As soon as I appeared up the mineshaft, I fumbled for one of my small stock of healing potions and drained it, while teleporting my other potion, the one that I’d dropped, into the air in front of the revenant, while in the same instant encasing it in another fungal lock, just to try and slow it down.

The potion smashed down and another ball of fire bloomed in the cave. I felt the power of the revenant flickering wildly, before settling around third gate, and its armored form emerged from the fire.

I drew on my still-overflowing temporal mana and really wished that I had an offensive spell I could use, but instead I just used it to finish restoring my mana-garden to full while the skeletal form sprinted up the hall toward me. When it got close, I teleported behind it, leaving another material echo that it ripped apart with a slash of light from its pick.

Then the power of the revenant faded back down to first gate, and I leapt onto the offensive, overcharging my Briarthreads and Pinpoint Boneshard to strike out at the skeleton form from behind.

My attacks left a long series of cracks and scratches along it, but the skeleton’s power flickered again, and I was suddenly facing off a second gate opponent.

The skeleton’s weapon expanded to twice its size, then three times, and the crystals embedded on either side began to glow brightly. Flashes of light-force exploded down the tunnel, supersized, and I teleported behind the revenant, but it seemed to expect it, spinning and bringing its weapon down. I barely ducked aside in time to unleash another barrage of bones and briars at it, but the light caught the attacks in mid-air, and they struggled for a long moment.

Then its power exploded up to fourth gate, and my bones and briars were shredded apart. The light seemed to crack and break, and I saw the veins of cracks running along the length of the expanded weapon.

I didn’t even try to fight, especially as I felt the floor under me gathering the heat and glassy obsidian surface of its earlier spell. I turned and teleported up the corridor again, but then I found myself at the mouth of the cave, with nowhere else to run.

I cursed under my breath as the obsidian flowed up, and I reached out for the anchor I’d placed in the tree outside, thanking myself for the foresight to prepare a way out that didn’t require squeezing myself between rocks. I teleported away and started running, and a moment later, the obsidian splintered through the tree.

The skeletal revenant clambered out of the cave, flickering down to essentially powerless, but I couldn’t take advantage of it, not with my arm bleeding and the snowstorm swirling like wild around us.

I looked to the sky, where the deer-bird things swarmed, and I did something stupid. I lit my power like a beacon, exploding raw mana out of myself. I was practically announcing myself as a weakened human, lost in the storm.

I had to stop as the skeleton jumped to second gate and expanded its weapon, unleashing massive swings of force again.

At least it wasn’t trying the darkness trick again, seemingly having deduced that I had a sufficient enough counter to make the tactic worthless.

I thrust out Briarthreads in defense as I teleported up a tree, onto the largest, most stable branch I could.

I was running low on mana again, though, and without my plants to restore myself, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do…

Then the revenant buried its pick into the tree I was standing on, and the large, rust colored desolation stone exploded.

A massive wave of light, easily mid-fourth gate, exploded through the air. I teleported upwards and caught myself in a lock, then teleported up more as the light kept expanding. I chained upwards several times, until I felt a burst of mana near my side, and was forced to teleport backwards to dodge a swooping attack from one of the bird-deer things, its horns glimmering with force. I dove aside again, but I was caught in the light, as was the creature.

Pain shot over me as long, thin cuts ran all over my body, and blood started trickling from them. I felt pressure on the glass vials in my pocket, and the second healing potion I had in the pocket shattered, the healing liquid splattering all over me.

A moment after the light touched me, I managed to teleport out of the way, as far upwards as I could go.

I watched for several seconds as the powerful light and blades cut through everything in the surrounding area, and even the monsters in the storm seemed unwilling to descend into it.

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Then the light abated, and I got a look at the destruction.

Everything in the space around the cave that was weaker than stone was gone. The snow was evaporated, the trees were nothing but churned chunks of kindling and splinters. Even the stone was chipped and pitted, long, thin gouges ripped out of it.

The only thing not caught by the explosion was the revenant, who was completely unharmed.

Or… maybe not completely.

Its pickaxe was a melted puddle of slag, at least, and I breathed a sigh of relief before teleporting down in a chain of several steps. I kept myself over the head of the skeleton, but then teleported to the side as a mid-third gate creature tried to grab me.

A spike of obsidian shot through the creature’s chest as it stood where I’d been moments ago, and I squeezed in two more quick teleports, landing inside the cave as I did. I quickly shaped the Testudinal Reserve spell and drew out what power I could from it to restore my flagging temporal mana.

The revenant clambered back inside, and I cursed. How was this thing able to track me with such absurd accuracy? I’d been trying to lure it into an ambush of the bird-things outside.

I turned to face it, and quickly flicked through my options. I had two more firebomb potions in my pack down near the village, but I couldn’t get to those in time.

I forced my mana senses into the storm, letting them drift on the currents of energy, and managed to teleport back outside. The tree, and the anchor that had been in it, was destroyed, but the new technique – unreliable it may be – had just barely been enough.

I was tempted to reach for Dusk’s realm, but with how far away she was, it would take minutes to even call Blademoss or restore myself.

So as the revenant turned back to me, its armor appearing as it flickered to third gate, I drew on the only source of power I had left.

The power of Burn Future lit itself in my mana-garden, and power flowed out. The revenant charged, and I overcharged Briarthreads as I stabbed my staff at it, flooding the spell within me with power until the briars that were hammering against the stone armor looked more like a beam of green magic than any individual briar.

At the same time, I cast Capture Moment on the massive swarm, then echoed it. I teleported to the side as a weak fourth gate deer-thing from the storm dove at me, but kept up the stream, spreading my echoes through the spell, then teleported up above the revenant.

Within moments, the revenant was locked in a cage of briars so thick that it was hard to make out its skeletal form.

I stopped the stream of power the moment I felt the fourth gate mana surge out of the cage. Spikes of obsidian shattered my cage, and the revenant launched itself at me, gleaming pillars of deadly black stone screaming behind it. I teleported back, throwing power into my Foxstep spell like it was nothing.

Truthfully, it was nothing, at least not when measured against my life.

The revenant’s obsidian shattered through several trees, and the monsters in the air retreated, suddenly uncertain about facing off against a threat stronger than even the strongest of them.

I shot into the air amongst them, and for once, they didn’t attack, even as Edgar’s mana surged into the air around me. Their instincts in the face of a greater predator held too much sway.

Then the revenant’s power fell down to first gate again, and I teleported back down.

A half dozen of the bird-deer dove after me, their horns glistening with powerful mana. I froze, holding still as the revenant came at me from one side with a blade of mana compressed in its hand, and the screaming herd of creatures came down on the other side.

At the last second, I teleported straight up, two hundred feet into the air, leaving an echo of myself behind.

The revenant crashed into my copy, blade piercing its chest, while the lead monster’s horns gored it from the other side. The echo exploded, and the pair’s attacks met each other.

The bird-deer let out a roar of indignation, the same attacking roar I’d felt earlier, and the revenant flickered up to third gate, armor appearing around it. It swung a fist at the lead monster, whose horns glowed bright and sheared through the armor of the skeleton and took off a finger. The revenant howled in a scream that shouldn’t have been able to exist without lungs, yet carried anyways.

I teleported down, landing on the boughs of the largest tree I could spot, then cut off my Burn Future, and cast Harvest Plant Life. I flicked two more onto the nearby large trees, and then took a moment to study my wounds.

My clothes were in tatters, and I really hoped that the coblynau had some tailors among them who didn’t mind working on tall person clothing. Maybe they also had healers? That… Wasn’t completely impossible. I was pretty sure that there were some crystals that had healing properties.

I would definitely need a healer, though, because, there were a series of long, thin parts of my arm that were still pink, even when I managed to wipe away the blood, and as the adrenaline from the fight began to wear off, I could feel that the obsidian spike had gone fairly deep. My basic healing potions, even if they were boosted to third gate, might not be able to fix damage to the bone.

My legs also felt strange, and I turned my boots to see that the thick soles had melted. I didn’t want to take my shoes off, not until I was in the village at least, but I would bet every silver I had left that my feet had been burned from the obsidian. At least that shouldn’t be untreatable by a healing potion, unless they’d progressed past first degree burns.

But if I had second or third degree burns and a fractured humerus bone, then it honestly might be a good idea to throw in the towel.

Then I picked up on one of the bird-deer diving for me, and cursed, teleporting away. I landed in the new clearing, grabbed the golden crown off of the revenant’s head, and then slipped into the crack.

My feet hurt.

My bones hurt.

I’d need to pay at least two full days of mana into the debt of Burn Future, even draining every scrap of mana I could from nearby trees.

But I’d won.

I staggered down the mineshaft, my body sagging under my own weight, and when I finally made it in sight of the coblynau village, my vision faded, and I slumped to the ground.