I continue to back away from the stinger nest, mind racing.

Core, keep an eye out on the ground, I tell it. Watch for any thin spots. Weak points. Make sure I’m not about to step through a hole and fall again. Got that?

I’m not sure it does, but I don’t have time to be more explicit. I snuff out my Spark next, summoning two Blazes in their place. A small fire, only the size of a Spark, appears over each hand. Unlike my Spark spell, however, I can manipulate the size and movement of each Blaze. When I step back again, I leave the two flames where I’d summoned them, hovering next to each other in the air.

[Spell Level Up,] Echo abruptly announces. [Blaze spell now Level 2. Mana cost reduced to 8 per cubic yard per second.]

Ah, yes! About time. I’d neglected the spell before, but this experience is really underscoring how I should be leveling up offensive abilities as well—especially if I continue to explore the Catacombs with Mirzayael. Mana appears to be an invaluable resource in this world, so any way I can help reduce my mana consumption is—

One of the stingers hisses, darting forward and breaking me out of my strategizing. Against all instinct, I force myself to remain still, instead sending my Blaze spells forward to meet the creature.

The stinger falters as my two fires rush toward it. With any luck, I’m pulling off a tried-and-true feature of defensive evolution: tricking a predator into thinking I have much bigger and more intimidating eyes than I do.

I slowly swivel my pair of eye-flames around to the side, and the stinger thankfully turns to face them. So far so good.

I take another step back.

Oh! The Dungeon Core abruptly speaks up. Yes, it would not step right there. That’s a bad place to step.

I throw myself forward, even as my foot begins to plunge through a gap in the floor. The stone crumbles away behind me as I land on my knees and scramble forward, away from the widening gap in the floor, until I find myself on solid ground once more.

“You have to tell me before I step on a bad spot,” I cry, adrenaline shooting through me, my heart thrumming like an engine inside my chest.

Oh. The Dungeon Core didn’t know that. Okay!

I let out an irritated breath, but I don’t have time to recover; the stinger is no longer facing my flames. It’s facing me—and it’s not alone.

“Mirzayael!” I call, my voice tight as I try to remain calm. I pull my flames back between me and the stingers again, hoping to deter them. “Any time now!”

The woman swears. “I still need a minute. Here, take this for now. Head’s up!”

I glance toward the ceiling in time to see Mirzayael’s spear flying down toward me. I scramble away with a surprised squawk.

A squawk? Really?

The spear stabs into the floor next to me, its tip still glowing an ethereal blue. I grab the shaft and yank it from the ground, but the force was unnecessary: it slides smoothly free of the stone. Perhaps that magic is doing more than just making the point glow. I’m glad Mirzayael never had a chance to use it on me.

Hissing and clicks surge in my direction. I slash the spear in a circle around me, buying space as the stingers close in, while I flare my Blaze spells, feeding more mana into them and sending the flames crashing into the nearest creatures who dared venture too close. Several of them screech, darting back into the shadows, but there are more to take their place.

[7 points of Fire damage dealt,] Echo reports.

Now that they’re close enough to my firelight to make out, I can’t help but shiver. The creatures do look similar to scorpions, though horrifyingly they vary from the size of a small cat to a large dog, each equipped with dual tails curled up over their backs, ending in wickedly sharp points. One of the greater stingers surges forward, crashing through my flames and straight toward me.

I slash at it with Mirzayael’s spear, slicing through two of its forelegs. The creature screeches as it crashes to the ground, its other legs still scrabbling to push it forward, its tails slashing wildly at the air. Horrified, I stab the spear into its back, whereupon the creature screams again, flailing wildly.

“The head,” Mirzayael calls down. “You have to stab it through the head!”

My stomach turns with horror at the tortured display occurring before me. “Good God.” I yank my spear free, flecks of black juice splattering the stone, and then I stab it down once more, straight into the cluster of eyes and clicking jaws. The creature shudders, then goes limp.

I pull the spear away, but I don’t get a chance to recover as another one of the creatures races toward me. Steeling myself, I attack once more.

It takes killing another three of the large stingers and burning a dozen more with my flames before the nest begins to back off. I’m constantly spinning, slashing, flaring my fire to keep any of them from getting within tail-stabbing range.

Abruptly, a giant shadow scurries over the wall. I stagger away, spear raised. This is much bigger than anything else. If it’s a high-level stinger, then I’m in serious trouble. I squeeze the spear, heart hammering my chest, as I flare my fires brighter. The form leaps, and I brace myself.

Mirzayael crashes down on top of one of the stingers, her legs stabbing through the creature. She spins toward me, snatching the spear from my grasp before I have a moment to react, then becomes a blur of death as she sweeps through the stingers’ ranks. The creatures scatter before her, but Mirzayael is unrelenting.

Finally, the Captain stops, flicking her spear to the side to fling viscera from its point. What stingers still remain alive flee back into the shadows, leaving dozens of their fellows stabbed or charred on the ground before us. I could claim only perhaps six of those.

“Well done,” Mirzayael says, turning to me. “You did better than I would have thought.”

“You make it sound like you were expecting me to get eaten,” I say, finally allowing myself to relax. My wings droop, and my arms ache.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “They would have stung you, not eaten you. That only comes after their prey has succumbed to the venom.”

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“Right,” I say flatly. “That’s much preferable.”

A smile pulls at her lips. “Sorry I couldn’t help you sooner. It took a few minutes to find a way down.” She points behind us into the black. “There’s a staircase back that way which leads to the main floor.”

It’s the same direction as the unstable ground I’d nearly fallen through. “Might be tricky for me to make it back that way. I lack the ability to walk on walls.”

“Pity, that,” Mirzayael says. “Such a useful skill. Well, we’ll figure something out. First, help me with these.” She gestures to the dead stingers.

I raise an eyebrow. “Help how?”

She grabs the nearest one and pulls it over to a pile of others. “Gather them up. We’ll take these home for food and materials. Here, you form a pile while I work on securing them.” She produces a length of white, shimmering rope I strongly suspect to be spider webbing. She must have caught me staring, because she lifts the rope with a shrug. “I started spinning it above, but realized it wouldn’t help in time. Still, I should be able to finish it now.”

“Right,” I say, belatedly moving to the nearest stinger corpse to begin forming the pile Mirzayael asked for. At the same time, I try to keep my staring as subtle as possible while I watch her produce more of the silk. Sure enough, she produces the material from the back of her abdomen, spinning new lines of the material and dexterously weaving them together to form thicker braids.

I don’t know what else I had been expecting.

I desperately try not to think about it when she hands me a piece to use to tie up the stingers.

It’s sticky.

I think about it.

We get around twenty of the stingers tied to Mirzayael’s rope, each attached in a sequential string. Once secured, Mirzayael drags them over to the wall, then begins to pick her way up. Watching her scale the surface is fascinating. Like a mountain goat finding impossible footholds. At the ceiling she maneuvers her way over to the hole I’d fallen down, then fixes the end of the string to the gap, leaving the string of dead stingers hanging in the air. A minute later she climbs back down.

“There,” she says, breathing heavily. I guess even she can get worn out every once in a while. “We will be able to haul them up from the other side on the way back to the Keep. For now, we can carry on.”

How she intends to drag all of those creatures back to the city, I have no idea. But I’m beginning to know better than to question Mirzayael.

“Great,” I say, looking back into the dark. I snuff out one of my Blazes and push the other forward, floating it across the room. There are cracks in the floor I can make out from here, even without the Core to tell me the stone is unstable.

Core, is there a safe way across this room? I ask it. And since clearly I need to be more specific when I ask it questions, I add, And by safe, I mean a path I could walk across without the ground crumbling beneath my feet.

The Core can’t tell. It can barely see anything! I stopped giving it mana, and it is soooooo hungry. Why can’t I give it more mana? It really could do so much more if I found it mana ore. Then it could see everything! The whole mountain! Its power would be limitle—

Alright, alright, I cut it off. I’ll keep an eye out for this mana ore of yours. Although I’m not sure I like the idea of giving this creature limitless power. Not that I think it would do anything evil, per se, but I also don’t trust it has the self-awareness to not cause harm. Like an excited dog prancing around a pile of kittens.

In the meantime, I check my own mana stores: 23/200. Not looking great, and we’ve only just barely begun to explore the Catacombs. I’ll need to be more judicial with my mana expenditure going forward.

“Looks like we’ll just have to carefully pick our way across,” I say. “I should be able to use the Dungeon Core to find a safe path, but I won’t be able to tell if the ground is stable more than a few steps ahead of me, so it might involve some backtracking. Not the most efficient route, but until these wings decide to start working, it’s the best I’ve got.”

Mirzayael nods. “Here, tie this around your waist,” she says, offering me more spider silk. “At least next time you fall, I can be prepared and haul you back up.”

“If there’s a next time,” I add.

Mirzayael nods. “Yes. Next time.”

I sigh, tying the rope around my waist.

Slowly, I begin edging my way across the room. Mirzayael keeps to the side—literally—as she half walks along the floor, half on the wall. I try to follow, figuring the edges of the room are more likely to be stable than the middle, but even then the Dungeon Core abruptly and loudly bursts into my mind, suggesting maybe I shouldn’t step on the half-decayed tile, or rotted out floor. Its suggestions to avoid death are very much appreciated, even if they all come nearly a moment too late. Finally, we make it to the opposite wall.

“The staircase is just ahead,” Mirzayael says. “Then we can get back on track.”

As if me nearly perishing was only a detour. “Sounds great to me,” I say. As we head in the direction Mirzayael suggested, we pass a crumbling statue built into an alcove of the wall. My firelight falls over it as we pass, moving shadows over the features of the statue almost as if it’s come to life. A harpy, I note. She’s twenty feet tall, hands raised above her and wings splayed to the side. Bits of her hands and wings have broken off, and a pile of rubble lays at her feet. I turn my attention away, searching for the stairwell, as—

WAIT!

I jump as the Dungeon Core practically screams into my mind.

Wait wait wait! Go back. There’s stone there—different stone! It must taste it—it’s new, different, something it hasn’t tasted ever! Or at least, a long time. But that’s basically forever! It needs it, I have to go back, please please please please—

“Shhhh,” I hiss, shaking my head. “Calm down.”

“What is it?” Mirzayael asks.

“Ah, sorry,” I say, pausing to look back at the statue. “The Dungeon Core noticed something in the rocks we passed. It’s just being… insistent.”

“Noticed what?” Mirzayael asks.

“I’m not sure.” Carefully, I backtrack to the statue. Well?

The stone. It’s so light and fluffy and soft! And infused with mana. It wants to eat it! Can it eat it?

Curious, I bend down and pick up a piece of broken stone. “Ah!” I say, my hand coming up fast. I open my hand, palm up, and it almost feels as though I’m holding nothing at all. “It’s so light!”

Mirzayael peers over my shoulder, looking from the stone to the statue. She picks up a piece as well.

“Ah, cloudstone,” she says, tossing the rock into the air. It floats up, and up and up until it vanishes into the dark. A moment later, it begins drifting back down.

“Amazing,” I say, bouncing the rock in my hand. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” I squeeze the stone, expecting it to crumble like dried sand, but it remains firm and solid in my grasp. “How can it have such strength?”

“Air arcana infused in the rock,” Mirzayael says. “I’m surprised there’s any mana in it after all this time. It must have been radiating magic when it was made.”

“Fascinating,” I say. “I can’t even imagine what kind of aircraft we might have been able to achieve with composites like this.” My mind is already spinning with the applications. Lighter than air—or perhaps nearly as light as air—fuselages. But how would that affect its center of gravity? Hmmm…

Please. Please please please it wants to eat some, just a little bit, it’s so soft and fluffy and it will feel so good to devour it!

I snort as the Dungeon Core pulls me from my thoughts. It’s like a child begging for cotton candy. Alright, I think, allowing the Core to consume the piece I’m holding in my hand. At least that will add another type of material to our catalog. And I’m definitely eager to read into its attributes at a later date.

The rock glows, then disintegrates out of existence as the Dungeon Core exudes all sorts of happy food-related sensations. It’s almost enough to make rocks sound appetizing.

[Mana Gain: 1]

Ohoho. What’s this? We gained mana from consuming it, rather than losing any. It must be because of the air arcana Mirzayael mentioned. Which means consuming things infused with magic will help restore my own mana store. This is excellent information to know.

Mirzayael watches curiously as the stone vanishes from my hand. “What do you intend to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But it stokes the imagination, doesn’t it?”

Mirzayael tips her head at me. “You are a strange one, Outsider.”

“That’s what they tell me,” I say with a chuckle. “Now, come on. We’ve got a whole kingdom to explore, don’t we?”

“Indeed we do.” Mirzayael leads us away from the statue, and the staircase is only a thirty second walk beyond. She holds her spearhead out into the dark stairwell. “Come, then. We’ve still much climbing to do. And more danger lies ahead.”

Despite the warning, I can’t help but smile. What other treasures will I find within these walls? What other mysteries lay in wait to be discovered?

I step onto the stairs, eager to find out.