“Damn!” I swear. All that, only to fail…. Maybe we should have just given up in the first place.

Then the dragon stops moving with its head and shoulders in the tunnel and I find a hope rising within me. Is it stuck?

Even better, it appears that the dragon’s attack is time-limited as the flame-like acidic tendrils are already fading away. Either that or the dragon needs to keep focus on it at all times and has lost concentration.

However, it’s not all good.

I don’t know how long I can hold this, Joy’s voice thrums through the network of Bonds, strain and weariness clear within it. It’s trying to melt my weave away and replacing the broken areas is taking all my mana.

Tarra, do you have any more mana potions you can give her? I ask urgently in response.

She’s had as many as she can cope with for now. She can’t take another for two clicks or it will have a bad effect on her body, Tarra answers, her voice tense.

Then Joy, hold it for as long as you can. Shrieks, do you have the net?

We do, he answers shortly. But Murmurs-quietly is dead, and Leaps-from-fright is too injured to help. The knowledge hits me like a punch to the gut, but I push myself through it. We need to deal with the situation: if we let the dragon go now, everything is just going to get harder.

Peace? Can you help? I force myself to ask.

“I will do what I can,” the Warrior answers with determination in his voice.

We need at least one more to have a good chance of success, rumbles Shrieks, though I see both of the samurans already moving towards the dragon again. I can’t help but admire their bravery for a moment.

I’ll go, River says. My immediate response is to reject it, but I stop myself just in time. If I reject it because of my close bond with her, that’s unfair to everyone else currently putting themselves in danger – and makes a mockery of those who have…already died.

Fortunately, I don’t need to reject it – Iandee does it for me.

No Pathwalker shall go into danger when I am able to take her place, he announces nobly. I will go.

He makes it to my side just as I reach the area where the wounded are lying around Tarra. She and River are moving efficiently around the area, showing the long-practice they’ve had in dealing with wounded together, covering injuries in paste, tipping potions down throats, and generally doing what they can. That’s another reason why River shouldn’t be one of those to take the net.

But time is of the essence and I see Iandee wincing as he pushes himself upright and the stiffness of his movements as he limps towards the edge of the clearing.

“Wait. Show me the injury,” I demand, hurrying over to him. As I get to his side, he presents his back to me – a tendril of acid breath clearly struck him like a whip across his shoulders.

Putting my hand on his shoulder, I try to heal the injury, though to limited effect. I have to guess that Iandee is suffering the same attack to his internal matrix that I did, but I don’t know how to fix that on someone else. With the urgency of the current situation, I don’t have the time to experiment, either.

Instead, I just focus on numbing the area, so that at least he doesn’t need to suffer until I can do a better job.

Thank you, Honoured Tamer, Iandee says in gratitude as the pain reduces.

“It’s not healed,” I warn him. “I can’t do that right now. So be careful of it.”

I will, he promises as he quickly hurries off, moving a lot more quickly than previously.

Not wasting any time myself, I immediately move to start healing my suffering Bound. Wanting to heal them all at once, I unfortunately have to prioritise. Knowing I can’t heal the full acid damage is useful, even as it’s frustrating and worrying.

For Lee and Thorn who were heavily injured by acid, there’s little I can do right now. I take a moment to block off their pain receptors. It’s not normally something I would do – feeling pain is actually a good way of stopping us hurting ourselves – but in this case, they already know they can’t move. It’s just cruel to let them keep feeling the agony when I can stop it.

Komodo is my next target – he’s one of the most heavily injured still of my Bound, is arguably one of the most useful, and also the majority of his injuries are healable since they come from him impacting a tree. Hard.

It takes a fair bit of mana, but by keeping up Light Meditation, I recover some of it even while I’m healing the kalestan. After him, I quickly heal Bastet, Lathani, and Honey, who were all lightly injured, and only a little by the acid. Those areas, I just numb for now.

It turns out that the three Bound killed were Murmur, Wolverine, and Demon. I clench my teeth together until they threaten to crack, doubt going through me. Was it right to continue fighting this? Is it right to continue it even now that we’re out of the tunnel? I try to fight the doubt back with my previous reasoning, but in the face of the three losses, I find it’s weaker than I’d like.

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By the time I’m done, the samurans are in position. I steel myself to continuing. There is still a chance that we can achieve what we set out to achieve, and to give up now would be to abandon the efforts made – and lives spent – so far.

The dragon is still head and shoulders in the tunnel, though not much further than that. The reason why Joy was so weak when we left the tunnel was because we spent a few minutes on a quick back-up plan – one that’s proven itself to be essential. Using roots in the walls and ceiling, the Pathwalker wove a barrier into place across more than half the tunnel.

It took her two of Tarra’ potions – one that increased her mana directly, the other that increased her regeneration significantly – but she managed. Just.

She’s struggling to hold it – no doubt the dragon is spitting acid at it to eat the roots away, and attacking it with tooth and claw, but she’s pouring mana into it from a distance to make it resistant and replace parts which have been destroyed. The dragon is held still for a moment: this is our chance to turn the tides in our favour.

Looking out between the trees, I see an arc of white go over the dragon’s wings. Triumph chimes through the network of Bonds, and I start running towards the dragon, accompanied by those of my combat Bound who are still in a decent enough condition to fight. With Joy currently focussing on keeping the barrier up in front of the dragon, it’s up to me to do the next task.

The only problem: I’m already low on mana.

River, I need some of your mana, I say, the stress of the situation making me blunt. Out of the three Pathwalkers, she’s the one who’s not using her mana pool.

Take it, she says immediately, apparently not minding. It’s hard to concentrate well enough while I’m running, but my ability to split my focus has increased significantly in recent times, and I manage to pull mana from my Bound. Perhaps it’s helped by her pushing it to me along the Bond as much as she can too.

Reaching the dragon, I use the netting currently lying over its back to pull myself up. The dragon bellows and starts backing up – perhaps it’s realised something more serious is happening that it needs to deal with.

Even as I pour my recently borrowed mana into the net, I feel the dragon inhaling again, its chest expanding significantly.

Run! I yell mentally again – I recognise the signs.

So do several of my Bound, particularly the ones who were in that previous battle. Most run, but to my horror, I see Bastet and Lathani lingering for a moment, their eyes on me, agonised. They don’t want to leave me, I realise.

Run! I order, forcing their compliance. I hate doing so, especially with them. But it’s too late for me – I’m too slow to get away. I’m just going to have to hope that somehow I can withstand the semi-sentient acid attack.

The two felines turn and run like the wind, a moment before the green tendrils form around the dragon once more.

They flicker out like tongues, searching for foes, and not finding any. I keep on feeding mana quietly into the net. It’s already fairly full of my mana from earlier; I’m just topping it up a little.

For a few moments, it looks like my attempt to stay unremarked is successful. I’m even using Fade to hide from sight, in case that helps. Then the dragon manages to back out completely, and twists its head to see me. It is extremely tempting to use Dominate on it. It’s only the certainty that I will fail it and the ensuing period of vulnerability which stops me. It’s not the right time.

On the upside, I manage to confirm my theory that the acidic tendrils are at least partially controlled by the dragon, and that the dragon is definitely able to detect me through my Fade. Of course, the downside of that is that I am immediately attacked. By all of them.

Pain sears through me, almost as bad as the Pure Energy had felt. It’s actually remarkably similar, I realise as I immediately use Sensation Management to dull the pain so I can think. Probably because both of them attack the internal matrix. Maybe it was only that the Pure Energy also attacked the soul which made it slightly more agonising.

Remembering what worked before, I drop into my Core space and grab mana, sending it flushing through my system like a wave. I know that this leaves my body vulnerable, but if I don’t deal with the acidic mana, I won’t need to worry about being eaten.

Recalling how the mana had seemed to burn the invading corrosive energy, I try to focus on repeating the effect, imagining my mana taking on fiery characteristics, even if I don’t dare actually change it into fire mana. I remember well how I once exploded the tip of a finger by doing that; I’m not sure that my new fire affinity is enough to stop that from happening to my whole body if I start flooding my internal matrix with actual fire mana.

To my bone-deep relief, it works. And it’s just as well: unlike before where the corrosive energy just ate away at a small part of my matrix, this time it covered at least seventy percent of it.

Even with my efforts, I can tell that it’s done some damage, but am confident that I will be able to fix that with time. I keep spamming wave after wave out of my Core to deal with it, trying to recycle as much of my mana as I can: my Core has a limited capacity, of course.

Finally, I emerge from my Core space, somewhat surprised that I’m still alive. Even if I managed to fight against the acidic mana, I was rather expecting for the dragon to have bitten off my head.

The first thing I realise is that my vision is gone. Again. Since the dragon hasn’t actually killed me yet, I’m going to assume that it thinks I’m dead already, or not a threat, so I start healing myself. I need the mana regeneration so I dip into Medium Meditation – the dragon would have killed me already if it was inclined to do so.

My eyes are the first things I restore, using the ‘blueprint’ in the cells to tell me how to rebuild them. As soon as they and my eyelids are back in place, I look to see where the dragon is.

Perhaps it thought that its acidic tendrils were enough to finish me off, because it has returned to the tunnel, its head and shoulders disappearing into the hole, evidently attacking the barrier again. The rest of the acid attack is fading, the tendrils disappearing.

I take stock. Physically, I’m actually not as badly off as I would have expected: my armour has done a good job in protecting me. It has paid for its protection, though – more than half the scales have fallen away because the hide below has been eaten by the physical aspect of the attack. Still, I’ve only suffered light to severe acid burns in most places.

My head and hands have suffered the worst – I suspect that I resemble Red Skull more than a little at the moment. Thank God for Pain Management, is all I can say. If the acid hadn’t also burned away the blood vessels and cauterised them to some extent, I’d probably be rather at risk of hypovolemic shock. My health has taken a beating, dropping down to a tenth in that one attack, despite my armour.

But I’m alive. And that’s more than I can say for three of my Bound.

The reminder firms my resolve and pushes away the slightly hysterical mood that hovers over me threateningly.

I’m not losing health; I can heal myself more later. Right now, we need to deal with this fucking dragon.

Setting my hands – skinned, muscle burned away, bone and cartilage showing in places – on to the net, I focus my Will on it.