Val could always tell.

Ashless Forest. The Dark Mineshaft. Storm’s Keep. Every rift had a flavour—a set of main elements—that summarized its entity so succinctly, that it was impressive.

Fire.

Darkness.

Water, lightning and air.

But as the winding cave passed by her in a blur, as the walls drew so close they pressed at her shoulders then widened so far she hardly noticed them, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Was it earth? She faced more rock elementals than she could count on one hand. Poison? While the element was scarcely seen in general, many of the aether creatures she’d encountered in the past hour were of the poison-gate one way or the other. The Elemental Gate of Plants? After all, the rift was named Bloom’s Essence in honour of the many-coloured flowers ordaining the ceilings.

She just couldn’t tell—and that in itself was frightening. The team raced ahead after Bo’s lean figure, Caro and Otis on either side of her, with grim faces. They had no clue what they rushed to face, or who they had left to save.

“What’s got the air queen herself stumped?” Caro threw out into the silence, the slight sound of their breathing a little too much to bear.

Bo shot a disgruntled look over the shoulder, then returned his sights ahead. “We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Jesal echoed from fifteen steps behind. He was doing a lot of that lately—echoing. I suppose it is in line with amplification.

“Undocumented,” was the Hunter’s one-word response.

“Friiiick.” Caro stretched the curse out, grimacing at the end of it all. “You got any info that’d be helpful though? Type? Gate or ensign? Tier? Stars?”

“We can’t tell what type it is. Not gonna lie, I would bet my money’s worth that it’s an anomaly. Leaning towards elemental, though.”

“Shit,” came the Striker’s one-word answer.

“It’s tri-bound. From what I’ve seen, it possesses the mud ensign—a mixture between water and earth, I presume—as well as the poison and light gates.”

“Damn.”

“At least Tier 2, and it’s two-starred, probably three.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Air’s not doing anything to it, is it?” Val asked, putting together the integrated creature in her mind.

“Attack-wise?” The illusion Hunter shook his head. “Nothing. Solid weapons are a no-go, too.”

“What are we going to do, then?” Ekon asked. “We’re a weapon-based team.”

“You’re weapon-based. We can’t do much as Hunters. You’re teammates, however? We need Val and that giant guy’s extra shields. Caro’s magma. Sil’s cousin’s buffs. The Lenson girl’s ice. You sit tight and throw your drugs where needed.”

It was both odd and absolutely hilarious to witness the sight of Ekon sputtering. “Drugs?”

“Pills. Tonics. Potions. Whatever. We’re here, anyway.”

As if at Bo’s will, the tunnel broadened to an average-sized cavern. Even through the filtered air that the mask provided, Val swore she caught the tiniest bit of a sweet, floral scent. It pulled her eyes up, and she was met with thousands of flowers—they seemed like tulips in all except their poisonous nature—somehow defying both gravity and common sense. That wasn’t even the main concern.

Below, to the far left edge, a deep pond remained by its lonesome, the top of its waters moving a little too much in an area where there was no breeze inside to blow at it. Then, as her gaze swept the cavern, she discovered that the pond wasn’t alone. In fact, two still figures sat by its edge, their feet crossed beneath them in a lotus position. Upon closer look, she recognized the pair’s short auburn hair and light-brown braid.

“Aeron? Leah?” Caro called out, as confused as the rest of Hammer Squad. She just was always the first out of the six to voice her thoughts. “The hell are they doing here—and where’s this elemental beast we’re supposed to fight?”

“She never shuts up, does she…” Versetti’s mumble carried over from some fifty feet away.

“As someone once said—” Val jumped at the familiar voice at her back “—you learn to love it.”

Hammer Squad whirled behind to the tunnel they exited a mere moment ago, their jaws ajar at the grey eyes scanning their group from end to end. “Val, Caro. Good to see you.”

“You too…?” Val managed to get out to the Erydian Hunter, once at her back, now facing her. Her eyes flickered between Mike and Bo. “Aren’t you supposed to be clearing a different track?”

“We needed help,” Aeron answered absent-mindedly. “Plus, nothing we could do to stop it from barging into their territory. We tried. Seriously.”

Kylee canted her head to the side at the two water mages. “What are you two doing?”

“Worry about that later.” Bo pointed at her, Jesal and then Ekon. “You, you and you. Stay here with the lightning Hunter. Kill any aether creature on sight. When we come back around—and you’ll know when we’re coming—I need you, Lenson girl, to keep it away from our water mages and into the pond. Got it?”

“Understood.”

“Copy that.”

“Fine.”

“Vanguard, on me.” That was all the warning Bo gave before shooting off into the opposite tunnel.

Val, alongside Caro and Otis, sprinted on after him. She sent a probing hand over her shoulder. Good. Her E-shield remained holstered beside her saber, snug and ready to go. A glance behind told her Otis managed to keep up with the Strikers and Hunters, the growing sheen of sweat across his brow the sole indication of any exertion.

“Caro, I need you to flood the elemental back into this tunnel as soon as we get a grasp on the situation waiting for us,” Bo commanded. “You’ll likely be the bait after that, which is where your Bulwark comes in. Rumours say you have mobile shields?”

“Well those rumours sound about right,” Otis huffed between breaths. “You’ll have to tell me where you heard it from once this is over.”

“Deal.” The illusion Hunter fished out a ziplock full of aether tonics and threw it over to the only other guy in the group. “You’ll need those.”

“Thanks.”

“Val.”

She nodded at her name. “You said I’ll be a second shield, right?”

“Well…” Val saw Bo’s shoulder raise a touch up ahead of her. “More of a relief, if anything.”

“That doesn’t sound too good,” Caro muttered.

“You’ll see,” was his response.

And they did.

As was common in this rift, the tunnel stretched into another decent-sized pocket of space, no bigger than the average EC-room. Out of the seven people they found, only two remained standing. Sil and the orangish-haired Bulwark on Versetti’s team whose name, now that she realized, she couldn’t recall off the top of her head.

The rest, in different variations of incapacitation, were sprawled across the damp, earthen floor. A beast of a monster loomed over them, composed of dripping mud that slipped off its person every other second. It stood at least three feet taller than Otis in a nebulous human form—trunk-like limps, a meter-thick torso and giant head with a glowing circle in the center.

“Val,” Bo hissed in an urgent tone. Who could blame him? The monster was making its way over to finish the job. Val had to make sure she got there first.

“On it!” Her E-shield snapped out of its holster at once. She urged energy into her calves and took off in a blur, spurred on by the lifeless bodies scattered about. A glance told her even Rick, the six-foot tall earth Bulwark, took a knee next to Sil, and it only served to deepen the pang of fear pulsing at her chest. A burst of aether strands departed her Aetherial Vessel, and the E-shield came alive. Already preset to omnipresent-mode, the water surged out of the shaft and swirled around the compromised mages in a dome. Something bright grabbed her attention. It came from beyond the translucent water shield.

“Close your eyes!” Silann barked. Val snapped them closed at once. A second later, she saw red through her eyelids. Was that a flash bomb? No—it must’ve been the elemental’s light affinity that Bo talked about. If not for him, she would’ve never attributed the spell to the mud beast stomping its way over.

Every instinct within screamed at Val to get a visual read on the situation. “Are we good?”

“Yeah,” Silann bit out. Val was welcomed to a shadow of a towering figure through the water shield, its single eye ablaze from its previous work. It raised its two thick stumps-for-arms high in the air and brought them down like hammers. The E-shield sparked in resistance, and Val bit into her lips and grunted, holding her E-shield in place. “We have a minute or two without the light show,” Silann continued. “I don’t know if I can say the same for this shield. How long will it hold?”

“Ten to fifteen seconds,” Val muttered through the distant pain. Her entire focus remained on keeping the rod upright. If it fell, they all followed.

“Does the rest of your crew know that?” Silann asked right before the elemental swung at the shield once more. The loud booms rattled Val’s bones. It was a good thing it abstained from surrounding the shield in a hug and crushing it through a squeezing force. The shield wouldn’t have lasted a heartbeat.

“Caro should,” Val answered. And that’s what counts the most.

“Magma Flood!”

A couple of months ago, Caro used the very same spell to chase the Lifemonger away from them in the Darkshift. The lack of control resulted in the entire cavern floor covered in molten metal and mineral, and the energy cost gave the dual-bound mage a nasty rebound. Today… the opposite happened.

A three-meter wide moat materialized around the E-shield’s boundary. The elemental twitched as if shocked by a few bolts of lightning. Smoke began to rise, and its feet—if you could call the now-melting stumps that, anyway—caught fire, and liquefied even further. It lost half a foot in height before it finally thought of stepping away from them. The sloppy mud of its torso slid off in droves, forcibly it appeared. It landed perfectly at its feet, putting out the growing fire. The elemental rounded its head around, looking for the source of its problem. Caro, of course, made it easy.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Over here, you dipshit!”

It whirled, and Val could’ve sworn its giant eye warmed up in irritation.

“Yeah that’s right.” Val vividly imagined her best friend’s grin as the following taunt left her mouth. “Catch me if you can!”

Light scampering sounds remained the sole indication that Caro, indeed, took off into the tunnel they entered through. Louder thumps followed. Otis. Both of their footsteps combined were eclipsed by the elemental chasing them down, hurting, burnt and pissed. Val kept her ears apprised and waited till nothing save for the spare wind passing by could be heard.

“All clear,” came Bo’s voice from somewhere outside the water shield. With a click of the tool’s knob, the water collapsed into the ground. Bo stood, his weapons back inside their sheaths, by his lonesome. A welcome sight. He crouched beside Rick, and planted a hand on his shoulder. “You good?”

“Never… been better,” his captain voiced through painful chuckles. Blood dried across his face, and a red rash invaded the dark skin of his neck and exposed arm. “You?”

When no response sounded, Val turned to take a closer look at the illusion Hunter. Stress seemed ingrained in what little of his gaunt face she could see behind his brown bangs, his usual intellectual eyes dull from exhaustion. Then, a stray thought hit her. Had she ever witnessed Bo take the lead out of his four-man crew? Scratch that, had she ever heard him talk as much as he did today? No, she answered internally. She hadn’t. It must’ve been largely out of his comfort zone and Rick, the captain he was, noticed it in a blink. “I am,” Bo finally breathed with a nod.

“Good.” Rick smiled. “You have it?”

“Plenty.” Bo rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a dozen talismans. He dropped one in his captain’s hands and passed half of the stack to the orange-haired Bulwark. “You gonna stand here while you’re squad’s half-dead?”

“That’s pretty unnecessary,” he grumbled under his breath, although he spared no speed when it came to treating his teammates.

Val, on the other hand, glanced back at the tunnel her own squadmates ran off through. “Can I—?”

“Go.” Rick, after applying the talisman on the inner side of his forearm, gave her a warm smile and nodded his head toward the exit. “I think we’re good here. We’ve managed to clear the area of all other aether creatures. It’s only that one left. Besides, I think Aeron would appreciate it if both his little proteges were there.”

“Bo will be right behind you. I’ll stay back in case, though,” Sil added. “I’m all the backup they need. Just… not against that monstrosity. It molds itself right back together, and any part of its muddy self—and I mean any—is highly poisonous.” She thumbed the prone adventurers beside her. “That’s what took them out.”

“Okay.” Val snapped her barely working E-shield into its place on her back. “I’ll see you soon?”

A soft smile blossomed on Sil’s face. “Always.

…

Val’s combat boots screeched to a halt upon reaching the cavern where the water mages cooped up. She arrived in time to see it pummeling Otis’ jade Barricade, both he and Caro huddled before a long sheet of off-white mineral stretched from end to end. With lightning trailing his steps, Mike materialized beside the gigantic elemental. Teal coated his long dagger, and his arm lashed out.

The mud sizzled as he cut through, but not for long. The sludge hardened to clay, and the blade caught. The golem—Val resorted to calling it, upon seeing its shape—spared a glance at its leg. By the time it returned its sights to the shield, new sludge had appeared to patch up Mike’s work, swallowing the dagger whole.

Bo was right. Weapons don’t work. Mike retreated a few steps ahead of Val, busy scrubbing the mud splatter off his neck. A nasty rash took residence on his pale skin, courtesy of the golem’s poison.

“Get it in the damn pond already!” Versetti yelled through gritted teeth from the far right, strained concentration embedded in the furrowed line marking her forehead. Aeron gave a prompt nod in agreement. A glance told Val that Kylie was occupied preparing one spell or the other, her lips moving incessantly. It was time for her to do something.

She picked up a random pebble beside her and engaged in energy enhancement. Aether spilled into her muscles as she whipped it at the golem. This time, it didn't bother looking distressed. The rock disappeared into its body before she could blink twice. Works out for me.

“I've got it!” Val answered Versetti. Eight oblong pieces of metal came off her belt, four in each hand. She launched one, praying to the saints above it followed the results of her tests.

Once again, under the power of the blunt force, the muddy material of the golem’s body gave way, forming a cavity. New sludge spilled over, covering the metal piece. Yes! It worked. Val wasted no time in sending the rest, though she made sure to spread them out. By the seventh attack, it finally looked over, probably finding her pestering actions annoying.

“Magma Pellet!” Caro’s voice carried over, and a small, condensed bullet of liquid metal hit the golem smack in the back of its head. Its large iris glowed, and it only continued to grow in luminance as it whipped its head around.

Val’s heart clenched. “Otis, double down!”

Harken—the Bulwark’s familiar—appeared on his shoulder without hesitation, and layers of jade shields formed in front of Otis’ Barricade. Light filled the cavern. Val held her breath. Once the attack cleared, she strained her eyes to assess the damage. With a preliminary survey, it was obvious that none of the shields actually broke. However, cracks and fractures visibly filled the parts that took the brunt of the golem’s ire.

With one blunt strike, every one of them shattered save for the Barricade originally summoned. The golem reared back its arm to finish the job when Val decided seven was enough.

“Shard Bomb.” The metal pieces exploded into tens of pieces inside, some going so far as to peek out of its skin. It jerked, afflicted by the sudden attack for a total of three seconds. Thinking it over, it simply continued on. Unluckily for it, that wasn’t the end of Val’s plan.

“Metal Puppeteer.” The shrapnel inside the golem was an extension of her will, and she urged them rightward, toward the pond. At first, the golem carried about clueless. Then, its feet shifted a mere inch. Val gritted her teeth, pouring every bit of her willpower behind the spell. Move—now!

It slid a meter more. Then, now apprised of what was occurring, it began to brace its feet. Val took a knee, engaged in a standoff of might with the damnable golem, and she wasn’t winning.

“Sand Limbs!” Pieces of sedimentary dust congregated around the golem in thick ropes, tugging it with far more strength than Val could summon. Caro shot her a wink—because, of course she did—before they both tripled their efforts. It resisted all fifty meters to the pond. Perhaps sensing its impending demise, it changed tactics one step before the water.

A stump grew out of its side, then extended farther to strike the clay ground beneath it. It hardened, forming a support against the Striker’s attacks. Another stump formed, and Val’s heart sank.

“Oh no you don’t!” Mike charged at the elemental and tackled it with all the speed and strength he could conjure. The golem rocked back for a time, then softened its belly to reduce the blow. Bo appeared out of thin air, greataxe in hand. Wait a minute… Val’s head snapped to Caro, surprised to find her weapon nowhere to be seen. When did he have time to grab her axe?

Val decided it was a question for another time. He brought it down with a vengeance, left the weapon embedded in the floor and delivered a straight-up kick to the golem. It splashed inside the pond, but not before he managed to catch Mike by the arm and bodily drag him out from its insides.

“Water Fetters!” The pond's surface took shape, forming a brace for each of the golem's limb. It held in place, disallowing a retreat onto to dry ground. In the next breath, Aeron fired off another spell. “Orb Cage!”

Half of the pond moved to envelop the golem in a bubble of water, debilitating its movement. In a way too smooth to be a part of either spell, the water seeped into the golem, from the looks of it, against its will. Ice shards formed atop its head, a harbinger of the things to come. Its panicky movements stilled as more ice shards formed across its body, as if it were being frozen inside out…

Val didn’t even have to think—this was none other than Versetti. She controlled the phases of water as easily as she breathed, and if the golem was soaked through, all she had to do was simply freeze it. Finally, the seemingly unassailable elemental was no different than a statue.

“Wind Blades: Convergence.” It was at that point when Kylie let her air spell go. As per its name, sharp scythes of fast-moving air converged at the golem, slicing it from all angles. Frozen as it was, it couldn’t simply meld itself back together. Instead, it shattered into thousands of pieces, pieces which Versetti then moved out of the pond and onto the ground.

With no resistance, and a lot more water than the golem’s body, she could do what Val attempted at successfully.

“Magma Flood!” Caro voiced again, and the pieces of mud burned until nothing remained. Silence reigned in the golems' absence. Seconds passed before the thought finally bloomed in the back of Val’s mind. It’s dead, right? Mike’s strained groan broke the quiet. He collapsed a few feet from the pond, red rashes spread all over his visible skin.

They rushed towards him, though only Bo had the necessary talismans on hand. He placed them where he could, and Mike’s eyelashes fluttered close as relief coursed through his veins.

“You idiot,” Caro hissed under her breath, her gaze darting across his body.

Mike cracked an eye open. “Like you’re one to talk.

“Hear, hear,” Versetti muttered.

The magma Striker raised an indignant finger at the both of them. “I’ll let it slide, only because you guys killed it out there.”

“I don’t need your sentiments,” Versetti fired back. “Keep ‘em.”

“Oh, so you get to say something?”

“Aren’t you the one that said we did well enough to do so?”

“I—you—what I meant was—”

“Now, now,” Aeron said, planting a hand on both Strikers’ shoulders. “This is no time to fight.”

“Agreed,” Val voiced, as she scanned the vicinity. “Where the heck are Ekon and Jesal?”

Caro stiffened. “Shit. You’re so right.” She bolted to a stand. “They weren’t here when I got back.”

“Relax. They had to deal with the other aether creatures,” Versetti answered. She pointed to three gorges in the cavern's far walls. “They came out from over there. A couple of annoying Tier One, two-starred creatures. We told them to meet us at the next rest stop. We’ll see them there.”

“Okay,” Val said on an exhale. She didn't worry too much. After all, it'd take an aether creature on par of the mud elemental to take out the pair, and the likelihood of two of such beings roaming about should be at a minimum. “Let’s get a move on then." She looked askance at the smoldering spot near the feet of the pond ten feet away. "I don’t want to stay near that golem’s remains any longer than I have to.”

“Golem?” Bo parotted.

“I’m too tired to even explain.”

"Fair enough," he grunted, patting the paper rectangle he applied to Mike's forearm. "The talisman should be working by now. You good to walk?"

"With... some help," he got out. Aeron moved to crouch beside Val and burrowed an arm under Mike's shoulders, hefting him to a sitting position. In due time, he was up on his feet, braced against the water mage. All eight of them pivoted for the tunnel that led to the rest of Versetti and Rick's teams. Perhaps because they advanced at a slower pace, it seemed to take nearly forever to return to the place where the fight originally began. Soon enough, however, they stepped into the connected cavern and Caro's voice called out. "Golem's gone!"

"Thank the saints," she heard Rick respond, helping up the now-awake adventurers. Val was somewhat surprised to see Versetti book it over, clasping the orange-haired Bulwark in a side-hug and before hurrying to fuss over her squad. Huh... Val failed to not shake her head. While rude to her, the water Striker did care for her teammates, and it showed in the white-knuckled grasp she had on their hands and her glistening, brown eyes. An elbow to the gut startled Val out of her reverie. She turned to give an exhausted glare at Caro.

"Don't look at me," the magma mage whispered behind a hand. "Look at them."

Interested in seeing who them was, she traced Caro's gaze and found Aeron at the other end. He stopped a mere step before Sil and slipped his arms around her waist. There was no lightning, there was no wind, and no sharp barb to come out of Sil's mouth. Val rubbed at her eyes. She knew she was drained physically, but not to the point of hallucination, right? Right? she asked herself privately. Yet as Sil rested her chin within the groove of his neck and returned the hug, Val decided that she was not, in fact, seeing things.

"I told you I saw sparks," Caro said, a grin tugging at her lips. Back when they completed their first-ever rift dive, the magma mage had teased Aeron with those very same words.

Val cracked a small smile. "How'd you know?"

Caro gave a mysterious shrug. "A girl has her ways."

"Almost like divination at this point," Val wondered aloud.

"A false comparison," Kylee said, "but not entirely inaccurate."

Val couldn't help but chuckle. "Good enough for me."

"Alright!" Rick hollered above the gentle drone of conversations taking place. "I'm glad to say we are all in one piece and, saints-willing, that applies to Nightingale and Sil's cousin. This should be the worst of it, but let's not wait to find out. Otis, Grayson and Juniper please take point."

The orange-haired Bulwark—Grayson—and a Kidraan woman, supposedly Juniper, walked beside Otis to start the journey to the next resting site.

"Strikers, take rear. Hunters, decide amongst yourself who's scouting and who's staying. That doesn't include you, Williams. You're benched. The rest? Sit tight in the middle."

And with that, the group of eighteen adventurers proceeded onwards, injured, a bit scarred, but nonetheless whole. Val thought that, while rough, it wasn't a half-bad start to the expedition. She just hoped that it was only up from here.