Perhaps it was shock, of a sort, that had Lady Elva Cristova gazing open mouthed at Jack and his companions as they did their best to make short work of the horrors waiting just beyond the sealed off birthing chamber of horrors.

All of them glaring with an almost palpable hate at whatever lay in wait for them beyond the stone sealed doorway, five impossibly sharp naginatas and glaives held in high hanging guards as if for killing thrusts and one massive war hammer readied for a pounding blow, held by figures radiating such lethal intent their auras blazed like crimson fire, much like their weapon heads, dread artifacts a masterwork forging of blood-forged mithril and killing runes, all glittering with killing intent so brightly in the miasma of dream. And without a word being said, the six seemed to flow to either side of the presently sealed doorway, save for the Vrala Skald and the curse mage, the former a silver haired lad hardly out of boyhood with a quick wit and charming smile, the latter a shy young woman with her eyes demurely cast downward, tongue tied before Elva, who gave off such an odd mixture of awkward mousy shyness and sleek sensual potency, as if her soul were caught between two extremes, or she was undergoing a late adolescence of sorts... or perhaps, had found her soul infused with such potency and rapid growth that she and her companions had achieved in months what it should take the most dedicated of delvers years to even begin to approach, and decades or far, far longer, once they hit their eventual bottlenecks.

She would think it anything but the latter, despite hearing the even younger boy Elof quip something about '14!' as if he had actually achieved the 14th level at the age of seventeen at most, a feat only the most gifted of Reborns daring the Path of Peril could ever hope to achieve, rare as they were. But the way their demeanors had shifted from bemused lucky survivors of a White Tier delve, which was all this area of York had ever supported before into the cold-eyed veteran killers that all who dared the most perilous of dungeons, delves, and rifts eventually transformed to, made her think these youths, all save two the age of college freshmen at most, to her eyes, really had dared the deeps, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

But oddest of all was the brown haired youth now covered in armor that flowed like liquid blood. His sapphire blue eyes were striking, the way they now glittered like jewels with a corona of crimson fire, who had looked so innocent, so vulnerable when she had caught sight of him sleeping, and Elva was far too versed and well trained not to pick up the disparity between himself and the delvers around him, the contrast making it clear that yes, they had indeed been forged in the crucible of unthinkable peril to radiate such spiritual intensity and yet, for some strange reason, it was this youth who everyone seemed to defer to, either that or their tactician right before battle was about to commence, and that the flow of command past so smoothly and wordlessly between them should have been impossible in adventurers so long, especially considering that the pair were clearly lovers, a recipe for pure disaster, as Veti herself could attest, in delving groups far more mature than they.

And her heart lurched in suprise when the young man turned to catch her gaze, favoring her with the oddest of smiles that left her breathless, throat parched and dry, before turning back around and whispering the word "Formo" as he pointed to the entrance even Elva could tell was now warded with such potent blood magics that none but a master enchanter of any of a handful of disciplines could hope to breach.

And Elva couldn't but hiss in startled surprise to see the bloodrunes flow back like parting curtains, the stone as well, though only a slit one foot wide and four foot long, just below head height.

She couldn't quite swallower her whimper when she cought sight of the grey skinned horror beyond. One of those hideous, vile mindflayers who cloaked themselves in the foulest murk of burnt essence, armor made of smoke and nightmare that few could hope to...

"Bedova!"

A stunned Elva found herself lurching back, smacking on her butt when the high tiered titan shout rocked through the chamber. But as awed as she was to hear one of the original words of making and unmaking the elves declared the building blocks of reality itself, it was no less than the stunned lurch suffered by the squid-faced horror that had just crashed back against the barrier just a few feet behind it, the body crumpling several feet, as if a boneless horror had fallen to its stunned knees, even as curse after curse slammed into it.

"Rusticitas! Tarde! Os Infirmar!"

And Veti could tell by the girl's high pitched shouts, her magitech visors lighting up with the flashes of complex arcane surges seeping deep into the Harvester's flesh and psyche, penetrating all the deeper like a long thin stilleto, baning, crippling, and hindering, as opposed to a shallow wide dagger that could only cause direct harm, allowing it to pierce the foe's natural magical resilience, the creature suddenly dizzy, off balance, and slowed.

"Glacio Sanguis!"

Veti hissed when the air was instantly filled with not one but a dozen spikes the color of blood tore through the air, sprung from the central boy's fist. In an eyeblink. And what chilled her even more than seeing them tear into the torso of the now hissing horror, was realizing that she hadn't heard him shout a single word of binding or control.

The fact that the crimson spikes only penetrated a few inches past thick mantel of liquid ooze like nightmare the squid-faced horror protected itself with came as no surprise at all. Veti was only surprised that the spikes had hit with such force, such potency, that they could penetrate at all, let alone enough force to send the creature further off balance even as the boy stepped back. And all that had happened in the blink of an eye.

Because the youth had mastered it so well it didn't need to say a word, merely will the explosion of blood and ice to erupt from his hand like a blast of artillery sharpnel, no matter that his own attack had been near silent, and gunpowder didn't have a hope or prayer of working anywhere near rifts or mana surges.

But what really chilled her to the quick, was that Elva hadn't heard the words with her ears, but her mind.

Why the hell, how the hell, was she mindlinked with this boy?

A troubling question immediately put on the back burner when she was forced to behold the next martial feat her unexpected allies had up their sleave.

Because in the time it took Jack to step back, his six pole-arm wielding friends were already acting in well choreographed concert, each of them spinning around like a top as they dove from left to right past the rift in the wall, only to thrust their glaives and naginatas into the foot wide stone incision, each of them lancing the crumpling Mind Lord one at a time with weapons so impossibly sharp, so hideously potent, they could cleave through even the thickest barriers of ooze and nightmare as if it were no more solid than smoke in truth, leaving massive rents in the stumbling horror before first one, then another, before all six warriors had successfully lanced the soul flayer with their mithril weapons before spinning back out of sight the horror had no chance to focus his mind on any of them.

Which was a feat so perilous, so daring, that Elva didn't know weather or not to be be awed or horrified, by how perilously, and adroitly, these youths played with fire.

When the trio of wizards had cast their spells, they had positioned themselves and the opening such that there was no way the abomination could catch their gazes. Not before it was already stumbling back under the weight of no less than a handful of Power words, elemental spells, and curses.

And much to Elva's horror, the crumpled Harvester was now very much able to lock gazes with its foes, only the half dozen warriors of the party had brilliantly used near supernatural reflexes and thei positioning beside the wall to tear open the beast so fast that the horror couldn't get a bead on a single one of his foes before he or she had spun out of sight and he had been lanced by another, and yet another, before finally being slammed against the far wall with an oozing squish and the words 'Ore Strike!' by the dwarf, the last and slowest and perhaps the most powerfully built of all of them, the abomination crumpling in a heap, and so his gaze was also torn off the dwarf, for all that the lumbering demi human was the slowest to dart around.

For a heartbeat, she wanted to shout in triumph, feeling a vicarious thrill with her young saviors' brilliant performance, all of them heaving and flashing fierce smiles.

Before feeling a sudden surge of alarm.

They were no longer looking the Harvester's way.

It was as if they assumed it was dead.

But the creature was getting up!

Elva's heart pounded with icy cold dread as the horror seemed to rise like a venemous weed growing at a supernatural rate, using water pressure differentials as much as contractile musculature to force itself upright, even as green bile or blood spurted from more than one rent.

Injured, but not dying.

And the youngest of their party, the one who also seemed somehow the most frail, was actually stupid enough to stare it down.

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"Jack, move! Seal it up! It's still alive. It's looking at you!" Elva couldn't help but scream, terrified by the thought of the young innocent, the young fool so surprisingly gifted with luck and an unthinkable mastery of a high tier flame spell, might be enslaved by this horror for a single momentary lapse of judgment.

Worse than even the loss of the young man's mind... if this creature actually took control... if he washed them all with his Tier 5 beam of plasma... they were as good as dead.

And Elva would never see her girls again.

A thought that filled her with unthinking horror, having done all she could to push away all thought of her lovelies while in the grips of psychopaths and monsters. But now, having savored sweetest rescue... having been so close to escape, feeling the cool breeze against her cheeks, being just minutes away from her loft in the city... only to be stupid enough to entice these children from nowhere, her as much by mad luck as predetermined skill... into a mad bid that she now realized didn't have a hope of succeeding.

For her greed, her eagerness for the glory, massive bonus, and immediate advancement in rank, she had enticed these children into a fool's errand only the most elite of government contractors should be daring, and as a result they'd all lose their lives and she'd never see her brave beautiful babies ever again.

A though that filled her with such horror and regret she was a heartbeat from screaming a mission abort, and promising them a hundred thousand credits out of her own account, when something as chilling as it was remarkable happened.

"Spool!" A single innocuous word as the hot-eyed boy glared at the eldritch horror now only feet away from him, struggling in it's broken, battered, perforated way to squeeze through the foot-wide slit, one arm ending in a mass of tentacles grasping at what was now the only figure in sight with a hideous wave of fury even Elva could sense, her senses smashed by the inhuman hate, the horror going so far as to squeeze its head through, eight whipping tendrils about its face pointed straight at a strangely unhorrified youth, who didn't hesitate to lock gazes with the abomination.

"NO, Jack, get back. For the love of god, get back!" She knew she should keep her cool. That his best bet was to blast it with his overpowered flame strike, not have a staring contest with the inhuman monster.

Desperately, she caught the gazes of the smirking dwarf, everyone else flat against the adjoining walls, out of the beast's line of sight, but ready to twist and spring for final killing blows in a heartbeat.

And the bemused wink the massive dwarf gave her left her feeling helplessly confused.

As if the stupid boy confronting the creature with hands gripping nothing but air actually knew what he was doing.

She bit her lip, darting around the pedestal that had almost been her sacrificial table, hands desperately twisting the gears on her gauntlet, whimpering with horror when her worst fears came to life.

How confident and cocky she had been, thinking she could successfully play the clueless waif, that the guildmaster was no real threat to her... yet with a single wave of his mocking hand, he had rendered her prized spell gauntlet she had shaped her whole class, whole being around... to an inert piece of crystal and gold.

No matter how she pressed her mana into it, it was utterly inert. The priceless, precious circuit board of gold, artistry, and the tiniest of mithril filaments rendered worthless... and now, save for force shield and a backup blade she drilled with for exercise more than any duelist's passion and was still apprentice ranked with, was all she had.

That and the sharp mind, wonderful reflexes, and glorious physique of a noble heiress and former model of her family's clothing empire who had achieved Level 8 as a gauntleteer after years of training and effort, and so damned close to level 9, for all that it was now taking years to level up at all.

Because no matter how hard she had trained for the right to wear her gauntlet, how special and privileged she and the noble scions like her had thought themselves, compared to those would-be delvers who's stubborn contrariness or natural inclinations had led them to actually trying to claim one of the archaic classes as their own by learning spells the old fashioned way, at least their entire class hadn't been built around a single fragile artifact a powerful enough enemy had neutralized with a single spell. She gave a bitter shake of her head.

As bitter as her humbling made her feel, she knew she had made the best choice available to her by far. Because among the handful struggling for mastery of the most ancient arts, spells everyone knew wouldn't even work outside of extraplanar interface points like dungeons, rifts and delves, or exquisitely calibrated mana fields like the one supported at MIMT, how many students had she known to declare themselves determined to stay true to the craft, refusing to take the Gauntleteer's path, ended up quitting thier arcanist hobbies in absolute disgust? Unable to successfully more than a single spell after months of obsessive effort? Did the college even have any dusty academics, arcanists, or scholars left teaching those old formulas as anything but historical relics at this point? Anyone who could successfully cast evocations at all?

It was utter foolishness in any case, she knew. Because save for Delves or practice in carefully designated patches of campus Regio, arcane cantrips wouldn't do anything but flare in a burst of pretty fireworks and mana exhaustion! At least for self-taught students.

Magitech, not the castin of arcane cantrips was the way forward! How many times did she recall arguing that point with her friends? How many orienation seminars had she given to handfuls of new hopeful students, just to make that very point? It was a tool, just like the swords, shields, or glaives pure combat delvers trained in the use of before daring the Deeps. They didn't have to master metalsmithing to be efficient with the blade and a delver to be feared. So too, they need not spend months or years of their lives struggling fruitlessly to cast a single archaic spell, or even pursue studies in the magitech field, for all that it was encouraged, to prove worthy of the gauntlets, goggles, force shields an mesh armor that could so easily mean the difference between life and death for those adventurers who dared to be heroes, cleansing the infestations of Shadow, pustules of dream that sporadically formed as wild dungeons, putting entire communities in peril, were it not for the efforts of heroic delvers like she herself had striven so hard to become.

Heroes not afraid to master any tool that would help them better perform their job.

Cantrips? All but worthless, save as academy curiosity magitech majors studied for inspiration. Only artifacts like her gauntlet with its specialized circuits and external crystal power source to backup her own mana had a hope of actually being useful when encountering horror's in the deep. Not desperately screamed incantations a panicked student was as like as not to botch, even after months if not years of practice, endangering their entire party while on their first delve.

She shook her head at the remembered folly of those peers so in love with the characters they played in countless gaming sessions, actually thinking that the rare gift to survive in Shadow they had inherited actually meant that they could be classically trained wizards as well. Pure foolishness, as she had experienced, and heard from others, much to her dismay. Far better skill with spear or sword, or even a single row of disciplined students with hardly any physical aptitudes at all, save being able to fire their double-shot crossbows with any degree of accuracty, easily wiping out the smallest clusters of beasties in the shallowest areas of the White tier Delve MIMT called it's own.

All in all, anything was better than a half-assed spell that might wipe out one's entire party. And affinity with melee weapons, or even simple crossbows, was all one needed to ascend the ranks of a Delver, and forge one's psyche into whatever one wanted to be in life, so long as one possessed a spirit strong enough to survive in overlapping layers of nightmare and dream at all. and Gauntleteers or other magitech specialists were best of all.

But few of any of them would ever know the power of even a White Tier gauntleteer.

And she was already Green Tier. And should she ever make it to double digits... she would have earned her Yellow badge, with unlimited advancement opportunity as a federal agent of any branch of the government, and be a shoe-in for elected office as well, the populace loving their heroes.

And how fiercely proud she had been back at the college, such that her cheeks flushed with shame in rememberance, she and her friends holding delvers consigned to the basic warrior class and especially struggling arcanists in something she now realized was painfully close to contempt, no matter how gracious they pretended to be.

Yet with a single surge of will, Amir had rendered her supposedly inviolate, near indestructible tool utterly worthless. And it was adventurers following the crude warrior's path that had managed to so brilliantly take out the bastard who had so efforltessly shorted out her prized treasure that she had had the gall to think had made her one of the elite. Warriors and actual arcanists, casting spells that were the farthest thing from fizzling cantrips that hardly did anything at all.

It was the very archetypes she had once felt so superior to that had slaughtered her captors to paste, and her prized treasure had been effortlessly inert by a man who had made it painfully clear just how fragile her class truly was.

Her life now utterly dependent upon the grace of strangers who owed her nothing, using classes she had once held in such contempt to fiersome deadly effect, daring to face mind-melting horrors without a single Golden Gauntlet among them.

And this presently unarmed boy was actually goading on the squid-faced horror whose psychic tendrils she swore she even felt slipping into her ear like a slimy slug... and it was all she could do not to scream... and the boy... Jack was his name, actually turned to give her a quick wink before... what was he doing?

Her eyes widened with disbelief when she abruptly tore off the magitech goggles detecting nothing at all, to see the faintest trail of silver, connecting her to the Harvester whose bulbous eyes had caught his own... before Jack snipped the string that had come so close to drilling through her mind, trapping her in endless nightmare.

The thought sickened her... but she was left flabbergasted to see the boy actually spool that thread up on what looked like... a spool? shimmering with flashes of fresh blood, and the silvery sheen of mithril... she choked back a surprised cry, not knowing whether to be surprised or horrified, but knowing something was happening when the Mind Lord abruptly lurched forward as a snarling Jack struggled, as if with a fishing line he pulled and teased after daring too big game, the hideous squid headed monstrosity squeeling in protest, Jack sparing a single second for his friends.

"Now, Barlton!"

"Ore Strike!"

"Shear!"

And with those words a massive maul crashing down with such force that the squid's head splattered, instantly pulpified, and the flash of something that almost look like... a sword? flashed through the ether, and Jack was hooting with fiercest triumph and Elva didn't know whether or not to cry out in horror... sensing something so chillingly wrong... then blinked, rubbing her aching temples, realizing once more that the mad boy who had served as a brilliant distraction for his friends to line up the killing shot while their nemesis focused on the fool prancing about, his hands holding nothing at all.