The good thing about absolute panic is that all the adrenaline makes a person incredibly, resiliently alert. Not even a bop on the head from a dirt-monster’s tentacle can knock them out for long.

Especially if there’s also a large flame-colored griffin nearby, calling in his signature high single-volume setting.

“Wordsmith! Wordsmith! WORDSMITH!”

Bjarni’s voice hit Daphne right in the brain stem, mixing with the panic-fuel already coursing through her system. The resulting was like a chemical reaction, jolting her back to reality and sending a shot of strength through every limb.

With a truly barbaric yell, she managed to roll herself over. The dirt-monster still had hold of both her legs, and it was still pulling her back towards the room, but at least now she was on her stomach and had better use of her hands. She grabbed at the rocky floor, searching for something to hold onto as Bjarni’s voice got closer.

“Wordsmith! Wordsmith!”

“I’m here!” Daphne called, fingers scrabbling through loose pebbles. “Bjarni! Help!”

Unfortunately, the dirt-monster also seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation. It channeled its own surge of adrenaline, reaching out two more giant tentacles to wrap around Daphne’s chest and give its mightiest tug yet. She felt her feet slide over the threshold — her ankles — her knees —

“Wordsmith!” The young griffin’s voice echoed off the rocky walls. Daphne caught a glimpse of silvery blue light flickering over the stone fifty feet away, where the tunnel turned a sharp corner to the right…

Daphne’s hips slid over the threshold, followed by her stomach. Then her shoulders.

“BJARNI!” She channeled all her remaining adrenaline reserves into her voice. “I’M HERE!”

The flame-colored griffin tore around the corner just as Daphne’s head crossed the threshold. She caught a glimpse of Bjarni bolting down the hallway before dirt began rapidly piling itself up in the doorway, closing her into the room with the monster. Before Bjarni had covered half the distance, the entrance to the room was completely full of dirt.

The good news about this dirt-door was that it depleted the monster’s body mass. As long as it was maintaining the door barricade, it just wasn’t big enough to consume Daphne completely. The most it could do was to bury her in a waist-high mound and trap her hands against her sides for good measure. This was plenty annoying, but she was still alive. Being able to breathe was also a definite plus.

The bad news was that she was cut off from the cavalry just as it arrived to save the day.

“Wordsmith!” Bjarni yelled. Daphne heard the unmistakable sound of a large griffin hurling itself at a solid wall of dirt.

“Bjarni! Can you hear me?” Daphne asked.

“Wordsmith! Yes! I hear thee!”

They could hear each other. That was another huge plus. In fact, as crisis situations went, this one was surprisingly full of ‘could have been worse’ elements. Still, it wouldn’t take long for ‘could have been worse’ to shift to ‘how could it get any worse?’ Best not to push their luck.

“Word-chains don’t work!” she shouted. “Bashers, water — nothing works! Any ideas?”

She heard another full body-slam sound, but the dirt-door didn’t budge.

“What is this creature?” Bjarni’s voice was shrill with hysterical panic. “What is it doing to thee?”

“Nothing!” Daphne answered honestly. “It’s got me kinda tied up, but it’s not eating me yet!”

“Can thou break free?”

Daphne strained her hands, trying to pull them from the soil gathered around her. The dirt just squeezed tighter, making her gasp in pain.

“Not really!” she yelled to Bjarni. “It’s too strong!”

This time, Bjarni’s body-slam blow sounded more like an act of frustration than a purposeful rescue attempt.

“I do not understand!” he bellowed. “What is it doing?”

Daphne looked at the solid dirt wall filling the door. She looked at the thick rope of dirt connecting that mass to her own soil prison mound.

“I think it’s waiting,” she called.

“Waiting for what?” Bjarni sounded confused.

The truth dawned on her, like the desolate first sunrise after a destructive hurricane.

“It’s waiting for you to leave.”

“I will not leave!” Bjarni threw himself at the wall again to emphasize his resolve. “I will never abandon thee! I shall wait forever!”

But he wouldn’t have to wait forever. That was the desolate part of the sunrise truth breaking over Daphne’s still highly active, super adrenaline-charged brain.

The dirt monster didn’t have to outlast Bjarni. It just had to outlast Daphne.

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She took an experimental sniff of the air. Her Wisdom score was surprisingly high at this point, probably because all her work with the Lore-light. The extra Wisdom came in clutch now, helpfully informing her that suffocation would not be a problem. This was not an airtight prison. The dirt was covering the room’s only opening, but the dirt was porous. That was one primal fear she wouldn’t have to face.

On a roll now, her Wisdom proceeded to fill in the corners of Daphne’s understanding regarding this particular creature. As she had suspected, the dirt monster was not particularly logical or intelligent. It was born of irrational fears, Daphne’s to be specific, and operated almost entirely on instinct. Judging by the way it had just kept on using Mark’s voice, calling only her name, the beast was also a one-trick pony. Daphne doubted it could speak at all on its own, or hear, or perform any acts of high-level reasoning.

Its method was simple: separate a person from the group, lure them to this kill room, and gobble their prey up. But that first step was key. Like all fears, the dirt monster was most effective when it managed to consume all of someone’s attention. Its whole deal depended on its victim being alone.

That meant the arrival of Bjarni had thrown off the dirt monster’s plan. But, like all fears, this bugger was persistent. It wasn’t going to give up its Daphne-lunch that easily.

It just had to wait.

Eventually, Daphne would weaken. She might be fine in the air department, but it was tricky to eat or drink when your hands were encased in sentient dirt. Thirst or hunger would get her in the end, and then the monster could drop the dirt wall and devour what was left of her. It wouldn’t matter if Bjarni got into the room at that point. In fact, the dirt monster probably thought the young griffin would make an excellent dessert.

“Wordsmith?” Bjarni’s voice snapped Daphne out of her Wisdom’s depressing info-dump. “Art thou there?”

“I’m here!” she assured him. “Just thinking.”

“Of a way out?”

“Not exactly.” She took a shaky breath. “I — I don’t know how to beat this, Bjarni. I don’t think there’s a way.”

“Nonsense!” Bjarni’s indignation made him sound almost like Eydis. Daphne choked back a tearful laugh as he went on: “There is always a way! I have word-chains!”

“Don’t work, remember? I already tried.”

“Perhaps I can bash through the wall, or dig…”

“Bashers don’t work. Water doesn’t work. If you dig, the dirt just fills in the hole.” Daphne closed her eyes, trying to keep all her rising despair out of her voice. “I really think this is it, Bjarni. I — I’m so sorry.”

But the unyielding dirt wall was nothing compared to Bjarni’s indestructible optimism. “There is always a way!” he insisted. “Hast thou tried Lore-light?”

“How would I do that?” Opening her eyes, Daphne took another scan of the room to confirm her initial assessment. Yup, the walls were just like the rest of the prose-shaft and its adjacent tunnels. There was nothing but rough, unadorned rock, free of any carving or design. “There’s no word-power down here. Nothing to draw from. We’re too deep underground.”

“It is as I said!” Bjarni, too, sounded impatient. “Thou hast the fire in thyself! Thou hast no need of carvings.”

“Bjarni, that’s really sweet, but —”

“Thou art a Loresmith!” Forget impatient. The young griffin was angry. He threw himself against the door again, as if he could get his point across to Daphne by sheer force. “Thou can forge from within! Summon the Lore-light!”

Daphne opened her mouth, ready to beg him to stop or to plead with him to leave.

She froze.

Maybe Euloban had taken pity on her and kicked her Aesthetics score up a notch. Maybe Bjarni’s repeated body slams actually were transmitting some of his will to her, carrying his burning enthusiasm all the way through the dirt. Either way, in that moment, Daphne received a rare gift.

She saw herself as Bjarni saw her.

It was the briefest of flashes, but it was potent. Instead of the weak, whiny, accidentally destructive wimp that normally dominated her self-image, Daphne saw… an artist. A weaver of words. A wielder of dreams. A brain that birthed beautiful things and sent them out to brighten a darkening world.

Sure, every strength had a corresponding weakness. She was still very aware that the same beautiful brain had also invented Rabid Daydreams, and Devouring Winds, and dirt monsters that preyed upon the lonely.

But she was more than the sum of her worst fears.

And she wasn’t alone.

“Loresmith!” Bjarni sounded tearful now. “Please!”

What had he said before? ‘Thou hast the fire in thyself…’

Close, Bjarni, she thought. Not ‘myself’.

Us.

“Touch the wall!” she called out, surprising herself with the clarity of her own voice.

Trusting him to obey, she closed her eyes… and reached out with her mind.

She reached out to Bjarni, who was channeling all of his fire and faith to her through the dirt-prison.

She reached out to Runar, who had saved her life and fought by her side and rejoiced to share the Phrase-gift with her.

She reached out to Mark, who wouldn’t let her settle for anything less than the best possible Daphne she could be. Who would never let her disappear into her fears.

Finally, she reached out to Eydis. The dark brown griffin had opened a way for Daphne and her friends when there didn’t seem to be a way. Now, trapped in this room, it was Eydis’s words that sprang to Daphne’s lips — the entrance words for Eydis’s doomsday prose-shaft.

Daphne let them ring out like a battle cry:

“Though it be lonely Following the ancient ways Watch for the Lore-light.”

She felt a warmth in her hands, like light was beginning to pool around her fingertips. Opening her eyes, she looked down.

The dirt was on fire.

More importantly, Daphne herself was not on fire. Somehow, she was the source of the fire, but she was not burning. It was the dirt that was burning, dissolving and melting as fire spread from Daphne’s hands.

I didn’t think dirt could burn, she thought giddily.

But then again, this wasn’t normal dirt. And it wasn’t normal fire. This was a spark of Lore-light, kindled by a Loresmith and fed by the warmth of communion.

Soil made from irrational, lonely fear didn’t stand a chance.

The flames gobbled up the soil mound rapidly, then raced along the dirt rope to the doorway and began climbing the dirt wall.

“Stand back!” Daphne called to Bjarni.

This fire was hungry or maybe it was feeding on Bjarni’s particularly high levels of enthusiasm. Either way, seconds later, the doorway was clear. Nothing remained of the dirt monster. The flames that had consumed it gathered into one massive ball and then vanished, leaving only a sweet smoky scent on the air.

Bjarni and Daphne stared at each other through the open doorway.

“Loresmith,” he whispered. The young griffin seemed overcome, his face full of reverent awe. “Thou summoned it. The Cleansing Flame —”

“Bjarni,” Daphne interrupted. Seeing the empty tunnel had snapped an important missing detail back into place in her mind. “Where’s Runar?”

Bjarni whirled around, as if realizing himself that his brother was not there.

“He — he was with me,” Bjarni stammered. “Thou ran off, and we hastened to follow thee. We were calling thy name.”

Suddenly, the young griffin froze. His fiery plumage seemed to grow pale.

“Then he began calling my name,” Bjarni said. “As thou called for thy Mark. But that was when I heard thee, and I ran on. I was sure he was following…”

Daphne grabbed onto the flame-colored griffin, wrapping him in a tight, fierce hug.

“You saved me,” she said. “Thanks.” Pulling back, she gave him a bracing smile. “Now let’s go save your brother.”

Then she took off to find Runar, Bjarni hot on her heels.