Casper watches as the world is consumed.

The dark star roars overhead, sucking in the light of the moon and every other star around it.

Greedy

Hungry

The end of all things.

The star vibrates the very earth underfoot, shatters the skies, kills the heavens, sunders the hells and bathes in the destruction of it all.

Casper is alone, watching the world end from atop the hill near his village. The mountains rise to meet the star, which drips with ink that turns all it touches into nothing.

The star consumes even him, sapping his strength, stripping him of his breath, his energy, his everything.

Casper walks down the hill, trying to tune out the deafening sound of the star, of the stone as it is torn from the ground, the air as it’s sucked from the sky to become one with nothing at all.

His eyes trace the familiar shapes, imagining the figures who used to live there dance and play and walk before the bricks that built the place he loved are swallowed whole by the ink.

Every inch of Casper body tingles, as the color is sucked from what little remains. First the violets and blues, then greens, then yellow, then orange, leaving the sky a full red, surrounded by buildings of blacks and grays, rolling hills of ashen grass and dying trees turned ghostly white.

His own body appears to be a patchwork of black and white, as if he was drawn by a shaky hand using blotches of black ink, sketched in some crude approximation of a man.

He is without detail, every shifting, undefined yet holding a shape that resembles what he believes he used to be.

Casper stands perfectly still beneath the star he was born under, and waits to be brought into it along with the rest of everything around him.

His feet lift from the ground as it rises from beneath him, replaced with void space. Casper sighs, as he feels the pressure of the star engulf him, surround him, consume him…

But not fully…

The star fights against his body, a body he willingly tries to give. It eats its way through his chest, down the very marrow of his bones and yet still he is alive, conscious and unwilling to vanish.

He sits there for a time, nearly gone, disapparated in the void, but not quite gone.

The star is the end of all things, but it too bore him. The star is very much a part of him, as he is a part of it.

To be born, just to die seemed an awfully depressing thing, Casper thought.

Now was a good time to think, what better time in fact? At the end of it all was the best possible place to consider all that could have been, and what now will never be.

If the star birthed him, why did it try to kill him? Wasn’t it cruel for a mother to kill her own son? A father to kill his own daughter?

Of course, comparing the star to a parent was in part one of his failures. It was a force, not a person. It was conscious so much as it had will, but it had no feelings, no thoughts, only a path and that path was forward, forward towards the end.

Once Casper could no longer continue, of course it would seek to devour him, use him, take him. It would drain his strength, to feed off the corpse. Nothing to waste. Once every 20 years was a long time, and surely not even celestial bodies could afford to be wasteful.

When the mark is used; the star is used, his mind and body and soul seek to consume too. It always has, but what is he meant to consume?

When he channels the star, calls upon its power in the dead of night to fuel his strength, what is that other than the consumption of its being?

What are the hunters but bastardized fragments of the star itself? Pieces, warped and changed to kill him.

They consume him, as he consumes the star, as the star consumes him now.

It was a cycle, but who determined in which direction the cycle flowed? If the star could devour him, in spite of the fact that he in part devoured the star, why would he not then be able to devour the hunters, who also devoured him?

It was worth a try, it’s not as though he had any other option.

A taste then, a nibble, a fraction of a fraction, to see if it was possible?

Casper's body opens, his mind and soul crack open like a fissure, no, a fire. A little ember catching on a twig.

Casper’s fire grows, as it burns, feeds. The flames rise within him, the black ink claws and bites and scratches its way out, bigger, more, stronger.

Yes… this would do nicely.

Casper's eyes open, to see only black, and pressure all around him. He is consumed, surrounded by the membrane of the beast, the beast that is power. His power, his fuel.

Rage, all consuming flows through Casper in a torrent. Growing and building faster than he can comprehend.

This monster thinks to consume him? Him?

This hunter seeks to devour him? Use him?

Light streams in from somewhere beyond, gold and illuminating.

Casper sees his marrow grow bone, watches as the bone grows stronger, as the muscle builds around them snapping into their places like ropes around the pillars of his being. Casper watches as the hunter is devoured, used to rebuild himself, used to strengthen him.

The air vibrates, the hunter screams, and Casper pulls himself from the belly of the beast as it flows into him, faster and faster, until his skin covers his muscles and his veins.

Air flows through the cavernous space made more cavernous as Casper feeds. Color leaves the hunter, violets and blues, yellows and oranges and reds.

The hunter collapses from the inside, as it turns to strands of ink in space, all flowing towards the nexus of power that is Casper, filling him, strengthening him, turning his skin as dark as the night itself until he is nothing more than an all consuming void in space.

Greedy

Hungry

All consuming

The end of all things.

Light explodes around him, light from beyond the body of the hunter as the shell of its being collapses in on itself, devoured by Casper who breathes a breath that shakes the ocean floor, who takes a step, and rips apart the group upon which he walks.

When the hunter is gone, his body shifts for something more to consume. His entire being yearns for more, hungers for more, needs more.

A sliver of power, a fraction of his yet present and pure, like a drop from a fresh spring flashes across his vision.

He couldn’t see shapes, he couldn’t see figures. Only flashes of light, that which was power and that which was not. That which could be consumed, and that which could be destroyed.

Casper steps towards the mote, and the earth rumbles in protest.

A voice screams, shouts, but the sound too is eaten. Every inch of him vibrates with strength, every cell in his body impossibly strong.

“Don’t! We’ve come too damn far!” someone shouts, a voice some far away part of him recognizes.

The world is bathed in golden light, golden light that is swallowed whole, reduced to the blaze of a flickering candle.

He tries to consume it, devouring the last bit of power to become his own but can’t. Something in him fights it, his body down to the marrow of his bones is consumed by the strength of the star yet a piece of him fights, refuses to vanish.

A warm hand rests against his face, warmth that is eaten as quickly as it is provided, turned cold and fragile at his touch.

“Casper… come back to me, please” A voice calls, familiar was well, desperate, pleading, begging. It hurts him to hear it, but that voice too is swallowed

Casper fights against the ink, fights against the star as it consumes the world around him.

“I am here, it’s alright, you are safe now…”

He screams, and feels the mote of power shift away, the hand leaves, terrified of him, he hates how scared it is.

Casper rips his hands through his head, his hair, trying to pull at his brain, to free it from the mess, free it from the chaos.

“Get - away!” he shouts, his voice sending the air around him quaking

He doesn’t want to hurt it, but he knows he will, he knows he will consume it too if it gets too close.

“Casper~” her whisper sends a shiver through his body, disrupting the roar, stopping the draw of power for a moment.

“Please - I don’t want - to hurt - you.” His voice echoes, closer now somehow.

“You won’t hurt me. I am like you. Let me help you.”

The ink scatters, his vision clears for only a second, a second long enough to see the shape of her slender body, feel the warmth of her hand return to his cheek, the soft rise and fall of her terrified breath, the incredible length of her pitch black hair.

Rathiel must have healed her, but how? Where was the celestial? did he kill him? His mind struggles to work through reason as everything else fights to release control over the primal, monstrous instincts ravaging him.

“Please….” Casper begs, every muscle in his body, every vessel under his skin, every tendon fights the urge to devour her entirely.

“Casper… I want you to take me.”

Another shiver, a pulse, the world returns long enough to see her bare shoulder against his chest, her cheek resting on his collar bone, her delicate hand tracing the powerful lines of pitch black, void like skin.

The urge to consume her is replaced in nearly an instant, with a different urge, one that scares Casper even more.

His breathing quickens, as the power begins to fluctuate around him. Like moments in time suspended. A painting he can only see in stuttered broken pieces as the star radiates from every pore. Flashes of uncontrollable power erupt from him as everything in his being tries to focus on the woman before him.

To consume her, to use her, to save her, to devour her.

“Engee, I don’t know what I will do!” Casper begs, as he feels the muscles in his fingers fight the tendons as they try to reach for her, to take her.

She shakes her head, letting her curtain of ebony hair shift like a silken sheet around both their bodies. “Casper~” She moans his name, her voice like a song, written just for him.

He didn’t know why. He didn’t understand. This effect she had on him scared Casper. Thrice now she calmed him from what Casper thought to be the very edge, twice she had been with him, released him, helped him. And once they had talked about why the mark would want this…

“Please Engee.”

“The star will either consume me, or you will take me.” She says softly, speaking the works into his very heart. “I want you to take me Casper. Release the mark. Release its hold, let it out. Give it to me~” She begs him, pleads with him. Her voice hungry and eager and utterly dizzying.

Casper channels the mark, though its power is uncontrollable within him now, violent, unpredictable. He struggles to see the future and tries to find the way out, but instead Casper finds himself watching infinite time unfold in front of him, in where there are only two worlds.

The world where he denies her, where he fights his urge, and the star returns to consume everything. Or the world he accepts her, releases the star, shares the power, shares the burden, and in that embrace they live.

Were those truly the only options before him? Or was that only what the star wanted him to see? The star wanted Engee, her electric pull towards him was undeniable. Her everything enticed Casper beyond words, because of the mark.

“We can fight this!”

“I don’t want to fight this~” Engee’s voice fills him like milk and honey, his mind goes white, his body floods with the tingling buzz of euphoria.

Casper is about to protest again, extending his mind to find another way, he didn’t want to use her, he didn’t want to treat her like a tool.

Her hands wrap around Casper's head, she is too weak to move him against his will, so he follows her guidance, and lowers his head.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Her sweet breath smells of wildflowers and lust, her pitch black eyes the same shade of nothing as all of the rest of him. In that empty voice, he sees her.

Engee’s lips part, her mouth edges closer, closer, until their lips touch, and wrap around each other fully.

Her tongue explores his mouth, his tongue fights against hers. Far, far too powerful. He could break her with a single breath…

Casper fights it, tries to pull away but the mark pulls him back. Engee's pulls him back. Her hands tangled in him, her breath heavy. He eyes begging, pleading with him to stay.

She… wanted to be used…

Casper's breath quickens as her bare body presses into his. He falls to the ground, his back landing against stone, his eyes searching beyond the mass of her hair to see more stone above him.

Where the hell was he? He wanted to ask, but every question, every thought ejects itself from his brain the moment he is reminded of her weight on him. Her nails trace his scalp through his hair, grab at his shoulders as they kiss.

His mind was a mess, indiscernible, unreadable, unpredictable. He was so terribly lost and confused, but she was his anchor. Her delicate bones and tender skin and silken hair were a beacon in the frenzy, a lighthouse in the void of his mind.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Casper breaths again, the words too strong. The air from his mouth nearly blows her away, lifts her from his body, sends stones falling from the ceiling above. He has to reach out and catch her, gentle, fighting the strength his body holds, trying to not to break her.

“Pleasure shared is doubled, pain shared is halved.” Engee whispers, resting her body on top of his, before shifting to the side, laying on the broken earth next to him. “Share with me your power, so that I might be used, and use me, so that your pain may be removed.”

“I don’t want to use you…” Casper whispers, his eyes searching, his body aching, everything radiating more than he knew to comprehend.

“So moral, so caring. My words alone can give you pause even in this state? I am honored to be thought of so highly by you.” Her hand rests gently on his chest. Each breath nearly breaks every bone in her hand.

“I care for you, I feel for you… I have known you for nearly no time at all and yet every part of me craves you.”

“The mark is power, the mark is nature. It is your nature to want me, and mine to want you. We were made for each other you know.”

“I… don’t know, I don’t know anything. Anything other than that I don't want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want you to hurt me Casper, I want you to take me~” she purrs. “I want you to use me. Please… it would be my greatest pleasure.”

Her eyes beg him, her scent demands him, her tongue yearns for him.

“To release the mark… it is practical.” Casper says, shifting his naked body over hers, watching her lay there, feel her as she brings her legs around his hips, and her hands to rejoin their place in his hair.

“Practical, yes…” Engee smiles, a smile that shatters his mind entirely.

He can’t take it any more, he can’t resist or restrain, and so he does what Engee wants him to do, what the mark wants him to do, what he wants to do.

As gently as he can, Casper guides himself into her, slowly, fractions at a time, lost in the feeling of her body as she begins to take him.

His tip disappears inside, sliding easily for the wetness between her legs. He breaths out slowly, fighting the urge to ravage her, an urge he doesn’t have to fight for very long.

Engee slams her hips into him, squeezing his hips with her legs and driving his full length deep inside her in an instant.

Casper’s vision fills with stars as blinding euphoria wracks his body.

His muscles spasm as she takes him, his body tenses and before he can even think to stop himself he orgasms.

Engee moans as his seed fills her, spills from her, sends her to a writhing mess of limbs desperately grabbing at any part of him as he finishes.

But his body isn’t satisfied, the mark isn’t satisfied. He feels himself regenerate, the pressure build once more and his stamina returns as quickly as it left.

Casper is too stunned to move, too lost in the pleasure, but Engee becomes greedy.

She lowers herself, and drives her hips into him again, working his length in and out with hungry aggression, a primal need, an insatiable apatite for Casper and Casper alone.

The pleasure is all consuming, but he battles against his desire to let himself drift in the pleasure.

Casper bares down on her, taking control.

Engee’s body reinforces itself, his mark feeding hers, allowing her to strengthen her muscles and skin and bones. Strength that is necessary as Casper lets himself lose just a little control.

Casper slams her into the ground, smiling with satisfaction as the earth cracks below them. Planting on hand under her back and arching her, his other on her hips he uses her like a toy.

Engee gasps as Casper pumps himself deeper and deeper into her, slamming his body against hers with a reverberating slap that sends dust falling down on them from the rock above.

“Ohh by the fates~” she moans, her voice nearly lost over the sound of their animalistic mating.

Casper slides himself into her several more times, before pulling himself free and watching as she struggles to catch her breath, and scrambles to make him re-enter her.

Casper spins Engee over, forcing her face and chest into the ground, while bringing her ass into the air.

“Ready?” Casper pants, his own breath coming in ragged, rapid rhythms.

“Give it to me~” Engee begs, and Casper obliges.

He grinds himself into her from behind, using her hips to force her back and forth around his length, her insides gripping at him, trying to get him to remain inside of her with every thrust.

The ground cracks and shatters as Engee is driven deeper and deeper into it, until Casper has to pick her entire body up, swing her around, throw her on her back in a different direction to continue, less they end up creating a crater.

Engee’s words become nothing more that nonsensical moans. His own attempts to talk to her reduced to grunts.

She feels incredible, her enhanced body struggle to keep up with him just enough to send his mind into a blurry whirl of heavenly pleasure and satisfy the marks desire to take her, break her, and consume her.

Casper feels the pressure mounting inside of him, his body wanting to finish but his logical mind realizing that might be a very bad decision. He had already finishes inside her once, and that was bad enough.

Casper moves to pull himself free, but Engee doesn’t let him. Instead she brings her leg around Casper's neck and slams him into the ground, sending the cave shaking around them.

“Engee!~” Casper moans, but she doesn’t listen, not as she mounts him from above and bounces her lower body up and down around his cock, this time sending him deeper and deeper into the ground that shatters around them at her movements.

Casper fights her, forces her off of him, but she holds on.

Casper throws himself up off the ground but Engee remains even as he slams her back into the rock wall, sending a cascade of stone falling around them.

“Cum inside me again~!” Engee begs, her nails now raking across his back as he pins her to the wall and continues to fuck her, her legs equally responsible for his continues thrusts as she pulls him deeper inside.

Casper’s mind is a blur, everything lost as some distant part of him tries to pull away again, but Engee locks her legs around him as he spasms a second time.

Engee’s eyes roll into the back of her head as she uses all of her strength to hold Casper there.

His body feels lighter than air, the strength leaving him as any thoughts in his mind are ejected along with his semen.

Engee pushes off the wall and drives Casper into the ground, and despite the fact that his body continues to flex as he spills himself into her depths, she doesn’t stop.

“More more more~” Engee demands, and bounces up and down on his length, spinning around so that her back faces him.

Casper watches in a daze as the muscles of her thin body flex and work as she rides him, each time her ass connects to his pelvis the walls shake and ceiling showers them in more stone.

He regenerates once more, but he is unable to feel the pressure build for long as she squeezes him, milks him, utterly and fully takes him.

He can feel the walls of her flexing from orgasm, strangling his manhood as if it knew Engee’s will and needed to suck him totally dry.

Casper brings his hands up to her hips again as she drives her body down on top of him again and again and again until he bursts yet another time.

By now their bodies are both saturated. the sticky orgasm from both of their bodies coating them, yet still she continues, an unstoppable force content on draining him entirely.

Casper wouldn’t let her win though.

Casper grabs her by the throat and forces her backwards, slamming her back into his stomach, lost in her screaming moans as their faces touch.

Casper raises his hips and pumps himself into her on the ground, watching as her legs go limp and fall to either side of him.

He gently wraps his hand around her her throat, feels everything in her squeeze as the pleasure wracks her body in a continuous orgasm.

Her breathing becomes wild, everything moving and spasming as Casper thrusts, letting himself out nearly to the tip before pushing his fell length into her, feeling his head touch the deepest parts of her, watching in satisfaction as he can see his own length move and bulge from her stomach.

“Ca-cas- cass~!” Engee tries to say his name but its lost, lost in the wet slap of their saturated bodies, in the echoing, deafening collision of their sexes, in the sound of fissures opening and rocks falling.

Casper feels her finish, feels her love spray forth to saturate the ground around them, yet he doesn’t stop. He keeps driving himself into her as her insides flex and strain against his length.

Her body flails, going nearly limp as he finishes once more deep inside her, his body shuddering in time with her own until he has nothing left to give.

His lags collapse and his cock spills out of her, spurting a few more times onto her stomach, before Engee fumbles around with his length and shoves it back inside, sending blinding white light through Caper's vision as she takes every last drop of his seed.

Everything feels as if he was drunk.

The world spins, his body is fuzzy and warm and utterly exhausted.

Engee continues to rest on top of him, her back on his chest. Their sexes still connected even as her breathing finally slows from the end of her orgasm.

“What... what did we just do?” Casper asks, the feeling of the marks hold on him finally releasing enough to recognize the consequences of everything that just happened.

“Something we should have done a while ago. Engee says, her hand reaching back to caress Casper's cheek.

“Where the hell are we?” Casper ends up asking instead, his mind flooding with the remnants of euphoria and a creeping, pressing anxiety and guilt.

“A cave, deep below the ocean, it’s lair.” Engee offers, finally sitting upright. She raises and lowers her hips, nearly making Casper pass out as he once more slides inside of her.

She wiggles once, and then lifts her ass off of him. Standing above him.

Casper watches as she drips between her legs and onto the ground. Turning, she looks down to him with a great deal of satisfaction and offers a hand to him.

Casper takes it and looks around for the first time since arriving here.

They were in a sizable cave. Nearly 30 feet tall and well over 60 feet in diameter. It was pitch black, though the mark allowed him to see regardless.

With a breath, Casper assess the damage they cause, of which there was quite a substantial amount.

The walls of the cave are cracked, hundreds of stones fell from the ceiling into the ground, some falling to the several craters they had created that now will with a faint amount of water from the larger underground “lake” that occupies most of the cave’s center.

“So... you are back with us again?” Rathiel asks tentatively.

Casper whips around to see the celestial sitting naked on a collection of rocks at the opposite end of the cave across the water.

Casper’s face suddenly turns bright red as he realizes that Rathiel would have seen the entire thing... and it didn’t help that all three of them were still very naked, without a single fragment of clothes in sight.

“I told you I could bring him back.” Engee offers, unbothered by her nude state.

“I’m glad I trusted you.” Rathiel jumps from his side of the water to Casper's, landing a few feet from him.

Despite everything that had just happened, he found himself a little jealous of Rathiel’s body. While Casper might be considered a bit more on the “bulky” side, with the kind of muscle a laborer would have, Rathiel looked the very picture of an ancient god, each muscle defined in his perfect skin.

“Ahem.” Rathiel coughs, and Casper realizes he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding his observations.

“Sorry.”

“It’s no matter. I am glad to see you are back in your own mind. You worried me there for a second.” Rathiel offers a sad smile.

“I... thought I felt your energy, what happened?” Casper asks.

“You consumed the Hunter, a feat myself nor Engee though was possible. We were almost dead. With the Hunter dead and gone I was able to call upon my god to heal myself and Engee moments before you tried to kill me.” Rathiel admits sheepishly.

“By the fates Rathiel I am so sorry.” Casper offers, his heart sinking at the realization that he had lost control enough to hurt the man, the man who had been nothing but kind to him and his people.

“I forgive you my friend. It was a dangerous gambit, but well worth the risk. The options were we all died in there, or you saved yourself. I trust you would have regretted killing me, had that fate come to pass, and you would have learned to control that outburst of power in light of your failure, and in doing so would have progressed your mission to better the world.”

Casper feels himself nearly on the brink of tears at the mans words. He would hug him were he not naked.

“Engee told me she could bring you back to us, and she did... granted the... ah, the method was unexpected but the results speak for themselves.” Rathiel chuckles uncomfortably.

“Sex wasn’t necessary to bring him back, he was already back before we began, but I know the mark would be dangerous if it didn’t get it’s release... besides, Sharing your power with me helped take the edge off as it were. Casper would have accidently broken the ship if he tried to board it in that state.” Engee explains casually.

“It.... wasn’t necessary?”

“No, do you regret it?” Engee asks.

“I think I regret Rathiel seeing it.” Casper notes with a hint of embarrassment.

“I'm sure Rathiel didn’t mind.” Engee smiles.

“No, I didn’t. It was for the greater good.” the celestial shrugs, though bares a strange weight on his perfect shoulders as he does so.

“It was practical.” Engee adds.

“Right...” Casper runs his hands through his hair, and looks to the water. “Lets wash up, and then we can think about how the hell we are meant to get out of here.”

“Agreed.” Engee nods, and follows Casper into the ice cold water while Rathiel cautiously steps over the puddles left behind, and begins to investigate the walls of the cave.

The cool ocean begins to steam slightly as the residual heat radiating off of Casper’s body is lost to the water.

His eyes follow Engee’s movements as she joins him, lowering herself in, causing even more steam to rise.

He tries to turn away, some itching guilt still tickling its way through his mind. He knew the star wanted them to do that, and he had some idea why now...

Engee makes her way closer to Casper, resting a hand on his bare back as he washes.

“You look like you feel guilty... more so than Rathiel seeing us I mean.” Engee asks, her voice low and calm.

“The star wants you to bear my child I think... every 20 years it appears right? The timing would match.” Casper responds, still trying to process it all.

Engee nods, confirming his suspicions. “Do... you not want me to bare your child?”

“No no, it isn’t that. I think some part of me has always wanted to be a father, I just... I didn’t think it would be so soon. With how strong the pull was towards you, and how much I ah, finished, the chances of nothing happening are slim I would think.”

“It was the reasonable thing to do. Out of the options available, I am glad you chose to be with me as oppose to consume me.” Engee says perhaps a little too casually.

“I'm glad as well, but is this something you want?”

“Desperately so...” Engee confirms, lowering her head slightly. “To bring and raise a marked child into this world, the world you will create, surrounded by the people you love. It is the best fate i could have hopped for.”

“You sound so confident, your visions of the future show you something like that?”

“I do not need to look into the future to see that being with you was the right choice, or to know that you will some day be a good father, or that you will create a place for the people you love. Your dream was to build a town, yes?”

“Yea, that's right.” Casper confirms, spinning Engee around to wash her back.

“You are a man who charges towards their goals no matter what. I have no doubt you will succeed. Admittedly I am a little scared. Scared to bare a child, to give birth, to raise someone made of two marked, born under the star, but I’ve known that was my life’s purpose since meeting you.”

“Feels a little shallow doesn’t it? Your purpose for being to bare my kid? Don’t you have any aspirations of your own? No offense of course...”

“Non taken. And yes, I do have aspirations. I aspire to raise a child to be someone kind and good in a world full of evil. To help forge a champion to carry on our dreams of freedom. My memories are a blur, my past is a dream, I am a marked, but I am also yours. I dare say my goals are not shallow, because these are the things I truthfully and honestly want. I will save the grandeur for the other women. Their dreams are larger than mine.”

“Well, don’t sell yourself short... raising our child would be a big task. I was quite the rambunctious little shit when I was young.”

Engee giggles to herself and shakes her head, running her fingers through her long black hair.

“It is always possible I won’t bare your child. Perhaps your infatuation with me and mine with you is more a testament to our needs than the will of the star.”

“I think it’s probably some combination of the two.”

“You should probably find a way to explain this to the others. It will be a little while before I begin to show, assuming I do end up pregnant. They will have questions.”

“Shit, you’re right.” Casper sighs. “Damn I didn’t even think of that...”

“My suggestion to you would be this. They all seek to be with you already, you wish to be with them. Move the process along. There is only so much dilly dallying a person can take before any lingering interest is lost. Follow your heart Casper. Do what you know you want to do, what they want to do. Everyone is more than aware of it by now, it’s time to finally act.”

“Easier said than done in fairness, but you’re right. We have all been top toeing around it for too damn long.”

“If it helps. My visions of the future show this all going very well for us. All of us.”

“That doesn’t give me some hope.” Casper smiles, and brings himself to rise from the water, holding out a hand for Engee to take as he lifts her from the pool and back onto solid ground.

“However, that is under the condition we escape from here in one piece, which currently appears to me to be about a fifty percent chance.

“Fifty percent?” Casper watches as Rathiel examines a fissure in the stone, one of a dozen created from his and Engee’s little bout. “I can work with fifty percent.”

As Rathiel touches one fissure, the cave rumbles violently, sending a cascade of stone down around them, and water dripping from somewhere above.

“Probably....”