“We were wrong, it’s coming down from above, and it’s big, really fucking big,” Ramal said just as Dnoeth reached to remove the barrier to the ventilation hub.

His hand stopped, and he turned back toward the mountainous man. Ramal’s seven-foot frame loomed even larger bedecked in his full Und Varden battle gear. Of the three of them, Ramal’s weapon selection presented the clearest paradoxical clash with his size. The wicked Warhammer, that hung on his hip, fit well enough, but other than that he was essentially equipped as a ranged fighter.

His main weapon was a massive five-foot long recurve bow of Daedrium. However, in keeping with the theme of Daedrium’s shape shifting properties, the bow was currently compressed to a two-feet-long curved rod with flattened ends, that attached to Ramal’s upper right arm via a Daedrium quick release point.

Instead of having a quiver, his arrows were stored on the front of his enhanced leather armor. Not that you could tell they were arrows. Dull steel tabs ran in four long lines down his chest making it appear like the armor had far too many square buttons. When Ramal pulled one the tab unfolded into the fletching of a flat head bolt. Upon being fitted the to the bow, the bolt elongated into an arrow.

It wasn’t the unlimited ammunition of Ramal’s much beloved Mana bow from Novamen, but it was one hell of a starting weapon. Or second weapon. Dnoeth corrected. Technically, stone sticks had been each of their starting weapons.

Dnoeth wasn’t a ranged guy and didn’t know archery, but he could appreciate the utility benefit of both modifications to a typical archer’s set-up.

Along Ramal’s thighs, throwing blade handles bristled from stitched sheaves. Then, in the small of his back, crossed with handles down, where one would expect to see assassin’s short swords, he had a pair of weapons called Klevits.

The business end of the Klevits had a sharpened scoop, which was connected to the handle with a wide, flat, flexible length of dark Daedrium alloy. They were designed to rapidly scoop and compact any available material into dense golf ball sized projectiles. In addition, at the user’s election, the Klevits could excite the essential elemental energy within the compacted ball, causing them to explode on impact.

They didn’t have the same range or accuracy as the bow, but because of their compact size and infinite ammo supply, the Klevits were a powerful short and mid-range weapon for dealing a lot of damage in a short period of time.

None of them had ever heard of a Klevit, so Ramal didn’t have any experience with them. but his broad grin and statement that the Klevit’s were, ‘fucking ridiculous’, clearly communicated his excitement to gain said lacking experience.

“How big?” Dnoeth asked.

“Big. Maybe too big. Also...” Ramal focused upward, on some distant point above the hub room. “Damn.”

“It’s the Demon,” Roxanna said. “Isn’t it.”

“Yeah, it’s the damn demon. Fucking persistent bastard. How the hell did it get back up the cliff?” Ramal shoot her a glance. “Roxy.” His tone was slightly dark. “You say that like you’ve suspected as much since the alarm sounded. Why?”

She nodded and replied, “Rage. The sound of its scream when Dnoeth first touched the elevator Daedrium was so primal. It was the sound of a being wounded to the very core. Like it’s reason for being was threatened by what he did. Anyone, even a Demon, probably particularly a demon, feeling that emotion won’t just give up. Barriers that would have stopped it in the past will appear like paper tigers before that kind of wrath. It’s a massive well of power.”

Ramal was nodding now. “Dammit if you’re not right.” He cursed. “This is the most dangerous kind of enemy, one that has nothing to lose. It was blindness to think that anything here would be so simple, or that the demon didn’t have a way to get back up that cliff.”

He paused and his face hardened. “Well kids, I think we might be fucked. Enemies like that do impossible, unthinkable things. I doubt digging through hundreds of feet of dirt and rock will be the limit of what’s its willing to do.”

Dnoeth put his hand on the barrier.

“Woahhh!” Ramal grabbed his arm to stop him.

“I’m not opening it,” Dnoeth said. “This is the elemental Daedrium that I bonded with, I have a better connection to it, and it’s the…” He struggled to find a word momentarily. “Group, unit, umm... cell, yeah that’s about right, cell. It’s the cell that has control here. This whole place is set up like a bunch of autonomous interlinked cells.”

He indicated he path behind them. “I’m not sure how this perimeter cell connects back to the barracks, but the connection isn’t perfect. It’s a lot more like an analog phone connection or to two-way radio. It’s functional, but imperfect. So, this Daedrium will have the most complete information about our inbound friend, and I have an intimate connection to it.”

Roxanna looked at Ramal who returned a slight scowl. Her gaze returned to Dnoeth and she said, “This is useful information Dnoeth. Why didn’t you mention it back in the armory? Knowing that we’d get the best data from this cell.” Roxanna gestured to the barrier. “We probably would have rushed out here immediately.”

“Definitely,” Ramal agreed. “We wasted a good ten minutes back there.”

Dnoeth looked slightly abashed, then his brow furrowed, and he looked down to the side. In his expression, Roxanna could see him forcibly shoving aside feelings of self-doubt and it warmed her.

“I didn’t mention it because I didn’t know.” Dnoeth replied as he held up a hand to forestall any more questions. “Look, we’re wasting more time talking about this, so just understand that I have intrinsic knowledge from gaining this bond that’s basically sleeping in my subconscious. It’s not an instant download. So I don’t really know what I know, until I need to know it.”

“Hah!” Ramal barked. “So what, your brain is full of situational knowledge popcorn?”

“Sure, something like that.” Dnoeth quirked a little smile. “I’ve got a popcorn brain. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to do this.” He raised a brow, implying a question but didn’t wait for their response and reached for the barrier again.

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After a moment his face crunched into a focused grimace. He began to mutter to himself, “how many seconds?... No, that doesn’t exist... huh? Wait... how do you count? Ohhh... so base eight...” This continued for a minute, then he removed his hand, dropping his head and wrapping fingers around his jaw pensively.

“Okay, Good news, the earth around the ventilation hub is reinforced against intrusion, similar to the cliffside but weaker, which is slowing it down, and the closer it gets the stronger the protection is, so we have some time. Bad news, the whole system of time here is different. It’s all base eight, which is great in theory, but the Daedrium doesn’t understand the concept of nine and eight is like ten, which is really kind of trippy.”

Ramal and Roxanna looked at him in confusion. Ramal replied with gruff humor, “Listen D, break it down for us, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Dnoeth looked up at him, then shook himself, “Right. Never mind, doesn’t matter. Bottom line is that a minute isn’t a minute here, I think it’s more like eighty seconds…” He trailed off and closed his eyes, then his head bobbed about in slight side-to-side nods.

“Okay, so by my rough math, I think we have about twenty minutes.”

“Good. We have some time to figure out a plan then.” Roxanna said. “First things first: Can we kill it? Even with this Varden gear, that beast was way out of our league.”

“It can be killed.” Dnoeth replied with confidence and his companions again regarded him questioningly.

“Brain popcorn?” Ramal asked.

“Yeah. Kind of, plus some fill in data I just learned. This demon, it’s been corrupted by the same thing that’s effecting the whole base. And, our weapons were specifically designed to fight this corruption. It also used to be connected to this place in a protective way.”

He shook his head. “The corruption made it go all psycho ex-girlfriend though. Now it just wants to kill anyone that goes near it.”

“Well, that makes some kind of sense.” Roxy nodded. “It explains the rage and it’s single-minded blood lust for us. Or you at least.” She looked at Dnoeth. “In the future we’ll have to screen our Demons better. You know, try to avoid those with psycho-possessive tendencies.”

“Hah, right, we can give them personality tests,” Ramal said, then in the same light-hearted tone, refocused them. “Okay, it can be killed, and we’ve got the gear to do it. What else do we know?” His gaze shifted between the other two.

Dnoeth rubbed his chin in consideration.

“That’s all I’ve got,” Roxanna said. “Really angry, way over-powered, hyper-possessive demon. And, we hooked up with its ex. Soo, probably safe to assume that it won’t ever stop trying to kill us.” She paused. “Or, at least kill Dnoeth.”

Dnoeth’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever. Screw this asshole, we’ll respawn, and it won’t. We only need to kill it once. That said, I don’t think we can kill it in that little room. There’s no space to fight, all it’ll have to do is spin around a few times and we’ll all be crushed.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Ramal said. “I think our only real chance is to find a way to fight a harrying battle, play for distance and whittle it down.”

The group fell silent as their focus shifted to Dnoeth. They were all thinking the same thing. How far down did the ventilation shaft go? And, what was at the bottom?

Air whistled past Roxanna as she looked up at the rapidly vanishing prick of light that was the ventilation hub room. She popped her ears. The elevator cage was dropping at a terrifying velocity; she had to guess it was close to highway speed. For this reason, the absence of a cable tying them back to the room above, was a touch disquieting.

The system of math had again proven itself an issue when Dnoeth connected to the elevator control. He’d spent several minutes muttering to himself about velocity, distance, and standards of measurement. And then their wait became considerably more tense when the stone paneled ceiling had begun to vibrate.

The cable had eventually disconnected and Dnoeth hurriedly explained that there were multiple modes of operation. Typical mode used the cable, but since the shaft was almost seven thousand feet deep, typical mode was too slow. He also pointed out that “The demon could also just grab the cable and haul them up.” Which was all the convincing that Roxanna needed to opt for the non-cable mode.

Thus, they were descending via the rapid deployment mode of operation. A mode apparently designed for strike team fast response to threats down in the vast system of caves and tunnels. It this case, the Daedrium cable couldn’t spin out fast enough, so empowered glyph panels moved the elevator cage. They glowed faintly on the top and bottom corners, and somehow made it go while also preventing it from all out freefall.

Roxanna grasped all of this and ageed with the need to get to the bottom as fast as possible. But... It felt a whole lot like they were just falling. I really hope this thing has good breaks, she though with an anxious glance at the other two. Dnoeth, hair flying around his head, smiled at her. Ramal winked. She scowled back at the irreverent man, then with a deep breath, she pushed her fear aside.

“The collection hub has is big,” Dnoeth yelled over the wind. “It’s essentially like the room above but much bigger, and with proper sized tunnels and a lot more of them. Since it’s marked as being corrupted, we’ll want to stay sharp for potential attacks. Although, I don’t think there will be any immediate threats.”

He’d already told them that the cavern below was corrupted, initially causing Roxy and Ramal to doubt the plan. But, Dnoeth explained that the ventilation hub was also marked as corrupted. From this, he reasoned that corrupted areas weren’t necessarily teaming with monsters.

He thought an apt comparison was more akin to being outside the city walls. He also reminded them that the actual battle was ancient history, it was unlikely the enemy was still hanging around. It was decent logic, but definitely not a guarantee.

Roxanna also worried about dying. She’d brought up her concern about respawn points during their run from the armory and it had been strongly echoed by her companions. Given the size of Kuora, they assumed it was possible to shift their respawn point, but they didn’t know how. Or, if it was automated.

When Dnoeth was killed by the horned wolves, he’d come back beside the river, where he’d appeared in Kuora. But they’d been relatively close to there. Now, a full day’s walk further on, their respawn points could have shifted to closer, safe areas. However, as a group they doubted this, nothing about Kuora seemed to lend itself to such a convenience.

The cage began to slow, and Roxanna looked down. All she could see was black at first. After a moment her dark vision picked out a rock floor. The brushed steel cage dropped into a large cavern and touched down with a thump. She exhaled with relief.

Dnoeth touched one side, melting it away for them to exit. When they were out, he collapsed the entire cage into a squat cube. He unslung his large leather satchel that was mostly empty and, after touching a glyph that glowed faintly, threw back its thick cover flap.

The bag was partitioned by a grid of leather dividers, with a half dozen filled by stacks of the Daedrium plates that he called scales. Small glyphs glowed at the connecting corners of the leather partitions. Dnoeth deactivated a bunch and rearranged them, organizing the scales to one end of the bag, and stowing the extra leather squares in a side pocket. Then he put the flattish cube into that freed up space.

Satisfied, he secured the flap, stood, and flipped the cross-body, messenger-style satchel over his head.

Roxy gave him a questioning look. Dnoeth shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not supposed to do this,” he said. “But since we’re the only Varden here, I’m doing it. We might be able to use it. It’s not bonded to me, so I can’t change its shape, but a cage of Daedrium might come in handy.”

Roxanna nodded. “Waste not, want not.”