Flizz’ eye twitched furiously. A mad, grinding grin spread over her lips as she glared at the flood rushing relentlessly towards the Crystal Well, towards her and Haggard. That Abyss born annoyance!Couldn’t it have just killed those idiotic flies and died with them?! Whirling around, she grabbed Haggard by the scruff and threw him over her shoulder, leaping over the railing into the basin of the Crystal Well.

No matter! So what if things didn’t go the easy way? The hard way was just as fine.

A twisted smirk spread over the gecko’s lips as she forced her powers through the blockade infecting her body, painfully ripping through her body.

“I can’t die, after all~ The Linumen will never let me.” She giggled madly to herself while despising the debt that she was forced to incur.

Her arm burned, water and blood ripping through the cloth of her makeshift bandage, as she forced open a window. Together with Haggard she fell through, landing clumsily on the crystalline pedestal at the very centre of the well. Small, beautiful Amber crystals of deep blue covered it all and a perfect half sphere indention was smoothly carved into the centre of the wide platform. Above it hovered the brightly gleaming and radiating Primal Glyph of Water.

Water bubbled continuously up from below, a fountain that streamed through the Primal Glyph and created a rain of shimmering drops of light that fed the shallow lake atop and the waterfalls pouring down the sides of the platform.

Flizz could feel her body vibrate within its presence, the blood roiling in her wounds in response. Bubbling and rising upwards. No, not her blood. It was the bloodied water of the wraith.

Flizz realised her mistake but it was already far too late.

———

Blood. Blood was the origin of the wraith’s identity. A single drop running down the side of a crystal and then infused with awesome power, refracted and reflected until twisted beyond its origin. Knowledge, memories. Its very Soul was born in that moment. And yet it was far older than that. The feelings within it were boiling with hatred for Flizz, for Haggard. They were the source of its agonising life! Those painful memories. But it was broken at an even more fundamental level, the hatred for them imbued with an innate urge to devour their existence that was much less driven by its own will but a most primal, overwhelm urge and desire beyond its control. To complete itself.

It hadn’t really thought much as it infected Flizz with some of its water, thinking it would just weaken her for the kill. Or just make her life worse until it had dissolved. Or to devour her whole.

And then it had devoured all that water, all that crystallised Amber. Power poured into her yet unable to fill that yawning hole in her existence. But it had build up potential, enough that when it saw another gateway, a glimpse from one place to another, it wrest control from its user, pulling them through space to understand this power. The first key piece it had already stolen from Flizz. And now with an understand of Rehn’s Third Eye it replicated her gates.

But by the very nature of its existence, this power turned wild and uncontrollable. It overflowed, and infecting the ambient Amber the portals began to propagate rapidly, flickering in and out of existence even without its doing. Yet it was still capable of taking partial control of them.

And now, the wraith felt another part of its body again. A connection reborn through the source of power whose mere fragment had fuelled its shape. The wraith saw where Flizz was. And it knew how to open a gate.

———

Goggles strapped over his eyes, Max rushed after the wraith alongside the twins. The twisting and roiling of the ambient amber spread out before him, the flow a complete mess that was impossible for him to read never mind even understand. But that wasn’t what he was trying to achieve here.

The leopard’s gaze flitted across the cavern, noting how the frames of the portals began to form and collapse. One rectangular frame collapsed while the circular frame of another gate expanded at a different spot. These frames stood against the otherwise unreadable chaos, giving a minute moment of warning of a portal forming tat allowed him to react ahead of time.

And more importantly, he could potentially note matching gates according to their frame.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Max’ fingers twitched, muscles coiled, his eyes narrowed and wires were at the ready.

There! A portal nearby connected to one near the wraith! Without hesitation he leapt forwards. The wires exploded into motions, piercing through the opening portal before it collapse in on itself again. Immediately Max could feel himself get drained, the portal sucking his energies through the wires to keep itself open. A feeling that vanished the moment he was through, the portal slamming shut behind him and propelling him forwards with its collapse as soon as he had passed the threshold.

Max landed wide eyed on his feet, forced into a stumbling sprint to keep up with the chaos of opening and collapsing portals around the wraith’ body. And the teenager getting hounded by them a bit too literally.

“Woah! You’re a portal magnet!” Max exclaimed in disbelief as he landed right besides Jak, watching as the portal frames were pulled towards the young wolf cat from all sides.

“Anything actually helpful you can say…?” Jak bit back with a twitching eye even through his burning lungs, feeling more and more frustrated than terrified at the moment.

“I’m getting you of here.” Was Max’ immediate response, admittedly he still had to come up with a plan of how to do that. His eyes flitted around them, most portals near Jak kept to the area around the wraith. Those that didn’t were often a bit to he side.

And even through the chaos, he could see that something was linking Jak to the portals the wraith had torn open. But there had to be range limit. Going by the sheer number of portals opening up all over the cavern and connecting to Dampfstadt’s central areas, it was safe to assume that this range was at least the entire cavern itself.

“Hoo, okay…” Max finally breathed out and winced. This was wasn’t going to be pleasant. It was already a pain to keep up with Jak in the first place, needing to jump through every portal with him. Already he was breathing harder.

“Here’s the plan…!” He began to call out.

Just as he said that, the wraith moved completely out of sight. No, it had appeared right inside the basin! The sudden movement was jarring and accompanied by an even greater increase of portal formation. Something was increasing that monster’s influence… and Max could already guess the source.

“… I can keep any portal open for an extra few seconds…!” Max continued to explain, falling through the next portal alongside Jak.

With a cry they flew out of the gate into the shallow waters below the crystalline pedestal at the centre of the basin. Splashing could be heard above them as the wraith crashed onto the very same pedestal. A shockwave echoed through the air and all of the water around them began to surged upwards as if gravity had lost its grip onto it. Bubbles of water of varying size floated momentally in the air.

A glow of blue, pink and crimson suddenly gleamed brilliantly above them, illuminating the entire cave like a second sun. But the light wasn’t blinding, it didn’t burn the eyes. If anything, it felt strangely pleasant. And then it dispersed.

Max eyes narrowed as he saw a jittering, glitching portal slid open on the opposite side, Flizz washed out of it alongside Haggard. The Demon Witch was coughing, cursing under her breath how her entire mission had become a colossal failure.

“Shit.” Max hissed quietly, remembering Graam’s rundown. She had been after Jak for some reason. And there was no way he would let her catch him, nothing good could come from it.

His mind whirled as he leaped after Jak through another portal, finding themselves landing hard atop the basin’s catwalks.

“Okay, keep the portal open! Then what?!” Jak exclaimed, desperate for answers, barely able to keep his balance as he landed feet first on the slippery metal grating.

“R-right, sorry!” Max shouted back with a wince at being thrown out of focus. Resolve burned within his eyes as the plan to keep Jak as far away from the Demon Witch took on shape. “Okay, here’s the new plan! And absolutely follow it to the letter. This isn’t just about getting you away from the portals anymore, I have to get you out of Dampfstadt itself.”

“W-what…?!” Jak shouted back in disbelief.

“Look, kid. This is your life on the line. Just trust me and Graam that I’m trying to safe you here.” Max shot back, adrenaline rushing through his veins as the catwalk started to break under them. With a groan it snagged to the side and it was all he and Jak could do not to fall off of it or into one of the various portals.

Water was rushing over the basin’s edge, waves upon waves pouring down towards the central pedestal. Massive rivers surged like snakes through the air, winding themselves before crashing into and around the catwalk’s supports, weakening and breaking them. The wraith’ body had condensed into dome of pinkish water, a brilliant blue glow emanating from it as it swirled around the Primal Glyph gleaming within its core.

As terrified as Max was by this phenomenon, he forced his focus away from that and back towards his current goal. Hey, even if their initial plan had been utterly pulverised, at least he would have done some good today.

“Fine…!” Jak hissed out between his teeth, forced to concede to this point. As numb as his mind was from the utter insanity of the last however long, he still held tight onto his desire to survive and staying here was definitely not conductive for that.

“Great, I’m finding you a portal to the docks. Get into any of the red marked crates around the harbour, they will bring you out of Dampfstadt. And whatever you do! Don’t leave the crate for any reason.” Max nodded back, his words echoing through another two portals they were forced to leap through. “Oh, and wear these…!”

Without even needing to look, Max had pulled out one of his three reserve goggles and awkwardly handed it to Jak

“They will give you a heads up on any portals…!” Max was quick to explain at Jak’s disbelieving look and turned to look around.

Now the only problem was to find these portals leading to or at least near the docks in the first place.