The forest provided little relief from the heat, the canopy too thin as they marched higher into the mountains, but they took what they could get and were grateful for it. The forest grew stiller and quieter as they moved north, the world around them bereft of the chirping of insects and birdsong that should have been present. They marched for another half hour before their good mood turned to cautious silence, the trail showing more signs of carnage. Tree branches were snapped, gouges were carved into trunks, and scorch marks were all evident in a wide space several yards wide and long.

Shaya raised a hand to call another halt when she spotted the bodies of the monsters. Weapons raised, the party moved silently towards a small clearing in front of a cave entrance, eyes scanning the area around them for monsters lurking behind hills or in the trees. Given the village elder’s warnings, they were all on edge. The area reeked of sulphur and brimstone.

“Looks like the gryphon here really didn’t like sharing their territory with monsters…” She moved over to one of the corpses and rolled it over with her halberd, looking at it more closely.

The creature resembled a wolf, but rather than the normal grey fur of wolves in this region, it possessed black and red fur, from what she could make out under the blood. Fur that was barbed and bristled like that of a tarantula, but thick and hard enough to offer it some protection against weapons. The corruption went further, as the monster was longer than the average wolf, with its mid-section appearing more sinuous and flexible. Its natural weaponry was also more lethal, with large claws like meat hooks and an oversized head with crushing jaws. Not that any of that stopped its attacker from biting through the back of its head and into its spine.

“Spawn of Cindrahl?” Shaya asked.

Krebo nodded his head. “Aye, likely half-breeds. Given the number of them just around here, I reckon an Ur found its way into the area and took over a few wolf packs, breeding with them.”

They all shuddered at Krebo’s reckoning, hoping he was wrong.

“Damn Titan Blood. Those bastards keep troubling us, no respect for the effort that went into killing them in the first place,” Gazno muttered.

“Seven protect,” Krebo said, the others echoing him. Even Shaya followed suit, albeit reluctantly.

Jax turned to Shaya and quirked an eyebrow at her. “Do you sense that?”

“What do you mean?”

The old man tapped his forehead.

Shaya nodded in understanding and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to centre herself. Tuning out her physical senses, she extended her spiritual senses outward, dowsing the area for signs of aether. At first, she didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary, but then her senses reached a point in space that was… empty.

That’s when she realized the entire area was suffused with low levels of Ruby aether, the magical energy so constant it became background noise.

Her eyes snapped open and Jax nodded at her. “The spawn have been here long enough to erode the Veil here, corrupting the area with their Titan’s influence. Everything in the area is going to be hotter and more hostile towards humans. The cave is likely their lair, and the corruption will be more potent the closer we get to its centre.”

“Is that why I have goosebumps?” Pel asked.

“Yes,” Krebo replied. “Even those without channels into the Aetherium can still sense magic, even if it’s rudimentary.”

“But you know the great thing about Cindrahl’s corruption?” Lorral asked, her eyes lighting up. “The best hot peppers are formed under it!”

“I still can’t believe you eat Cindrahl Reapers.” Pel shook his head. “I’m pretty sure that’s heresy.”

“It is,” Krebo acknowledged with a nod.

“Alright, time to focus, people.” Shaya rose to her full height and squared her shoulders. “This is more than we bargained for and we’re fortunate the gryphon here did at least some of the work for us. We need to make sure the actual Ur-Cinwolf can’t escape to keep spreading its Titan’s corruption and hurting more of our people, but we don’t know how many are left in its pack or if we’re about to walk into an enraged gryphon.”

She nodded at the cave entrance, wide enough for maybe two people to walk abreast. “Krebo and Gazno up front. Krebo, conjure a protective ward against destructive magic.” She looked at the scorch marks again and wrinkled her nose against the stench. “It won’t be able to block physical attacks, but I don’t think any of us wants to get roasted today.”

“Shouldn’t you take this opportunity to practice your magic?” Krebo chided.

“No, I’d rather save my energy for personal protection and any healing we may need,” she replied, “Besides, your esper has the greater affinity for wards.”

“Hm, astute, I suppose. You do pay attention to my lessons.”

Shaya chuckled at the barb, but deigned not to retort. Instead, she continued issuing orders: “Pelark and I will take the middle with our polearms, and Jax and Lorral can take up the rear with their bows. We take it nice and slow, and keep an ear out for ambush or the gryphon. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. No surprises, no losses. Any questions?”

Shaya turned to each of her companions, who shook their heads in turn. They set down their packs of gear, cracked their knuckles, and did a final equipment check to ensure armour was strapped on tight and all their weapons were ready to be drawn from sheathes or loops. All of them took out flint and steel to light small lanterns hooked to their belts to help navigate the cave’s darkness.

“Now?” Krebo asked.

“Now,” Shaya confirmed.

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“Kaiex, Bastion of the Sun!” He invoked the name of his esper and banged on his pavise. Krebo tilted his head toward the sun, taking in a deep breath, his eyes filling with Amber light. Within a few seconds, the golden light left his eyes as the aether powered his spell. Strands of light weaved around his shield, growing and hardening to create a wide wall of translucent golden light fixed upon it. Leaves from the trees drifted through it, showing that the shield would do nothing for physical matter—just destructive energy.

At the same time, Shaya took a deep breath to steady her nerves. You’ve got this. You’re trained, you’re practiced, you’re coordinated.

“Phaedra Amon, Guardian of Light!” she invoked, and her esper manifested behind her in a flash of light. Unlike Krebo, she couldn’t yet invoke hers or cast any spells without the visual manifestation.

Shaya felt the connections forged in her spirit as she called her esper, the channels she would use to draw in aether and the circuits she would shape formulae onto to cast her spells. She opened herself and pulled in Amber aether, her heart alight with what had to be done. As the aether entered her, she felt its warmth and surety spread through her body—a steady and firm support that she wished to hold onto forever. It pulsed and glowed in her eyes like a rich, golden halo of light, and she felt her pride swell at its magnificence, forgetting about her own insignificance.

It took her five seconds just to draw in the required aether for her spell, at which point it felt like her spirit’s capacity was bursting at the seams from the amount of magical energy within her.

These spawn can’t hope to stand against us.

She shook her head to focus and remain grounded in reality. With a force of will, she shaped the Amber within her, sculpting some of her spirit’s circuits into a magical formula that would turn into a spell. She tried to do it without an incantation, but seconds ticked by and she couldn’t solidify the formula, the Amber too brittle from her ministrations. If she channelled more aether into it now, the inefficient formula would make for a weak spell and would bleed away energy faster than it should.

She felt her frustration grow, and the Amber began to slip from her as it recoiled from her doubts. She relented and infused her voice with confidence and will as she called out an incantation, “Phaedra, gird my form against harm!”

The incantation helped her shape the aether to specification much easier than she could without it. Once the formula was laid out, she channelled the rest of the aether into it and released the spell.

With a snap of her esper’s angelic wings, motes of light flared into life and spun around her body, leaving behind trails that weaved about her. Within moments, the motes had spun the light into a protective panoply that hardened around her like an outer layer of armour that looked similar to what her esper wore.

“You’re getting better,” Krebo commented. “The plates are pretty smooth, they should do well to deflect attacks rather than absorb them head on.”

“I’m still too slow. And this is the spell I’ve been practicing at the longest.”

“You lost time trying to skip the incantation. I know you want to progress quickly, but you have to learn to walk before you can run. Push your limits, don’t try to leap past them.”

“I know,” Shaya said, biting back her frustration. She had heard this a thousand times and tired of it, she just wanted to get better faster. It felt like her abilities had plateaued months ago.

Krebo didn’t push, instead patting her on the shoulder as he walked ahead of her.

Shaya and her hunting party approached the cave’s entrance, Krebo and Gazno in the front with their shields raised. More blood and tracks led into the cave, but its darkness swallowed the grisly trail before long. The group stood there in silence for a moment, straining their eyes and ears as they tried to draw any bit of information they could from within the cave—but saw and heard nothing unnatural. Shaya’s eyes drifted around the entrance and noted that it appeared man-made, perhaps an old, forgotten mine that had been stripped by scavengers or refugees long ago.

“Alright, move in,” she commanded, readying her halberd to stab past Krebo if needed. “Remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fas—”

A high-pitched, shrill screech echoed from deep within the cave, full of pain and fear.

Shaya sighed, and all eyes turned to her. Her mind raced. Rushing in was reckless and dangerous, but she couldn’t just let the gryphon die after what it had done for her people. It likely kept far more monsters at bay than they even knew of, which was invaluable to the people here given how few resources the duke could spare.

If they moved fast enough, maybe they could save it and it would help them in the coming battle. But they could be ambushed as they ran through the cave, flanked or worse by the mutants. And if they did manage to save the gryphon, could they communicate with it well enough to prevent it from attacking them? They were supposed to be smarter than the average beast, but just how smart were they?

What would her mother have done?

“Throne, let’s move fast, but stay in formation,” Shaya said. If she could make a difference, she had to try. “Keep your eyes and ears peeled, I don’t want these things ambushing us while we move.”

They moved through the cave at a jog, Krebo’s glowing shield of light and their lanterns illuminating a narrow tunnel with carefully hewn rock walls all around them. Shaya noted with alarm a number of other tunnels that spun off the main one, the rotting, wooden scaffolding confirming her suspicions it was once a mine and that it was now far from stable. Some of the offshoots were collapsed and Shaya hoped that the rest of the cave was sound.

“It’s growing hotter!” Gazno barked as they charged deeper into the cave.

“This is definitely the Ur’s lair,” Krebo replied, not even breathing hard from the jog in heavy armour. “It’s much worse than I thought. Check your emotions, Cindrahl’s corruption is known to fan the flames of strong emotions, especially pain, fear, and anger.”

Shaya gulped at the last one.

The rattling of chain mail and banging of scabbards against armour sounded as cacophonous as Rel banging pots and pans together when he was young, before the Empire threw them into an orphanage. She pushed the memory and the sadness it brought out of her mind, focusing on how much she hated the noise they were making at this speed.

They rushed past more dead Cinwolves, rent apart or utterly broken, and Shaya thought that maybe the gryphon had finished them all off. The growling and screeching that erupted from ahead of them dispelled the notion, alongside the increasing stench of a slaughterhouse filled with sulphur.

Shaya’s keen, bestial eyes picked out the scene from the group’s faint light before anyone else. The freshly scaffolded tunnel opened into a wide, natural cavern filled with stalagmites and stalactites. Many of the stalagmites lay broken across the floor, alongside the shattered remains of more Cinwolves. Despite their casualties, another dozen monsters encircled and harassed a gryphon at the centre of the room. Some baited its reactions so that its packmates could lunge in at its exposed hindquarters.

Shaya’s eyes widened as she laid eyes on a gryphon for the first time.

It was huge, its lower body the shape of a tiger but larger in size and weight by at least half. The upper body maintained some of the tiger’s musculature, but the front feet were the talons of an eagle and the torso extra-long to make space for enormous wings of gold and brown feathers. The cavern’s ceiling was much too low for the gryphon to take flight and its wings were tucked into its side, though one appeared broken and bent at an awkward angle. The head was that of an enlarged, proud eagle, their predatory eyes locked on the beasts in front of it with a hatred Shaya didn’t think animals were capable of.

Then her heart sank. A second gryphon lay collapsed and unmoving on the ground a dozen feet away from the first. Blood had pooled around its prone form and none of the monsters seem to pay it any mind.

She couldn’t imagine what would cause an apex predator to enter these confined quarters where its size and wings put it at such a disadvantage. Then she realized the screeches weren’t coming from the gryphon at the centre.