> Anyone who has ever claimed that a Slime Colony Core Is an ‘easy’ thing to deal with, has only ever dealt with those carefully nurtured ones kept as training pets for neophyte adventurers. It is true, that in controlled circumstances they are highly adaptable and utilitarian creatures, exploited for everything from garbage disposal to agriculture to execution.

>

> The wild variants however, if left to their own devices, in lands where they are afforded latitude to grow and adapt will become representative of whatever they eat. If they eat garbage they become living harbringers of pollution. If they eat rot and decay they can become wretched plague pits gnawing at the vitality of the land. However, amongst the very worst are those which have taken up root in battlefields or ancient monster dens, gaining posession of the blood and bones of either men, elf or monster, without cull or containment to limit their spread thereafter. Slimes are what they eat afterall, and a slime colony in posession of the bones of higher circle practicioners is a force of carnage and misfortune like few things you can envisage and with even fewer limitations.

Excerpt from ‘A Bestiary for the Undren Mare’

  ~Sir Danial of Karoth, Explorer.

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~ Arai & Sana, Mysterious Tunnels ~

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The first proper incursion into their now very heavily warded little corridor territory arrived sometime around early morning on the second ‘day’. They had worked out how to properly hide the qi quite quickly. It was as simple as mirroring the framework and leaving the central symbol as it was, but connected in the new points. Even their own qi enhanced vision with the symbol couldn’t pick them out easily once they were set. To know where they were, she had to rely on the subtle sense of affinity she got towards each placed core symbol. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to make a whole bunch of difference to whatever had arrived.

Listening to the series of dull cracks in the distance, Arai could only assume that that was just how long it had taken something else to come and investigate if the spiders were really exterminated. Several more exploded in rapid succession before the first corrosion trap was tripped with tunnel shaking ferocity the still arcing lightning arrays did their bit and the two combined catastrophically.

*Shuppp- Thump *

Crackling mists swirled along the corridor to their right, slowly dissipating as the arrays that had been tripped expended all the qi within them. It was impossible not to admire how ferocious and effective the combination was, especially given it was mostly achieved by individual symbols rather than properly ‘linked’ ones.

Eventually, the onslaught subsided, leaving them crouched in cover, observing the aftermath cautiously, just in case anything had managed to survive. However, seconds passed by and nothing materialized, then minutes, and eventually, the mists themselves began to disperse and the water started to flow back in.

“Well, that was anti-climactic…” Sana muttered, slipping out of the alcove, intending to go check. “I wonder what it-”

Her sister threw herself back into the alcove as something smashed into the wall immediately above and behind them, exploding violently and showering both of them in rock chips.

“What the!” she winced, pushing herself back into the alcove and searching frantically with her qi perception.

“….No idea!” Sana signed, shaking her head to clear it. “It was well beyond my detection range.”

Carefully her sister peered around the corner of the alcove and immediately snapped her head back as something hissed by a hair's breadth from her cheek and ricocheted into the alcove wall behind them.

They stared dully at each other for a split second. "Monkeyshit..."

Cursing she threw herself flat in the tunnel, dragging Sana with her as it exploded right behind where she would have been sat.

She triggered her basic movement art from the pavilion, using just its qi imprint like she was a spiritual cultivator, and arrived at the opposite alcove just as another rock smashed into the left-hand side of it, missing her head by a hands width. The explosion embedded several finger-sized shards of rock into her shoulder, side and Sana’s back.

“But it knows exactly where the merciless fates we are apparently,” her sister hissed beside her.

They both looked up at the arched ceiling, with its myriad blind angles and weird bits of ornamentation and she mentally cursed the designers of this place for their ludicrous choices.

Seconds dragged by and there were no further explosive projectiles, not that that made her feel any more at ease.

“Another alcove?” Sana signed.

Nodding tersely, she pushed qi into her leg meridians and they flitted towards the next alcove-

Her instincts kicked in and she flattened herself to the ground in a splash of mud and water. Sana splashed down nearby as both their previous alcove and the two ahead of them erupted like firecrackers under a sustained barrage of projectiles. Lying there, she thanked whatever had given her that ‘nope’ feeling. If not for that she would have taken half a dozen of those explosions without any recourse to avoid them. On the other hand, they were both now stuck in the shallow water of the corridor, blind to their...

*Plop*

She rolled to the side of the tunnel a moment after Sana had already reached the same conclusion.

*Plop*

*Plop*

*Plop*

Three more objects about the size of a fist arced lazily through the air and landed in the mud about five metres beyond them. The second of the three projectiles exploded with a dull thud a moment later, making her lose track of the other two.

-You cunning little… you think I am going to buy that? she snarled in her own head.

Unfortunately, whatever was attacking them had a clear advantage in being able to as good as pinpoint them from well beyond her meagre qi perception range. That meant it was at least forty metres away in the gloom, or very well hidden.

“Fight or run?” Sana signed.

Another two rocks lazily arched through the air and landed behind them, with only one of them exploding, showering the area around them with splinters of rock and mud. Stuck as they were in the corridor, with no cover, their only options really were to run blind or attack blind and hope they could spot whatever it was before it either retreated or got them before they saw it. Neither was appealing.

“Fight, then run?” she could only shrug back. “Run risky, unknown speed.”

That was the other problem. Running would expose them to pursuit while forcing them into threats ahead of them, like more spiders. Dashing into a corridor full of those, or meeting a bigger one, all while being chased by whatever was responsible for these projectiles would be a bad way to die.

“Everything risky” came the almost sarcastic sign back. “Offence is defence.”

Well, her sister was right there. Offence was defence in circumstances like this, based on what she remembered of her father's training on tactics. She pushed her qi into her skin to act as some sort of armour, its protection was minimal, but it was the-

She realised her mistake in the very same instant she felt like she had just been hit in the back by a huge hammer. Whatever it was could sense qi to a much greater degree than the spiders in all likelihood. That was almost certainly how it was targeting them so fate thrashed accurately. By using her qi armour she had just lit herself up like a torch in the gloom. There was a moment of sickening emptiness and then she was thrown away down the corridor as every other unexploded projectile ahead and behind them detonated one after another.

-fates-thrashed-piece-of…

She mustered as much qi as her meridians could possess and charged forward, keeping as low as she could as explosions unfurled behind her. Sana had landed a bit ahead of her it seemed and was already up and using the tunnel wall as best she could to ensure that whatever was shooting the-

A rock hung in the air in front of her and exploded in the moment before Sana successfully deflected it. Her sister screamed in rage as much as pain as her forearm was lacerated briefly to the bone and she was thrown into the opposite wall.

That confirmed her burst of paranoia earlier about them being able to explode whenever whatever was casting these things at them needed them to. It was remarkably like what they had been able to do with the purified cores.

-At least it saves me qi testing whether they could be deflected, she thought with a wince for her sister's misfortune there.

“Monkeyshit, they can sense qi can’t they?” Sana said as another explosion thudded into the muddy water behind then scattering silt and spider bits all over the tunnel.

“Seems that way-…” she signed back, rolling over and realising she was right... besides.

The rock plopped down right in front of her and in a singular, gut-twisting moment, she realised she had made a catastrophic error with their activation criteria-

She hit the roof of the tunnel with enough force to rattle every bone in her body, screaming in agony even before she landed right in the middle of her own trap. It was fortunate she had acquired some resistance to the corrosion, so the agony was merely very bad.

-Lash Lamium bad, her memories unhelpfully supplied.

Tasting blood in her mouth, she stimulated the symbol and her mantra and used her movement art to the full for the first time.

'Heart, Blessed...Bestow... Body, Day'

{Flickering Steps}

With an immense burst of speed, she blurred almost thirty metres down the corridor in a single bound-

At the same time as she registered that that was fifteen metres further than she had intended to go! Something crunched into her, just above her right breast, spinning her in the air and smashing her into the far wall and then the ground. Coughing up blood she was sure her bones in her ribcage, shoulder and arm had been cracked in spite of the mantra's support.

-How the fates had it detected where the trap was… was that not as invisible as they had hoped?

-or was whatever it was watching even then? Biding its time for some reason?

Either was possible, really.

She rolled desperately in the shallow muddy water and another explosion ignited above her, peppering her with razor-sharp rock shards.

-fate-accursed-mother-loving…

Another two projectiles hissed through the air at her. Travelling so fast that her qi perception which was really being focused now could barely track them.

-Time to gamble…

Pushing as much qi into her movement art as she dared, but not actually initiating it, she braced herself for the moment of the explosion. When the first one triggered, after an agonising few seconds delay, she aimed for the ceiling. Smashing into it, she slapped a hand against it and let herself be repelled forwards largely at random, crashing down into the muddy water and trusting to her body's durability not to break anything else. As she hit the water, she let some of her qi grow chaotic and start to 'bleed' away even as she suppressed everything, using her mantra to totally hide her presence. Playing dead was seriously risky, but it was all she could think of, even as she felt bad for deliberately fooling Sana in the moment.

Something exploded above her, against the wall. This time it seemed to come at a diagonal so she was close from what she could tell. Another explosion in the water immediately beside her made every bone in her body creak from the amplified shockwaves. Her body rag-dolled into the wall like a broken puppet and crashed down. Three more explosions came in rapid succession. Her eardrums burst under the pressure and her inner organs shook in very unpleasant ways. She focused her intent on her heart and briefly stopped it, trusting to the mantra and the qi in her bones to sustain her body even as she crumpled back to the ground. Suppressing her concerns at how badly she was bleeding for this act, she finally got a good look at their tormentor.

It was a weird, sludgy thing that looked like some kind of amorphous rock with some blotchy reddish fungus on it. The only clue to its identity came from its size. It was way too big for a piece of roof fall in this part of the tunnel and the mushrooms growing it were unlike anything else she had yet laid eyes upon up to this point. Even the ‘sludge’ part was barely visible. Nothing more than a film over the ‘rock’. If it wasn’t for years of looking for things that stood out in weird ways in forests she would have assumed it was just some kind of slime mould.

Something latched onto her arm a second later and she finally registered the tendril-like current in the water. With deceptive speed and strength, it started to drag her body across the corridor towards the main body.

Behind her, with a pang of unhappiness, she heard Sana yell in fury, which meant she properly screamed given how damaged her eardrums were. The creature convulsed and spat something up the corridor. It moved so fast her vision couldn't follow it directly, only hear the sound it made. There was an explosion and a flash of light, visible for the first time now that she wasn’t using her qi vision. Sana was visible as a shadow in the middle distance, taking cover behind a piece of genuine roof fall, freshly brought down from the ornate ceiling.

The thing dragged her closer and more tendrils arrived; wrapping around her arm, latching onto her shoulder where it was lacerated and then coiling around her thigh. As soon as the tendril connected with her shoulder, she felt something tug at the qi in her body and start to bleed away unrefined qi that was held in her body. It was a supreme effort not to react as the tendrils wormed deeper and wrapped around her collar bone trying to absorb qi from it directly even as it used the purchase to drag her closer. The tug lasted for a half-second and then the symbol just symbolled faintly and the drain was gone. Shrouded subtly by something the symbol and her mantra did.

Even focusing as she was, it was hard not to be in awe of what was occurring in her body. at a faint nudge, in a very specific way, her mantra was now escorting the invading qi through her meridians, hoovering up qi that was somehow connected to the symbol. Just as quietly it started to infiltrate back into the creature. In that instant, she felt the creature focus harder on her even as her grasp of its qi flow and intent rapidly improved with the new connection.

Its intent to [Devour], [Refine] and [Consume] came through its qi clearly now.

The qi and what she could only consider its 'intent', flowed from a particular part in the centre of the rock, which, thanks to her qi being escorted into it she could now grasp the inner structure of.

At the last possible moment, she mustered all the nascent intent she could with her mantra...

{ Spirit. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.}

All five aspects of the mnemonic were directed towards aspects of the attack, as surging up, she stabbed the Arborundum leaf through its body, trusting to her weight and momentum to do the damage.

As she expected, the leaf carved the thing open like it was wet clay. A wave of hot, corrosive, bile flowed over her. She wanted to scream, but that would mean opening her mouth. Instead, she took that pain and anger and used it to sustain her stab with leaf deep into the creature. With remarkable speed, it distended and started flowing away from her. That ‘important’ point that was trying to exert the devouring intent on her qi rapidly retreating away from her even as it invited more and more of the qi infused with the symbols strange intent into its body without ever seeming to realise.

Sana saw the opening and shot forward so fast her body was just a series of afterimages, crashing down onto the thing in a single bound.

It roiled and shook under the impact. Hundreds of algru-like tentacles lashed at both of them even as its Qi Core opened up even more space and slipped under the water and out of visual sight without so much as a ripple.

Exerting as much of her own qi as she could now, she tore herself free of the worst of the creature and plunged after it, ignoring the sounds of tearing flesh in her shoulder and leg. The damage was going to be horrific no matter what at this point. What was most important was that this fate thrashed thing died here and now, and didn’t get away.

{FLICKERING STEPS}

The distended body rippled and bits of it exploded off at her with remarkable velocity, detonating at point-blank even as she catapulted herself at its core with her movement art.

Behind her, Sana was tearing chunks from its surface and hurling them aside.

Sustained by an inarticulate howl of anger, she threw herself forward again and slashed down with the leaf, narrowly missing the ‘core’ if that was what it was, and instead managing to sever a part of its body off entirely. The mass juddered and twisted away, prompting her to lunge after it again and crash down into the mud as the creature just managed to nudge its core out of the way on the wrong side of the blade, leading to her inadvertently severing it from the bulk of its body. The thing recoiled and then the entire large part of the body started to boil and expand behind and all around them.

She ignored it, trusting Sana would get clear, desperately lunging after the bit that was still the core.

{Flickering Steps}

Thanks to her movement art, she managed to stab the leaf into it at full sprawl. She barely knicked the core, even as it flowed away, leaving only a fraction behind with the blade. In the same instant, the rest of it vanished with a *Plop* into deeper water, immune to the searing curses in her mind. Swimming away with an immense speed she had no way to match, even if she dared.

Behind her, she was aware of an ominous absence of anything, then a hand grasped her robe and the world twisted in a truly disorientating blur. she was aware of water, mid, skipping motion-

The pressure wave from the explosion of the thing's main body tossed her... both of them probably, down the tunnel like a stringless puppet and dropped her into deep, cold, water with a jarring *thwack*.

She floundered for solid ground and managed to grasp an edge of something under the water and pull herself towards it. The reality of pain and her current physical condition was rapidly intruding now. It was unspeakable... close to when she had nearly been frozen to death. She tried to look around, but the world was a messy blur of shadows and nausea. In any case, whatever that sludge thing was had cleanly escaped, which was certainly bad, all her instincts told her. She got a second hand to whatever it was, and her eyes finally recovered to the point where she could barely see as she hauled herself above the water surface.

“Are you okay!?” Sana yelled, accompanied by the sound of splashing somewhere nearby.

“Maybe?” she managed to rasp, coughing out water.

Her eardrums were still ruined, but she had enough awareness through her wavering qi perception, enough to inform her that rocks were falling nearby. A lot of rocks. She was no longer in a tunnel but in some pool of water… and there was a curved wall. Her qi perception made no headway under the water though, so she still had no idea of depth and her feet kicked on nothing as she struggled through it, cursing that it was oddly hard to get purchase on anything within it.

Something…someone splashed towards her and an arm slid under hers.

“What the fates was that!” Sana wheezed.

“A…sludge monster?” she gasped. “It was like the bastard offspring between an Algru mat and-”

Her words were cut off as the viscosity of the water around them shifted abruptly to gelatinous and a surge swept up, lifting both of them off the rock and rolled them over, trying to pull them down into the depths. She groaned in agony as something all around her tried to physically rip every shred of unrefined qi in her body away from her. Blood flowed out of all her pores and misted the surrounding water even as she managed to lock down her body with her mantra and the symbols help.

Failing abjectly at devouring whatever it was has abruptly changed to tried to compress her instead. The strength of whatever was drawing her down was inexorable.

Perhaps pushed by the truly dire circumstance she was in, she had a minor epiphany of sorts even as she watched the symbol repel the strange viscosity that was surging through the water now trying to constrict her and twist her into a bloody rag.

-Why not transmute the water using the symbol?

Visualising the transmutation circle in her mind, she poked the symbol desperately. It symbolled in a way that suggested both dubiousness and also praise at her decisive decision and then rotated in a way she had never felt before.

Its intent bled out of her and imprinted somehow on the intangible material component within the water around her. All the qi in her body bled away like morning mist and she had a gut-wrenching sense of fragmentation as if every bone in her body had just shattered.

The viscosity in the water raged against her. Trying to overcome the change in the qi within the water that the symbol had just provoked. In a split second, she was the eye of a terrifying qi cycle. The water around her and the viscosity bled qi all over the place, which poured into her body, fusing with her ruined bones at a rate so furious that it compacted them back together again in the blink of an eye. Her body compressed and there was another sense of gut-wrenching fragmentation as her qi erupted outwards. This time her bones didn’t break, which was something she guessed from the small island of sanity amid pain and focus.

At the same time, the viscosity around her surged and pounded down on her. The force trying to both push and pull her into the depths was colossal now. A mountain of viscous water crushing down on her. The symbol shifted of its own accord and her mantra moved according to her own desperate intention to resist it and drew in as much as her body could hold, compressing it into her bones before erupting once again. Eroding the force above her one bite at a time, or so it felt.

Somewhere in her mind, another knot of fury, rage and panic exploded. It was her but not quite… her. In the same instant, she felt the pressure lessen and there was a second changing sensation in the viscous water trying to constrict her.

-S-sana?

-Had her sister… done the same thing?

Now running totally under the impetus of her instinctive desire to take this fate thrashed thing down with her, the cycle repeated and she felt the viscous water...

Before she was even aware of what it is, something had battered its way into her consciousness like an axe biting into a rotten log. The symbol met it with a force that she would not have believed possible. Two titans locking horns in her mind for a fraction of a second, then the symbol deflected the intent from whatever was directing the viscosity and it swirled around her without it causing any real damage to her psyche or her consciousness.

Something grasped her hair and pulled her up. She tried to fight it but there was no strength in her body now. The cycle roared again and someone was yelling at her. She gasped for breath and broke the surface. Sana was dragging her free of the maelstrom that was consuming the hall.

“Out!”

“OUT” she was whispering...?

“We have to get out of the water! Something else is coming!” ... no, screaming?

-Ah, her eardrums were ruined from the pressure…

She half stumbled, was half dragged out of the shallows, darkness and red blurring her vision even as she was aware of being dragged through a doorway…

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~ Sana, Mysterious Tunnels - now hating on sludge monsters ~

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Sana cursed and swore as she dragged her now properly unconscious sister through the doorway and out of the hall.

“Useless-fate-thrashed-sister…”

-Tell me what you plan to do!

When her sister got hit by the sludge she had thought she was genuinely incapacitated. That had been bad enough! But then when she was dragged under, when the water sludge… slime thing returned in the water with a vengeance, she had, for a horrible moment thought that her sister was going to explode herself to try to kill it.

-Never mind that we shouldn’t be able to do that at our realm, a more rational part of her panicked self pointed out.

-Voices be gone! She castigated herself, even though it wasn’t a voice.

Thankfully, her sister had instead transmuted the water somehow, rather than explode into bits, although the cost to her body seemed to be extreme. It was a mad, mad idea in any case.

-You hear that stupid sister! MAD!

She hissed more curses in her head as she looked around the room they were now in and cursed…

-Dead end, fates thrashed…

The water was still up to her knees here. Looking around again she registered that the room stepped up on one side, whole this end had something like a shallow channel that ran to the wall and then stopped in a flat rock with a bunch of graven symbols in a circle on it?

Shockingly, what her sister had done had even worked for a bit, until the full strength of the thing welled up from the depths. Of that hall, dragging her in as well. It had been a desperate follow-up act to try to transmute the water into something that its controlling qi couldn’t really affect. What the change had given her was some sort of slick of oil accompanied by a smell akin to a refuse heap combined with the life attuned substances that alchemists used. Whatever it was, it was an act that had taken all her qi and was still happening. The process triggered by her desperate attempt to transmute the water, having set of something akin to a chain reaction that was inexorably eating through the viscous water.

The viscosity of the water was still increasing as well, so she didn’t think too hard about it and instead continued to struggle through the water towards the edge, dragging Arai along with her. The suction of the water pulling them both back. Right on cue, it managed to rip her feet out from under her. Another wave of viscous water surged across the top of the oil, swirling to become close to a tentacle which smashed into her midriff even as she crashed into the shallow water. It swept over her body, shredding at her clothes and trying to smother her face even as she triggered her movement art and attempted to catapult both of them vertically. Instead of hitting the ceiling it barely dragged her half out of the water and then dropped her a few paces away with a dull splat, scattering viscous water and oil everywhere. A sharp pain in her side and a feeling of cracking ribs told her she had found the edge of the steps.

With a soundless scream, she exerted every shred of her strength and cast Arai beyond her, ignoring the disgusting feeling of rupturing ligaments and tearing muscles in her arm and shoulder. Feeding the pain into her mantra to turn it into fuel for her own survival. Scrambling up, she became aware that they had been dragged back out of the hall they had been in without her even noticing.

“Fates! We really need to get. Out. Of. Here.” she screamed, grabbing her sister by the hair now and struggling towards the doorway.

The whole chamber was trembling faintly now, the water rippling in very unnatural ways, tearing at her legs. Her qi couldn’t get any purchase on the rock of the steps either, so she threw herself forward and managed to get a hand on the edge of the doorframe, her arms were just puppet limbs for her mantra and her qi at this point. Another surge of whatever it was, from the depths, hammered into her and the symbol flawlessly let it roll over her without any impetus.

Struggling up, she dragged Arai forward, turning to look out behind her, and almost froze in terror. A hulking thing was wading towards the centre of the dim, circular hall. its form was immense, metres taller than her, seemingly grasping on the edge of the shallows for something, even as her own attack and whatever her sister had done kept eating away at the viscosity. Finally, mercifully, she made it through the door and into the roughly square hall, turning immediately right and lugging her sister onto the shallower shelf where the water was no more than half a hand deep and now entirely oily.

Looking about, she wanted to scream in rage.

-great, death fate thrashed nameless blessed end!

Or maybe despair.

It was hard to distinguish the two, even though she was putting everything into her mantra and leaving nothing behind at this point.

-The smell… it’s similar to what the alchemists use to refine fire element ward stones, the ‘Distillate of Ancient Life’, a part of her mind, set to seeking ways to survive this chirped up.

She stared around her blankly, trying to fit this information into something, anything at all as whatever it was outside roared in rage and splashed away in the pool.

-Where had –that- come from in any case? Another part of her found time to wonder.

Shaking her head, she stopped letting her thoughts run in parallel, courtesy of the mantra and stared around again. Yes, the smell was akin to that component used by alchemists and sometimes formations experts for refining fire ward stones… from the oil…

-Water turned into… Distillate of Ancient Life?

That thought rattled around again… water… life… fire...

An idea about as suicidally insane as whatever her sister had done… was still just about doing, flickered in her head. It was a thing everyone was warned to never do with ward stones...

-Not the time to be thinking about that kind of thing!

Another wave of tendril-like ripples swept through the room, grasping at her and Arai even as she struggled further back and finally found some blocks that had dropped from the ceiling. Pulling her sister on them, as far out of the water as she could, she scrabbled for the bundle of little stones they had intended to use as formation cores, checking their elements with her hand. Pushing what little qi she had accumulated into a fire one, until it was starting to smoke against her skin. Taking a deep breath, she struggled back towards the doorway a few metres away and the hall.

The battle unfolding, just visible on the edge of her perception, was titanic. Waves of viscous water were lashing at the thing that was wrestling up to its waist in the centre of the room. The black slick was slowly eating into the water of the room, refusing to mix with it. Whatever Arai had done was now unnoticeable, which might be for the best. Under the sustained exposure to her own efforts, the slick was now congealing in places into a thick tar-like substance that also had an uncanny resemblance to the sap some of the more dangerous Heaven Blade Pine’s secreted.

-Water feeds life, life feeds fire, and fire feeds earth… Earth suppresses water?

She shoved as much qi into the small fire stone as it was possible for it to hold and envisaged a symbol and framework that transmuted Life into Fire as possible then threw it at a bit of the pitch that was adhering to the wall and stumbled backwards towards the doorway into the side room.

For several agonising heartbeats, she thought she had miscalculated, that it wouldn’t work like that. Her heart finally dropped when she felt as much as heard the *pop* and a gentle blue flame swirled across the surface of the water, so fast that it was almost unreal. The heat that washed over her and the sense of combusting life. Her qi defences, such as they were, barely protected her from the heat that was coming off it, even as the surface of the water started to smoke ominously. Within ten heartbeats half the room was illuminated in the gentle blue blaze.

Knowing her resistance wouldn’t last long in the face of this, she pulled out another fire stone and focused on the idea of transforming fire into earth while adding a symbol that as far as she could work out involved corroding earth. The symbol gave her a few seconds of ominous resistance until she clarified in her own mind exactly ‘what’ it was she was trying to do. At that point it somehow seemed to understand on its own what she was after and took over the process, directing her mantra in strange ways that focused heavily on the Bestowal mnemonic.

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The qi in the stone shifted to a weird purple-green, and she got a faint sense of devouring transformation from it. Finally getting out of the hall, she stumbled to the blocks where her sister was, thankful that the viscosity creature seemed to have its hands full with the grey, horned creature outside that was tearing into it.

She shoved the stone down on a lower rock slab. Rather than risk her own qi in this, she scooped some of the tar. She could see that the viscosity was now fighting back against that as well, breaking it up and scattering it. Dispersing it in an attempt to cut off the blaze. It might eventually succeed, but for now the rate of change was not in its favour. Grimacing, she drew a framework outline and searched for her sister's bundle. Mercifully it was still there, as was the Arborundum leaf, scattering them out she grabbed two more fire stones.

Continuing to draw the framework outline, she refined another of the corrosive stones and then another. Connecting the wood oil to the water, she rummaged in her pack and found the sole lightning stone she had managed to make, thinking it might work for light and added it. She added a water one for good measure to complete the circle.

Staring at the potential thing of utmost calamity, all beginner students of formations were warned never to attempt, which she had just scrawled on the floor, eyed the rock about the size of her torso, lifted it up dragged it outside. The viscosity actually helped here, because it finally returned to try to claim her once again. Arriving at the doorway she mustered all her effort, pushed as much qi into the thing as she could and watched the array fuse, symbol by symbol into the rock, becoming part of it. At the last possible moment, when the lightning stone had fused, and the qi was rolling into the central symbol, she dropped it and threw herself back through the doorway.

Five seconds… she managed to get around the corner.

Three seconds, the viscosity registered something was wrong and a wave of intent split past her even as she made it to the rock.

One second... she used her movement art, screaming as one of her meridians in her leg finally gave out and slammed them both into the corner of the room, at ninety degrees to the door and as far away as possible.

Nothing…

Seconds ticked by, with the only obvious change being the waters in the room rapidly twisting and receding. She was just about to admit that she had screwed up when the pressure wave knocked her out cold.

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~ Arai, Mysterious Tunnels - Really hating on sludge monsters ~

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Arai found herself jarred back to consciousness, feeling like she had been used as some pets chew toy. Her whole body was either screaming, raging, or crying at her. Two things stood out immediately, though. She wasn’t in water, viscous or normal, and that the air was stifling. A third belated comprehension arrived regarding her current condition and told her she was crumpled in a corner, with Sana lying on top of her. Her sister was breathing, but still unconscious. She could feel her heartbeat as well, so whatever had happened… they had both survived.

Shaking her carefully, she disentangled herself and had to take a moment as she realised that the pain was mostly phantom and she was suspiciously hale. She eyed the symbol dubiously.

-Was that you?

She got something approaching reproach from it and belatedly remembered that it had been her idea to do what she did.

Sana groaned and tried to move.

Helping her sit up, she asked - “What happened after?”

“World go boom,” Sana said groggily. “Big boom, very boom.”

“Right…” she said, eyeing her sister with some concern, wondering if she was concussed or something.

“Uhh… I tried to blow it up, it seems we survived,” Sana clarified after a moment.

Sana groaned and tried to get up. Arai helped her sit asked, “what happened after?”

Looking around, she had to concede there was a distinct lack of sludge monsters or viscous person devouring water. Given Sana was still not entirely with it, she carefully limped over to the doorway. Peering out into the circular hall, very cautiously in case something was still around to spit another exploding rock at her, she was met with a scene of apocalyptic devastation. The upper level of the circular hall upon which they were currently, had a bunch of doors off it and two tunnels. One was clearly filled with Rockfall, and thus likely the one they entered by. The other, on the far side, was twice its width and sloped upwards slightly.

The floor of the hall which turned out to be about a level below them, was a world of boiling mud, rippling gyres of unstable qi and smoke. A corpse was still burning, sprawled on the far side of the room. Almost 5 metres tall, it looked like some kind of hunched ape, but more twisted and burnt nearly to the bone. There was no water left in the room, and it appeared that the walls on both levels were faintly melted. Whatever Sana had done after she passed out, it had certainly worked.

Edging down the steps and onto the walkway, she peered over the edge and immediately snapped her head back as a streak of blazing mud cut through where her head had been. Two more rapidly hit the entrance above her, scattering boiling mud everywhere and making her skin smoke faintly where it caught her. A hand grabbed hers and Sana hauled her flat onto the steps and out of line of sight of most of the floor below. Below them, she could see vaguely humanoid figures standing up out of the mud. Several more projectiles of burning sludge slapped into the wall and the doorway, preventing them from scrambling back into the room.

“How in all the nameless fates is this horrific thing STILL not dead?” Sana gasped, sounding equal parts horrified and exhausted.

“How the fates should I know. Maybe it’s immortal,” she groaned.

Eyeing the door above her, she considered that their attempt to head them off might actually be a minor mercy. The last thing they needed to do was get pinned in a dead-end under sustained bombardment from that thing.

Without saying anything Sana nodded, and she got a brief sense of agreement, a reminder of the strange link that now existed between the two of them. Looking left and right, she saw several more lumps of burning sludge splatter into the wall behind them, scattering boiling mud and steam everywhere. Her heart sank as she watched several of the nearby globs of mud slowly start to pull themselves together. The largest one pulsed faintly and then spat a piece of itself at them, sending them scrambling back around the perimeter to avoid it. At least they weren’t exploding, yet.

Sana grabbed a brick-sized lump of masonry that wasn’t quite melted to the walkway, presumably having been recently dislodged and hurled it at another mini mud sludge, scattering it apart. They both watched dully as it pulled itself back together around the rock. There was a conspicuous sound of grinding rock-

“Oh fates, go get-” she cursed and hurled herself into the next doorway around which turned out to be another fate thrashed room.

Behind her, the wall was scoured by a scattershot of exploding rock. Sana struggled up and gave an apologetic wince.

After a few moments, a bunch of the scalding mud sludge slime things rolled into the room. Still kneeling as she was, she pushed her qi out towards the doorway, sending it in a sheet across the floor. All the sludge things immediately orientated on her. Sana projected her own qi as best she could and about managed to create a shield of qi armour around both of them to weather out the barrage of boiling mud and rock.

Rather than bother with a second barrage, instead, the sludge things all rolled together and became one large sludge thing about the size of a large dog which promptly spewed a torrent of scalding mud over them both that did have qi penetrative properties. She had the presence of mind to roll away even as her own screams of pain registered in a rather dissociated way.

-Do your fate thrashed thing, she sent to the symbol, whose qi was rapidly suffusing the thin film of qi she was extending out from her body.

The heat in the room became even more stifling for a moment as the Mud sludge steamed and started to do something. All her qi flooded away, leaving her weak and rubber-limbed for a second and the heat faded away. The Mud slime thing just slumped outwards and became a collection of mud and rock. It’s qi transmuted by the symbol to become her own.

She exhaled and then watched mutely as a glob of sludge plopped through the doorway straight into it and the whole creature pulled itself back together again.

“Oh nameless fates, I will flay your 9 generations' souls!” she swore.

“And if you have no nameless spawned soul I swear if I ever become a god I’m going to remember you and give you one just so she can!” Sana yelled from near the wall as she repeated the same trick she had just demonstrated.

They both watched, nursing a certain degree of impotent rage as the thing discarded almost all its volume the instant before the transmutation hit it. Half a heartbeat later another orb of mud dropped onto the stairs into the room, doubling the number of sludges.

“Run?” Sana signed

“Run.” she agreed. “Towards opposite tunnel.”

As if it intuitively grasped that they were about to flee, both sludges flowed up the doorway, clearly intending to block off their escape route with a qi infused membrane of slime and boiling, corrosive mud. Fortunately, it had failed to factor in the Arborundum leaf, which sheared apart the membrane as if it were paper. Grimacing in pain, she watched as the membrane collapsed over the two of them, briefly smothering them before she once again sacrificed a significant portion of her extant qi to orphan all the qi of their attackers, and dropped a triggered corrosive spider core for good measure. Not for the first time, she noticed she only got the difference back from the transmutation of qi. On the way past, Sana also slapped her hand against the other doorframe.

Out of the room, they immediately turned right. Behind them, there was a sense of heat and tingling across her back as a lightning array incinerated everything in the vicinity of the doorway. A heartbeat later and the corrosive stone also exploded, spreading a cloud of greenish mist behind them that made her skin itch. The resistance to that was really something at this point, she had to acknowledge.

As they kept running around the room, she had a few moments of paranoid expectation, waiting for the probably inevitable barrage of projectiles from an explosion sludge but they never materialised. Glancing into the room below, she really wished she had held her nerve and not done so, because there were hundreds of mud sludge forms, including humanoid figures working on turning the five-metre tall ape thing, which wasn’t dead, into a giant ape sludge.

Finally reaching the stairs down to the lower level, she was met with the sight of several still faintly burning human-shaped sludges coming up the stairs to meet them. Not particularly fast or slow, but with the kind of gait that suggested a certain inevitability. She shared a look with Sana and then they both ran past the stairs as fast as they could without resorting to qi, heading towards the large tunnel on the far side.

She didn’t stop to consider countermeasures and just ran as fast as she could, with Sana half a step behind. Along the way it did occur to her briefly that dropping the leaf blade would be all kinds of bad. Trusting to her qi perception to protect her for a few seconds, as there was no point in being stealthy at this point, she tore what remained of her sleeve and lashed the leaf to her hand, hoping she wouldn’t come to regret that choice. Cutting your own limb off with it would be a really dumb way to cripple herself. Her paranoia regarding her qi perception was rewarded, when having only made it twenty metres a dozen points twisted briefly on the periphery of her qi perception ahead of her. Throwing herself into the wall, a dozen explosions split the air between them, making her whole body rattle.

“You know I’m starting to see why that fate thrashed spirit one was so sure we would die down here.” Sana snarled from across the corridor.

“At least the humanoid ones are sl-” she ducked as one of the human sludges literally appeared right beside her.

Its hand closed with a *clap* of displaced air where her neck would have been.

Rolling forward, she kicked, and it grunted, because it was like kicking a wall of mud. Its body rippled and tried to suck in her foot. The arms of the thing swung downward in a blur and she had to use her movement art and accept the punishment to her meridians to dodge back a metre. Her heart almost stopped as it became a flowing blur and arrived beside her, already striking downwards.

-Too fate thrashed fast!

-It was faster than she had been at peak physical foundation for nameless sakes!

Sana was dodging away from another on the far side, ducking explosions from further ahead of them. Cursing under her breath she twisted away and running up the wall kicked off, intending to smash the sludge into the ground and transmute it directly. In direct contravention to her chosen strategy, it blurred sluggishly out of the way and struck down at her with a knife-hand. spinning in mid-air now, she grit her teeth as it sliced a palm-sized hole through her leg and grasped her thigh bone directly. Her panic at that had no time to land in her mind though, because two explosions hit her flat in the back, making her spit blood as her ribs creaked.

The thing stared at her facelessly and smashed her into the ground by her leg, all the while ensuring she couldn’t get it within arm’s reach.

-What a cunning piece of nameless sworn trash! She screamed in her own head.

Whatever it was doing had some kind of intent, as the unrefined qi in her body was becoming disordered in a way that felt decidedly ominous.

-Underestimate this you piece of monkeyshit!

She sent her mantra and the symbols' own strange strength into the qi that was being absorbed. A second later the figure twisted and discarded its arm, which rippled-

The explosion probably should have removed her leg, but much like the corrosion, she was sure she had been hit by so many explosions at this point that the symbol was conferring some kind of resistance to physical blast trauma. Even so, she had to roll madly as the thing stomped for her head in a blur, barely missing her and tearing a chunk of her hair out in the process.

-Heaven bless you! mantra that is taking away my pain and confusion! she groaned.

The symbol symbolled oddly in her head as if to say ‘what heaven? It’s all me, you fool!’, but she didn’t care, she was just glad that it was continuing to draw in qi as fast as it was from the surroundings. Rolling away, she grimaced in a different way as the leaf blade reminded her of its presence by stabbing into her other leg faintly. Grasping for it she spun as she rolled up and cut a leg of the sludge as it was kicking at her. It mostly missed, but still managed to take a decent slab of mud off the side to reveal… bones!

She stared blankly for a split second at the silvery sheen on the bones, internalising what that meant.

-Skeletons… inside the sludge?

Something swatted at her so fast she never saw it, shattering her breastbone and sending her across the hall into the wall. Even as she registered the impact, the sludge skeleton monster was before her, one hand grasping the hand that held the knife, crushing it inexorably while the other hammered into her chest, working its way towards her heart. Starting to visualise the transmutation array again as best she could, in the end, she was rescued by Sana crashing into its back with the full force of her movement art.

The sludge collapsed, and she thought she heard the snapping of bone and saw the skull explode. Sadly it was just an afterimage as the sludge implausibly ducked and then snapped its head back up. That was what did it, finally. Her sister’s hand, veiled in qi sank into its body and grasped some bone she guessed, with the intention of transforming the qi in the skeleton directly.

Everything went white, and she was thrown down another corridor like a rag doll.

-Nope, not the corridor nameless-take-your-nine-generations!

She was pitched across the ledge on the upper floor, striking it twice as she flailed in space and then crashed into still bubbling mud on the lower level and let herself bounce. Sana wasn’t so lucky, just smashing into the ground nearby with a sickening splat of scalding mud spraying everywhere.

Groaning, she had to admit that maybe she had misjudged her previous durability in this ‘stage’. It was well over Qi Containment… in fact, as she swiftly took stock of her bodily condition, she judged that she was probably more durable than she had been at Peak Physical Foundation.

Several more of the skeleton sludges flowed towards her even as she spun for a third time, showing none of their bored gait. Amid a hail of explosions Sana had righted herself, but she had no time to care about that as the ground roiled beneath her, trying to snare her as she found footing and triggered her movement art with what qi she had left, diverting towards the side of the room and the ring of raised stonework that could be another walkway.

After the failed attempt to mire her in mud came a rippling tide of qi, rising from below. Two sludges shot past her, running backwards and diverting to strike at her vital points, moving faster than she was with her movement art. She twisted and dodged one, slashing at it with the leaf, watching it sway effortlessly away. The other… shifted into an orb of bone and spikes with the skull in the very centre, she guessed. It rolled right over her, shredding her qi armour and hammering her into the ground, where she was met with a massive maw of devouring intent rising up from below. This time the symbol shifted and swallowed that strike whole. The attack vanishing into it like a rock slipping into a deep pool without a ripple, even as the spiky one twisted and somehow reversed its motion without losing any momentum.

The strange swallowing seemed to extend for several tenuous seconds, and the movement of all the things around her became sluggish. Trying to capitalize on it, she cut for the head of the first one and just accepted as it dodged in a bizarre and inexplicable fashion. Instead, she just cut down, biting deep into its body, shredding ribs, sternum and finally its spine. Slicing through where its heart gate should be, assuming its qi circulation mimicked the normal rules, and it was just puppeting the skeletons via its core meridians that were merged with the bones.

-Reality is a cruel Empress, she sighed.

At this point, she didn’t even have the spare mental space to be angry as she felt its bones reconfiguring around her cut. Instead, she tore the blade out laterally and skipped back before her qi armour was totally eroded. Three projectiles and explosions punched through her perception sphere at such a speed as to make a mockery of the idea of foresight and pitched her straight onto the onrushing spiked orb.

This time it didn’t simply flatten her, but tried to roll back over her. She barely matched the impact thanks to the symbol and the mantra devouring everything with reckless abandon, keeping her ahead of the defensive curve by the merest margins. Continued explosions from elsewhere suggested Sana was okay at-

Another explosion hit the back of her head. The force of the impact snapped her head forward and she involuntarily head-butted a dozen boiling mud spikes that had conveniently materialised to stab at her in the very same instant. Contrary to her expectations though, these spikes scattered off her qi reinforced skin like water droplets, where just five minutes earlier she was fate thrashed certain they would have gone halfway through her body.

In her mind’s eye, she was sure the symbol had just sent her an intention that was somewhere between ‘whos your grand-daddy’, and ‘where is your heaven now?’ both of those sentiments sort of reflected her current mindset, but even so, it was distracting how it could manifest so… independently despite being patently a part of her.

-Is this your doing? She asked it, even as she attempted to dodge away from the spiked thing.

It symbolled in a way that suggested ‘we are all in this together!’ and then ‘stop worrying about pointless things and keep fatethrashed dodging’

Well… that second bit was certainly her, rather than it. In any case, she was getting, if not stronger, less vulnerable to the damage that the qi of this thing was doing. At the same time, another thought finally surfaced as she had a chance to take in the bigger picture around her. The majority were still trying to subsume the grey ape thing. Sana was somewhere on the other side of the area… and there were two attacking her. Shifting out of her qi vision partially, she saw the other skeleton sludges just stood up on the second floor… watching.

-Not individuals, we are not fighting individual sludge monsters.

-Everything is the sludge monster.

It was an almost soul-crushing realisation, and the more past events stacked up the more certain of that conclusion she became. Every bit of it could observe and react to every other bit…

-Each sludge is like a formation node?

-Monkeyshit, how do we even kill this or escape if it can constantly reconfigure itself.

In the same instant, another thought surfaced, reminding her of the ape thing.

-Wonderful, so we gotta escape or kill it before that gets up.

She lashed out at the spikey one, catching it several times and ruining several bones in the process. their rolling melee of attrition probably only lasted ten heartbeats, though it felt like minutes before it blurred out of the way of an attack. Choosing to relinquish its proximity rather than risk getting more bones cut. As soon as it gained distance exploding projectiles and corrosive mud enveloped the entirety of her surroundings. another skeleton sludge monster slowly stood up from the quagmire nearby, even as she registered more slug-like sludge monsters in the shapes of rocks exiting half of the smaller tunnels around this lower level of the hall.

In the burning mud hell, the only warning of a new variable was her hair crackling faintly. Spinning to see if it was Sana, who was dodging another two attackers on the far side, her confusion cost her time. Her desperate dive, snared by mud and qi to dodge the line of white that twisted like a serpent through the air between her and an incandescent rock on the far side not enough to avoid it scouring her back and sending waves of numbness through her body that left the phantom knives in her flesh. It was a statement of how inured to this she was that all this new variable elicited was resignation.

-Great, so they had the full elemental spectrum.

Struggling up, she was wondering just what stroke of luck was required to extricate both of them from this horror show, when for once the heavens obliged in their favour.

The roar that echoed from the large tunnel on the second level made her vision swim, even as the symbol stepped in and did something. Something barrelled out of it. Another of the giant, ape-like creatures.

-When tribulation thunder rolls, it’s never just one bolt, the dispassionate island at the centre of her consciousness grumbled.

This time she got a clearer look at it in the flickering fires. This one was bigger than the last one. Dark grey-green skin that had the texture of rock. Hard brutish features, four eyes filled with malice and twisted horns on its head. It wore no armour, but probably it didn’t need it given its hide had the appearance of armour, anyway. In one hand it carried a club made of a stone column.

The sludges all paused for a fractional moment to consider this new arrival. For its part, it surveyed the ruin of the room, the corpse of its possible compatriot, the sludge monsters… them…

The howl of rage made her vision waver before it became a dull, muted pulse amid pain in her head. Her eardrums had ruptured again, and she found herself disorientated mid dodge as every shred of qi in the room recoiled at the sound. The sludge creatures seemed mostly unbothered by the sound, nothing stopped what it was doing, and instead, she was treated to the hair raising scene of dozens more skeleton sludges standing up from the ruin of the floor between them and the new arrival.

Dancing backwards she cursed it in her heart again as a new mud skeleton came, reconfiguring itself into another strange spike thing with swirling tentacles and a lot of pointy edges, clearly adapted to better snare her up. The other one, now joined by a second, charged after her. Still unable to properly use her qi due to the roar, she avoided their knife-hands as much by luck as anything else. Out of the corner of her eye, Sana was being similarly pressured and… the sludge that had been arriving was rapidly stacking up in the doorways forming likely impenetrable barriers to fleeing in any direction except towards the new arrival.

-K, now I get why the spiders were invisible to qi perception, she groaned.

Anything that didn’t have some adaption like that was likely to get eaten by this monstrosity among monstrosities.

Howling again, and making her stumble backwards and get stabbed in the shoulder by one of her own pursuers, the hulking grey monster swept its club through several skeleton sludges. For their part, they barely blurred out of the way. The shockwave from the strike swept through the room, disturbing even her combat twenty metres away. Skeletons rippled and surged forward towards it, arms swinging and stabbing like swords. To her left, she saw Sana struggle out of the devouring grasp of another wave of explosions sent from the upper gallery, barely keeping ahead of them as she tried to dodge two more of the mud skeletons. That turned out to be prophetic, because a heartbeat later a wave of a dozen explosions came for her.

Barely dodging them, she was suddenly aware that she was inside a blurry cloud of white mist that started to dissolve her skin. She had a moment of anger in her mind about them also having corrosive sludges now, when her body suddenly got an ominous tingle and induction. She stared for a single horrified instant at the lightning element sludge as it reappeared from behind a column, glimmering ominously. It was about the size of a small cow now and appeared to be charging up a blast.

-Half the crap in here is earth element apart from us and the grey demon thing… uh-oh.

She drew as much qi around herself as she dared and used her movement art to hurtle towards Sana even as the world around her became light and pain. The lightning bolt didn’t actually come for her, or Sana. Instead, it split the air, heading for the grey demon creature… striking it on the shoulder and making it stagger. Stray bolts crackled out as the lightning was repelled somehow, earthing across half the room and making the veil of corrosive mist combust with enough force to sweep her to the edge of the room.

More acidic explosions, which she just ignored, tore up the path all around her as she spun desperately and charged for a second time in Sana’s direction.

*Crrrrrrrraaaaack*

The second bolt properly split the air, leaving glowing afterimages squiggling on the edges of her vision. This time the grey demon creature snarled and raised a hand, plucking the bolt out of the air with one hand. With a single contemptuous motion, it closed its fist around the bolt and crushed it out of existence, leaving only sparking embers, while lashing out at another skeleton sludge sending it flying away across the room.

She found she had no words really for that.

Even the sludge monster paused for the briefest of moments. The grey monster roared once more, again managing to disturb the qi around her in a way even the symbol seemed unwilling or unable to do anything about. With a second roar that she barely resisted because she expected it, it planted the club in the floor like a staff and pointed at the smoking corpse and hammered its chest with its free hand.

-Ah, so it was here to avenge its comra-

Every skeleton sludge in the room turned their heads and pointed directly at the two of them.

-Oh-you-nameless-I-swear-your-nine-generations!

The nearest skeleton sludges not facing the grey demon all bent their heads slightly to the side and abruptly acquired crescent moon smiles and slit eyes that slanted upwards in some horrific caricatures of grinning faces. Speechless, she found that rage in her heart was now so dense it was starting to manifest as physical intent across her body, giving her qi armour a faintly black hue.

Faced with this, the grey monster swept a malicious gaze across the room and… in a shockingly comprehendible action, just laughed. The echoes of the booming sound carried with them a strangely mocking intent that suggested everything here was now very much going to regret their life choices. Still struggling to react to the roar and speechless from the mockery of the sludge monster, she could only watch in horror as it clapped its hands together. The shockwave swept everything within a hundred metres over. Her body screamed under the force of the purely physical impact of displaced air. The mud below her grew another devouring maw that collapsed into nothing in the face of the symbol, but served to distract her from the creature's follow-up action until the very last moment.

With a howl, the grey creature smashed both fists into the muddy floor, sending a wave of earthen spikes that held a truly terrifying intent to overturn half the hall. Even the walls grew spikes. The sludges blurred around and between the spikes, trying to evade them, and treating her to the weirdest scene in this whole battle up to this point as they avoided yet fundamentally failed to avoid the spikes at the same time. Every mud skeleton hit was scattered into a smear of disarticulated bones.

The wave of spikes swept her up as well, and she tried to escape with her movement art as best she could, promptly discovering why the sludges had been hit. No matter where she went, they moved with her somehow, as if she was trapped in a little tableau of the world, of which the spikes were an immutable and constant part. Two ripped through her leg, another impaled her arm and a third smashed into her heart, making her spit blood as she was turned over twice. The intent that came within it rattled around her body, jangling her meridians within a hair's width of their physical limits, before being dispersed by the symbol and her mantra. She would have screamed, but her lungs were still repairing themselves.

It struck her, even as she watched dozens more sludge skeletons standing back up from the floor, that her own durability was not really that dissimilar to theirs in some strange way. Both the sludge and now the grey beast had gone for her heart twice…

-Was that where they thought the symbol was? A slightly dissociated part of her that was still catching up to things mumbled.

-No time to worry about that!

She mustered her strength and with a final effort made it over to where Sana had been thrown at the side of the room.

Sana was still groggy, but rather miraculously less injured than she was. For whatever reason, her qi defences seemed to be a lot sturdier than her own… a difference in how their bodies had been adapting? Still, she barely had time to refocus on this around them as another wave of unavoidable spikes arrived and swept them both into the wall.

Dozens of wounds were rent open up across her body. Her organs punctured, her bones broken. Simultaneously, a tsunami of devouring intent welled up from somewhere below, seeking to capitalise on her brief incapacitance. The qi it carried along with it swept through the mud, into the spikes, even overwhelming whatever the grey monster had done for a brief second. It rampaged into her body, striking at her meridians, seeking for her dantian, her heart, her brain trying to break apart everything that made her… her. The symbol blazed and crushed the invading qi with contemptuous ease, reducing the damage to purely physical trauma and then rushed outwards through the attacking qi.

Something about it seemed different now, until she realised this was the first time she had felt proper anger… except it wasn’t its anger but her anger, the shadow of her own rage being wielded by the symbol and her mantra in a truly intuitive way. All her desires to end this battle, to be done with it and away from here coalesced into a counter-attack. In the same instant, her scrambled thoughts were weirdly put in mind of those decisive sword strikes she has witnessed Elaria repeating time after time.

In the end, though, it all came to naught, as the sludge monster decisively abandoned everything within forty metres of her. Each and every one exploded violently, turning their area of the hall into a maelstrom of mud, bone and orphaned, unstable qi. The wave of spikes and razor blades crumbled under the dual onslaught and the grey demon looked in their direction, its malicious snarl twisted faintly by a new alien expression… confusion.

That confusion only persisted for a heartbeat though, as it roared again, more waves of distortion through the qi in the room. This time it smashed the stone club into the ground as if planting a post. Simultaneously every single surface in the room sprouted spikes over and over again. She screamed soundlessly as her body was battered by the attack, her qi armour unable to do anything to stop the attack. Two purple lightning bolts smashed into the side of the grey demon, making it flinch for a second. Wiping the lightning off the smoking wound with a hand, it licked its fingers and laughed mockingly before just…

Her hair on her neck stood on end as the creature stepped forward and the world went wobbly somehow. Its leg extended impossibly, and it stamped on the lightning slime, scattering across the floor with an accompanying flash of destabilizing qi. The next instant its leg was where it had been. Grinning it turned and started to walk towards the two of them, even as the waves of spikes kept rolling out from the club, preventing either them or the sludge from getting any serious purchase to move around.

The change in flow came almost as rapidly as the last one had. The floor around the column wobbled and the waves of spikes stopped as the sludge managed to undo whatever the grey monster had effected. At the same time, the corpse of the other grey demon, that had been largely forgotten, slowly stood up, its wounds rippling suspiciously. It wavered on the spot for a few moments and then, with a thunderclap of displaced air that pushed those both back against the wall, arrived beside the grey demon, tackling it into the ground. Ominous grinding sounds began to echo from the floor and the centre of the room twisted and the region of still bubbling mud started to swirl, while the middle of the room started to subtly subside. Before her horrified eyes, the entirety of the hall became a devouring mire of twisting, mud and bone, trying to draw everything in the room on this level towards it.

The two demons, because she could only think of it as a demon now, fought furiously in the middle of the quagmire for a few moments before the twisting maw of the mud bone pit disgorged a veritable swarm of the sludge skeletons, over a hundred at least, which all blurred towards the grey demons.

Intending to move, reality intruded once again into her state of shock and reminded her that she was still impaled on a dozen or more spikes from the floor and wall. Most of them had missed anything vital but… Fates, it hurt so much it was beyond a joke. As if to make a mockery of her previous discomfort, she realised that another wave of spikes was sweeping around the sides of the room, from that fate thrashed column that was no longer being restrained by the sludge.

Sana was no better than her it seemed. Pinned through an arm and the spikes were hammering at her qi defences continuously. Staring dully at her hand, she found that her unthinking earlier action of tying the Arborundum leaf to her hand with what remained of her ruined sleeve had somehow paid off. Still, it was miraculous that it had made it this far… not that she had time to think on it. Grimacing she rapidly cut her way free of the spikes that were holding her to the floor like barbs. The rolling wave of new ones arrived, and she desperately slashed out at them. Her action cleared a bit of space, but a few still reformed and smashed up, aiming for her knees. Her qi defences held, barely, the devouring strength of the symbol on the qi replenishing it as it was dispersed. Even so, each spike took maybe a third of her body’s capacity for unrefined qi to blunt.

Diving towards Sana, who was shattering the spikes that had pierced her, she grabbed her sister and dragged her up, keenly aware that the wave of spikes had nearly made its circuit and was about to return to them.

“Monkeyshit it changed!” Sana gasped.

It took her a second to realise what she meant. The wave of rolling razor spikes of earth had stopped. The grey demon had recovered its weapon and was using it to lay about the horde of mud skeletons while evading the sludge controlled corpse of its compatriot. To punctuate that, her qi perception twisted and and two spikes shot out of nowhere, hitting her in the midriff and the ankle. Sana staggered as several punched out of the wall at her legs.

“Big exit only exit,” Sana winced getting distance on the wall.

Two more spikes shot out, much more focused and with more qi behind them, splintering her own qi defence and gashing open the flesh on her leg for a heartbeat before the mantra healed it.

“No talk. Just go!” she signed.

The choice in routes wasn’t great. The walkway was a shifting morass of spikes that would ruin them within twenty paces, she judged, whereas the bone pit… actually seemed like the lesser of two evils.

Shaking her head, she dashed out onto the edge of it, keeping ahead of the rolling distortions. It was like walking over shifting sand, except the sand was simultaneously boiling and trying to flay her lower legs. Her boots were gone at this point. Actually, most of her clothing was ruined and little better than rags. Their light robes hadn’t been in the best condition before and now between the acid, fire, water, explosions and earth blades, not to mention a few close shaves with dismemberment, it was a miracle they both weren’t completely naked. Groaning, she pushed even more qi into her limbs and sped up her movement. Even with the reinforcement, the help of the mantra and the symbol she was getting close to the proper limits of her physical condition. Meridian stress was a real and proper thing, the sustained damage to her body accumulating in a thousand little ways which were just barely being kept in check by the constant replenishment of qi.

Gritting her teeth she massed her qi and used as much as she dared to initiate her movement art to the full, flitting across the morass, and keeping pace with Sana as they tried their best to weather the waves of corrosive explosions that were chasing after her. Sana danced closer to avoid the worst while she-

The lightning bolt cast from the other side of the room numbed her whole body and punched a hole straight through her stomach, leaving a burnt hole right through her body about a fist wide. Pinned in mid-air for a horrible moment, she watched it melt a hole in the wall before inertia took its toll and she was thrown back towards the bone pit. Her salvation, ironically enough came from the grey ape demon who in a desperate endeavour not to be dragged down punched the floor again, sending an immense shockwave that picked up everything, her included and sent it flying to the edge of the room, where she smashed head first into the wall with enough force that she felt her spine creek and terrifying ripples of dissociation nibble at her limbs for a heartbeat, even as the mantra healed them. The spikes had at least decreased. Only three shot out of the floor and wall, impaling her leg, shoulder and side.

Sana arrived beside her and, taking the leaf knife, cut her free and dragging her onwards even as she recovered enough to walk on her own. Afforded a brief moment as a spectator amid the madness, she observed slimes on the upper layer that had been focusing their bombardment on the centre of the room ripple in their direction faintly.

“Fate-cursed-spawn-of-the-nameless,” her sister rasped.

She spun behind a column, pulling her along with her to avoid the worst of the volley that was clearly aimed to force them off the path and back into the pit. Now the spikes had mostly stopped. Shaking her head to clear the last of the grogginess from it, she motioned that she could stand on her own merits. The wonders of accrued resistance to the punishment they had been receiving.

-It’s only because we are the prize, a part of her acknowledged.

-The secondary nuisance, Sana’s voice agreed in her head.

The battle in the pit was also reaching fever pitch. The grey demon had reached the middle and was brutally trading blows once more with its sludge compatriot. Taking advantage of that, they both staggered on resisting the ambient damage and periodic barrages of acid explosion and narrowly avoiding a further lightning bolt.

“Dodge” she yelled desperately in her own head,

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the demon recover its club somehow and smash it down in the centre of the pit, roaring something that made all the qi in the air around them flinch and get dragged inwards momentarily...

They barely made it behind a column as, with an immense bone-rattling detonation, scalding mud was plastered on every surface. Even with that protection, she was turned into a smoking mud person, her qi defences barely up to the task of delaying the damage long enough for the symbol to step in. the devouring effect turned the qi infused mud that was charring their skin to dust in the blink of an eye.

In the same instant, a lightning sludge the size of a large dog sneakily appeared from behind a column ahead of them, already discharging a bolt that slyly kicked at them both, hammering them into the wall. Qi swirled in and out of her in a way that made her meridians creak as her own defences battled with the energies of the bolt. Furious, her intent swept back down the bolt, draining qi out of the sludge, which imploded with a strange non-sound. Above them, a dozen smaller sludges of various forms rolled off the upper layer and down the columns towards them.

Cursing the fates, she pushed herself up and used her own qi to puppet her body directly. Grabbing Sana, she focused everything she had on her movement art, hoping the line was right.

‘Heart. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.’

{Flickering Steps}

The mnemonics rippled in her mind and her left leg meridian turned out to be the piece that finally gave rupturing even as she smashed into a wall.

Struggling up, she took in her surrounds… the tunnel!

-Out of that hell!

Behind her, there was a twisted hole in the barrier the sludges had been making across it. Heaven finally proving it had some eyes. The one on the main tunnel had clearly been a lot weaker than on the side tunnels. Beside her, her sister vomited blood on to the ground and held her leg. She hadn’t had much awareness of what her sister was doing when she grabbed her to move. Clearly, she had used her movement art as well.

“No pause, run,” Sana’s voice hissed in her mind as she grasped her arm and they both staggered up.

A few belated explosions scythed after them in the darkness before another lightning bolt hissed through the gap like an enraged serpent and caught them both, hurling them along the wall and dropping them in a heap of smoking flesh, numb limbs and rampaging pain. Every second it took to purge the invading qi felt like an eternity as she pictured a hoard of mud skeletons pouring down the corridor after them with the intent to drag them back to that hell and their inevitable deaths.

Sana recovered first, fractionally, and pulled her up. Pushing qi around her body with her mantra’s help, she winced with every footfall as her leg tried to rebel and collapse under her. However, the expected pursuit didn’t materialise. Thirty metres further on, the reason for that became apparent as they were met with two mud skeletons waiting for them by a ramp up to another level.

They blurred towards them, sending immense waves of intent ahead of them, and she screamed as its limb punched through her chest. Grabbing it, she transmuted the qi within it directly, devouring as much as she could before it exploded a fraction before the one that had grabbed Sana suffered the same fate.

Sobbing in anger she pushed herself up. That had cost her another meridian, in her left arm this time. A silver skull, half-melted, stared up at her, still somehow mocking. With a snarl, she stomped on it and it exploded into silver powder, whatever preternatural durability it had had now gone.

Several side passages came and went over the next hundred metres until they decided to arbitrarily pick one. Turning into it, she smashed a fist-sized spider on the wall with her palm without even looking at it. Beside her, Sana stopped and vomited another mouthful of blood onto the ground.

“Ruptured abdominal meridian,” her sister’s voice echoed in her head as she put her hand on her shoulder to help her.

“Ruptured leg and arm meridian,” she sent back, wincing.

Ruptured core organs were unpleasant. The only time she had suffered one was the aftermath of being poisoned by a Yang Lash Lamium a few years back. She had been sick in bed, vomiting blood for a week as her mantra put her spleen back together. Compared to that, their durability now might as well have been a leap into the heavens. She could feel the symbol already working on the meridian damage, devouring the remnants of qi in her body that still were not under her control to expedite the process.

“Stay or move?” she sent.

“When. We. Get. Out. Of. Here. I’m. Going. To. Find. A… Way. To... Make... That fate cursed, spirit pay.”

Her sister struggled to her feet, coughing up another mouthful of blood, poking pressure points on her abdomen to stabilize her internal injury. Without further comment, she started to make her way onwards down the corridor.

Nodding, she slipped an arm under her sister’s shoulder to help her.

With a wince, she sent back. “Get in fate thrashed line, as your older sister I will definitely end it in first.”