The final stage of the journey into the lowest depths of the Underworld was a nervous one, for it meant descending below the magma table.

The superheated fluid which ruled the depths of the world was not without pockets of air, or bubbles of metals – just as not all places above the magma table were entirely free of the stuff – but there was a big difference between skirting around an upwelling of flowing liquid stone, and crawling down into a tiny bubble of safety beneath an ocean of it.

Little wonder that Ivaldi watched on edge as the crawler passed between great magmafalls to plunge down into a chasm between the huge expanses of two lakes.

They were entering the tunnel to Vitrgraf, a road right under the molten rock.

His mind should have been on his missions, to investigate the huge eruption of essence and learn the truth of what happened to Vitrgraf itself, but the aulogemscire in him couldn’t help but be absorbed by the original, grand promise of the Vitrgraf project once again; a mine below the magma table, reached and protected by technological innovations that would have been thought impossible even a few centuries ago.

Just the tunnel to get there was remarkable, sized for traffic on an industrial scale yet eerily deserted, leaving nothing to obscure the impressive triangular vaulting arches and the machinery housed between them. Or to distract from the transparent rounded windows which showed the magma beyond, it’s sinister red glow blending with the green overhead lighting.

“How does it look up there, Councilor?” Captain Beyla’s voice called up the ladder, from the control room below.

“It’s very… interesting,” Ivaldi replied.

His nails had long since found the familiar, almost comfortable grooves left by his previous stint in the observation pod.

“The, um, superstructure of the tunnel seems fine. A little wear and tear, but I’d posit that occurred through normal operational stresses rather than anything dangerous or unusual,” spoke Ivaldi, expanding on his answer with a certain enthusiasm as he found himself on more familiar, secure ground.

“It’s actually in impressively good condition given the reports of seismic instability. My, main, er, concern, so to speak, is the lack of maintenance and gemstone replacement. The latent mana rising from the core is thick enough to extend the operational lifespan of the fuel crystals, but the effect is, well, somewhat unpredictable, even with the thick essence outside it won’t be able to run indefinitely.”

Beyla listened to his explanation with a smile, allowing Ivaldi to go on for some time before she gently interjected.

“Interesting indeed, but that’s beyond my expertise. I was enquiring more about the view from so high up, sticking out over the side of the crawler….”

Ivaldi felt his nails dig a little deeper into the armrests.

“Oh, that… it’s…. Good!”

“Spectacular, I’d say, given all the lava out there, but it isn’t for everyone. You could observe from down here if you prefer,” she suggested, before lowering her voice. “No-one would think anything of it.”

“Thank you Captain… but, well, it’s actually magma when it’s below the magma table, and it will still be there either way, won’t it? So I think I’d like to stay here. I helped develop the theory behind the cooling systems that are protecting us, and, uh, I’d like to see as much as I can of the finished tunnel.”

“As you wish, the observation pods are still reasonably heat resistant.”

“Reasonably?!” he asked, spinning around to look back over his seat and down at the captain.

“Oh yes, not as good as the main hull, but that’s why we have bulkhead doors to seal the observation pods off from the control room if they’re breached,” she said, grinning up at him, like a predator enjoying playing with her prey. “Of course if you did a good job with your cooling systems then you should be perfectly safe up there, shouldn’t you? We’ll just try to give you a smooth ride.”

She left him with that, her playful tone leaving him to wonder if she might not plan on shaking the vessel just to tease him.

As it went, she did not – although Ivaldi was certain it had been tempting. He was on edge all the same, seeing the sloping tunnel leading ever downwards, deeper under the red-hot stone, the crawler rocking slightly with rhythmic steps as it scuttled through the absurd road to the spaces beneath the depths.

~~~

According to the sign I was in ‘Vitrgraf Mine’, property of the ‘Pharyes’ people. There was a certain familiarity to the language that I couldn’t place, but the names meant nothing to me.

My pondering was cut short by a sound ahead, from the direction of the tunnels leading out of the chamber. My mind went at once to the predators still hunting for me outside, in the magma. One must have found a way in.

With the muted rainbow of ambient gem-light strongest around the rock-faces, the twin tunnels were in relative darkness, but that was no challenge to me. Yet clear as my sight was, I struggled to parse what moved in the gloom of that narrow left hand passage.

It wasn’t one of my attackers at least – the sickly essence spilling from it was wholly different.

Despite its lesser size, it was also far worse than seeing some ravenous lava-beast bursting from the rock.

A thick and suffocating scent assaulted me in wafts, dense like the spores of the fungal woods had been, yet with a deeper, stronger reek of decay.

Emerging into the half-light the thing oozed towards me with wretched wet slopping sounds, dragging and pushing itself up on limbs that grew from the four corners of its twisted shape, ripped and torn meat flopping and drooling putrefying fluids as it wobbled and grasped.

Lumbering movements like that were reminiscent of the hateful taruchel, deepening my unease, but it was too small, and the rank odors far worse.

The body was something even fouler than the parasitic scavengers of fungus and worms.

The main body was roughly rectangular, but it was concave, somehow exploded out from within, layers of black flesh sloughing away along its length to expose what could have been ribs. But what the ruin of the creature had exposed weren’t bones; the formations were dark and cloudy crystal, newly grown clusters bursting through decayed meat like tumors anywhere that mana gathered and pooled, radiating a dark power.

Within the cavity between those crystalline structures were exposed what might be organs, rotting and festering, yet there were few left, the space mostly hollow. What did remain were somehow alive with movement of their own, squirming and undulating nauseatingly, like entrails come to life, each squishing motion sending fresh trails of black oil weeping from the ruined things….

The black ichor.

One look at the viscous foulness told me this was some depraved corruption brought about by the leaking seal of the Sepulchre.

But it was only as it emerged into the chamber that I understood its full origin.

When I saw the blossom of flesh at the back of the torso, trailing from what had once been a neck, as though the monstrosity had shed its own cranium.

Suddenly, with awful clarity I understood the form before me.

The appendages were twisted in impossible directions and the chest had come apart all the way from the neck to the groin, to expose a nightmare of decaying, yet still moving muscle hanging from surreal crystal bone, yet even so it was unmistakable; it was a humanoid.

This… used to be a person.

The knowledge made me sick all over again to watch the tiny figure, bent all wrong, limbs snapped back on themselves, making wet pops as dislocated joints articulated to drag it forwards.

From the gurgling, horrifying orifice which had once been a neck, the missing vitals trailed, a tail of disgorged, decaying viscera, the defiled pulsing mass of what once had been the heart and organs of a living, thinking, feeling being.

I could smell lungs rotting.

Coming closer, the thing reached out the stump of a destroyed leg and from somewhere within it came a gurgling of agony and horror.

I vomited.

Nothing much actually came up, after so many days without food, but the retching overtook me all the same, my eyes watering and crying the convulsion overtook me.

Echo was safe in my hand, a small mercy.

Wiping my eyes, I coughed and spat away what little bile had escaped my throat, feeling the queasy tingle behind my tongue and the second wave of nausea that came with the stink of stomach acid mixing with that of death.

I began a chant, with all the essence I could still command.

Flames incinerated the abomination, burning so hot that the metal beneath started to glow with heat. Were it not cooled from below it might have been destroyed too.

As it was, the remains of the miner disappeared from the world forever, reduced to less than ash.

It was all I could do for them.

I tried to assure myself that the thing certainly hadn’t retained anything of the person it once was – most of the head and any sort of brain were entirely gone already. Somehow that gave me little solace.

Even that scant comfort evaporated into the trailing heat haze as I realized my fatal mistake.

Outside, the howls had redoubled, intensifying and closing in from all sides. A moment later came a boom, the sound of an attack striking thick rock to one side and making the mine shake.

More impacts came, thick and fast, followed by sounds of metal tearing and yielding.

A few yards away the rock-face erupted, molten glass lancing through it, followed by a thick flood of the evaporating refrigerant. More such holes were being punched in the surfaces all around as the enemies outside continued attacking, their energy and anger relentless.

The cooling systems lining the outside of the mine were keeping the magma at bay for now, but every puncture weakened them – they were clearly never designed to serve as armor against attack. Any moment now-

The thought was drowned out by the sounds of the ceiling shattering, a giant magmafall flooding into the chamber, wreathed in gaseous blue coolant.

Something else entered with it, a shape that moved within the current, but I was already running and spared it no second glance. Tight as they were, and infested with gruesome animated corpses as they might be, I had better chances with the tunnels than with the flood.

Echo was snug in my mouth once more as I entered the right hand tunnel – which hadn’t just issued the ichor-infected thing. I was crawling over pebbles and rock flakes crunching under me, knees catching on the rails laid for the minecarts in my haste, racing to find higher ground before the wash of magma caught us.

Behind I heard the grating hunting call of the monster within the waves, closing in with them like a hound which had my scent.

A stolen glance over my shoulder revealed a mass within the tumult, outlined by the wisps of evaporating blue fluid, but the form was concealed by the lava.

~~~

“We’re making the final approach to the dock now.”

Captain Beyla’s stern voice was a welcome knife through the threads of Ivaldi’s anxiety.

“Chief Aulogemscire, please prepare your Skidbladnir now; we don’t want to linger any longer here than we have to.”

He let himself be escorted from the observation pod, down where his Skidbladnir, Idi, awaited him. Once inside, with the machine powered up and ready to move, it was time to step out, into the dock which led on to Vitrgraf proper.

Chamber Hreidmar, as the Justicar had dubbed it, was the first of the giant brimskhraun bubbles to be found and excavated. It had the thickest walls and the fewest gems, but that had been no disadvantage. The bubble was relatively safe thanks to that same thickness, even after they hollowed it out to serve as the dock and staging area for the mine below. The excavation had also provided ample materials for both the construction of immersion suits and the fabrication of the cladding which would make the rest of Vitrgraf safe.

Naturally the dock was as deserted as the tunnel, but it too was in excellent condition. There were a few overturned crates by one of the funiculars and other detritus was scattered about, but there was no sign at all of structural damage or magma intrusion. Even the overhead lightning was still glowing in a healthy green.

Even so, only those with vehicles able to withstand the extreme temperatures outside the mine were authorized to leave the crawler, the force deploying from the docking modules spaced along its length.

“I told you it would be better if you remained with your vessel, Captain,” Uldmar reiterated, as the team were disembarking, he and his people stepping out in sleek and deadly war machines. “Immersion suits are not durable enough for battle, and they have no weapons beyond welding equipment. Not to mention how slow and vulnerable they make you….”

Indeed, despite its similar size to a production Skidbladnir, captain Beyla moved with clumsy, ponderous steps in her bulky vehicle, made bulbous by its actively cooled armor.

“And I told you I have command of this mission, Lord Uldmar,” the older woman reminded him over the shared voice system, with a tone that avoided becoming insulting, but spoke of too many encounters with prissy young nobility. “I’m not defenseless anyway; I’ll be bringing a squad of Triskelions under my control.”

“But if we should encounter resistance-” he began, audibly displeased.

“The threat here is magma, not monsters,” Beyla interjected. “If there really is flooding you may be glad to have someone who can dive in to investigate. Actual combat is up to you of course… assuming you’re up to the job of protecting me.”

“Naturally, my lady, we should die before we allowed any harm to reach you, I swear it!”

The arrogant younger voice was that of a jovial Lord Hlesey.

“We have four ancestral Skidbladnir with us – my own precious Hnitborg, and those of Lord Uldmar, Lady Idavoll, and why even good Councilor Ivaldi – who, I’m quite certain, shall prove a valiant warrior worthy of both his high rank and his famed family weapon, Idi!”

“Don’t forget the rest of us!” chimed in another of the young posse of aristocrats. “They may not be heirlooms, but our Skidbladnir are as fine as any in Varangian service!”

In addition to a total of four ancestral models, Uldmar’s lackeys and Ivaldi’s two assistants were all of deep enough birth to be granted production suits, adding to the group thirteen weapons of the mass-built variety. Young and unproven as many of them were, they formed an impressive force all the same, a match for a small army.

Not to forget the three Triskelions with the captain either. The crawler carried more of course, along with footsoldier golems, but they were staying in the dock to protect their ride home.

“Enough posturing,” Uldmar barked irritably, taking charge despite the captain’s earlier words. “Time is critical. Onto the funicular!”

~~~

Emerging from the tunnel I came to another open space, larger than the last, a towering vertical cylinder more than a hundred feet wide and thousands tall.

Much of the dizzying tube was smooth metal, open and unobstructed save for an inner column of pillars and supports which ran the entire height like a central spine, but around the upper and lower reaches multiple tunnels converged and the walls were rock, riddled with more of the huge, brilliant gemstones that were the sole illumination. In those regions the cylinder was also lined with mining platforms, webbed together by walkways that crisscrossed the cavity.

The central pillar of metal was joined and braced by smaller ones spaced around the edges, the combined structures acting as supports for both the huge chamber and the elevator cages and ore lifts which conveyed the spoils upwards and granted access to other passages branching off the chamber sides.

Among those, one gigantic ore lift stood out in particular, the hopper a rectangular bucket that even empty must have been on the order of a hundred tons. Filled as it was, I couldn’t even guess at the total mass, but somehow the sturdy metal construction of the mine supported it aloft, around halfway up the chamber.

Vitrgraf mine was an operation on a truly astonishing scale.

Yet even people powerful enough to build this place had been powerless against the corruption lurking within the Sepulchre. A shudder ran through me as I imagined all the lives which must have been lost.

But I didn’t just have to imagine.

This space too was tainted by the ichor, the air rancid with death and decay. Horrid splatters of remains were spread about with burst forms and spattering that suggested many had fallen or been crushed, mutilated piles of rotten meat and crystalline bone smeared across the ground, hanging from walkways and daubed down the sides of the room.

Somehow, a few of them hadn’t stopped moving.

Smashed and liquefying pieces of the former miners dragged and pushed themselves towards me, not even stopping as the exertions split and tore their putrescent flesh, appendages shearing off with wet ripping sounds, organs bursting into slime and oil.

It was as if they sensed my vitality, my life, and coveted it for themselves.

Transmitted heat from the magma behind me stirred me from the daze of sickened dismay.

The corpses were abominable to even hear, let alone see and… smell… but the roil of molten rock was already rushing up the tunnel I’d just passed though.

My pursuer howled, the sound reverberating from within the magma, deep and high at once, like great boulders pulverizing glass.

It was echoed through the walls from all around, the external attackers changing target to the new chamber in which I stood.

The mine shook as beams of fluid glass drilled into the sides, the first few blocked by the thick walls, but many starting to pierce through as the attacks intensified.

I was already off, leaping up to the nearest walkway. With no time to plan a path or come up with some tactic to fend off the monsters I was just trying to gain height, dodging the molten rays of glass and the abhorrent masses in my way.

The latter were simple to evade, most already destroyed, those which grasped and gurgled towards me far too slow to catch me. The former were a very different matter however.

The monsters outside were increasingly accurate, likely guided by their ally below, shooting up at me from the rising surface of the magma.

More was already pouring in through dozens of holes in the sides of the chamber, and above and ahead I saw several of the punctures cracking and spreading, as something big tried to batter its way through with heavy booming impacts.

The thing was bigger than whatever had already entered the mine, and the walls couldn’t resist its power. With a groan the metal plating twisted and tore, the stone crumbling, a huge shape forcing its way inside though a torrent of lava.

Formless amid the stream it washed down towards me just as I was alighting on a large bridge, one of the last before the empty stretch of air making up the middle of the chamber.

Fluid though its movement seemed it landed before me with a crash that spoke of mass and solidity, the sturdy metal structure under us buckling and shaking under the great weight of the impact, the shock transmitted up my legs.

Even against the currents of boiling air rising up from the flood of liquid rock below, the presence of the thing before me was intense, the radiating heat painful.

Many times my height, the beast was unlike anything I’d encountered, or could even have imagined.

The outline was artful somehow, not the hulking mass I’d expected – although the weight of the predator must surely be tens, even hundreds of tons. It was vaguely aquatic, or perhaps mustelid, however the details were utterly alien, baffling my eyes even as it shed the magma like a cat might shake off drops of water.

Eight limbs were among the fixtures of that mutable corpus, growing in pairs at the shoulders and hips of the long quadruped torso. Its body was stretched, flowing out into a tail like a river at one end, the edges of the flow ever changing yet always sharp as a razor.

Shifting peaks emerged and sank around the neck and shoulders in a sort of mane, a kaleidoscopic pattern of fins like knives. The lethal ridges continued down the top of the torso in a line, flaring out at the hips then continuing all the way to the tip of the tail, where glassy needles clustered like daggers.

It was the head of the creature which faced me however, shaped like a bullet. Two pairs of eyes, one atop the other, looked at me from beneath the unbroken sheet of glass which was its face. The orbs themselves were darker, like globes of dark obsidian, sinister flames burning in their depths.

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The line of the jaw was high, giving the creature a powerful under-bite and a protruding chin, and when it opened that maw to roar once again I saw countless flowing streams of teeth, forming and receding in currents that rushed in circles around the mouth, as if its jaws were packed with chainsaw blades.

Scintillating dark waves rolled over the body of the thing, rolling and undulating like the ocean by night, their ripples like scales, coating a mass of flowing liquid glass.

Deep beneath that fluid surface something vast glowed, flickering and churning; an underwater inferno, raging at the heart of the entity.

Pulses of the furious blaze seemed to vitalize it, to drive it, as if that conflagration were the source of its life and vitality, but the flames had a sickly black tint to them, faint traces of which leached out into the silicate waters around them, like tendrils of pollution… like oil.

It was hard to say that the creature was injured by the contamination – the scorching essence pouring from it showed no sign of sickness or frailty – rather it seemed maddened.

Magma washed off the moving shape as it unleashed a pyroclastic vociferation, a tortuous and twisted song of breaking and burning that rumbled in my bones, fragments of words colliding, the meaning impossible to decipher, yet the intent clear as crystal.

Violation. Rage. Loss.

It washed forwards, flowing as much as leaping, the bridge splashing under it, liquefied in moments by the rippling heat.

The metal under me tore as I kicked off; weakened by the heat the surface was too soft to take the force of my attempted evasion, giving way and blunting my movement.

From the rising pool below a throbbing blade of glass cut through the bridge before me, severing the path of my escape in that critical instant.

My foe’s jaws missed the throat and head for which they aimed, but avoiding the attack entirely was like trying to dodge a freight train.

Forelegs slammed into me, overwhelming my last-moment attempt to anchor myself and driving the wind from my lungs, almost forcing Echo from my mouth.

The heat alone was agony, more intense than even the magma, yet the creature wasn’t satisfied with just scalding me. Glass claws pierced my midriff, trying to pin and disembowel me too, the ‘paw’ alone as big as my entire torso. All around more monsters were firing in through the growing holes in the walls, half a dozen liquid obsidian spears stabbing into my sides and legs.

Drilling my knee into the attacking appendage sent cracks spidering through the depths of the foreleg, even as the surface rippled and flowed around my kneecap. The beast released me, crying out in resonant anger and pain.

It looked shocked by my strength more than by its injury, while my own dismay showed clearly too – weakened though I was, I’d still expected to shatter the whole leg. Glassy as it was, the monstrous horror from the depths was hard and strong too.

Despite the constant covering fire from its smaller supporters I pressed the advantage, giving it no chance to recover. Karlya had taught me that sometimes you had to be willing to take hits to bring down a powerful foe, and after suffering so many wounds and such terrible pain from these creatures, I was willing to endure a little more to defeat them.

Kicking upwards scored a glancing blow on the retreating chin, rattling whatever brains my foe had.

With a brief reprieve I was on my feet in an instant, darting in, weaving under and over the slower, weaker shots from the lesser predators.

A defensive swipe of a claw almost caught my forehead, but I swung with the strike to let it glance off, then smacked aside the second arm that flashed out from its shadow.

Leaping, I threw an uppercut at its chest.

Glass shattered once more as its own great weight and my better posture made this strike count, a painful shower of liquid fragments soaking me, cracks growing around the burning heart of my foe.

Shuddering and recoiling in pain as it was, I pressed my advantage, dancing around the slicing, stabbing spit of the others as I landed, gathering strength for another jump.

But I’d forgotten about the tail.

Whipping from outside my awareness the sword cut me down, plunging deep into my back and slicing me open with a shower of blood.

Burning agony was the first I knew of my injury, my blood boiling where it penetrated me, but the tail couldn’t make it through me, to impale and split me in two as the predator intended; instead, as Ael’s sting had once done so long ago, the blade snapped off in my flesh as its pronged edge lodged in my ribs, my innards proving tougher than the weapon.

Staggering from the blow I took more stabbing, burning shots from the others, glowing hot glass drilling into my skin and muscle.

Even so I recovered faster than my foe could. I had practice in taking the hits now.

My mortal foe was less focused, roaring and rippling with pain and humiliation at the loss of a good fifteen inches of its prided blade.

Grabbing the tail I tore it from my flesh with a muffled moan of pain as I leapt, bringing the semi-liquid blade down at the face of the retreating monstrous hunter.

The hard edge screeched, glass on glass, as it slashed into the thing’s face, scoring a deepening gash that penetrated through to the eyes, one of the four spheres rupturing, spilling out flames like blood from the wound.

Enraged, it took the amputated weapon in its claws as it caught in the beast’s head, and flung it away into the magma below.

Touching down I leapt back from a poorly aimed swipe at the bleeding gash in my own body, but my feet slipped in the scalding puddle of melting metal atop the bridge, and I overbalanced, sliding towards the edge.

A low railing broke under me as I fell, and molten metal soaked my front to make me shudder with pain as it entered my wounds, but I managed to catch myself on the snapped struts, just barely avoiding falling over and into the red-hot lake rising up rapidly to meet me.

The predator was itself backing off however, and for a moment there was space between us again as we each recovered from the exchange, and took stock of our damage.

Already damage to its leg and chest was fading as the inner fires gushed into the wounds, the cracked innards glowing and seeping back into a solid mass, the injuries fading rapidly.

On the surface, with firm footing and clear of magma, I knew could beat the predator one on one – even without my magic, exhausted and weakened as I was – but here it had the backup of dozens more like it, while another careless slip would put me in the magma below, and each dodge was hindered by the melting metal under us, burning my feet and sabotaging my movements.

And the longer I took the worse the odds would get.

All around more blasts of white-hot silica were assaulting the walls, boring through and carving into the platforms and the bridge under me, more of the creatures breaking into the flooding mine.

The towering terror before me clamored with its geological, booming tones, as if calling on all the rest to press the attack.

Several were already dragging themselves through the widening holes they’d smashed, leaping onto other walkways nearby. None were so large as the foe on the bridge before me, but I felt them gathering essence to attack me once more. So was the giant facing me down, strange, intense and tainted power collecting in its chest and neck. Jaws spread to reveal a ‘tongue’ armed with more teeth, a second mouth, glowing brighter as I sensed pressure building behind it.

I ducked just in time as a beam of glass shrieked out of the tongue like a firehose, hotter than white, roiling and arcing more like plasma than liquid as it whipped through the air to cleave the central pillar in two behind me as if it were mere tissue.

The bridge rocked again, the melting surface shaken by the severance of the supports at one end. As more thermal lances bore into the metal it started to sag.

I kicked off with all I had, rocketing myself up, aiming for the giant ore lift which hung on cables thicker than my legs.

The giant predator tried to do the same, but it had misjudged the damage it and its kin were inflicting.

Groaning, the bridge at last gave way, at the middle where the hunter tried to leap, melting metal splitting apart, the two sides pivoting at the disintegrating ends to dump the superheated foe into the lava below.

More of the things leapt from fresh holes in the walls to intercept me, or spat their devastating ranged attacks.

Several of the latter scorched my sides, but none scored a direct hit. I was too busy with the beast flying towards me to do anything more about them.

It was huge, but only the size of an ogre, much less menacing than the pack leader. The problem was the maw, open and lunging towards me, extended out far enough that I couldn’t strike the thing anywhere else before it would close around me. Eyes spun downwards to watch me through the transparent glass of the roof of the mouth, monitoring its prey as it aimed a killing bite.

If I couldn’t avoid its mouth, I wouldn’t try.

Balling myself up, legs bent, arms at my sides, I tensed my muscles, readying all the mana I could to negate the force of the coming impact.

At the same moment those scorching fangs snapped shut around me my leg whipped out with a boom that scattered layers of filth and blood, the cracking air preceding any connection.

The predator had just enough time to feel its head shatter, before the blasting wind of the strike blew the half-liquid shards apart, my foot driving clear through and out the other side, flames and spraying glass erupting in a plume with the force.

Anchored against the blow, I’d managed to preserve my existing momentum, and for a moment I wondered just when I’d gotten that good at taking and negating hits, but then the throbbing, sizzling pain in my shoulder caught my attention.

Slamming into the side of the ore lift, I grabbed on tight with my good arm, fingers sinking into metal, and then swung myself up on top of it.

With the mass of it under me I had cover, at least for a few seconds, to pull the fractured fang out of my flesh, wincing at the bloody burning wound it left in my steaming body.

But the arm still worked, and the monsters were still coming.

The giant elevator shook as a small and light hunter leapt up and caught hold of the side, easily pulling itself aboard.

It looked shocked to see my still smaller form hurtling towards it.

The beast gave a cry like splitting crystal as the fang-turned-dagger in my hand stabbed deep into its throat. It stumbled backwards, losing its grip on the edge of the lift, and my fist punched through its shoulder clear into its chest cavity, fire and dark beads of glass like marbles spurting out as the breaking beast spun back down to crack into a bridge below.

Another caught a heel to the domed head as it was climbing over the side of the hopper, dying in an instant.

That bought me a few seconds before the next pursuers would reach me, but already their attacks were striking the ore lift.

An echoing, rumbling call of tectonic fury and cracking obsidian split the air and made my head pound.

Looking down over the side, past one of the huge bolts connecting the metal ropes, I saw the giant from before. Its claws were shredding the already abused pillar beneath me as it ran up the side, charging another shot to gun me down with its lethal tongue.

Well the predators weren’t the only ones who could engage in inaccurate ranged attacks. There was no magma shielding them now, and gravity would help me. Rooting myself in place I hefted a geode the size of a truck.

With all possible strength I hurled the giant mass.

It cracked in two at the stress, pieces tumbling and spinning, breaking up more as they flew, but the trajectory was too far to the left to be a hit, the material passing to one side of the creature as it dodged into the relative shelter of the left shaft and continued to climb. If anything it just looked angrier, further intensifying the beam weapon it was about to fire.

Pausing in place for a moment, I pushed mana to my leg muscles and eyes, focusing my mind to time my dodge, straining to see and react to the attack.

Impossibly fast, the blinding light flashed out under absurd pressure.

Throwing myself back from the edge of the lift, I saw the jet evaporate the rigging and gouge a chunk of the elevator into vapor.

It was hard to say if the desperate attempts at using my essence made any difference, but I had the result I needed. My aim was improving too.

My ankle carved through the other cable with a series of pings and snaps, the tensioned metal fibers holding double the weight they were supposed to. They had proven able to bear the immense load somehow, yet they were never designed to deal with sudden shear stress under such conditions.

Grabbing the severed end I was whisked upwards at speed by the dropping counterweight, while hundreds of tons of metal and ore plummeted down in freefall – directly into the giant predator.

My hands were full, but I couldn’t resist waving a foot at the furious beast as it glared up at me in the instant before the impact, realizing somewhere in its tormented mind that I’d manipulated it, maneuvered it under the mass and even incited it to help me cut the weight free.

The boom seemed to shake the whole mine, the metal lift slamming headlong into the chest of the creature, smashed to rubble yet not stopping, the chest of the enemy bursting too as the traces of the injury I dealt it shattered once again, deeper this time, fire gouting from its mouth and ruined torso and exploding through the debris.

Fragments of breaking glass mixed with gem-laden rock and metal debris as the lift and monster tumbled together down into the magma below.

My ascent was equally rapid, leaving behind the other foes as I whipped through the towering mine, walkways and scaffolds flashing by on all sides, until the ceiling filled my view.

I had a vague and disconcerting sense that there was far too much heat in the upper reaches of the great vertical hall, the walls and many of the shafts and pillars encrusted with what seemed to be volcanic stone, more filling the head of the elevator shaft I was riding, but there was no time to process that. It was time to release the cable or else be slammed into whatever blocked my way.

Releasing my grip with a kick against one of the beams flashing past, I was hurled at an angle towards the metal surface overhead.

Rather than search for an opening I grabbed on as I slammed into the flat, blank plating, a hand driving into the metal, holding myself against it upside down. Anchoring myself as I had in the Dweomer tunnels, I had my hands free again to go to work creating a suitable door.

As I pried out a confusingly hot, gooey chunk of metal my anchoring almost failed me, as lava gushed out at my face.

~~~

The funicular ride down to the main chamber was spectacular.

The ancient, frozen bubbles were absurd in their scale, the moving platform depositing them inside a dome which could have easily held the entire royal palace, if not for all the magma. It was fitting then that it was named Chamber Jotunn.

“Wow…,” someone murmured over voice.

“Incredible, right?”

“I suppose we can’t deny that the spyrja have their uses, no?” Hlesey chimed in. “How I wish father could see this….”

The roof overhead was a sphere of pure white brimskhraun, lined with giant white growths like gargantuan worms, packed densely together in a stunning display of interweaving tongues and tendrils. The result was a forest of glittering metal surrealism from which there descended a twinkling, ethereal mist, glowing with essence as it flowed between the arms, like a veil of water cloaking the sides of the cavern.

Overhead it fell straight down instead, a gentle rain of ice crystals which could burn the skin with their coldness.

An impossible sight built in the furnace heat of the bottom of the world, the lowest place any person had ever set foot.

“It’s beautiful…. But why does it look like that?” asked Idavoll.

“Yes, Chief Aulogemscire! Illuminate us with your great expertise!” Hlesey demanded eagerly, with only a mild undercurrent of contempt.

Ivaldi had frozen in place, staring up at the wonderful sight, but at the brash command of the young noble he was roused from his reverie. Rude as it was for Hlesey to address a councilor in that way, he was all too eager to answer the question.

“Well, you see, we’re actually standing at the top of a simply titanic upwelling of brimskhraun. In the core of Arcadia even the brimskhraun melts into liquid, but when it does it bubbles up to the higher levels where its cooler, and as it does it starts to solidify again. The, uh, the roof overhead is actually a single giant bubble of ore, an unusually pure one.”

“Mush and winewords!” Hlesey declared, snorting with laugher. “If it was a bubble it should pop!”

“Or melt,” Idavoll suggested, giggling along with him.

“Precisely, my dear! This must certainly be some ancient enchanting!” Hlesey insisted.

“No really, it’s honestly all just the natural forces of Arcadia!”

The aulogemscire surprised the others with his boldly spoken assertion, and the passion of his voice though their cockpits.

“Brimskhraun is highly heat resistant, so much so that the bubbles which became Vitrgraf mine have lasted for thousands, maybe millions of years – it’s absolutely incredible, but absolutely true! The high heat capacity also makes it perfect for immersion suits, or the active cooling systems we use in the mine. But, er, resistant isn’t exactly the same as impervious if you know what I mean? It really has melted – and re-solidified, over and over! That’s why there are all those… um… well, wiggly bits on the inside. You see, changing magmatic forces bring up hotter plumes of magma periodically, which created cycles of thawing and freezing.”

“Well then why didn’t it all just run down the sides?” Challenged Idavoll, sounding pleased with herself.

“It does! I mean… it does now, but, well, the bubbles weren’t always hollow, you see? When they first formed they contained minerals and volcanic rock, and when the bubble started to melt during intensely hot magma plumes the runoff would, uh, kind of worm its way through the stone to create these shapes.”

“And the mystical rain of glittering crystals? You mean to tell us there’s nothing supernatural about that either?” asked Hlesey, incredulous.

“Well, it certainly looks supernatural, yes, but it’s just frozen water from the air, charged with essence of course. Runoff from the active cooling systems that are built into the dome. I don’t know if you’ve ever examined what water does when it freezes – it’s really quite fascinating, the particles have an almost magnetic property to them, it… uh… well, ahem, suffice to say, the shapes are quite fascinating, so elaborate and intricate, yet each seems to be quite unique-”

“How can anything freeze in this heat?” a voice cut in irritably.

“It doesn’t actually feel hot under the ice though, does it?” asked another having just stepped out into the dusting of ice crystals. It was one of Ivaldi’s assistants, Hylli.

“Perhaps the Chief Aulogemscire of the kingdom knows what he’s talking about,” Captain Beyla suggested dryly.

“Enough chatter,” Uldmar said, as the party finished disembarking the funicular. “Stay focused, we’re in dangerous an unstable territory. The mine was closed off with good reason.”

He had a point there – even with the active cooling the lower half of the chamber was a boiling sea of magma, the lower half of the dome having long ago melted beyond repair. It had been lucky that Chamber Jotunn had a solid core of metal in the middle too. It began at the wall, emerging from the side through which the funicular entered, but extended out all the way to the middle of the infernal lake, rising up from the flood like a great ship. It reminded Ivaldi of the first Skidbladnir, parting the oceans of the surface world.

The ‘weather’ was fittingly dramatic for such a comparison; the descending billows of supernatural ice were ever fighting with the heat below, pouring down only to melt before coming close to the surface, rising again as thick plumes of vapor around the sides of the ‘ship’, creating powerful updrafts that threw the falling ice into dancing disarray and slicked every surface with glistening moisture, to begin the cycle of condensation and falling ice anew.

It was out on the deck of the great ship that the mine truly began, the enormous five-sided building that was the command center and entrance to the three elevators of the main shaft brutally plain and industrial against the magical backdrop. The huge doors on the three forward sides were a concession to the wondrous locale however; artfully sculpted with reliefs and endowed with elaborate locking mechanisms, they evoked the competing fancies of the noble warrens in their over-engineered finery of moving parts.

All were closed now, locked and sealed tight against any intrusion, by the order of the Justicar.

“I don’t understand,” came the voice of Idavoll once more. “The whole area around the mine is supposed to be unstable. The report said we couldn’t risk returning or it might all collapse. So….”

“So why is the place in pristine condition?” asked Hylli.

“Maybe the good Councilor can tell us that too?” Hlesey suggested, his smirk audible even over the transmission.

Silent at the jibe, Ivaldi recalled the words of the miner he’d tracked down, the haunted look in her eyes as she told him an impossible, nightmare tale.

But he would have the truth soon and they needn’t unseal the mine to get it.

All the data from the seismic instruments was sent to the command center of course, but it was also piped to a monitoring station outside. It stood apart from the entrance, a far smaller and more modest building, kept isolated to avoid interfering with the wheel-to-wheel operation of the mine.

Sized for workers in immersion suits or Skidbladnir, Ivaldi didn’t even have to dock and exit his vehicle to enter and get to work.

~~~

With quick reactions I was able to avoid the deluge of magma gushing out at me, but the glowing, hateful liquid still splattered and burned my hands.

Almost as bad was the shock and fear that I had opened up another vast lake of magma above me. Almost.

The initial flow quickly slowed and then ran dry, and peering up cautiously through the hole in the ceiling I saw glowing hot, dripping rock, but no great lake bursting through it.

Even if there really was more magma lurking up there to ambush me, there were still several dozen predators climbing up beneath. Thanks to my trick they’d lost sight of me amid the many bridges and walkways, but they’d be on me any second now, while the much larger flood of magma they’d unleashed wouldn’t be far behind.

I really had no alternative.

Closing and covering my eyes as I had before, I fought my way into the hole I’d made, groaning as I broke through rocks and globs of lava hissed against my wounds, piling up more fresh burns on my lacerated skin. My healing shower felt like it was many hours ago.

But the layer really was a thin as it seemed, perhaps six feet thick. Breaking through into the chamber above, I crawled out into a carpet of porous stone almost like pumice, to find lavaflies buzzing curiously about me.

The ruined, twisted metal supports of the destroyed elevator I’d ridden ended nearby, bursting up from the rock like a surreal sculpture, as did other smaller elevators designed for the miners. Two more giant lifts began opposite, with giant overhead rails in place to allow the giant buckets to be moved from one to the other, but they were no good to me now.

The space had been an interstice, a metal room with a roof just hundred feet up, like a landing area where countless branching tunnels met.

Now a drying flood of lava filled the bottom of the chamber and closed them off. The deluge had emerged from every open elevator shaft, oozing through in now frozen falls to blanket the floor and pour on through any openings it could find. That included the tunnels, many identifiable only by the runic signage over their suffocated entrances, filled to the brim and beyond.

Most of it had cooled enough to harden, but even now it gave off impressive heat, and I could hear the odd gurgle of fluid moving within the rock skin, the lavaflies swarming around those cracks and rifts still emitting a glow of fresh magma.

Forgetting Echo for a moment I gave a warped groan of horror and despair.

My fears were right. The mine above me was flooded with magma too.

There was no end to it, and no way out….

I was nearly out of mana, my body shaking with pain and soaked in blood….

The space below me would also be filled soon….

A throbbing bellow like the fury of the volcanoes themselves roused me from my blank panic.

I could hear glassy claws on the metal below and feel the radiant essence as the predators drew near. Then I heard them slamming into the floor, shaking the whole chamber with the enormous impact.

They would be upon me long before the magma, and already they were gathering power to attack.

With no ideas left and no thought of trying to survive a blind swim though the submerged layers of the mine, I could only attempt somehow to hide, and to pray the magma and monsters wouldn’t reach me.

It didn’t sound like much of a plan to me either.

Blasts of molten glass sheared through floor and ceiling alike as they fired on me.

Moving already, none of the beams caught me, but I’d forgotten about the greatest weapon my foes had – turning the environment against me.

Fresh magma flooded in from overhead, the sounds of so much mass of rock flowing themselves deafening, but nothing could down out the cries of the monsters tearing up through the floor.

Dead ahead a vast obsidian shape rippled with absurd intensity as it started to emerge, caught on metal beams thick as tree-trunks, yet melting and ripping them apart along with the stone and paneling with frightening ease, eyes burning with a fury beyond anything I’d yet encountered.

It would be through in mere moments. It also wasn’t alone.

The surface cracked in places as I ran, but I ignored the burning – splashes of molten stone were no threat, as long as I could avoid submersion.

A nearby opening in the wall buzzed with thick traffic of flies, the tiny creatures flitting in and out in droves. I ran for it, pinning my hopes on the little creatures to guide me to some salvation, some escape from the nightmare.

The doorway would have stood around ten feet tall before the mine flooded, but now I had to duck to enter.

What must have been maintenance equipment and spare machinery floated in the dried lava, the sheer weight of the rock having displaced even a set of white metallic suits, which lay atop it as if in repose. At around seven foot tall they could have fit a harpy had they the space for wings and a tail, but they were strangely rounded and bulky, more like diving suits than armor.

Were I calmer I’d have noted the odd discrepancy in size between these and the clothing and tools of the miners, but in the haste and disorientation of my flight I could only think that they were absolutely covered in more lavaflies.

The insects buzzed all around them, alighting on the cooler surfaces to rest between trips to the still-molten seams in the rock, where they were gleefully spawning.

I was such an idiot.

What was the point in studying in the details of some abandoned, half-flooded storeroom when I was about to be eaten alive my monsters?

A strange thought came to me as I was regretting my absurd priorities.

From my observations as I climbed through the lower layers I’d noticed that lavaflies, despite how I’d dubbed them, used the molten rock to lay their eggs, but couldn’t survive in it themselves. In that they reminded me of certain types of crustacean found on Earth.

So if they couldn’t survive in magma, how had so many of them gotten into the storeroom?

They might have come from eggs already laid outside, which happened to hatch after washing into the mine… but I suspected the place had been abandoned recently, so could so many really have bred in here in so little time?

Scanning the walls and ceiling and trying not to panic, I almost cried out in joy as I saw it – a tiny gap in the metal panels lining the wall, where the minuscule flies were entering the room – entering not escaping!

Tearing the wall apart I found that the seam was the top of a removable plate of metal concealing some sort of maintenance or access tunnel; one which bent at a right angle and went straight up.

The sides were glowing hot in places and it was only around a foot deep and two wide, claustrophobic in the extreme, but I couldn’t see any obstructions. I should be just small enough to fit, even if it would be tight with my figure.

A crash as the monstrous predator broke through into the chamber behind me settled any remaining uncertainty.

~~~

Ivaldi found the monitoring systems fully functional, but the information they relayed, while unsurprising to him, was a shock to the rest of the party.

“Check again! The reports were clear!” Uldmar barked through the resonating crystal voice system, his outrage clear.

He and his force were scattered about outside the monitoring station, watching the magma below and the glowing frost overhead with equal trepidation. Just standing in the mana-rich atmosphere was enough to make a person anxious, feeling all that ambient energy pressing in, making the body ache.

“The Chief Aulogemscire is correct – there’s no significant geological instability recorded anywhere,” answered Hylli, at Ivaldi’s side. “The mine is flooded, but the area is entirely stable and the cooling systems are active.”

“Perhaps the monitoring system itself is wrong?” Idavoll posited.

“There’s no reason to think it would be, but only way to know for sure would be to send someone down in an immersion suit.”

“Preposterous!” growled Uldmar. “I will not send Captain Beyla to her death!”

“Indeed, as you needn’t send me anywhere, Lord Uldmar,” the captain replied, with a cool bite to her words. “We’re here to use the instruments to investigate the shockwave, not the stability of the mine.”

The denial felt like a betrayal to Ivaldi, who’d counted on Beyla to be on his side, helping him fend off Uldmar’s attempts to stymie his investigation. He had to remind himself that she was a military woman, with no idea there was any conspiracy to root out. What surprised him more was that Uldmar was arguing with her, showing far more interest in the anomalous report than she did.

“We must resolve this contradiction with the reports of the Vitrgraf disaster,” Uldmar went on. “It could prove highly significant.”

The captain shook her head, her suit mirroring the motion.

“Nonsense. Whether the area reads as stable or not doesn’t matter, there’s already been at least a partial collapse. We need to gather our information on the new threat and get out as fast as we can. The Justicar can send more investigators later if he wishes.”

Away from the crawler and with none of the crew present save the captain herself, Uldmar and his gang could easily force the issue, but there should be no reason to. Why would he want to reveal his own uncle’s treason?

From his silence Ivaldi could guess that the young nobleman was seething in his Skidbladnir, but when he spoke it was with composure.

“As you wish, Captain Belya, but we must at least be sure that the ground isn’t about to give way beneath us. Councilor Ivaldi, what is the exact situation within the mine?”

Ivaldi hesitated as he read through the data. Just how much did Uldmar really know?

Not everything, surely, or he would never have allowed them to come to Vitrgraf at all, or argued with the captain about investigating further. But if he knew of his uncle’s involvement then any proof Ivaldi turned up might lead him to silence the aulogemscire, his assistants and the captain all at once, and return to the crawler without them to report another ‘terrible accident’.

“On… closer inspection it seems there have been multiple breaches in the cooling and containment along the main shaft, recorded at the time of the accident,” he spoke, choosing his words carefully. “The magma intrusion set off some of the seismic sensors, but the signals were weak.”

There was no need to tell Uldmar that the systems could only have been manually disabled.

Ivaldi recorded the data to his Skidbladnir, his heart pounding loud enough that he wondered that no-one could hear it through their cockpit resonators.

He had proof now, incontrovertible proof that the mine was sabotaged.

“You see?” Uldmar was saying, sounding oddly relieved himself. “We have our answer – nothing but a simple failure in the containment systems and phantom signals from the detectors. You should have just checked properly in the first instance! As should the fools manning the mine at the time… I shall have to have words with my uncle about this….”

“Now, the long range data,” the captain insisted. “What do we have, Councilor? Don’t tell me we came all this way for nothing.”

“Yes, report, Chief Aulogemscire,” Uldmar demanded impatiently.

So Ivaldi was attempting to do, however the information he was receiving after switching back to the real time readouts was utterly nonsensical.

“I-I don’t understand it! There’s activity inside the mine right now!” Ivaldi answered, looking over the various flashing numbers in bewilderment.

“Chief!” called the voice of his assistant. “We have more shocks in the sides of the main shaft, and signs of fresh magma intrusions in the lower levels!”

“There’s a huge essence signature right below us!” called Hylli, her voice tremulous with panic. “It’s muddy, but I think it’s a kajatora!”

Checking the readings Ivaldi’s heart beat faster than ever. The measurements were beyond anything he’d seen for the deadly creatures, yet despite some variations and pollution, the pattern was a match.

“She’s right, it’s a big one, it… it might even have aged enough to shed its eggs!”

“Impossible!” Uldmar exclaimed. “Mature earth dragons never leave the deep magma!”

Ivaldi would have liked to agree with him. Little was understood about the creatures, as those which were encountered in the depths were only the youngest of their kind – and even they were deadly and savage predators; too fast to outrun and more than a match for even a Varangian, despite their small size.

It was speculated that as kajatora grew larger their internal temperature become so intense that it was too much even for their own eggs, and they ceased producing them, instead retreating further down into the magma where the heat matched their bodies.

There was a boom, felt as well as heard, the ground shaking under them.

More came in rapid succession as the creature broke through the barriers sealing off the mine with ease, red warnings flashing desperately one after another on the console.

“Prepare yourselves!” Beyla shouted at the other pharyes, the young nobles frozen in their machines like frightened children.

Uldmar seemed to rouse himself at her words. “You heard that, it’s a kajatora! Spread out! Don’t let it hit you with its breath attack, it can pierce any armor. Before all else avoid the tail – the blade can cut through even ancestral Skidbladnir. Captain Beyla, behind me – your immersion suit won’t survive its attacks.”

Those in the monitoring station ran outside together to join the others.

With a dreadful impact something slammed against the middle door of the mine, like a giant fist, knocking to be released, the metal bowing out around the shape.

“It’s breaking through!” Idavoll screamed. “We have to get out of here!”

Another hammering blow fell against the doors, and the metal wailed as it started to split apart.

“Control yourself!” Uldmar snapped. “We face it here! Remember your pride as nobility – you’re each a match for any Varangian!”

Screaming through the air a white ray sliced the ruined door in two; molten obsidian compressed and heated to create a weapon sharper than any sword, passing right over their heads.

The ruined door melted around the attack, a glowing orange line cut from one side to the other.

Everyone was silent, until another impact came.

With a crash that broke the huge metal doors to pieces a gigantic earth dragon burst sidelong through the opening, howling a seismic cry of fury that made the air shake.

Its tumbling landing sent fresh tremors through the ground, spines gouging deep grooves as the creature skidded to a halt near the party.

Even laid out on one side it was as tall as any Skidbladnir, and many times heavier – it was impossible to even compare this monstrosity to the hunters which prowled the magma above.

Its body was so intensely hot it melted anything it touched, and its mana alone threatened to burn them alive.

Ivaldi could scarcely believe it was even the same species.

Yet even as panic rippled through the group he noticed the condition of the beast.

The creature was impossibly large and powerful, yet it seemed to be in pain.

The fires at its core blazed up and out through giant cracks in the semi-liquid body, and the features of the predator were contorted… almost as if it too were gripped by fear.

As it tried to rise there was another howl from inside the mine, and a second glowing form emerged, hurtling through the air, upside down, eight limbs flailing as it careened headlong into the first kajatora.

The monstrous dragons screamed as they collided, exploding with liquid fire from their rupturing hearts, bodies breaking apart with the screeching of bursting crystal.

The impact almost threw Ivaldi off his feet, even in his Skidbladnir, molten obsidian splattering everywhere, those closer ducking and running for cover.

Yet Ivaldi wasn’t even watching the astonishing spectacle.

His eyes were on the entrance building as a blinding white blade speared through the roof with a sound of shrieking plasma, the air itself burning with the dread power of the creature inside, essence hotter than even magma attacking their suits.

A moment later the entire building erupted like a volcano, layers of masonry thrown up in a cloud, countless tons of solid stonework thrown into the air as the entire structure blew apart from within.

With a calamitous roar of crashing rock and ruinous tectonic thunder it emerged like the ending of the world.

An ancient kajatora to make the first two monsters seem newborns, its rage so powerful none could breathe, its essence so intense it burnt the skin even through their Skidbladnir.

All around boulders larger than Triskelions crashed down, yet it was only by pure luck that no-one was crushed, for all were transfixed, staring up at the rearing beast.

Ivaldi understood now why they were called dragons. The being before them was too huge to be anything less than a mythical being; a natural disaster. Surely this was the source of the shockwaves that brought them to Vitrgraf.

“It’s over,” groaned Idavoll. “Everything’s over….”

“Not even a legion of Varangians could stop that,” another noble said, choking out the words.

Ivaldi could understand why. The creature before them was the embodiment of the ruin of the Pharyes. It was the end of their civilization.

He watched as the flames within the chest of the colossus surged and focused, gathering to a point in the throat, then pumping up into the mouth where they would emerge as a weapon that nothing could endure.

With a crash sharper and harder than any yet the titan’s head exploded!

Big enough to swallow his suit whole, the massive glass skull blasted apart as some impossible force within smashed its way out through the top of the monster, a projectile leaping up out of the billowing plume of fire which marked the death throes of the leviathan.

No-one could understand what they were seeing as the slain dragon vomited tongues of flaming obsidian from wounds all over its towering body, falling backward to sprawl across the bow of the great metal ship with a crash of pulverizing glass and metal.

Yet the nightmare of essence had only grown stronger.

It landed before them, the culprit, tiny even compared to their Skidbladnir, yet too intense even to look at, such was the dark, crushing mana it exuded.

“Another dragon!” Hlesey shouted is dismay.

Most couldn’t even manage to speak.

Where the dragon had burned them with sheer supernal heat, this figure carried weight and depth to drown even oceans, crashing out in all directions as if it meant to grind their bodies to pieces with mana alone.

Then, suddenly, the power pulled back, as if spent.

Ivaldi saw the figure of their enemy clearly now.

It was a humanoid, perhaps five foot tall, but it was drenched in molten obsidian, stained red by the terrible wounds which covered every inch of its body. Blood boiled from the sheer heat of the thing, surrounding it in a red mist that moved with it as it staggered forwards, breathing labored.

It mouthed something incoherent, as if its mouth too were filled with glass.

Impossible as it was, Ivaldi couldn’t deny the reality of the readings his instruments gave him. The faint remaining mana signature was clear, one he’d seen before. One he’d been sent to investigate.

It was Safkhet.