The hallways sloped downwards, and this time, Vayra didn’t try to avoid them. She needed to take the most direct route possible.

She walked as fast as she could. Running was still out of the question—she needed to keep her stamina up in case she ever had to fight. If she got injured, it would just slow her down, no matter how much better her healing was now.

She took a turn, and soon, she was walking through a tunnel that she didn’t recognize. None of the rooms it connected to were familiar, either. She found a storeroom, with stone shelves and trickling channels of Stream water. For a few minutes, she searched the shelves.

If the chambers had once been a storeroom for magical items, then maybe she would find something here. But the shelves were all empty. Cobwebs clung to the stone, and when she wiped the dust off, there was enough of it that it began to cloud the air. If there had been any treasures here, they had long since been looted.

Just as she was about to leave, she heard a gurgle from behind, and a couple of roars from either side of the little room—from the four intersecting hallways. The hallway to the right began to glow with amber light.

Vayra clenched her fists. But there was no need to fight if she didn’t have to. She turned to the northwards tunnel, ready to continue onwards, when she spotted a dark shadow looming in that tunnel as well. It didn’t have glowing horns or flesh made of rock, but it was as large as a horse and prowled towards her on all six legs.

A drake. Its skin was made of black scales. Its eyes glimmered, and it opened its mouth. As it walked, it licked its lips, then struck the back of its metal teeth with a flint embedded in the tip of its tongue.

She stepped back into the storeroom, where the magmaspawn had gathered.

Three of the beasts lumbered in through the doors, gurgling and growling. They all hoisted crude weapons, ready to mash her into a pulp.

“Trying to trap me, were you?” she muttered. As quickly as she could, she drew the power of her seer-core into her body and Braced her arms with it.

‘I don’t think they were pleased about you travelling so deep into the Chambers this soon,’ Phasoné said. ‘That, or something else riled them up.’

“The drake?”

‘I doubt it. Looks like they’re friends with the drake. Possibly something else.’

Vayra wanted to respond, but the closest magmaspawn swung a broad club at her. She dropped down to her knees, imagining one of the training dummies throwing a wide steel bar towards her chest. She lowered her head just enough to dip under it.

She made a fist. Instinct, drilled into her by the dummies, took over. She punched at the creature’s stomach.

Her fist collided, but not fast enough. The magmaspawn’s stomach only cracked.

Another approached from the side, lunging at her with obsidian daggers. She stepped back quickly and shattered them with a counter-attack—exactly how the dummies had taught her to move while dodging the inevitable.

The magmaspawn reached for her shoulders, however, which she hadn’t anticipated. Its claws stretched out, seething with glowing orange embers. She jumped back again. The creature stumbled. Before it could swipe again, she punched it in its gut as hard as she could. The beast’s rocky body cracked around the impact point, but it kept advancing. She caught one of its arms and crushed its wrist in her temporarily-enhanced grip.

‘If you’re going to keep punching, then feed more starlight Arcara to your shoulder and elbow!’ Phasoné suggested. ‘A strong fist will only get you so far.’

“Working on it.” Vayra glanced around. The four magmaspawn converged, leaking out of the three hallways behind her, and the drake still advanced from the hallway ahead, slow and cautious.

She transferred all of the power she’d absorbed into her right arm. Ducking under another swipe from the nearest spawn, she sprung forwards. She drove her fist again into its cracked gut, and with a boom, the impact shattered it. Shards of stone flew backward from the impact site, but most of the creature collapsed into a pile of harmless dust and sparks.

The drake hissed, spilling a stream of some sort of gas from its mouth. As soon as the drake struck its tongue against its teeth, the gas ignited, burning a trail through the air. Vayra leapt to the side, mostly for the sake of Phasoné, then pressed her back against the wall. The three remaining magmaspawn pounced through the wall of flames, charging at her with stone clubs.

She ducked and spun, dodging the clubs like she had dodged the training dummies’ vents of power. Leaping to the side, ducking, leaning, and—

And taking a strike straight to the chest. It flung her across the small room and into the wall, and it hurt just as much as before.

‘No one said you could reliably complete the training course,’ Phasoné complained, in-between pained groans.

Vayra rolled to the side, just in time to avoid a blast of the drake’s flame. “You’re welcome.”

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‘I can stand a little of it, you know.’

“No, I didn’t.” Vayra pushed herself to her feet, just in time to lean and avoid one of the magmaspawn’s heavy strikes. “You just complained about it a ton, so I figured it was just as deadly to you as it was to a human.”

‘When you get stronger, you’ll give me more Arcara, and I’ll be able to take more.’

Vayra forced herself to resume her breathing technique, no matter how much it hurt her ribs. When a magmaspawn swung its club at her head, she gripped its wrist so tight that the stone began to crack under her glowing fingers. “Well, how about that?” she muttered. Like she was throwing a ball, she tried to toss the first magmaspawn into the one just behind it.

Her arm might have been strengthened, but it didn’t make the rest of her any heavier. Nor did it make the rest of her body strong enough to throw the equivalent of a statue.

The magmaspawn flung her off, and she slid across the room. When she came to a rest, she landed at the feet of the drake.

It smiled, then lunged and tried to rip her throat out with its maw. Just in time, she rolled to the side and spun away from its clawed feet. They swished through the air, catching the tip of her starry scarf. Vayra expected them to tear the fabric, but they didn’t. They hooked on. The drake pulled her to the ground with the scarf.

Trying to free herself, she punched its leg with her starlight-infused arm. A few scales cracked. A bone snapped.

Howling, the drake backed up. It raised its neck and blasted out a puff of flame. The fire flew over her head and blasted straight into one of the magmaspawn. The humanoid didn’t melt, but the force sent it skidding back to the other side of the room.

Vayra drew her pistol from her belt and tried to shoot the drake in the chin. The shot flew wide and clipped the side of its head, drawing blood but not killing it. It reeled, releasing Vayra’s scarf. She leapt to her feet and punched it in the side of the head, putting as much force as she could into the strike.

Her knuckles slapped against its scales, and she skidded back a few feet. But most of the force funnelled into the drake’s head, launching it into the corner of the wall, at the intersection between the northward hallway and the room.

The last three magmaspawn charged. First, she dealt with the creature whose wrist she had severed. She sidestepped away from its claws and blasted its arm with a starlight palm, rendering it defenseless. Then, she struck in the chest with her fist, this time hard enough to put a hole in it.

Two more.

They swung at her, but she anticipated where their strikes would land. She dodged and struck back, letting her limbs recall the habits of the training course.

With her mind and breaths, she directed which limb the starlight-Arcara mixture flooded and Braced next. Legs and knees, left arms, right arm…

Every time she tried to transfer starlight-Arcara through her body, she felt it searing through her channels. She tried to follow it with a flood of regular, pure Arcara, which soothed the damaged channels a little bit. Another surge of pure Arcara, and they felt clean and cool again.

She disarmed the first magmaspawn with a punch to its wrist, then a Starlight Palm to its chin. It reeled. She destroyed it with a roundhouse kick, Bracing her shin with starlight.

The second fell to a rapid burst of punches, each requiring her to shift her Arcara back and forth as fast as she could between her arms.

Finally, the last magmaspawn crumbled to a powerful kick to its gut. She fell to a crouch, trying to catch her breath. More than aching muscles and bones, the rapid punches had put a strain on her spirit and it stung. It was a different kind of pain, which she did her best to wash away. She breathed two cycles, using the fastest pattern she knew, until the burning strain on her spirit faded.

‘Still, you lasted longer than most would,’ Phasoné commented. ‘And at least you can recover from that. That would have done permanent damage to most God-heirs.’

Vayra pushed herself back to her feet, shaking out her arms. She let the mixture of Arcara and starlight fade out of her body, then glanced around. Aside from the little wisps of white light racing up to the ceiling, the only light came from her scarf. Again, she concentrated her starlight into the seer-core—just to give herself some light.

The drake was stirring. It wasn’t dead yet. Slowly, on the opposite side of the room, it climbed to its feet.

“Phas, how much mana do we have left?” Vayra asked.

‘You’ve used about three-quarters of your store. You could have just looked at the seer-core.’

“I could’ve.” Vayra took a deep breath. “But we’ve got other concerns.” She wasn’t exactly looking forward to another close-quarters brawl with the drake. “Let’s try throwing the scythe again.”

Vayra held her hand just above her shoulder, drawing more starlight out of the scarf. She gave Phasoné control of the hand, letting it fall limp. As the drake tried scrambling back to its feet, the scythe manifested.

Nudging the scarf with her chin, Vayra asked, “Can this thing run out of starlight?”

‘It’s a window into space. Unless the stars themselves die, or you drain them all, they’ll still be there.’

As soon as the scythe had fully formed, Vayra drew in the last light of the seer-core and used it to Brace her arm—as best she could. Along with the ghostly white outline of her hand, the skin beneath glowed too. “Now try throwing it. My arm’s Braced now; it should be stronger.”

‘Gladly.’

The drake pushed itself to its feet, malice glimmering in its eyes. Its claws clicked against the stone floor.

Vayra heaved with her shoulder and let her elbow follow through. Phasoné guided her wrist, and the scythe leapt out of her hand. It spun through the air and cleaved through the drake’s forelegs, before clattering along the ground. The moulded Arcara hissed and sputtered, and the blade left glowing scars in the stone. It came to a halt, and then an invisible force began to draw it back towards her hand. This time, it wasn’t dissipating as quickly.

“Oh no…” Vayra muttered. She ducked. The scythe whirled back towards her. She raised her arm and leaned back, and Phasoné tightened her fingers just in time to catch the very end of the scythe’s haft.

The drake, incapacitated, howled and writhed. Some drakes, the strongest ones, learned to speak. Vayra doubted this one had, isolated in the Chambers and not terribly powerful.. Instead, it voiced its pain through nonsensical noises. She figured she’d put it out of its misery.

Approaching carefully, she raised the scythe above her head and slashed down, impaling the beast’s neck. It stopped moving in seconds.

Vayra took control back of her hand, dispelling the scythe. “Well…that went better than last time,” she breathed, rubbing her ribs.

‘At least you can heal yourself now…but still, best not to linger. Let’s fill up your mana and keep moving.’