There was a sticky feeling to the moment. A second that stretched past all normal bounds, tugged long by fear and lucid madness. Taffy time, glued to a fool’s fingers. Truth had no idea what the hell was going on with the phoenix. Not one clue. Nothing good, if the whole base was mining it. Lotta cosmic energy running through those pipes though. Lots of heat. And it was so strong, it took a room full of pylons, altars and other ritual tools to keep it crucified.

He called Cup and Knife into his mind. This was wrong. This was so wrong. This was an utter perversion of how the world was supposed to be. Even if you thought that God took this world from demons and gave it to humans, crucifying a phoenix to power body-hijacking a little girl just couldn’t be right.

The spellform spilled out of his hand. He had never noticed before, but he could see how rough it looked compared to something like Incisive or Graeme’s Arrow. It looked… janky. Vek had done his best, but he had never understood what Manda showed him. He just scribbled down what he could.

He could work with jank. There was a load of free energy in the air. The exploding pylons were releasing geysers of it. He sacrificed the magic in him and let the spellform start its work. Triggering a magical cascade in the wider world. Sweeping up that free energy and slamming it into the spells keeping the phoenix crucified.

It was like trying to put out a volcano with a cup of water. The spells were built by level Eights and Nines, and fueled by the Phoenix’s own magic. Truth’s little magic was never going to overpower that. The magic raged and struggled… and fizzled out.

The PMC deathsworn were spinning around now. Spells coming online. Twenty Level Three’s, one Level Four. Less than a second to do something. High level coming down the tunnels. Maybe more than one. Dead for sure. Dead for absolutely certain. Nowhere to run, no way to fight.

He locked eyes with the Phoenix. There was intelligence in them. A kind of brutal cunning. Encouragement. And… maybe he was projecting in this final lucid moment but it looked like there was acceptance there too.

He didn’t have any other useful spells. He summoned Cup and Knife into existence once more. The Phoenix… did it just nod its head? Why? It saw the spell fail once before. Cup and knife fixes things. It corrects them. It… kills demons. A weapon of spiritual combat, taught personally to Vek by the angel of Revelation.

He aimed it straight at the Phoenix, and cast. More and more pylons exploded. He could hear Incisive screaming at him. DANGER! DANGER! RUN! BE A GOOD LITTLE RAT AND RUN!

He stood his ground and cast.

There had been enchantments protecting the Phoenix. He could see the ruins of them. Cup and Knife slammed into the vast Demon. It should have vanished again. It should have shattered into nothing against the Phoenix’s own magic. He could feel the spell sinking in, welcomed. Then, muffled through the explosions and the heavy, deadening hood came a basso yell-

[[RUN. NOW.]]

Truth turned and ran flat out. The protective suit strained to keep up with him. Tried to anchor him in place. It didn’t get a vote. He was sprinting for the door, dodging spells as best he could. There was a crumbling noise behind him. He could feel the magic in the room go crazy, the energy exploding chaotically. He could see spells just miss him, thrown off by the random shifts in energy. Feel them prematurely explode.

The room went white. He could feel the heat shedding spells strain under the pressure. Were they exploding? He couldn’t tell for sure. He kept running. At the tunnel. Up the tunnel. Relying on Incisive to keep him from slamming into a wall. There was a huge rush of air coming from behind him. No, not air, gas! Poison gas!

There was a different sort of pressure now. How fast did the lava move through the tubes? He didn’t know. He kept running. Was he missing his turns? He didn’t know. He couldn’t see. The light spells… were they even still working? He couldn’t tell- he was in the swirling yellow gas now, and the walls were incandescent. The walls were blinding him.

He felt danger coming from up ahead. Was there an opening? He jolted to his right and kept running. The danger swept past him, rushing down the tunnel. Did they think they could stop the Lava? Maybe they could. He hoped they were wrong.

There was a series of deep booms, audible even through the sound deadening poison gas. The pressure of the heat was only increasing. At a guess… if that senior could stop the lava normally, he couldn’t stop a Phoenix’s suicide.

Ah. Right. It wasn’t just lava. It was the Phoenix’s blood. He had no idea what that would do to basalt, other than make it very hot. He tried to run faster, and was disappointed to find that he could not. He was moving at nearly a hundred kilometers an hour through lava tubes, and he knew damn well it wasn’t fast enough.

Running through the burning earth, already lost and getting more so by the second. He didn’t know how long he ran. At the speed he was moving, it couldn’t have been that long. The incandescence was dimming a little. He still couldn’t tell if the light spells were working or not. He wasn’t going to stop and check. He certainly wouldn’t be taking the helmet off in any case.

He slowed a little, though. Just… pacing himself. He had a feeling he would need the energy.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

[[No, you need to be running faster, not slower. Much, much faster, if you can.]]

Truth had a mini-seizure that expressed itself in the form of an explosive sprint. He had traveled a few dozen meters before he saw a series of twists in the poison gas. Roughly bird shaped swirls and dips, fading into existence then vanishing in the turbulence again.

[[Well, if this is the best you can do… Hmm. I don’t suppose you want to die, do you? It would be convenient if you did.]]

He very much wanted to live. He didn’t think he could squeeze a single half meter more speed out of his legs, but he tried anyway.

[[Not that I don’t appreciate the rescue. It will take me a few decades to be reborn, but that’s fine. Plenty to enjoy in the meanwhile.]] The Phoenix’s voice wasn’t muffled by the gas. Was it talking directly into his mind?

Any chance you are telepathic?

There was no response. It was a faint hope.

“Flood the base. Lava into the base.” He gasped.

[[Eh? You want to flood the base with lava? It’s more likely to just collapse in the eruption. Seismic activity, earthquakes, all that good stuff. The so-called High Levels on the site aren’t enough to stop it now. It should have happened a century ago. The pressure that has built up is significant, even as I reckon these things.]]

There was an unpleasant noise. It seemed that the ghost of a phoenix could snigger. [[Frankly, I’m going to enjoy watching humanity suffer for a while. A century of torture will do that to a soul. Believe me, when I get a body back and my passions return to me, there WILL be a reckoning.]]

A century? Just how long has Starbite been planning whatever the Hell this is?

“Rescue the princess. The Shattervoid princess!” Truth gasped. The dimming of the rock had reversed. It was getting brighter again. He hoped the heat at his back was just his imagination. Just how fast was a lava eruption?! But it sounds like there is a LOT of pressure behind this one.

[[Don’t be stupid, boy. Do you have the faintest idea how big the Shattervoid are? They would be crushed under their own weight if they came too close to a planet. There is no way one of them is in the base.]]

“Baby! She’s twelve!”

[[Ah.]]

There was a long pause.

[[Left here, by the way.]]

Truth took the left fork. Definitely getting brighter. Moving from deep orange to gold. Not good. Very not good. He had a lot of faith in his heavily refined body. Not that much faith.

[[Never had any trouble with the Shattervoid. Never had any contact with them at all, really. Knew about them, of course. I could see them nosing around. She is another one of Starbrite’s little lab experiments? Oh wait, was he draining the magic out of me to do something to her?]]

“Yes!” Well, that was his guess, anyway.

[[Hmm. Why lava in the base?]]

“Melt the lead curse tablets! She’s heat resistant!” Funny, he wouldn’t have thought he could still get short breath, but here he was. Gasping in the damn suit. He must be shredding it. There is no way it was designed to work like this. Move this fast. It must be hanging on by a literal thread.

[[Eh? Kid. You wanted to trigger a volcano to melt lead? This was seriously the best plan you could come up with?]]

“Yes.” Truth gasped.

There was another long pause. He could feel the Phoenix judging him. The judgment was unkind.

[[Well, I can’t control the lava flow now. On account of being dead. And it’s far more than I could have stopped anyway. If I was going to stop it. Which I wasn’t, because why would I?]]

Ah. Fuck.

[[On the other hand, if you really are suicidal enough to want to go back to the base, I think it can survive with it’s shields and construction for twenty minutes. Probably. I could only see so much. Call it fifteen minutes to be safe. Certainly at least ten. Yes. Ten minutes. I am at least eighty percent sure it can last that long. Left again, if that’s really where you want to go, by the way.]]

Well, there would certainly be nothing in the base that would slow him down! Yes, this was very sane, very smart. Mmmhmm. He went left.

[[I was going to lead you out of the volcano as a thank you for the rescue. So we aren’t actually anywhere particularly near the entrence. But, there is a bend in this tube that will get you within a couple of meters of the base, and the basalt is getting comparatively soft, so if you have a way to dig it out, you might be able to tunnel your way in. Also you will leave behind a hole that will have lava shooting directly into the base.]]

“Great. Thank you.”

The phoenix steered him through two more turns then- [[This patch of wall here. I won’t be joining you- their wards would shred my soul. Good luck. If you survive this, and the next few decades, and my terrible revenge on humanity, come find me and say Hi.]]

Truth had the Tongue out and was hacking away. “Soft” really was only a comparative measure. It was still damn hard. The Tongue was forged with a piece of an angelic weapon made for fighting the armies of Hell. It could take the beating. And the heat.

[[I don’t know why I thought you would have a spell for that. Based on all available evidence, of course you would dig through basalt with a sword. Well. Thanks anyway.]]

He was able to cut away decent sized blocks of the basalt. It was terrifyingly hot. Would the…

Fuck. He would flood the base with poison gas. The shattervoid girl would be fine, she was born to travel the void. But everyone else? He hacked away faster. The tongue eventually bounced off something in a shower of sparks. Cement. Enchanted cement. The wall of the base.

Truth grinned horribly under the helmet and cast Obliteration He didn’t need a very big hole in the wards. It took a few more seconds to open up a decent sized patch. Big enough for him to jump through. A bit more hacking through the rebar and-

And Truth found out the hard way that the poison gas could, in fact, explode.