced by the Stoneshell itself. There are few of these left in the world since Evangeline's disappearance, but many generations of monks have toiled to keep the ones in our abbeys burning. Each was first lit by Evangeline herself."

  Talyndra jumped to her feet at once, exciming, "Emily, you have to try this!"