hen I stepped through the yellow door to Oz, I found myself in a city of ruins. Massive chunks of debris, slabs of concrete, and piles of iron were everywhere. This place had once been a fine metropolis, but now it was a deserted wasteland. It didn’t look like the Oz from storybooks.

I waved for my friends to take cover. “They’re coming!” I shouted.

The warning came too late. Arian, Alex, and Mauvrey emerged from the Portalscape Portal with twelve men behind him. My friends and I ran around the side of a collapsed apartment building. We jumped through one of the broken windows and bobbed and weaved through its decaying innards. It was dark and extremely creepy, but the antagonists continued their chase. After climbing through several sections of the building, we ducked behind a dusty, glass-covered countertop, which appeared to be the remnants of a kitchen island.

“Kill them all except Crisanta Knight!” I heard Arian call.

The five of us listened avidly to the sound of our enemies’ footsteps. Daniel shot me a look. “Since when do they not want to kill you?” he whispered.

“Mauvrey said they needed me for something,” I whispered back. “That’s why she didn’t kill me in Midveil.”

The footsteps started to recede. My friends and I took that as our cue to carefully keep going. We eased our way through a window in the adjacent room and stepped out into the open. We had about six seconds to take in our surroundings.

“Blue!” Daniel tackled Blue to the ground. An arrow narrowly missed them both and plunged into the wall behind us. I flicked my eyes in the direction from which it’d come. I could see two archers taking aim in a building across the way. I also spotted red and gold shapes sitting on windowsills on the building ledges.

Were those birds?

Two more arrows were fired. Jason ducked one; SJ sidestepped the other. We took off—desperately avoiding additional shots.

“They must have split up,” Jason said as we slid for cover beneath a fallen slab of concrete the size of a dragon’s torso. “Probably figured it would be easier to cross us off their list from different vantage points.”

I searched around for ideas but was not inspired. All I saw was a plump red bird the size of a goose sitting atop a tilted street lamp. It was fully scarlet except for a golden neck pouch that protruded from its chest like an inflated balloon.

“We’re sitting ducks and as a group we’re an easy target,” I said drawing my wandpin and morphing it into a shield. “There’s five of us and fifteen of them. We need to split up to split their focus.”

“Okay, but what’s our endgame?” Jason asked, pulling his axe from its sheath.

“That is,” Daniel said, pointing to a building a half-mile away. Cliffs ringed that side of the ruined city and a tall building leaned against them. The building looked like it had been affected by an explosion at some point, but not enough to cause it to topple. It rested against the cliff at a seventy-degree angle.

“It’s the only building that reaches the top of the cliffs,” Daniel said. “We split up, scale it, and once we’ve made it, SJ blows it down with an explosion portable potion and the antagonists have no way of following us.”

A weird and unexpected sound like a mini sonic boom suddenly pierced the air. It caused everything in the vicinity to quiver.

“What was that?” Blue asked.

“Not sure,” SJ said. “But there is no way we can reach the top of that building with enough lead time. It is too tall. They will shoot us down long before then.”

“No they won’t,” I said. “Because I’m going to distract the biggest threats. Arian wants me for something, and it’s obviously important enough for Mauvrey and Alex to divert their plans. They were supposed to go to Camelot, but they came after me instead. I can distract them and buy you guys time.”

“Crisa, you can’t do that on your own,” Jason protested.

“I can and I will. Because I have a score to settle and I’m fully recharged.” I held up my hand and golden energy sparked around it.

“Behind the concrete!” another voice yelled, distinctly closer.

“We need to move now,” I said.

My friends drew their weapons and braced themselves for the conflict ahead.

“See you at the top,” Blue said to me. She turned her attention to the task at hand and her eyes blazed with fire. “Break.”

We ran free of our cover. Daniel and Blue headed left while SJ bolted straight ahead and Jason went around back. Arrows whizzed through the air in their wake, but my friends moved swiftly. They would need to approach the building from different angles to keep from being shot and not give away our play.

I straightened up and began to walk into the open. I did not run. I did not hide. I strutted out in plain sight. I held my shield tightly in my hand, but I had faith I would not need to use it. They wanted me alive.

“Arian!” I shouted.

My voice echoed off the ruins. I could spot four different archers—two in the building we’d seen before, another in a structure further west, and a third on the fire escape of an apartment complex across from me.

Then I saw Arian. He emerged from beneath the remains of a crumbling, concrete bridge between two buildings. I stepped forward to meet him. He did the same. A moment later, Alex showed himself. He’d heard my call and had climbed out the window of a disheveled storefront. Finally, I saw Mauvrey. She was on the second floor of a wrecked structure. She started moving toward me as well.

It was working. The three leaders of this attack were focused on me, and the same could be said for the four archers in the vicinity. That meant there were only eight antagonists out there with the potential to waylay my friends.

Another mini sonic boom echoed through the city. The dirt trembled beneath my boots as the surrounding area vibrated from the disturbance.

Arian, Alex, and Mauvrey were only forty feet from me now, approaching from different directions. A flock of red birds with golden neck pouches flew across the sky, casting temporary shadows over our confrontation.

Arian and my brother had their swords drawn. Mauvrey had no weapon, but I noticed something different about her. My royal archenemy wore the same outfit as yesterday—shimmery purple jacket, black skinny jeans, high-heeled boots. But now she also donned a pair of bronze-colored fingerless gloves. They caught the light, making me think they were partly made of metal. She wore a belt containing a knife sheath and a small, handheld crossbow like I’d seen Goldilocks use a while back.

I addressed each of them in turn. “Arian. Alex. Princess of Darkness.”

“Long time no see, Knight,” Arian said.

“Did you miss me?”

Alex took another step closer.

“Uh-uh.” I raised my hand and waggled a finger. “Not another move, bro.”

My hand erupted in golden light.

Alex and I locked eyes as I tried to keep my expression even. While I could put on a good poker face, inside I was bursting with anger and sadness at the sight of him. I knew these strong emotions had the potential to make me use my magic to lash out. And despite my current show of power and confidence, I definitely didn’t want that. My glowing hand was a bluff. I hadn’t mentioned this to my friends before we split up, but I wanted to avoid using my magic against Alex and Mauvrey.

Liza consistently warned about the dangers of letting emotion fuel Pure Magic. That’s why I was always supposed to have a clear mind and be fully concentrating when I used it. If I didn’t, I risked losing control.

Having recently crossed the Malice Line, I didn’t want to tempt my power again if I could help it. Which meant I needed to avoid using my powers here. The emotion swelling inside me now was ten times more vindictive than it had been in Alderon, the last time I’d lost control. I could feel the magic itching to assert its dominance and cloud my focus. I had to be strong and hold back. Harnessing my Pure Magic in this state could be as damaging to me as it would be to my enemies.

“What do you want with me?” I asked. I pivoted toward Mauvrey. “You could have killed me yesterday and you didn’t. What could you possibly need me for that would have stopped you?”

“We needed a spare,” Mauvrey replied with a shrug.

“A spare what?”

Arian began to walk toward me again. Alex followed his lead.

“Hey, I said stay put.” My hand flared with more energy—some of it was my doing, but I knew it was more of an instinctive emotional reaction. The feelings I had about seeing my brother again after all he’d done were deep and intense.

“You forget that Alderon is full of witches and warlocks, Knight,” Arian said, unfazed by my threat. “They all have Pure Magic Disease. Which means I know that you’re going to try and avoid using magic when your emotions are too strong. Don’t want to make your heart disintegrate into darkness any faster, do you?”

I wasn’t sure how Arian knew my magic was pure. I didn’t think I’d ever mentioned that. But I realized maybe he didn’t know for certain and only suspected like Lenore did. He was testing for my reaction, and he was near enough now that he saw the change in my expression.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said with a smirk. “Alex, take her down. Mauvrey, give her a shock then tie her up once she’s knocked out. You can keep her in Camelot until we’re sure we don’t need her.”

Arian started to walk away.

“Not gonna fight me yourself, Arian?” I called as Alex and Mauvrey closed in.

“Not today, Knight,” he responded. “I have a Fairy Godmother to find. But I think I’ll kill one or two of your friends first. Not because I have to, but because I deeply want to.”

The anger I’d been holding in snapped. Golden energy shot out of my palm into a pile of rubble across from Arian. The mass of concrete, dirt, and cement shook. The pieces floated off the ground and joined together to form a lumpy, eight-foot-tall creature made of debris.

I didn’t specifically ask for this creature to rise, nor did I give it the direct order to attack, but it seemed I didn’t need to. Like with the incident of the knife I’d almost killed Sooz with, my magic could read the will of my emotion as easily as it could my express commands. If the latter failed to react quick enough or exert enough control, the former took over. The heart outweighed the head.

The rubble monster leapt in Arian’s direction. Arian jumped out of the way to evade the creature’s pummeling fists. The earth shook from its violent impact.

Alex was within striking distance then. He came at me with his sword. I ducked and swooped around his other side, throwing a kick. Alex deflected the kick with his hand, forcing my foot to the left with a powerful thrust. I did not let the move throw me off balance. I spun with it, threw my other boot up, and launched into a spinning back-kick that went straight into his ribs and knocked him to the dirt.

I trotted speedily backward. “Catch me if you can, traitors!” I taunted. Then I pivoted and bolted away.

Arian was occupied with my rubble monster, but Alex and Mauvrey came after me with full force. Transforming my shield into a wand, I made a beeline across the street—maneuvering through the city’s ruins with my pursuers hot on my tail. I sprinted around collapsed structures, through compressed buildings, and in and out of crumbling alleyways.

Eventually I ducked into an alleyway piled with debris. Mini mountains of brick and metal were in my way. A red and gold bird was perched on a windowsill two stories up. As I skidded down the slope of a dismembered piece of wall, the bird ruffled its feathers and unleashed a new level of chaos.

Now I knew where the mini sonic booms were coming from.

The bird stood, elongated its neck, and jerked it in-and-out again in a quick motion. This movement caused the bird’s golden neck sack to deflate and release a sonic boom into the air. The boom crashed into the upper half of the building to my left, smashing the wall to smithereens. The sound also produced an earthquake that made me lose my footing. Sections of wall rained down and I thrust my body away and covered my head, protecting myself.

I couldn’t see Alex and Mauvrey now. They’d probably had to leap back to avoid the boom’s destruction.

I picked up my wand, which had fallen from my grip, and picked up my pace. When I emerged from the alley, I discovered I’d closed about half the distance to the desired cliffside building. A burst of fire drew my attention to a tower a hundred feet away. Several explosions had gone off.

SJ.

She must’ve been firing portable potions at the antagonist archers, but the structure they were in was clearly not structurally sound enough to take the hits. The building began to lean in my direction and was poised to collapse.

I pushed my legs to their maximum speed to outrun it. The building’s shadow consumed me—growing bigger and bigger as it drew closer to impact until—

KER-SMASH!

I was able to clear the crash zone in time, but the collision caused a shockwave that rippled through the rubble. I was launched forward, colliding with a wall of concrete.

Ow . . .

I partially blacked out. I could still hear the sounds of the scene, but my vision was spotty and it felt like everything was moving at the speed of syrup. By the time I regained full consciousness, I saw that the shockwave had not only taken me down, it’d made several smaller structures fall and disturbed a flock of red birds that’d been flying overhead. All seven of them released sonic booms as they darted through taller ruins. Everything shook viciously.

I looked up to see Mauvrey only fifteen feet away. Adrenaline coursed through my body in the nick of time. My nemesis shot out her hand and her metallic glove released a pair of thin, shimmering wires that would have wrapped around my arm had I not moved in that instant. Instead, they bounced off the wall behind me. She closed her fingers around her palm with two rapid pulses and the wires immediately reeled in.

What the what?

“You like?” she said. “They are called trapper gloves. Arian has been training me with them for a long time. They have a lot of applications, for example . . .” Mauvrey shot out her hand as a red bird swooped ten feet overhead. The wires from her trapper gloves sprung out and latched onto the bird. Mauvrey crossed her pointer and middle fingers. The moment she did, a charge of electricity bolted up the wires. The bird smoked like an overcooked hamburger. Then Mauvrey jerked her arm down and slammed the creature into the ground. She released the charred, unconscious bird and whipped the wires back to her glove like a fishing line.

So that’s what Arian meant by “shock her.”

Suddenly Mauvrey was a much greater threat than I’d ever considered.

Shield.

My wand transformed and I blocked the wires that ejected from Mauvrey’s other glove. She moved in closer and mocked me as we fought. “So how is the remodeling going?” she asked. “I hear my castle in Tunderly will reopen soon, but yours may take weeks. I suppose that is the downside of utilizing so much glass in castle construction.”

Spear.

I gritted my teeth and lashed out. She ducked beneath my weapon and weaved to the side. I tried to stab her again, but she evaded me with ease. It only made me angrier. I usually moved faster than my opponents; it was one of my advantages. But Mauvrey was quicker than me. She was light on her feet and moved with a fluidity that I did not know how to counter.

We parried closer to the collapsed building lying in the street. I literally had my back to the crumbling wall, and there was a large, partly shattered window directly behind me. I felt like a sitting duck. These trapper gloves were difficult to evade.

“You know, Crisa,” Mauvrey sneered. “I really must tell you how glad I am things worked out with your brother. I was worried at first when Arian asked me to manipulate him over to our side. I thought it would be hard to change the heart of a hero. But it looks like that coldness and cruelty was inside him all along. He was never the person you thought he was. I simply brought out who he was truly meant to be.”

I wanted to grab Mauvrey by the neck and throttle her like that cave drawing in one of my visions had depicted. I also wanted to give her a good slap.

My magic itched to be released, but I contained the urge to use it. It was bad enough that I’d let some slip while clouded with fury at Arian. Any amount of power I unleashed toward Mauvrey (who I hated in a much more personal way) would be fueled entirely by loathing and vengeance, and I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t risk feeding the dark hunger of my Pure Magic. I would have to beat Mauvrey the old-fashioned way.

Standing ten feet away from me, Mauvrey shot her left glove wires at my legs. I leapt up to avoid them, but, anticipating that, she released her right glove wires at a higher angle. They latched around my left arm like metallic tentacles. She thought she had me, but I wrapped my hand around the wires and yanked with all my might before she could activate the electricity. The force pulled Mauvrey right off her feet and sent her toward me. I redirected her incoming body with my other hand to throw her through the window behind me.

She flew into the building with a brutal thud. The wires grew limp when she hit the ground and I shook them off. I bounded through the window after her, my shadow falling over her body as she groaned. She moved, but barely.

“You brought out who I was really meant to be too, Mauvrey,” I said plainly. “After all, a hero can’t properly rise without the right villain bringing out the best in them.”

I temporarily put my wand back in pin form and grabbed Mauvrey by her golden hair. Then I punched her in the face. Hard.

My nemesis sprawled on the floor, knocked out. I felt a wave of satisfaction flood over me, but also more venom. A punch in the face was too good for Mauvrey, and me giving it to her was not as fulfilling as I thought it would be. She had wronged me more than a simple beating could compensate for.

A scream suddenly pierced the city. It was loud, it was pained, and it was Blue’s. I jumped back through the window and ran toward the cliffs. More sonic booms resonated behind me. I was able to scale a great deal of distance until Alex suddenly emerged. He appeared at an intersection of rusty vehicles and storefronts with smashed windows. Red birds sat on street lamps and upturned carriages throughout the wasteland.

“Crisa.” He eyed my wand.

“Alex.” I eyed his sword. “So is this the part where we fight?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You just want to capture me and take me to Arian.”

“It’s necessary.”

“So is this.” I morphed my wand, twirling it in my hand as it changed so that when my spear elongated I came out swinging. Alex met me head on.

Our weapons collided fiercely. “You can’t beat me—you know that,” Alex said as he struck and I evaded. He and I parried through the debris-laden ground as red birds watched.

I leapt onto a chunk of concrete to get a higher position.

Shield.

Spear.

Shield.

Sword.

Spear.

“You’re weaker than I am,” Alex said. He swung his sword low and I jumped over it, coming onto ground level once more.

“I’m not weak,” I said angrily, clashing my weapon with his. I hooked my left fist. “You are!” The punch landed square on his cheek. For once I had the upper hand and I advanced on my brother with no mercy.

“You were too weak to resist Mauvrey’s manipulation. You were too weak to protect your family. You were too weak to pick the right side!” I thrust all my weight into my staff and rammed him in the chest with the dull end. He tripped, falling back on some rocks. I stood over him. With a swift follow-up kick, I knocked the sword clear out of his hand. It clacked against the ground, out of reach.

A tense moment hung between us.

“So now what?” Alex asked, keeping one eye on me and one on the weapon pointed at his chest. “Are you going to kill me?”

The hardness in my tone and face softened. As furious as I was with Alex, as much as I detested him and everything he’d done, I did not want to hurt him. I couldn’t. I loved him. I hated that I still did, but it was true. And if I sought vengeance on him now, it would cement the rift between us.

Naïve as it may have been, part of me hoped that Mauvrey was wrong. That this wasn’t who my brother was meant to be. He’d been deceived. He’d been tricked. He could come back. After all, he had warned me about Arian last night. Which meant some part of him still cared for me.

“No,” I responded with a sigh. “I’m going to reason with you.”

Wand.

I crouched down and squared him off at a safe distance. “Mauvrey’s mother asked me if I thought she could be saved and I told her I didn’t know. But I want to believe that you still can be, Alex. And this is your chance. Please. Don’t keep working for Arian. Don’t go with Mauvrey to Camelot. You can still change. Be the person I used to admire. Be the person I called my brother and my friend.”

There was a long beat where neither of us moved or said anything. Then two wires curtly whipped around my right arm. I barely realized they were there before an electric shock bolted through them.

“Argh!” My jacket cushioned some of the effect, but the shock definitely hurt. My wand slipped from my hand as I was jolted several feet back into the dirt and wreckage. My entire sleeve was smoking and I felt dazed. Alex rose and collected his sword. A red bird—who clearly did not grasp the gravity of the situation—fluttered over and landed on a piece of cement beside me. It blinked its emerald eyes with disinterest.

Mauvrey’s wires released my arm and reeled back to her trapper gloves. She stood on a big chunk of rubble and looked down while Alex came closer and paused in front of me. For a moment, hope sparked in my heart. He seemed unsure. Then hope was extinguished.

“Hit her again,” he said to Mauvrey. “She needs to be knocked out. Otherwise she’ll keep fighting.”

Mauvrey smiled at me smugly. “You got it, babe.” She raised her hand.

“Get away from her!” SJ’s voice shouted furiously. A lightning portable potion landed at Mauvrey’s feet. Instantly an intense capsule of electricity encased her and she screamed before collapsing to the ground, knocked out by the surge. I didn’t know where SJ was, but I saw my opportunity and took it. I lunged for the red bird and grabbed it by the neck. I hugged it against my chest then squeezed the bird’s throat.

The result was precisely what I’d hoped for. The bird discharged a sonic boom directly at Alex. It was so loud it nearly popped my eardrums, but it propelled Alex off his feet. He flew through the air and collided with a pillar.

I let go of the bird and it shook its feathers irately before flying off.

SJ came into view, as did Jason, both running to my aid. Jason picked up my wand while SJ helped me to my feet. “Thanks,” I said. “You saved me.”

She didn’t respond, nor did she meet my gaze.

“Let’s go. We’re close now,” Jason said.

I removed my smoldering jacket and threw it to the ground. Jason tossed me my wand and we took off running. “Does anyone know what happened to Blue?” I asked. “I heard her scream earlier.”

“No,” Jason said. “But I’m worried. Crisa, can you enchant one of these slabs of concrete and fly us to the top of the cliffs?”

The idea had occurred to me earlier as a means to outrun Arian and Mauvrey, but I didn’t take it for fear of the whole “magic overtaking me via emotion” thing. My heart was even worse off now—freshly devastated by my latest exchange with Alex.

“No good,” SJ objected before I could respond. “Before I ran into the both of you, I took out one of Arian’s men. He was communicating by Mark Two at the time. Arian guessed our play, Crisa. He told all his men to divert their attention to that building. If we fly up there, we will be open targets and completely exposed. Our only chance is to go inside the building and work our way up through the stairs.”

We ducked beneath another fallen bridge. “And if the antagonists are already inside the building?” Jason asked.

We skidded around a sharp turn. The huge cliffs were right in front of us. The enormous building was a staggering, crumbling monster. I saw something in my peripheral vision.

“They’re not,” I said. “They’re right there.” I gestured to four attackers running toward us.

“And there.” SJ pointed at two men drawing their bows from an adjacent building eight stories up. “Crisa!”

“Got it!” I turned my wand to a shield and blocked a set of arrows launched at us. “All right, let’s climb this—”

“And there!” Jason grabbed my arm and pulled me against him. His axe projected its shimmering force field and protected us from arrows fired by men standing on a bridge. Shots evaded, we rushed into the building.

The archers from the adjacent structure were too far off to pursue us on foot, but between the three on the bridge and the four on the ground, we had a seven-man tail. My friends and I had a head start, but this was going to be one heck of a chase.

We dove through the first slanted room of the building—leaping over moldy furniture and broken light fixtures. Eventually we entered a hall. At the end of it we found a staircase. The building was leaning at a seventy-degree angle, so climbing it was awkward, but easier than climbing thirty stories straight up a normal structure I suppose.

Our pursuers entered the stairwell when we were on the seventh floor. Our feet pounded on the steps with a noise like a stampede. It made my adrenaline pump harder—all those hammering footsteps filling my skull and causing the hairs on my arm to stand erect.

Rubble and wreckage littered the stairwell and made it treacherous. But it wasn’t until the twenty-second floor that we reached an impassible problem. There was a gaping hole where the stairs should’ve been. There was no way up. If we were going to continue, we would have to find another way.

“Here!” Jason pushed open the door that connected the stairwell to the hallway. We followed his lead through the mangled corridor. He kicked open another door at the far end and we dashed for a shattered window that led straight to the fire escape.

Jason leapt out, trailed by SJ, then me. We were so high up it was ridiculous. The wind blew my hair back as I stared down at the drop. The fire escape was made of rickety, rusted iron. The edge of the cliff was only eight floors up. We clambered toward it as fast as we could. We managed to ascend three more flights before our enemies appeared on the fire escape. They started to follow us, but then the red birds returned. A whole flock was flying in a V shape like a boomerang. They broke off in different directions and a few veered toward us.

“Incoming!” I shouted.

Three birds released sonic booms. One boom hit the cliffs, spraying rock at us. A second collided with the lower half of the building, causing the structure to buckle. The third blasted into the fire escape between us and our pursuers. Several parts of the fire escape were shaken loose from the building and jutted out to the side. I heard shouts from men plummeting to their doom. The antagonists had been thrown from the building.

SJ lost her balance a few steps above me and fell. I released one hand from the railing and grabbed her, forcefully shoving her back to her feet. “Keep going!” I yelled.

We continued to scale the floors of the building.

Twenty-seven . . .

Twenty-eight . . .

Twenty-nine . . .

The edge of the cliff was within our reach. But the structural damage from the latest burst of sonic booms was not through with us yet. The top half of the building lurched, scraping against the cliffside and preparing to collapse completely.

Jason reached the thirtieth floor and took the leap from the fire escape to the cliff. He made it. SJ went next. Jason grabbed her hand and pulled her in. I scrambled up the steps. The building kept sinking. I prepared to launch myself for the cliff, but the building couldn’t hold out any longer. Its weight pitched the entire structure to the side in one abrupt movement and I fell off. I dropped two stories in half a second, but managed to grab hold of one of the fire escape’s protruding railings.

My heart was in my throat. As I dangled in the open air, I could see the faces of SJ and Jason high above. I saw Daniel too. He’d made it there before us.

They were too far off to help. I had to find a way to help myself. There was only one option. I closed my eyes and shut out all the chaos. Difficult as it was, I forced myself to push away all my feelings of fury and loathing and sadness for Alex and Arian and Mauvrey. I let the calm and the focus in, and channeled my strength and clarity. Concentration overpowered the emotion inside me. With a steady exhale, I opened my eyes and allowed my magic to flow—not hungrily or vindictively, which would put me at risk, but with complete control.

Golden light streamed from my slipping fingers into the metal railing then spread to the fire escape. A moment later the metal gingerly began to move upward. Like a stem growing into a flower, the railing I clung to lifted me up with care until I rose over the cliff. It curved down like a bashful leaf and set me beside my friends before bending back the way it’d come. My friends were stunned.

“That was amazing,” SJ said in awe.

“I’ve been practicing,” I replied. “Where’s Blue?”

“Over there.” Daniel pointed to where Blue was resting beneath a tree. “She got hit pretty hard, but she’ll be okay. SJ,” he said, “bring it down.”

“Gladly.” SJ drew her slingshot and fired six consecutive red portable potions at lower parts of the structure. Explosions boomed. The sound was deafening and the resulting fire cast up an orange and red glow.

The entire building went crashing down, taking its final resting place with the ruins below.