Three figures emerged from the colourful miasma that perpetually covered the Myriad Toxins Desert Area. The early morning sunlight streamed through the mists behind them, turning them into blurry silhouettes that grew sharper and gained definition as they drew closer. A boy and a woman riding on the back of a massive two-headed dog.
It had been a month in the outside world since Lirael’s battle with the Evil Infant and almost two years within Bloodskull. Her Undead Marrow shard had finally fused with her Dungeon and to her pleasant surprise, even given birth to a Core Spirit – the double-headed dog she and Sand were currently employing as their mount.
The reason, Lirael suspected, that the Hellhound had grown so fast was the extra Undead Marrow shard she had harvested from the Lich as well as her action of seeding her Dungeon with a variety of undead to act as catalysts for the shard fusion. As things stood, it had skipped all the stages of its infancy, manifesting directly as a mature spirit that she could summon to participate in her battles.
The canine spirit was an amalgam of bone and rotting flesh. One of its two heads had a helmet of bone covering the top half of its face and orange fires smouldering within the sockets. The other one, in contrast, had a jawbone covering the lower half of its face and frigid blue eyes. It had a bony scorpion tail curving up over its back, dripping a dark, crimson venom from the stinger at its tip. Whenever the blood-venom dripped onto the sand, it would seep into it with a hissing sound, leaving bright red spots in the creature’s wake. Instead of fur, its entire body was covered by reptilian scales in earthy tones ranging from dark browns to muted ochres. It had a gnarly texture with the skin peeling off in several places, exposing the muscles beneath.
Interlocking plates of bone covered its shins and back like armour with two convenient depressions just above the points where the muscles of its forelimbs connected to its shoulders, providing natural seating for its riders.
Shifting a bit to get more comfortable in her bony seat, Lirael said, “After this, we’ll make a quick stop at the Mire Desert Area to gather the Oasis Leeches we need to secure a stable supply of Phlebotomy shards. Then we’ll head home, setting up the spice production chain within the Dungeon on the way. When we get there, I’ll finally be able to introduce you to the family and officially declare you my Champion. The Metropolis is a very different place from the desert. I’m sure you’ll love it.”
“I look forward to it, Mistress,” replied Sand from beside her.
After she had finished guiding the evolution of her Dungeon and all that was left was the long wait till the Undead Marrow shard fused thoroughly, she had awoken from her meditation and set about personally monitoring the Dungeon’s repair and upkeep while also taking a more hands-on approach to Sand’s education. He had displayed exceptional acuity and they had made great progress in his studies in a limited amount of time.
Lirael had noticed that he was much more relaxed around her and her Thralls. Taking it as a sign that he was putting more trust in them, she had tried to encourage this trend.
To increase his sense of belonging further, she had even asked him to give her Core Spirits names. Something she had never felt the need for before. It was a decision she had come to regret immediately, seeing the weird but oddly fitting names he had come up with.
She could wrap her head around the names Grim for the Willow spirit, or Blink for the Void Hummingbird, but why for crying out loud did her Magma Basilisk have to be Danger Noodle? Really, once the boy had become comfortable around her, he had put his childish side on display and taken to the task of naming things with great zeal. That was how, to her eternal mortification, the central pit had become the Ramen Bowl and the tree-cave within the Willow spirit had become Grim’s Gut. Having seen his shining eyes seeking her approval, Lirael hadn’t had the heart to deny him those names, but whenever she thought about how ridiculous they sounded, she felt like crying.
As for the newly formed Core Spirit, Sand had simply decomposed the name of its species, naming the icy head Hel and the fiery one Hound.
Feeling neglected, Hound turned his head back over his shoulder and barked at them, his ragged black tongue lolling out of his mouth. The sudden movement unbalanced the spirit, making it stumble, nearly throwing Lirael and Sand off its back. Irritated, Hel snarled and snapped at her brother, causing Hound to retaliate and the conjoined siblings devolved into civil strife.
Raising a long stick, Sand gave both of them a hard rap on the top of their head, aggravating the strength when it was Hound’s turn to drive the point through that thick skull of his. Both of them stopped fighting with a whine and looked back at him with innocent eyes – as though saying: “The other one started it.” Maybe it was their incompatible elements but the two heads didn’t get along very well.
Chuckling, Lirael reached forward and rubbed the base of their necks through a gap in their bone armour. Schooling her expression into one of solemnity, “Behave,” she admonished sternly.
Suddenly, in the periphery of her vision, she caught a flash of violet.
Before she could turn her head, something slammed into the ground. The thunderous sound of the crash assaulted her eardrums, followed closely by the strong winds created by the impact. Dust fountained up into the air, obscuring the sight of whatever it was.
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Instinctively, Lirael activated her Agility shard. The world slowed down to a crawl as her personal time sped up to several times the norm. With a colourless ripple, her Domain spread out, encompassing Sand and the Hellhound within it and extending the effect of her shard to them.
Hidden behind the curtain of slowly moving dust, the humanoid silhouette of the sudden arrival could be seen rising sluggishly from a crouch. What made Lirael’s heart sink and brow furrow was that along with the passage of time, the figure was speeding up in its movements. It too had an Agility shard.
Dainty wings of light sprouted out of her ankles as she got ready to use her Shrinking Space shard and evacuate at the slightest sign of trouble, but before she could act, the figure made a grasping motion towards her. With the sound of shattering glass, something all around her broke. Something intangible, yet extremely essential in the fabric of reality.
With a sinking feeling in her gut, Lirael activated her shard and made the Hellhound take a step back. Instead of the hundreds of metres she had wanted to move, their position only shifted by the distance of a normal stride. Her shard had failed. It had failed because the lattice of space -- which the shard relied upon to work -- in the entire region had been crushed by her opponent. He had a Shattered Space shard.
Both her mobility shards had been shut down by this mysterious character in an instant and the ease with which he had done so told her that he was a Dungeon Mage. An intense sense of crisis covered her heart. She wouldn't be able to escape and in a direct confrontation, she wouldn't stand a chance. Her scarlet eyes glittered and her mind began to work rapidly as she tried to guess the identity and motivations of her opponent and chalk out a plan to deal with him.
Sensing its mistress’ distress, the Hellhound began to bunch and relax its muscles restlessly, both the heads baring their teeth and growling at the direction of the silhouette. Suddenly, Hel, who despite her icy element was the more hot-tempered of the two heads, drew back her lips in a snarl, wrinkling her snout. Before Lirael could snap out of her thoughts and stop her, she opened her maw, revealing the frigid blue light gathering in the depths of her gullet and let loose with a condensed beam of freezing light.
The beam expanded, widening into a broad pillar of sub-zero temperatures as it shot towards the figure, leaving a track of sparkling ice in the desert.
The figure casually waved its hand as though swatting a fly and the pillar shattered, crumbling into a million pieces as a finger-thin bolt of violet electricity punched through its length and slammed into Hel’s mouth.
With a strangled yelp Hel’s attack immediately petered out, her jaws locking up and her muscles seizing as tiny sparks of violet electricity ravaged their way through her body. Grabbing onto Sand, Lirael leapt off the Hellhound’s back just in time to avoid getting shocked while poor Hound had to suffer the consequences of his impetuous sister's actions.
The Hellhound crashed onto the ground, thoroughly paralyzed -- Hel, unconscious with her eyes rolled up in her head, and Hound, with his tongue out and eyes rolling around in panic. The massive body of the spirit twitched intermittently as violet sparks played over its hide, leaving it utterly powerless. In the face of this paralysis, its vaunted resilience was useless as the Undead Marrow shard didn’t heal nerves.
Still holding onto Sand by a strong grip on his arm, Lirael observed the figure with a mixture of doubt and wariness. Finally, she let go of Sand and raised her hands, showing her open palms. Clenching her teeth, she shouted, “Stop! We surrender.”
To demonstrate her good faith, she halted the flow of mana to her Agility shard. The time within her Domain slowed down to match the tempo of the world and the spout of sand raised by the impact of her opponent’s landing suddenly sped back up. A strong desert breeze picked up, catching the falling grains of sand and the sparkling motes of powdered ice hanging in the air and swept them away, giving her a clear view of the Mage she was up against.
The ground had caved into a deep crater from the impact, with the region towards the centre glowing red with heat and the area beneath the man’s feet fused into glass. As the tall, muscular man made his way out of the crater, the glass cracked and crunched under the tread of his steel-soled boots. A large iron medallion swayed from side to side above the chest of his sleeveless canvas tunic as he walked with a rolling gait unique to long-time sailors on land. A circle with an inverted triangle was engraved in its centre. An iron bead held his braided beard together and his long, storm-grey hair fluttered in the wind. His intense eyes burnt with violet electricity.
“Uncle!” Lirael cried out joyfully. Letting go of all her inhibitions, she dashed across the intervening distance and threw herself into his chest and gave him a tight hug.
His salt-weathered skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes, Ezekiel Enzeal hugged his niece back as his solemn face broke into a smile. He shot a glance at the Hellhound splayed out powerlessly on the ground. “I hurried over as fast as I could after the recall order for you was sent out, hoping to help you with your Dungeon. But it seems that you’ve been doing fine on your own,” he said, each of his words rumbling out from deep within his chest.
Breaking the embrace and stepping back a little, Lirael punched him hard in the chest with a petulant expression on her face. “Uncle!” she complained, “you scared me half to death.” Grabbing onto his arm she complained, “And you hurt my Hellhound right after I went through so much trouble to create it.”
With a deep chuckle that resembled the roll of thunder across a flat plain, Ezekiel laid a hand on top of Lirael’s head and mussed her hair. “It was clear that it attacked without any instructions from you. I just gave it a little lesson in obedience.” His tone turned serious. “If it wasn’t me but any other Dungeon Mage, then it might have sparked a much more intense retaliation. Lirael, I keep telling you but you refuse to listen.” He emphasized each word. “Core Spirits aren’t pets to be pampered. They are war-beasts. They need to have discipline instilled into them, especially in their early, formative days.”
Letting go of his arm and looking properly contrite, Lirael lowered her head. “Sorry,” she said in a small voice, “I’ll pay attention.”
Sighing, he shook his head before walking over to the paralyzed Core Spirit. “I’m sure you will.” Kneeling down beside Hound, who looked absolutely terrified despite his massive head coming up to the kneeling man’s chest, Ezekiel placed a palm flat on top of his head. “Because I will oversee your training.” The disorderly sparks of violet electricity racing across the two-headed dog’s massive body homed in on the palm like a frenzy of sharks that had scented blood; only to be absorbed cleanly by it.
Standing up, he turned to Lirael who was looking at him with a glum face and cracked into a lopsided grin. “I rushed over like mad to warn you… that can't just have been in vain.”