It took her a while to get the concept of a globe, a planet across to him. When she did, Ser Dalius was astounded. And disbelieving.

“Impossible.”

“It is! We’ve left our planet! The Earth isn’t flat, Dalius. And your world…”

She actually had a stock photo of Earth on her iPhone as one of the backgrounds. Ser Dalius stared at it.

It was too much to process and he shook his head, closing his eyes.

“I might concede your planet, with all its strangeness, somehow became round. But this world—is flat, Miss Cara. No one could measure metrics with your methods.”

“Oh really? How do you know it’s flat?”

He gave her a long look.

“Because the end of the world is a place. The sea turns into an abyss. And no one who falls over the edge ever returns. Not [Archmages]. No Dragon has survived. No brave [Captain].”

Cara’s cocky smile vanished. She looked at Ser Dalius. And she realized if he could not fathom her planet of a world…perhaps she was applying physics where they did not exist. Or existed differently.

“Are you sure?”

“They call it The Last Tide, Miss Cara. I have heard experienced [Captains] speak of it. The abyss beyond terrifies to hear of it. Sometimes…things come from that place beyond. The world ends. I would rather walk into hell, than go beyond the world’s end.”

“Hell? But you said the gods are dead.”

She looked around, shivering. Ser Dalius glanced at her.

“Perhaps we mean different things. The gods are dead. That is a fact. But hell? I have walked on hell once, Miss Cara.”

The [Singer] looked at him.

“What is hell to you, Dalius?”

“Rhir. Smallest and last of the five continents. It is hell. No one lives there. And the things that come from Rhir’s hell terrify me even in death.”

She shuddered. In the daylight, Cara might have dared to ask more. But she had not the nerve in the tomb. Not with her bandaged wounds. She changed the subject, and Ser Dalius gratefully latched onto a discussion of metallurgy.

“Of course we have steel. I don’t know your ‘aluminum’, but the Dwarves have all kinds of metals. Do you know mithril?”

“M-mithril? I’ve heard of it. Tell me about that.”

They kept talking, walking. And all too soon—

They were at the tomb’s entrance.

——

“The seals are still in place.”

Ser Dalius pointed at the massive, stone doors. Cara said nothing. She just stared up.

And up. And up a bit longer.

Here they were. Suddenly, without warning. It came upon her so fast it felt like one second she was passing through the endless graves without noticeable change. The next?

They were here. The Tomb of Afiele did not have any change in construction, any markers as it reached the end—or entrance, as the case might be.