Dan stalked forward through the tunnel. He felt like his skin was on fire but he managed to ignore it for the most part. All it did was make him irritable right now.

“How long is this tunnel, Ah Dan?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was your magical tunnel through the impossible labyrinth a better choice?” Definitely irritable. Dan instantly heard himself and apologised. Calliope, the destination of his ire, did not seem bothered. If anything, Dan was becoming more and more sure that she was annoying him on purpose.

“Well, mine would be more jagged, for certain.” Calliope seemed to be in a jovial mood. Considering they were walking to an unknown destination, with an unknown array of enemies and issues to deal with when they arrived, Dan found this as problematic as Fa Lian.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Guan heiress was as highly strung as the bow in her hand. She pulled on the string absently, bending the bow and straining her muscles. She hadn’t spoken since they left Xiaomei and Po Daiyu, either she couldn’t because of her tense jaw or she wouldn’t because she was focused. Dan did not want to poke her with a thoughtless word, even if he was feeling tense himself.

Calliope’s question was not out of line. The length of this tunnel was surprising. Dan was not sure if he even had control over the shaping of the labyrinth or if it just happened in reaction to his energy. Dan’s current theory was that these pathways were already there and that Dan was moving a connecting hallway. There was no reason to think that specifically but it worked in Dan’s head. It also meant that it wasn’t Dan’s fault, which he liked.

Their conversation and questions stopped when sounds of battle occured from the end of the tunnel. Dan sent his mana down the hall. There was less control to it at the moment, the energy within made up mostly of Xiaomei’s mana and Po Daiyu’s. Xiaomei’s blue mana was rigid, in the way a dance routine is rigid. Po Daiyu’s mana was violet and seemed to spark in his mana channels as it barrelled through. It was taking some concentration to keep the flow of energy heading in the right direction.

Dan was finding it difficult to use his mana. Xiaomei’s technique came to him easily, stronger than he had ever been capable of making the threads before. Dan could feel Po Daiyu’s mana hungry to leap from him, an electric desire of impulse. A part of him had sympathy for Po Daiyu upon feeling how difficult this mana was to control. It would be so easy to lash out explosively.

His own technique, his mana sense, was slowly filtering back to life but he found that Xiaomei and Po Daiyu’s mana would not stay in the air for anywhere near as long as his own. With a small smack of pride, Dan continued trying to churn his own mana into useability but was only having small success. Calliope and Fa Lian had given Dan a smaller amount of their own energy than Xiaomei or Po Daiyu, but he moulded it into place gratefully all the same.

The next time Calliope became impatient enough to ask how long the tunnel would be, Dan was in agreement. Fa Lian was still tense as a drawn arrow, so she needed no convincing to pick up the pace. In a few short minutes of all out sprint from Calliope, Fa Lian and himself, the end of the tunnel came into sight. So did the sound of battle. Dan’s stomach dropped and his pace quickened slightly. He hadn’t truly hoped that Hyun Soon and Yurie would have avoided danger, it just wasn’t that kind of day.

Bestial force rippled in Dan’s muscles and senses. The general dimness of the labyrinth receded as they skidded to a halt before diving headfirst into the fray. Dan had hoped to use his small store of personal mana to get a better sense of the battlefield before them but he saw there was no chance of that. Even if the cavern they were heading into weren’t massive, there would be no making sense of the chaos within.

Dan wasn’t sure if there was a ceiling or if there was just black void above them, the walls to either side of them curved away slowly and if they kept their shape then this room was miles long. If the dimensions of the cavern were the most interesting thing happening right now, Dan would have been much happier.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Instead, it was the mountain of bone and death which heaved and flowed around the room that he focused on. He met eyes with Fa Lian, who nodded. This was just like the puppetmaster of the Sasin Forest. The first time they had worked together. Xiaomei wasn’t here exactly but Dan had some of her with them. Hyun Soon was in that mess somewhere, as was Yurie. Dan wasn’t sure how but he knew they were still alive. He knew it.

“In?” Fa Lian asked simply.

“In.” Dan answered.

So, they entered.

Straight into hell.

————————

Battle descended upon them before they had taken five steps. Calliope was ready. She had already decided that she would sooner destroy herself than let these children carry any more burdens. At this point, she had seen Guan Ah Dan and Guan Fa Lian shoulder the weight of Allusia, the Guan empire and depending on how religious one was feeling, the fate of the empty god.

It was too much.

So when she saw their eyes focus, she stepped forward. She had seen those eyes when they had first met. A meeting that had led to the death of their pursuer, a chase from which these children had gained strength and allies. They would continue to grow stronger, bring more people to their cause. Calliope knew this because she had seen people like them before.

Leaders.

Calliope had never been like that. She had never called people to a cause, that simply wasn’t her style. Calliope was much happier being the intrepid foot forward. The first line of defence and the point of the spear. She loved it. Her heart exalted that Ah Dan and Fa Lian had brought her to this place and trusted her to be in front of them. She unleashed the barricade within her soul and let the magic run free.

Practitioners and spellcasters call it mana but to Calliope it was just energy. She held back her energy at nearly all times, the dam stretching and creaking with every slight or annoyance. It was why she enjoyed the labyrinth while others, maybe rightfully, feared it. She never had reason to hold back there. It reminded her of home.

The bonetide fell heavily and quickly. Astounding speed for creatures without muscles, Calliope did not give their biology or lack thereof give her any pause. Hesitation would get you killed in the wild and it would get her killed here. She had no place for it.

Calliope felt the familiar sensation of fur sprouting from her arms, legs and back. Like velvet gloves slipping onto her hands, her fingers took on a more primal form. Her mouth opened into a toothy smirk as her fangs began to sharpen and lengthen. The lion within took the shape of her body and made it suit them both better.

Then they roared in unison.

—————————

Fa Lian was rethinking whether she would win in a fight with Calliope. She had sized up the other fighters she had come across nearly instantly upon meeting them, a new facet to her personality, forged by the dangers she had faced and the draconic influence of Ryong Aang. Before right now, she had given herself slightly above even odds against Calliope if they ever came to a one on one fight.

That was before.

As she and Ah Dan watched in abject fascination, Calliope cleared their path. It was as though all that had ever died were laid out before them, grasping and stabbing and attacking in asea of bones and malice. Calliope cut through that ocean of death with ease. She swiped her powerful claws and even the air pressure she created was enough to push back the swell.

They were making good progress into the thick of it. Hyun Soon and Yurie were in here? If they were, she wasn’t sure how long it would be possible for them to hold on. She hadn’t known what they were walking into but the corrupt shape of the dragon scales would do nicely. With no small effort, she pulled the bowstring back and loosed the half-formed arrow in her fingers.

Her control of the dragon scales was progressing nicely. Ryong Aang was formless, at a base. It was these scales which the magic of the dragon forged and formed, giving them their massive, scaled lizard bodies. Now that Ryong Aang was nestled in her core, wrapping himself around her soul stone like a gecko on a cool rock, their liquid nature was her’s to control.

The single scale stretched into a long shaft, flighted with feathers of flame. Another scale made the arrowhead, a weighty point which she aimed directly into the crowd before her before unleashing the scorched fury of her attack. The arrow was heavy, more of a battering ram against the horde than anything else but it punched through with satisfying force.

A blazing trail of heat followed the arrow before the true value of the shot showed itself. Once the scales were far enough, Fa Lian transformed the arrowhead into a flat shape and called it back. The other scale, in the shape of the arrow, hit this flat scale and the resulting explosion of force and flame left a crater in the mass of enemies. A smile on her face, scales returning and a new arrow ready to knock, Fa Lian turned to see Ah Dan’s reaction.

Instead of wide-eyed adulation, she saw a man possessed. Spinning in hypnotic patterns around him, Ah Dan was holding onto the cutting mana Po Daiyu launched as projectiles. Mana threads connected them to him and he whirled, spinning, slashing and cleaving his own way through the encroaching skeletal mess.

She had told herself only recently to stop being surprised by him, yet that was proving difficult. Instead of worrying about his attention, she focused on herself and the three of them punched into the chaotic mess of bone massing against them.