Emily coughed up a handful of blackish blood as she sat on the last steps of the temple.

She hadn't approached the pedestal for fear of triggering some long-forgotten booby trap, or something equally unpleasant.

As of right now, she didn't want to advance if she could help it while her body was in this state.

She'd already healed the wound in her rib and her hand, but her leg was taking the longest to reconstruct.

From where Emily sat, she could look out over the whole 'room' in front of her.

The top of the temple probably once had a roof, but the frequent storms that built in the area had long since eroded that away.

All save for the center of the room.

Floating just above the pedestal was a broken sphere of sorts.

When she had first arrived, she had thought it was made of shadow, but it was instead giving off that faint wispy smoke that drifted up to the clouds above.

To make things more interesting, Emily could tell that this was not the entire sphere here. If it were whole, it would have been about the size of a basketball, but this thing was shattered into countless pieces.

A rough estimation told her that more than two-thirds of the sphere was missing. She could tell this because of the way the pieces float in time with one another. They gravitated to the right spots even though the largest shard was that of a golf ball.

The pieces had slotted together perfectly, leaving only the smallest amounts of space between each shard. Almost as though they were waiting for the day that the other pieces would join them and they could be whole.

She did wonder where the other pieces were, but after some thought, it seemed pretty self-explanatory.

They were scattered throughout the entire city. Her running theory of their city's inhabitants messing with powers they didn't understand was starting to look better as time went on.

If she were to guess, an explosive event must have sent them scattering over the city and into the surrounding sands.

Possibly even into the skies themselves.

Worryingly, these pieces wouldn't look much different from any other piece of molten glass during a storm, but from what she had observed, they seemed to have a fairly strong resistance to wind. So it was probably a rare occurrence to be swept up into the atmosphere.

The question was what she should do now.

From Tao's account, the shards were supposed to be naturally occurring, but the Heathspeaker had to know this city was here. There were so many questions and yet so few answers.

The biggest question of all was that of the beast. Surely they knew that thing had been lurking here.

When she made it out of here, she was going to have a few pointed questions to throw his way.

Namely, why didn't he warn her? She'd somehow killed it, but that fight was far from fair. And honestly, she only won because of whatever disease that thing had that was eating away at it.

After things had calmed down, Emily had taken a second to inspect her life source for problems stemming from that horrid stuff she'd taken in, but as of right now, it was nowhere to be seen.

She had to hope that it was just the sheer unnatural feeling she got from the energy that made it such a vile experience. Though she didn't let her guard down completely.

Emily rubbed her eyes as she watched her toes finally complete their regeneration. Putting her now bare foot onto the ground, she applied some weight; it was tender, but it would do.

When she was sure her leg could handle standing, she got up and moved towards the pedestal.

She was still at a loss for what to do, but if she just grabbed all of them, then that would surely be good enough, right?

Moving closer, she tried to see if there were any obvious signs of traps.

When she was certain that there were none, she advanced.

There had to be hundreds of tiny shards here. At first, she wondered how they were doing that, but when she felt a gentle pull coming from the pack she was carrying, she realized they must pull towards one another.

The next question was what would happen when she tried to separate them.

Pulling a drop of blood from her finger, she encompassed one of the outer shards and yanked.

As it got separated from the others, there was a brief flicker of shadow and then, nothing.

Sighing in relief, she began to seal each one in a capsule of blood. Because of their size, she had to move delicately to make sure she didn't miss any, which took time.

An hour later, when she was down to the last few. She inspected the remaining knot of shards. The golfball-sized shard had been giving off gentle pulses for a little while now, and with the remaining four shards moving swiftly around it.

The shards moved erratically, and as she pulled off three more, the remaining shard sped up.

Staring at the last defender of her prize, Emily felt some trepidation, not enough to walk away, but it settled in the pit of her stomach.

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Furrowing her brow, she stifled a yawn. It forced its way through anyway, exhaustion gnawing at the edge of her focus.

Even so, she couldn't leave without her prize. This last piece was the largest by far. If she was doing this, then anything but the best was unacceptable.

May as well take it and be done with it.

Years ago, someone warned her that greed would be her downfall. If they could see her now, she'd point to this moment—this decision.

She reached out and wrapped her blood around the final orbiting shard. A flicker of black lightning leapt between them, small, almost imperceptible. Just a trick of the light, maybe. Static.

But as the shard separated, the larger one convulsed. It belched forth a thick black smoke, more than ever before.

In an instant, the entire area was swallowed in darkness as smoke surged upward in a violent column. It blinded her.

Coughing, eyes watering, she stumbled. Her new foot nearly gave out beneath her. Reaching through the haze, she groped blindly for the obsidian. By the time her blood found it, the thing was spewing smoke so dense it had to be visible from miles away.

She sealed it quickly, wrapping it in blood. Tears ran hot down her cheeks as the smoke finally began to clear. Choking into the crook of her elbow, she lifted her gaze.

The clouds had changed.

What were once roiling black thunderheads now stretched and twisted like waves above her, like she was staring up through seawater from the ocean floor.

Then came the pressure drop. Sudden. Violent.

Something had shifted inside the storm.

Far in the distance, the black curtain that walled off the desolate city began to rise. Pale sunlight pierced the clouds in faint silver streaks, reaching down like tentative fingers.

Most would see hope in that sight. A storm lifting. Light returning.

But Emily felt her throat tighten as that sensation rose from the depths of her stomach.

She knew better.

A storm was on its way, one to eclipse all others that come out of this basin.

Emily turned toward the exit. She had to get out of here, fast. But as she took her first step, a wave of fresh exhaustion overtook her.

She stumbled as her legs became heavier than lead.

What was going on, now was not the time for he body to give out on her.

Another stifled yawn hit the back of her throat, and she blinked away the tears.

Then she froze and turned to look at the venomtail's corpse.

Bringing her hand up to her mouth, she wiped dried flakes of its blood off her bottom lip.

There was no way, right? Not now.

But as she pressed the red bits between her thumb and index finger, she knew her suspicion was probably right.

Bloodline inheritance.

The act of drinking the blood of a powerful beast to strengthen oneself. The problem was that it put the body into a powerful slumber to achieve this.

Only this time, the timing could not be worse. If she fell asleep here, the chances of waking up again were zero

Grunting, Emily pushed back the waves of lethargy that threatened to pull her under. She had to flee now.

Pushing herself into a sprint, she navigated out of the temple and to the staircase. At the top, she jumped down it, letting her blood carry her the remaining way down. When her feet hit the sand, she slumped, almost falling before catching herself with her hands.

She shakily drew a few ragged breaths before advancing through the city.

Passing into the outer districts, she dove into the maze of choked streets and glanced up at the sky from down here.

The clouds unulated like waves, becoming more desperate and chaotic with each passing second.

Emily didn't know how much time she had, but it wouldn't be long now.

Thankfully, it seemed that whatever process was happening inside her body was slower than the last time. She managed to make it to the outskirts before her drowsiness became too powerful to ignore.

A growing sense of unease surfaced, and she realized she wasn't going to be able to make it out in time. Forget about escaping the city; even the surrounding lands would not be spared.

Sighing, Emily collapsed against a high brick wall.

She wasn't giving up; she just needed to rest for a second.

Reaching into her pack, Emily pulled out a flask and took a sip. The water was warm in her mouth, but it did nothing to wake her.

In fact, her eyes dropped as her seated position became all the more comfortable.

Her head lulled once, and the world faded, but a pulse of adrenaline opened them again with a start. The matrix she had been holding wavered, but she stabilized it just in time.

Glancing about, Emily saw the storm had begun to descend.

Groaning, Emily tried to shake the calling slumber. She ground her teeth and poured what remained of the flask over her face and down the back of her cloak. The cool, wet sensation gave her momentary clarity.

Emily pushed herself to her feet and glanced around. It was probably impossible to escape this storm, but maybe she could find cover.

That was easier said than done, though, because while there were still structures nearby, none of them looked like they'd offer much protection against the coming storm.

That was until she set her eyes on a large set of stairs nearby.

She frowned, seeing as half the city was submerged in sand, and yet this ground-level staircase was undisturbed.

Moving slowly towards it, Emily leaned against the wall of a house to stabilize herself.

The closer she got, the more detail she could make out. She arrived at the top of the stairs and looked down to see a huge square hole with a staircase leading down further. The stairs ran along the edge of the hole as it descended into the earth.

The fact that it wasn't filled was only due to its sheer size. Emily could not tell what this place had been used for when the city was still functioning, but she could see the bottom was choked with sand.

The hole was about thirty meters down, and if she was going to have any chance of surviving this, it was the perfect place to hole up.

The hole would provide at least some protection from the storm. Without much time remaining, she made her choice.

Stepping onto the sand-covered stairs, Emily tried to hurry down into the earth. Unfortunately, her coordination was already shot, and the weathered steps were not easy to navigate. She made it ten meters down before she tripped over an uneven step.

Unable to correct her balance, Emily went tumbling over the edge.

Seeing the ground rapidly approaching, she flashed her blood out and slowed her descent just before she hit the sands.

The somewhat soft material absorbed her as she landed on her back with a groan.

She was painfully aware that she wasn't out of the woods yet, but it felt like she was thinking through a fog.

Every thought was hazy and slow to rise.

From this vantage point, Emily could only see a patch of the sky, but it was enough to see the light from above disappearing behind the clouds again. Arcs of brilliant lightning built up in the grey canvas ominously, far more than she had seen earlier.

Her hold on reality was slipping, but she refused to give up before she had done everything in her power to survive.

Extracting herself from the sand, Emily pulled out the book Ashe had given her and opened it to the last page. Tracing the rune for the earthen dome, Emily mimicked it with her blood. It took a significant amount of concentration at this stage, but she managed. Pouring not an insignificant amount of source into the blood ward.

It glowed, and as she released the spell, the sands rushed up from beneath her, rapidly assembling into a thick wall of stone.

She pushed the spell to seal off the area by pulling more sand from beneath her. This burrowed her further into the hole as sand hardened like shards of spun silica reflecting light. Emily wasn't sure how far down she'd gone, but it was significant. Then, pulling a large amount of blood around herself, Emily created the toughest blood mantle she could manage and hardened it.

The world blurred, but with trembling fingers, Emily extracted the relic Svent had made and activated it. She tried to stay awake to listen for the beginnings of the storm, but her nest was too warm, her eyes too heavy, and all too soon her consciousness faded from the raging world.

Blood points: 667

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