For a moment, I allowed myself to sag against my upright spear in relief. I can’t exactly say that I was expecting to be fighting giant spiders today. I don’t think I’d acquitted myself too badly, though. Hell, this was the first time I’d ever fought more than one monster at a time as well.

I was knocked out of my introspection by an enormous burst of wind blowing through the cavern. I raised my head just in time to see a veritable wall of Miasma rolling my way. Damnit, the Prime must have just gone off. I didn’t manage to cover my mouth or nose in time to avoid inhaling a burst of the noxious fumes.

My stomach roiled and I clutched my mouth, doubling over. Oh God. It was so much worse than usual. I just barely managed to avoid hurling all over the stone of the cavern beneath me. I was knocked out of my momentary misery by the feeling of someone patting me on the shoulder. Looking up, I found that it was Grey, gazing down at me with an amused look on his face.

My mentor was looking a bit roughed up, but not terribly injured. Which was a bit odd, as I remembered seeing the Abyssmother land a shot on him. Hell, I could even see a rent in the abdomen of his clothing. He only had unblemished skin showing through it, so maybe it had just been a graze?

Oh, whatever.

I accepted Grey’s hand up.

“Unfortunately, you’ll find that the intensity of the Miasma will increase the higher level a monster is,” Grey told me, not unsympathetically. “Still, that isn’t the only thing that increases in power. The reward is often worth the effort.” Grey held up his other hand to show me, clenched around something. He allowed his hand to open, allowing a brilliant white light to shine through. I squinted in the darkness of the cavern, trying to get a better look.

Nestled in Grey’s palm was a Monster Core, but not like any I’d ever seen before. This one wasn’t the spherical crystal with swirling rainbow mist inside it that I’d come to expect. No, this one, while still a sphere, had a pure white light swirling in its depths. It was larger as well. While most Cores I’d seen had ranged in size from that of a bead to maybe golf ball size, this one sat heavy in Grey’s palm. It was about the size of a baseball, I’d say.

I fingered my necklace thoughtfully. That was much bigger than the Core of the first monster I’d ever killed that was set inside. My tiny little Blade-Rack Hart stone looked like a dull chip of quartz in comparison.

“Still,” Grey said, closing his fist back over the Core and storing it in a pouch on his waist. “We’ve only accomplished one of our objectives in these caverns. We still need to find young Aurum.”

I startled. In the chaos of the battle, I’d completely forgotten about him for a moment. Honestly felt kind of bad about it. Just goes to show, that even with having multiple thought trains now, I wasn’t inhuman. I was still able to space out. “Right, right,” I said, a little chagrined. I turned around and started scanning the cavern visually. I saw that while Grey and I had been speaking, the rest of our party had already started an inspection of the walls.

I started to move and join them, before pausing. Now that I wasn’t quite as focused on the damn giant spiders that wanted to kill and suck us dry, I could pay more attention to the cavern itself. As I’d noticed before, it was filled with stalactites on the ceiling and stalagmites on the floor. Idly, I let my middle ring wonder how old this cavern could possibly be, to have so many of them. However, from the various lights that had been cast throughout the cavern, I could see that there were webbed bodies on the stone fixtures.

I guess that made sense. When the spiders were done with their victims, I suppose they had just webbed their now dry juice boxes onto one of them. I furrowed my brow, turning my head to look at Grey. “You don’t think,” I said slowly. “That he’s up there, do you?” I pointed above us to the roof of the cavern, where the lights from everyone’s skills didn’t quite manage to pierce.

Grey’s brow furrowed contemplatively at my question. Calling his silver light back to his hand from where it had been hovering near his shoulder, he raised it above his head. The light began to shine brighter, directed in a cone at the ceiling.

I grimaced at what the light revealed.

I guess the stone spires were only overflow for the victims of the now-deceased monsters. Because the ceiling of the cavern was covered in the corpses of desiccated victims.

The Abyssmother may not have been the Prime we’d come here for, but I was pretty glad we’d killed her anyway. If for no other reason she and her children couldn’t do this to anyone else.

Still, the light did its job. Among the webbing above us, I managed to make out a glint of gold. Almost directly above Grey and I was the webbed figure of Aurum with only his head visible. Grey’s silver light was reflecting off of the gold of his pleading eyes.

I blinked up at him, meeting them.

Grey’s light show must have drawn the attention of everyone else because they migrated over to our position. Venix was unphased by the sight of our healer attached to the ceiling, and just took out a cloth to begin cleaning his blades of spider guts. Meanwhile, Sylvia was unphased, but Azarus seemed a bit amused.

The dwarf cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ya alright up there, goldie!” He shouted up to the bound Sculpted. Aurum didn’t manage to make any sound with the web around his mouth, but he did wiggle in place. Azarus snorted in amusement at the sight. At my unimpressed stare, he held up his hands defensively. “What? It’s funny.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Oh, sure it is,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You want to join him, then?”

Azarus squinted at me. “Nah. Think I’ll pass.”

Grey gave us a dry look and then turned to consider Aurum’s bound figure for a moment. Eventually, he gestured in my direction for a moment with his left hand, causing my spear to jump in my hands. I let go of it with a yelp, as it floated away from me up to the ceiling at Grey’s apparent telekinetic instruction.

With the precision of a surgeon, Grey directed my spear to cut the bindings that held the wrapped Sculpted to the ceiling. When the last strand of spider silk was cut, Aurum's eyes visibly bulged in their metallic sockets as he plummeted to the cavern floor. Inches before he could impact the floor, Venix snapped one of his four arms out in a blur and caught him by the back of the cocoon he was wrapped in without even looking. Glancing up, the Antium man began to cut Aurum out of the wrapping with one of his free blades.

Meanwhile, Grey dismissed the telekinetic hold he had on my weapon, causing it to tumble through the air groundward. I yelped, scrambling to catch it before it could hit the hard stone. When I did, I retracted the shaft and cradled the now-shortened spear to my chest. I sent Grey a wounded look. There were some delicate mechanisms in this thing, you know.

Grey ignored me and approached Aurum, accepting the golden Sculpted’s staff from Sylvia as he did so. He handed the stave to Aurum, who took it with shaking hands now that he was free from the webbing. “Are you well, young Aurum?”

Aurum gave Grey a shaky smile. “I’m-” He tried to say, before spitting out a piece of webbing. He coughed, and then tried again. “I’m fine, Headmaster. They…weren’t able to do much to me. They tried to inject me with something, but, well, obviously it didn’t work.” He said, leaning his neck to the side. Visible on it were two puncture marks akin to something a vampire would leave, punched straight through his solid gold skin. Aurum sighed. “It’s going to be a nightmare getting that fixed up. Plus, I think I have dried venom on the inside now.”

I stood up, and gave him a contemplative look, tilting my head. You know, now that I thought about it…

I decided to give him the choice. “Hey,” I said, drawing Aurum’s attention. He looked at me curiously. “I can give it a shot. I might be able to fix that right here.”

Aurum was visibly startled at my offer. I don’t think I’d ever mentioned Aetherial Melding to him, or used it in his presence. But it wasn’t exactly any of his business. Still wasn’t, but I was willing to see if I could do a quick mend for him. It would probably be easier than actual surgery on another human with my Profession. “Um,” Aurum stuttered. “Sure?”

I approached Aurum under the interested gazes of my companions and laid a hand over the bite marks on his neck. I closed my eyes and concentrated. These days, I could pretty much slip into the trance needed for Melding instantly. Once I was in it, I examined the puncture holes with my Aetherial senses.

Yeah, I could do this. The metal of a Sculpted was infused with Aether in a way that was similar to how a person's flesh was. But because it wasn’t flesh, it seemed like it would be much easier to shape and mend. I’d need a bit of material, though.

Not a problem.

I slipped a hand into my pouch and pulled out a gold coin. Which, interestingly enough, wasn’t registering as pure gold. Maybe about only ninety percent gold. Good. My senses were telling me that not even Aurum was actually pure gold. Guy seemed like…maybe seventy-five percent gold, with a mixture of other metals that I couldn’t quite put a name to. You know, I’d been wondering about that with him. Gold was pretty soft, so it hadn’t made sense for him to be one hundred percent pure gold.

He, uh, did have some dried liquid on the inside of his outer metallic shell too. I guess that was the venom the dumbass spiders tried to inject him with. I melded it away.

Anyway, I astrallized the coin and used its material to patch the holes on his neck. When I was done, I opened my eyes to see that Aurum was looking at me in amazement. I coughed, embarrassed. “That part on your neck might be a bit weaker, so watch it. When we have more time, I can reinforce it with a better mix.”

Aurum jumped, as if woken from his own trance. “Oh, all right! Thank you!”

Grey cleared his throat, smiling at me. “Now that that’s over with, we can continue with our plan,” He turned to examine the far wall of the cavern before stopping. He pointed to the far corner that the Abyssmother had been crouching in, when it had collapsed the entrance of the cavern in a trap. “Over there should be the hidden entrance to the prison proper.” He started walking in that direction, with the rest of us following along behind.

Once we’d reached that corner, the light from everyone’s skills illuminated a giant mass of webbing.

And eggs.

Lots and lots of spider eggs, each about the size of a volleyball. I cringed at the sight of them, making a disgusted noise. Meanwhile, Grey clucked his tongue. “Well, that just won’t do.” He held up a free hand and pointed it at the web and eggs. His hand glowed, and from it poured a continuous stream of blazing orange fire. The webbing exploded into flame like they’d been doused in gasoline. So did the eggs.

At the touch of the fire, some of the eggs began to prematurely hatch. From them, juvenile sea spiders tried to crawl out, only to immediately perish in the flame.

“You know…” I said out loud, taking in the grisly scene. “I thought monsters didn’t reproduce like regular animals.”

I got an answer from an unexpected source. “Primes are an exception,” Venix said shortly, in a monotone voice. I turned in surprise, to see him watching the extermination and tapping the hilt of one of his sheathed blades. “They are more akin to regular beasts than the typical monster. It is one of the reasons they’re hunted. They can quickly grow colonies that can overwhelm the frontier.”

Huh. I guess that made sense.

Venix spoke again, repeating a ritual that I’d come to expect from him.

“In icy depths, slain,

Flame sears the Frostbrine night,

Darkness yields to light.”

I had to stifle a laugh at the absolutely baffled look that Aurum shot Venix at that. I guess he had missed the haiku that Venix had done, back on the road with the patrol.

Grey finished with his fire work, revealing a large stone door carved into the wall of the cavern. It was pretty roughly hewn, and I could only really tell that it was a door because it was rectangular. Otherwise, it had no other features on it. I sure as hell couldn’t tell how it was supposed to open.

Nevertheless, Grey seemed satisfied. He approached the apparent door, uncaring about the still flickering flames near it. He laid a palm against the edifice, and spoke a word. “Aglon.” He intoned.

Nothing happened.

I could see Grey furrow his brow. “Aglon!” He tried again, speaking louder.

Azarus and I exchanged a glance when nothing happened again.

Grey stepped back from the door, and turned to face us. He scratched his chin. “Well,” He said thoughtfully. “Damn. I think the Loyalists blocked this entrance.”