The Dungeon attenuates all magic. Ambient Magicule concentration is effectively depleted by the Second Strata, rendering all conventional spells uncastable. This effect cannot be mitigated.

Effecting distortions in spacetime is the only way to deploy magic in the Dungeon. The Prime Arsenal in the Home City produces up to thirty quantum-entangled primary elements per day. One pair of entangled half-ounce tungsten alloy bullions replicates surface-level Magicule density in a spacetime region of one-and-one-third cubic inches. The forging of one Entangled Twinblade requires ten thousand bullions. This weight is beyond the physical capability of most elves.

The Entangled Twinblade Caster (colloquially the Twinblade) must maintain Personal Myrmidon, a conventional spell that enhances the caster’s constitution. All Magicule produced by the Twinblade is consumed by this spell. In the Dungeon, one must wield the Twinblade in both hands to cast Personal Myrmidon, which in turn strengthens the caster to use the Twinblade as a dual-wield CQC weapon. Conjunctional use of superheavy personal armour is recommended.

The “blade” resembles a pair of blunted greatswords. Regenerative coating prevents corrosion and molecular bombardment. Home City Manufacturing Standard SCI-1922B-1 mandates that the Twinblade shall not be rendered inoperable by Class Four Entities or below.

A Twinblade qualifies for the ADC by log-book. They must record four hundred hours of continuous use (i.e. the simultaneous deployment of the blades and Personal Myrmidon) in Stratas Three or above. A supervising PDC must corroborate accounts.

~

The deeper one ventures into the Dungeon, the longer it takes to initiate Personal Myrmidon. On the Third Strata, it would take Chiou three milliseconds; here, on the Seventh, it took five precious seconds. In an ambush, that meant standing still, hands on two giant metal sticks, waiting to die. As such, Chiou was pushing the seventieth hour of continuous use. This feat of endurance was in the top zero-point-one percent of all Twinblades.

The expedition was full of Master Dungeoneers, however, and Chiou knew for a fact that the two Twinblades in squad one have clocked ten million hours between them. Elves lived long lives, but those two have lived no other life but dungeoneering, and they were not even close to the best.

The best was with Chiou. Michel the Giant was pushing eight feet tall, the points of his ears like machetes, his arm the thickness of Chiou’s legs. They say Michel was raised on the surface, before the Encroachment, which made him one of the last thousand or so elves who has seen the sky. It was easy to see how he has survived. The standard Twinblades looked like shortwords in his hands, and it was said that Michel has not used Personal Myrmidon since his certification. He did not need it. Instead, his accumulated Magicules were dedicated to the casting of Constant Vigilance: a third eye gleamed on his forehead, seeing all, sensing all. It had the unnerving habit of looking opposite to his real eyes.

A red light blinked twice at the head of the column. The Vectorsmith’s signal to halt. All around them, the gloom pressed in. Ghostly trails floated in the darkness. The Seventh Strata was shrouded in eternal twilight. It was only seventy-percent mapped. Chiou had the blank quadrant map in his pocket with a dozen dubious lines penciled in.

Michel’s eye blinked red three times in quick succession. Danger. The Line Mages stared at Chiou: three luminescent hats, six steely eyes. Whatever came, it was his job to take the first hit, so the Line Mages can take the last.

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Something gargantuan shifted in the darkness. Rotten wind blasted the grime from his hands. A low rumble, like snoring, reverberated in the dark, and a circle of white luminescence rippled through the impenetrable black. Chiou glimpsed a rocky ceiling, a gaping hole, and a thousand pairs of eyes staring back.

Michel gestured, and the squad crouched. His eye was dark. A leg, giant as a pillar, passed above their heads. Chiou knew it was a leg because it was elven-shaped, with five toes and supple skin. Even in the dark, its skin glistened. With it came the stink of sulfuric acid. Something wet splattered on his faceplate. A droplet rubbed against his nose. It stung. Badly.

The Line Mages were unarmoured.

The scream came, brief and terrible. Michel’s eye blinked red, and in the bloody gloom Chiou saw a Mage’s hand bubbling. Her companions jumped on her. One held her down and clamped their hands on her mouth, the other shook out a medkit so quickly they might have been holding it all along. A plunge, a soothing chill, and the acid-rotten hand was coated in a light blue gel up to the elbow.

Chiou looked up, and the leg was gone. Another ripple of light, and the rocky ceiling roiled, replaced by what looked like folds of skin. A giant armpit. Chiou wanted to laugh but couldn’t, for the armpit was full of eyes.

They swam out from the darkness, thousands of eyeballs attached to fleshy stems resembling elven limbs, seemingly unaffected by gravity. They made no sound. It was Michel who broke the silence.

“Do the Hammer,” he said.

His Twinblades spun. The windblast knocked Chiou to the ground. Three lines of fire swept across the gloom, illuminating nothing but themselves. Faint tracer lines marked out the trajectory of the legged eyes. Michel stepped before the thickest cluster, and raised his blades.

A rain of shredded flesh. The eyes imploded upon contact with the blade, the few that went through bouncing off against Michel’s armour. A couple managed to latch onto the seams and were attempting to wriggle between the gaps when Chiou picked them off, one by one, like cutting fleas from a lion’s mane.

The Line Mages synchronised. The Filaments intersected in the midst of the swarm, first merging then deliberately made out-of-phase. A massive blast radiated from a single point in space, constrain to a two-dimensional plane. Every incoming eye was instantly annihilated by extreme heat. Everything on the other side was unharmed.

The Vectorsmith came bounding out of the darkness, pursued by a wriggling swarm. A wall of tracer lines wobbled ten feet behind him, held at bay by an invisible barrier. The eyes wriggled, seemingly moving at full speed, but never fast enough to catch up to their prey.

Chiou closed his visor and met them with swinging blades. Personal Myrmidon coursed through the fibres of his muscle, imbuing them with tenfold strength. The Twinblades spun in his hands like toys, decimating limbs, flesh, and bone upon contact. Sulfuric acid splattered from the desiccated remains but the resonance of the blades forced them back.

Something slipped around his neck. A needle-thin arm, attached to two misshapen eyes, tightened its grip. The gorget hissed as acid ate through the coating. Chiou could not touch it. To pry it free, he must let go of a blade, and to let go of a blade was to be incapacitated for five seconds in the middle of a swarm of eyeballs.

A small vibration, like the ringing of a tuning fork. Michel pierced through the thing clean despite it being half-bonded to his armour. Chiou gasped even though he had more than a few seconds to spare.

Together, they met the wave. Drawn by the resonance of the Twinblades, the swarm came at them from every direction, freeing the Line Mages to do their work. The Vectorsmith tweaked their trajectories so that they congregated on a single plane, and the Hammer destroyed them, wave after wave.

Within seconds, it was over. The giant leg-thing had moved away, showing no sign of sentience or awareness. The last eyeball was blasted into nonexistence by the wounded Line Mage. Chiou examined her acid-bitten hand. The gel was urine-yellow, having soaked up most of the acid, but the hand had been eaten to the subdermal layer. The Mage grimly stated that her nexus was on the other hand, so she was good to go.

All around them, the silence returned. The darkness never left. Chiou gazed into the gloom, trying to see something, anything. An end to this unending trial, maybe. Beside him, Michel planted his blades in the ground and took a swig from his canteen. His third eye gleamed a clear cyan.

“Good work,” he said.