In preparation for the approaching giant lizard, I grabbed a roll of linen from my belt, tore a stretch of it away, then wrapped the cloth around my face as a makeshift mask. I also took the flight goggles I had hanging from the front of my baldric and put those on, too.

I had to marvel at the process by which the new lizard was burrowing upward. The rock beneath me was mostly soft tuff, cracked in so many places that the they had to expend very little power to cause huge sections of it to fall away. It made me wonder if the whole of this cave system hadn’t been artificially constructed this way for this very purpose—keeping larger creatures out while allowing the mother to reach her young in case of an emergency.

I couldn’t extend my gaze far enough to see where the head-sized chunks of stone were falling away to, but it must have been a fairly large open space, even potentially a space outside—wherever it was, I expected it would be a better place to fight this massive creature in than a small tunnel.

I backed up the tunnel as the ground began to crack and heave below me, stopping once I wasn’t directly above it to focus on maintaining my claim on the earth beneath me as the lizard tried to take it with her own claim.

Finally the floor of the cave fell in, the creature having made a rough-edged tunnel almost directly upward to reach me. I could see its bulk through the cloud of billowing dust—something glittered inside as it shook free some rubble.

I withdrew my claim from the stone beneath me, and the creature took hold of it instantly, tearing the cave floor away so that it, too, fell away in a cascade of stone—but I simply stuck the butte of my spear against one wall and walked up the other, arching myself between both as I used the distraction to seize hold of the cracked stone just above the lizard and use my own magic to break as much of it as I could.

A cascade of stone struck the silhouetted head of the massive lizard, but it barely seemed to notice, shaking the weight free. I tried for the stone beneath its legs next, hoping to send it falling away into the pit it had created, but its claim there was too strong for me to even gain an inch.

The lizard, having shaken free all the stones I’d dropped on it, opened its mouth and launched a fast, scattered volley of glinting missiles at me, but I was already moving, dropping myself from where I was stretched between the remaining cave walls to fall down into the newly-formed cavity beneath me and then dive past where the lizard clung to the edge, into the pit.

Normally it was a bad idea to get beneath a lot of stone while something with [Earth Magick] is trying to kill you. But here my reasoning was simple: it was slow, and had to be burning through enormous amounts of mana no matter how efficiently it was moving through the stone. I could tire this creature out, if I had time and space.

Eyes covered by my goggles, I leapt downward through the dust, using my gaze to guide me from one newly-formed ledge to the other, easily able to sense the jutting stones.

Above me, I heard the massive bulk of the lizard shifting. I felt a sudden psychic assault from the beast, an attempt to momentarily paralyze me—but any druid knows how to deal with the brute power of a raging beast’s mind, the fluid psychic dance that turns their force and energy away as effortlessly as twirling out of the path of a charging bull.

It dropped a cascade of stones my way, but they were all knocked inward by the irregular walls and ledges of the pit—it was easy to find a recessed ledge where I lay flat against the wall, boulders passing harmlessly by before I leapt down to the next ledge.

It took me a half-dozen jumps before the pit opened up into a huge, dust-filled chamber with a pile of rubble beneath it. As I leapt onto this, I heard the lizard still moving, crashing around above me and getting closer. I bounded down off the pile of broken stone, leaping through a curtain of falling dust before conjuring a witchlight and bursting into a sudden grin at what I saw.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The cave was lined with created quartz: pure, clear crystals that glittered as my light followed me into the gallery. Great quartz pillars supported a ceiling of tuff that was 50 feet high in some places. My feet trod across smooth, uneven facets of the massive crystals as I spun to take in as much as I could, heightening the intensity of my light so that I could see the distant walls of the cave.

What was more, I counted eight of the smaller rock lizards scattered across the half of the cave not dominated by the growing rubble pile, all of them charging toward me—another cause to smile.

I ran into the group of baby lizards, flipping my spear over a shoulder to clip it to my baldric and grab my bow, nocking an arrow as the first of the lizards grabbed a rock—now a fist-sized hunk of quartz—and launched it at me.

But their aim against a moving target was only so good, and I didn’t even need to adjust my course to avoid the first few projectiles, sensing their trajectories with my gaze and letting them zip harmlessly past me.

Then I returned with shots of my own. My first arrow sank into the eye of the nearest lizard, my second into the eye of the next-nearest. I picked up speed, finding it easy to run across the crystal of the cavern compared to the jagged stones of the caves, launching two more arrows into two more eyes.

I ran for the first lizard, now howling because it had an arrow sticking out of one eye. It snapped at me, but I leapt to one side, drawing my knife with my free hand and striking it soundly in its one remaining eye.

Then I moved for the second, nocking another arrow and planting it into the eye of another, further lizard-child as I deflected a few of the shards of quartz being tossed at me, knife tucked back into the palm of my hand.

I missed a shot at the sixth lizard—even though they held their heads still to launch the stones they grabbed in their mouths. I didn’t know if it was vibrations through the floor shifting the lizard slightly as the arrow flew, or perhaps a gust of displaced air, or even a psychic attack from its mother—but the arrow scratched its way across the ridge of the creature’s skull. I scowled.

Then the ground shook as their mother finally arrived, carefully dropping the short distance between the tunnel and the rockpile to immediately charge toward me.

I halted, deflecting the shots of the only three of the young lizards that still had both eyes so that I could quickly aim and plant an arrow in every one of them. The sounds of their squeals of pain filled the air around me—even the ones who could still partially see were likely not going to be fighting very well.

I turned toward the mother, who was barreling toward us through a cloud of dust—and noticed, for the first time, how she scintillated. A full coat of quartz crystals covered her body, with many of the largest armoring her head and neck. [Earth Skin], then.

And since she had thrown chunks of quartz with [Earth Magick], and had [Wild Bond] as well… her core type was likely [*Earth], with her granted power being [Wild Bond]. She wouldn’t have any healing skills.

?—Mana 87/180, 40% Primeval

It wasn’t a lot, but all I needed was to use if for was deflect the shots long enough to kill her. I ran for the far wall of the cave, putting as many of its writhing, half-blind children between us as I could and nocking another arrow.

I felt cool satisfaction as the mother lizard snarled and slowed her charge, losing her momentum rather than trample her own kin. She let out a short, sharp roar, and I could see many glittering stones stored beneath her tongue, but I was focused on my target—her eyes.

I loosed my arrow, aiming for one of her overlarge pupils….

The arrow scratched across the surface of the eye, then fell harmlessly to the cave floor.

Naturally. This creature used its eyes to aim, and doubtless lived among many creatures who used [Earth Magick] to shoot things to death. The film covering its eyes was probably as thick as its skin.

I might have sighed, but I was too busy—the volley of quartz shards came shortly afterward, a focused line of shots that came twice as fast as my heartbeat, and I ran, reaching out with my magic to deflect two of them that were on the path to striking me.

I dove behind one of its fully-blind children, heard it let out another screech of rage as I crouched low, trying to keep the nearby thrashing lizard between myself and its mother.

Then I reached out with my [Earth Magick] to the crystal wall of the cave behind me—and I started to scratch a circle of runes into its surface.

It was time to get more complicated.