The scouts' feet beat against the ground as they ran around the fifteen-foot stone pillar. They quickly made it past the bodies, drenching the stone with blood that looked like a black stain creeping over the ground in the green light.

As her legs and arms pumped, Sathera couldn't stop her eyes from being drawn to her right side and away from the seemingly empty surroundings. It was hard to ignore the pulsing heat she felt on her skin… even under her armor. It wasn't precisely heat, but it was close enough to be mistaken for it if you weren't paying attention. A single look and a moment was all it took for Sathera to connect the pulsing green light along the crystal green vines running through the rock and the feeling.

Even the fact that the crystal was exerting some pressure on her wasn't what kept drawing her eyes away from the danger she knew was out in the camp, as they already were aware of it having some effect. No, what drew her like a lodestone to steel was the green vines worming their way through the wall. And worming was the correct word, as the crystal was growing.

Sathera could see flakes and shards of stone hanging from the wall around the borders of the crystal fissures. There was even a mound of debris along the base of the wall that she had failed to notice before. The farther around the column Sathera traveled, the more the crystal mass displaced the stone and the thicker the mound of stone shards on the ground became. They have to be cleaning up the stone chips, or the debris would be a small mountain by now. Meaning… it is still growing up the stone. That can not be good.

Caught up in her scrutinizing, Sathera hardly even noticed herself standing at the top step of a staircase. They were not stone steps. On the far side of the column, the crystal was little more than hair-thine fissures of pulsing light green. Those cracks widened and combined, shifting into a darker hue that affected the light as the crystal apparently spread not only up but down into the cave floor, consuming the entire tunnel.

Unlike the outer sections of the green growth, this inner section never entirely lost its glow, providing the light source that illuminated most of the cavern. While Sathera and the others were used to looking at caverns in green light by now, this light was different.

Despite its deep color, Sathera got the feeling it was… hungry. Which didn't make sense at all. Then again, neither did it make sense that the light coming off the tunnel walls could collect down the center of the passage in a dark green fog, so Sathera didn't know what to think at this point. And it was only made worse that the fog got so thick she couldn't see the bottom of the stairwell.

She could not have stood on the top steps for more than two seconds before Sathera felt her skin prickling as if a frigid wind flowed over her. After a few more seconds remaining in place, Sathera felt nauseous, and it was only growing worse by the moment. Flaring her psy in her core, Sathera pushed her psy all throughout her mind, searching for some kind of mental manipulation, finding nothing.

Not content with that, Sathera expanded her search to her body as a whole. It wasn't until she reached the outer edges of her body that she found anything. And when she did, Sathera almost wished she had not. Before her psy could reach her skin, Sathera came into contact with a foreign energy she had somehow overlooked intruding into her body. An energy she recognized as the same power suppressing her castings, just far more concentrated. With so much of it around, she could not help but examine it, and it felt… wrong.

And this wasn't the abnormal wrong of how her psy was hostily interacting with foreign energy without resulting in mutual destruction. Some deep part of her was screaming that the energy was twisted from what it was intended to be and went against nature on a fundamental level.

With a surge of willpower, she flexed her psy, forcing the energy out of her body. It was a weird sensation, and Sathera could not get the image of blowing up a wineskin within a water barrel out of her mind. Which was a good analogy for her situation for an entirely different reason, as she was now stuck holding back the tide.

The energy could and would enter her body without hesitation, and only Sathera's willpower-backed psy prevented it, but the struggle was quickly depleting her reserves. Her flesh was a ship with a thousand little holes poked into it, all of which needed to be covered simultaneously to be sealed tight.

Gritting her teeth at the mental effort to shield her body, Sathera realized that none of the others could perform this task. They had neither the training nor, most importantly, the psy reserves. Being born and raised as a noble does have its perks, Sathera thought wryly. There just are not nearly as many perks as people think when you are raised with morals.

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Turning without removing the ominous entrance from her line of sight, as she was not sure she could bring herself to face it again, Sathera spoke to the others who were standing just to the side of the entrance, looking toward their surroundings, "The twisted energies too thick for any of you to withstand. Stay up here and guard the passage… If I don't come out in a couple minutes, go for the stairs. Either I would have succeeded or be dead by that point." Without waiting for an answer or her will to falter, Sathera stepped forward, entering the confines of the descending tunnel.

As the walls enveloped her, the pressure she was resisting more than doubled, and she staggered to the side, banging into the passage wall and using it for support. It was a mistake. Even through her clothing and armor, the touch of the wall felt like glowing embers searing into her flesh. Sathera tried to stifle it, but a whine of pain squeezed itself out of her throat as her vision narrowed onto the next step.

She instantly pulled back, managing to sway in the center of the passage without falling, but the damage was already done. The ambient pressure was bad enough and would have slowly worn her down, but when she touched the wall, it released a flood of energy into her body that almost instantly smashed open her defenses.

While the energy was not exactly hostile, as it didn't directly lash out at her psy, it acted similar to an acid. Her shield was slowly being eroded away and needed to be continuously reinforced… when she was outside of the tunnel. When she touched the wall, the blast of twisted energy surging at her body was so compressed and potent that the erosion increased exponentially.

In less than a second, dozens of weak points formed on her shield, allowing the twisted energy to flood into her body. Unable to seal or stem the breaches, let alone reinforce the rest of her bulwark, the rents continued to expand and multiply until entire sections of her psy shield were cut off and enveloped. It was far worse than a straight-up psy annihilation fight, in Sathera's opinion. Within the moment her shoulder was leaning against the wall, it felt like her head was bashed with a stone dozens of times, as mini backlashes continuously reverberated throughout her psy as her shield was ripped to pieces.

However, despite the pain and without conscious thought on her part, Sathera yanked what was left of her psy into her mind. When she realized what she had done, she only reinforced the smaller shield protecting her brain, completely sacrificing the rest of her body. She didn't need any more proof that she was incapable of maintaining a full-person shield while being pitted against the foreign energy. Even if she wanted to be an idiot and keep trying, her mind currently felt like someone had gouged out a large chunk, making it hard to think. And it was only getting worse with every passing second as more of her psy and willpower were eroded, so it wasn't happening.

The effect of the twisted power flooding her form was almost instantaneous, as everything below her neck became numb. It wasn't quite that bad, as she could still somewhat feel and control her body. The thing was, moving her body was like doing it as someone looking down at her body instead of being inside it, which didn't seem to be a generally good thing, all things said and done. Even her eyes felt distant as if just to look out of the, she had to gaze through a long tunnel.

Sathera flopped her right leg to the edge of the step, releasing a scream filled with equal measures of pain, determination, and triumph at the movement. Gathering her will again, she forced herself to stumble forward and down a step.

Unable to entirely control her movements, Sathera balanced for an instant before slowly tilting to the left and bouncing into the other wall. Shoulder striking the surface, more energy tried to flood into her body, only partially succeeding.

A small amount of energy made it inside, but there was already so much of the twisted stuff packed within her form that no more could fit. Not that this was any better, as the surge caused all the energy within her body to jump, resulting in the energy striking her barrier like a hammer against a wall. Sathera's shield wasn't shattered, but she did lose ground, allowing the energy to start playing with the edges of her mind.

Without any better options, Sathera bounced from one side of the passage to the other. While touching the walls rang her mind like a bell, the pain also kept her thoughts focused, preventing her from being totally consumed by the utterly apathetic thoughts washing through her in waves. Why am I even doing this? What is this suffering for? I should just give up? No… not yet. I'll go one more step. Perhaps then… Perhaps.

Sathera could not say how long she traveled down the tunnel, but from her perspective, every second stretched into hours, then years of pain and numbness. All the while, apathy was steadily consuming her mind, pushing then pulling her into its depths. Even the clarion call of pain, which allowed her to muster a spark of life to breach the inky indifferent sea and take another step before being pulled back down, was becoming less effective with every use.

The lower Sathera sunk, the more reality was stretched and warped, making the simple tasks of taking a breath or sliding her foot forward like lifting a loaded wagon upon her back and carrying it. She couldn't even say how she kept moving time after time. But she did, all while looking down the jade steps leading an incomprehensibly long way into the earth.

Then, the next thing Sathera knew, she was opening her eyes and found herself lying on her side on top of a dark green floor.