The next day is a slow trek, ignoring splits in the path and following the river onwards. They are attacked from behind by a few small groups of groglers, but the attacks are less frequent than the day before. They find a few more herbs, including a sizable harvest of wyrmroot tucked into an alcove along their path. They also find a sparse outcrop of light crystals, but otherwise the day passes without intrigue.

The final day of their delve into the depths of The Waters brings a new bag of problems though. A few hours into the morning, a chill passes down Emily’s spine.

What’s following us this time?

With a frown, Emily starts channelling earthen detection as she walks. She looks behind them and finds a group of groglers in pursuit, which doesn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. Ignoring them for now, she sends her perception into the side tunnels near them and finds a few more groups of groglers, walking in parallel with them, further into the depths.

Strange! Why aren’t they coming to attack us? They’re definitely close enough to detect us.

She runs her scan over the tunnels a few more times, but only finds groglers lurking near them without approaching. Even the group behind them, which keeps increasing in size as more monsters show up, doesn’t come closer.

“We’re being surrounded by groglers,” Emily comments calmly.

“Surrounded?” Oscar asks sceptically.

“Yeah. There’s a large group behind us and a lot of small groups in the tunnels nearby, but none are approaching us.”

“Hmm.” Oscar frowns, halting their march and turning to Ivor for confirmation.

Ivor and Enzo both run scans, coming to the same conclusion as Emily.

“Shit! Why are they acting so weird? I thought that monster was controlling them,” Oscar questions Emily, anger and desperation mixing in his gaze.

“I don’t know. It looks like they’re trying to push us deeper, though, so we’ll probably find out soon. If not, we can just kill our way out. Relax, it’s only groglers, I can deal with them all myself if necessary.” Emily calms him down while pushing for them to continue onwards, her curiosity growing.

He’s starting to lose it. I guess losing nearly a third of his expedition in one night probably wasn’t great for his confidence.

Oscar takes a deep breath then releases it, letting his tension flow out.

“You’re right. Sorry, I should be keeping a calm head to lead properly. Let’s keep going. We turn around tomorrow morning anyway.”

They restart their march, with tension once again spreading through the group. Nothing happens till mid-afternoon when they arrive at a three-path split in the river, with new banks rising from the water to line the middle path up ahead. They try to walk towards the left-hand path, following the pattern they’ve now established whenever they’re faced with a choice, but as they get closer, Emily’s spots dozens of heat signatures lurking in the darkness at the edge of the path.

“That’s a lot of groglers,” she mutters to herself before turning to her groupmates. “Enzo, Ivor, status check.”

Hearing her command, both mages shut their eyes and send out scans. Everyone else starts preparing spells for their visitors.

“Fucking hell,” Enzo exclaims, the colour draining from his face. “There’s about fifty behind us.”

“Roughly thirty ahead, twenty on the middle, and none on the right,” Ivor signs, gesturing to the three paths ahead.

Nervous chatter breaks out in the group.

“Should we run?” Cian asks fearfully.

“We can’t fight that many while surrounded,” Erin adds.

“Maybe we should follow the path without any of them. Then we only have to deal with them on one side?” Enzo suggests.

“Yes,” Oscar nods while starting to break formation to head towards the empty path. “We should run.”

Emily reaches out and grabs his shoulder, staring at him with a scowl.

“What’s with you? It’s just a bunch of groglers. We can beat this many easily.”

Oscar pauses, looking into Emily’s eyes in confusion for a second before shaking his head and regaining clarity.

“You’re right. Why are we so nervous?” He walks back into position, straightening his back and giving out commands. “Mia, Bella, help me set up a barrier to completely block the back for now. Enzo, slow down any that come from the middle path. Ivor, make him a temporary bridge to reach it. Erin, Matteo, start picking off those behind us. Emily, Dante, wipe them out.”

After a few murmured agreements, everyone starts their chants, waiting for the monsters to approach.

Why are they just watching us? Will they not attack until we try to go down a path they don’t like? It’s quite obvious they’re trying to force us onto the right path, and Oscar almost did what they want.

Emily frowns before shaking her head and pushing her concerns to the back of her mind.

“If you’re not coming, I’ll just have to attack first,” she mutters, before exchanging grins with Dante as they both move towards the grogler filled path.

Flying lightning forms, wrapping around Emily’s arm to form a silver sleeve of coiled metal. The moment her foot lands in the entrance to the path, the groglers burst into motion, rushing out of the shadows to attack her. A flurry of burning petals flies past, bursting against the front runners of the group.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Emily spins up flying lightning before whipping the dart forward through the chest of the nearest grogler. She pulls the wire back quickly, spinning with the momentum of the metal projectile and sending it back in a sweeping arc. The wire wraps around one of their attackers, slashing several others as it tightens around the soft grey flesh, stunning them all with arcs of lightning.

With a quick tug and a drop of extra mana, the wire rips the grogler to shreds, slicing through flesh and bone with ease. As the dart flies back towards her, a grogler gets close and swipes a disproportionately long arm at her. She raises her right arm to block, catching the monster’s hand with the coiled wire of flying lighting. A spark of lightning stuns the creature, and Emily extends the Claw on her left hand, slashing its throat quickly.

She steps to the side to dodge another monster’s swipe, directing the returning metal dart into the unsuspecting creature’s back. She spins again to start the momentum of her weapon, delivering a heavy spinning kick to another grogler’s head as she does, splitting open its skull.

All distractions fall away as Emily performs an acrobatic dance of magic and metal, blitzing through groglers in a maelstrom of violence. With the help of Dante’s flames, they quickly clear the tunnel. Emily wipes some dirty brown blood from her eyes as she turns back to check on the group.

Covering the cave behind them is a short wall of wind and water, with a large horde of groglers pressed up against the other side. Spells fly through the barrier every few seconds, slowly reducing the enemy numbers. Emily turns her attention to the middle path, looking past Ivor holding up a bridge of stone, signs of exhaustion evident on his face. She sees just over twenty groglers struggling to move forward through soft, mud-like rock, and Enzo standing between them and the bridge, his hands pressed to the floor, surrounded by a glowing brown magic circle as sweat drips from his brow.

Seeing the grouped up groglers unable to move, an idea occurs to Emily.

“Enzo, hold them for a few more seconds and I’ll deal with them. Dante go help out the back.”

“Got it!” Dante replies with glee, sprinting towards the group while starting another chant.

“Please be quick,” Enzo grunts through gritted teeth.

Emily runs past Ivor and over the bridge, spinning up flying lightning while pouring in extra mana and focusing on sharpening the wire. She releases the full coil around her arm, passing Enzo to take position in front of the gathered monsters.

“Duck!” she calls while spinning.

Flying lightning extends, flashing in an arc of crackling silver. It sails over Enzo’s head, and slams into the groglers. In a single, swift motion, the wire continues past without resistance. As Emily slows her rotation, she looks at the aftermath of her attack, seeing twenty groglers split in half and bleeding out on the floor.

With a manic grin, she quickly whips the dart between the few remaining monsters before turning back to look at Enzo. His eyes are wide in shock, but as Emily runs past him he quickly shakes off his stupor and moves with her to join the rest of the group. Ivor dismisses the bridge the moment they cross and runs to join the fight too.

Emily dismisses flying lightning as she approaches the wall of magic. She starts casting bolt, while lining up a shot, she releases the spell and watches the beam of plasma tear through ten more monsters.

It’s more mana efficient to use bolt repeatedly. That little trick with flying lightning cost me almost five hundred mana. Totally worth it though.

Her grin remains as she sends another bolt through the monsters. They’re too stupid to realise lining up is a bad idea, and after a few more spells, they are wiped out.

The barrier mages drop the wall, and every combatant other than Emily pants in exhaustion.

“Right,” Oscar says after regaining his breath. “Let’s pause here for a bit to regain our mana before we move on. Cian, Callum, can you two harvest any usable eyes please.”

The two brothers start moving through the corpses while everyone else finds a spot to sit down and meditate in, their recovery aided by the dense mana surrounding them. Emily sits down on a rock at the edge of the cave, sending out earthen detection to check for any other groglers nearby, still feeling uncomfortably on edge.

I thought the groglers following us was what was bothering me, but they’re all dead and I still feel something’s wrong.

“I’m starting to think you’re the scariest monster in here,” Enzo says as he walks over, distracting Emily from the empty tunnels around them.

“How’d you realise?!” Emily asks in mock surprise before giggling as Enzo rolls his eyes and sits down.

“I’m serious though. You’ve been using detection spells all day, then you used a conjured weapon to fight. I know conjured objects don’t exactly drain a lot of mana normally, but there’s no way you weren’t dumping extra into it to be able to slice so many groglers in half in one go. You then threw out plenty more spells after, and now you’re running more detection spells without a single sign of exhaustion! How do you have so much mana?” Enzo rants, a mix of curiosity and confusing bleeding into his tone.

“Ah.” Emily is taken aback by his questioning, unsure how to answer.

She pauses to consider.

Can I tell him anything? It doesn’t seem like he’ll buy the efficient spell excuse. Well, there’s no chance he’ll tell the Mandrago family: he’s too close to Oscar and Oscar showed obvious disdain for them. Also, I like him. I don’t think I’m likely to need to fight him any time soon and he’s already suspicious, so I may as well tell him a little.

Emily lets out a sigh before glancing around and making sure no one’s within earshot.

“It’s down to a few things, but the main one I can just show you. Focus on the mana around me right now.”

Enzo obediently shuts his eyes and focuses on the mana around Emily who sits, with Technomancer’s Breath active on her second core, waiting for him to notice the oddity in the surrounding mana flow. After a few seconds, he opens his eyes in surprise.

“You’re drawing in mana without meditating?” he asks incredulously.

“Yeah. My meditation technique is unique, I’m able to keep part of it active while moving around as long as I split some of my focus for it.”

“I see.” He nods thoughtfully. “So, you just have to make sure you’re only casting one spell at a time while you do it.”

It’s Emily’s turn to be surprised as she listens to him muttering to himself.

“Wait, you know about my double casting?”

“You don’t exactly try to hide it,” Enzo says, surprised at Emily’s surprise. “We were all watching when you fought that monster, and you were definitely casting bolt while using another spell to coat your weapons in lightning. It’s pretty obvious that you can double cast.”

Of course! They don’t know about machina so it will look like another spell to them. Whoops! I never even considered that.

“Ah, yeah. I guess I haven’t exactly been hiding it on this expedition.”

“Anyway, thanks for answering my question,” he says as he stands to go and meditate.

Emily waves him goodbye and returns to her surveillance of the surrounding tunnels. They are all empty, all of the nearby groglers seeming to have died in the prior fight. She spends the rest of the break sitting at the edge of the group, periodically scanning for any approaching enemies just in case.

Soon, everyone finishes gathering mana and they get back into formation.

“Which path are we taking?” Dante asks before they set off.

“I say we find out where they were trying to lead us,” Emily suggests confidently, her hand resting on The Clock’s pouch at her hip.

There’s no way I’m leaving without working out what was controlling them. I wonder if it’s related to the curse.

Frowns spread through the group, but as Emily opens her mouth to persuade them they disappear.

“Sure, for the pursuit of knowledge, right?” Oscar says with a smile.

“Yeah, for the pursuit of knowledge.”

Emily turns around and leads the group forward.

Well that was weird. They changed their minds too fast and too easily. Is something affecting their minds? Maybe that’s the curse too.

They cross the water, this time swimming to avoid draining all of Ivor’s mana. They then continue downstream on the other side. The path remains the same as the other until, an hour in, they step into an unnerving cave, which halts them in their steps.

Emily looks from the large, open lake of water in the centre of the cavernous space to the scattered magic crystals to the piled up bodies, and the blood smeared walls surrounding them.

“Holy shit!”