"Well these sure aren't birds. Looks like this dungeon might have something interesting in it after all." The boisterous roar reverberated off the walls of the dungeon tunnel, Manfred swinging both of his hand axes in a wild frenzy. Each casual-seeming strike screeched with the protest of sheared metal, as Crowforged and Mechanical soldiers continued to march forward into the man's swings. Behind him, the rest of the adventuring party seemed almost relaxed as they watched the fight.

Flint looked disinterested, having decided that it wasn't worth interrupting Manfred's fun in order to score a few kills for himself, and leaned against the dungeon's wall. "What, did this place get sealed up or something, and someone just happened to open the front door? This place doesn't feel like a new dungeon at all. Maybe it's an old dungeon, only rediscovered. What'cha think, Noel? You're the walking library, you know anything about the metal men?"

The fiery mage shook his head, aiming his staff at the amassing piles of scrap metal that cluttered the hallway around Manfred's sides. If they didn't do anything about the wreckage, there wouldn't need to be a need to send more troops to block them, the passageway would merely fill with damaged detritus. A modest jet of flame swept back and forth across the remains, the magical fire igniting the metal and causing it to melt down into a lumpy pile of slag. The fire actively consumed the metal, though, and the piles were slowly growing smaller and smaller, clearing the way for them to follow after Manfred's slow advance.

"I've never seen anything like this before. That fact alone makes me suspect that it might not have been complete overkill to send us in for the job. After all, if this is a totally new dungeon that grew this fast, in another half-year it could actually have developed into something resembling a threat." The rogue sighed with a dramatic flourish of his hands that seemed to encompass everything around them in the gesture. "Alas, you could have been a place to get stronger. You just had to get too big for your breeches and all but wipe a town off the map. Such a waste."

The mostly-bald priest swatted the rogue on the back of the head with a firm thump, "Stop clowning around and focus on the task. With this much combat going on in the hall, there shouldn't be any untriggered traps for us to worry about, but that doesn't mean there won't be any. Pay attention to the ground and the walls, and less to gabbing." "Piss off, Rodney, I've got the skill active. If anything were going to happen, I'd know. Has my trap sense ever let you down?"

It was at that moment that a side passage opened a short distance behind the group, with Mechanical and Crowforged troops pouring out from the new opening. Rodney hefted his mace, and took up a rearguard position, as he didn't think that the rogue's knives would be of much use against these bloodless creations. "You were saying?" The older man asked, scathingly.

Flint raised both hands palms-out as if to profess his innocence. "That's a secret passage, not a trap! Not my job, not my fault!" "Less trying to weasel out of blame and more doing something useful, Flint!" "What do you want me to do, throw poisoned needles at them? I came prepared for birds!" "Oh you useless-"

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Malcom sighed in relief as the sheer weight of numbers had stalled out the party, the mage needing to divide his attention between the front and the rear of the party. Unfortunately, he kept using his flame magic with wild abandon, so the plan to see if he could starve out the oxygen in the tunnel and take care of his unwanted guests that way wasn't going to produce any results.

So, what was plan B? In fact, Malcom wasn't even sure he had one. Hope that he could channel enough mana into troops to create a ceaseless tide of them to keep the group engaged in combat until they were exhausted? They didn't seem to be putting forth that much effort into combat. They would get tired eventually, sure, but given the way they had blasted the surface, he wasn't convinced that they wouldn't just do so again if they were pressed too hard. Down here in the tunnels, a firebomb like that would likely scour every defense he could muster for a huge distance. Maybe the confines of the tunnel would cook them too if they tried?

No new levels, no new units. The first of his mages had finished up in the meantime, and while he had a flash of hope at that revelation... it simply wasn't going to be enough. Even if he had his entire spawning regiment of mages at the ready, he didn't think it would be enough. The only offensive spell he had assigned to his mages was "Force Bolt". Unless it was a whole lot more force than what he expected from the name, he didn't think it would do much. These people fought like they could shake off a direct impact from a ballista.

'Damn it, think, Malcom, think! There's got to be something you're forgetting, some way to turn this around? What aren't you seeing?' Malcom turned his 'stare' toward the statue of Amanda, trying to calm the frantic emotions coursing through him, only to have them burst into an even more intense rage. There, manifesting in his mind instead of his attempt to stare at the statue, was that figure. That damned, shadow-wreathed figure. It was that wisp-concealed smile, mocking him, taunting him with his failure. He twisted his view, shifting it from side to side, but it followed. It was tormenting him further. Could he have no solace? Gaze roamed the chamber, but each time he sought to see an image or statue of Amanda, the shadow-wreathed figure took her place, overlaying itself upon his vision. He knew it wasn't really there. He could sense that the chamber was empty. But he saw it all the same, and he knew that the expression beneath those swirling black-hued mists was one of amusement.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

'Must you take even the last bit of solace from me? Who are you? Why? Why? WHY? WHY!?' The rational part of Malcom's brain was refusing to listen, emotions running raw and wild. He stopped the expansion of the dungeon. He stopped producing more troops, though their absence would not be felt for some time given the massive numbers he still had at his disposal. Instead, he poured it into his magic. The magic that, to this moment, he still didn't know how to use. It was no longer a string of mana that meandered from his core, it was a river. It flowed from him in a rage, battering the illusion of the figure. The stones of Amanda's statue began to glow a brilliant silver, inundated with his mana, and the statue itself began to melt. The force of mana caused the mosaic arrangements depicting her face to blur and melt together. The entire room shifted, as if on the verge of collapse, as the supporting pillars sagged in a less-than-solid state, the ceiling overhead askew and slanting in a downward angle.

'GET OVER HERE!' Malcom's insensate scream made the mana condense, pulling it back in, and the fanciful visions of the smirking figure were drawn with it. It was almost as if this was something that his core was familiar with, drawing the energy back in, and the figure was swept away along with it. His core felt... satisfied. Not that he acknowledged it as more than a tickle in the back of his mind, an instinct brushed aside. The mana pulled harder, harder, his core glowing like a silver sun. Even the normal pitch-black of his razor-edged surface was shining silver. For a moment, his entire core was lit with effort and an intense abundance of mana. 'Crush it. Crush it! Smash it into nothing!' Malcom roared into the void, condensing his mana as deep into his core as he could manage, as if he wanted to will some sort of mana-singularity or black hole into existence just to force that shadowed figure into it.

You won't keep me much longer.

There it was again, those words that crashed against Malcom's consciousness like a hammer. In his fury, he barely reacted. The mana swirled in his core, a hurricane of magical might, and encircled around the shadowy figure. The mana-whirlwind blocked further thoughts from reaching Malcom, but it also took a large chunk out of his mana production to seal that taunting figure off. 'I'm not alone in this... Core...' That voice had always been real, and its influence had been growing stronger the more and more he grew. Something was trapped in here with him. Something that was influencing him, and seemed to very much want to be let out. Malcom cast his gaze around his destroyed sanctum. 'Amanda... I'm so... so sorry...' The sight of the damage he had inflicted in his rage left him staring for longer than he could probably spare, vaguely sensing the adventurers moving much faster now, but... he couldn't just shake off the image of her half-melted visage.

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Noel's eyes went wide at the same moment that the Mechanicals and the Crowforged almost seemed to stagger, their motions slowing as an absolutely absurd, illogical amount of mana gathered in one place. The compass in the mage's hand was all but vibrating with intensity, and the glass casing containing it actually cracked. "Get to the core. NOW!" The normally calm, collected mage had an expression of overwhelming terror. His eyes were wide spread, and he actually pushed past the burly figure of Manfred and shot a lance of fire that filled the entire width of the hallway, sprinting desperately down the hall before the stone had even finished smoldering.

"What the-" Flint jumped in surprise at the heat on his back, but was roughly pushed by Rodney. "Go! Manfred and I follow you! Questions later!" The older priest didn't seem to be any more aware of why the mage had been triggered into a frothing panic, but he had never seen him act like this before. Not even in the most dangerous moments had the mage screamed with such intense fear in his voice. Rodney knew it had to be bad. They shouldn't split up, so all they could do was trust that the mage knew what he was doing when he demanded they abandon all else and get to the core as fast as possible.

"Manfred, rearguard!" The barbarian nodded, losing his carefree demeanor and starting to back down the hall after the other two, the group listening to the slowly-retreating clattering and clanking of the metal men in the hall behind them. Now that they were really running, the troops simply couldn't keep up.

Far ahead of the party, Noel was accelerating faster and faster. He actually used his magic to create small explosions of fire under his feet, posture held low, using the blasts to launch himself forward faster and faster. If anything showed up in his path, it was removed with overwhelming firepower, the mage seemingly caring little for drawing on the reserves of mana around him. That made each spell more and more aggressive, which suited him at the moment. The blasts launching his feet sent him further, the magic devoured all before him as he desperately followed the needle toward the core. The others could just follow which corridors looked like they had been recently set aflame. He couldn't wait for them, not with the amount of mana he felt gathering in one place.

"It can't be ascending. There's no way a core can be ascending. The Gods won't permit it! But there's no other reason that much mana would be concentrated in one place. I have to get there now, before it's too late. If the core ascends, it'll be a war of Divinity. All over again."