When Emily woke, she was faced with clawing claustrophobia. Walls hedged her in on all sides, and it was all she could do not to destroy the surrounding barrier. She coughed and shook as she tried to draw in breath, but there was barely enough space to wiggle her toes, let alone expand her lungs.

Panic tried to set in, but she brushed it aside. After everything she'd been through, she wasn't about to lose it to something as simple as a tight space.

Closing her eyes, Emily began to feel out every extremity. Sending her awareness to her hands, then her legs, and finally her chest. Making sure that everything was in order.

She couldn't find anything wrong, and that was enough to calm her somewhat.

She was alive and well, not a crispy piece of bacon, as she had expected.

Reaching into her chest, she expanded her blood outward, making herself more room to sit up.

The tablet Svent had made for her fell off her chest and clattered to the floor of her crawl space.

When she saw it, she could tell it was still functioning, but it would last at most another hour before it collapsed.

Seeing this reminded Emily of what kind of conditions she'd left the waking world in.

She needed to get out of here, or at least figure out what was going on outside.

Not taking any chances, Emily began to wrap herself up in her matrix again. Building it up slowly and purposefully. She'd learned a lot from her previous experience and applied that, now, shaping the matrix around herself and, to a lesser extent, her surroundings.

Once it was in place, she turned the relic off and ran a fingernail down the side of her prison, creating an opening.

Sticking her head out to take in the scene, Emily was surprised to see that the wall she had created above was still intact.

Glancing down, she could see that far off in the distance was the ground, only it was covered in about thirty centimeters of water.

That mystery aside, something else occurred to her.

Right now, it should be pitch black down here; she'd had to seal herself off completely, and as of yet, she hadn't had a chance to crack her torch, so how was she able to see all this?

Emily rubbed her eyes and blinked rapidly. The colours around her were bleached, as though her eyes hadn't yet adjusted.

But it was this discovery that helped her realize what had happened.

She could see in the dark.

Distant shapes and crevases were easy to make out to her now.

Had consuming the venontail's inheritance given her night vision? It had had enough eyes to warrant it.

If that was the case, then this was a huge advantage. Not needing a torch meant that she wouldn't alert all the beasts hiding in the dark to her presence.

That fact alone was almost worth falling asleep in the single most dangerous location yet.

But as useful as this new ability was, there wasn't the time to waste a single moment. Emily stepped out onto the air, pausing to glance back at the place where she had spent—who knew how long—sleeping.

She pressed her lips together as her gaze settled on a mass of blood suspended in the center of the tunnel. Bands of crimson stretched outward, anchoring it to the surrounding walls like dozens of strands of spider silk.

At its heart was an empty cocoon.

Emily hummed but turned her attention to the ceiling once more.

There were no cracks that she could see, but the stone was giving off enormous amounts of heat. Practically causing the air around it to warp and shift like a heat mirage. Moving up towards it, she held out her hand and touched the stone.

Her matrix protected her, but something felt off.

The heat was unable to pierce the stone completely, but a chill ran down her spine as she detected more than just heat.

The energies up ahead had something mixed in with them. The source was agitated and seemed to rush towards her with a vengeance. Biting into her matrix like an animal possessed.

Emily pulled her hand away, frowning.

Something was very wrong with the source out there.

Red source should not gather like that. It moved in straight lines and radiated out from its points of origin. It didn't care at all for living things.

This source felt different, though. It was as if it desired nothing more than to burn her to cinders as it clung to the outside of her matrix like radiation.

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Already, she could see the stone in the area she'd touched heating up as more source gathered there. Any more and it would melt through the rock.

Backing away, Emily bit the inside of her lip.

If red source was doing that, then she had a huge problem. Breaking this stone and escaping here was not hard, but it did leave Emily wondering.

From her test with the stone, she could see that heat would continue to gather near her endlessly, almost as though hunting her down.

Now, her matrix should be able to hold it off, but she couldn't help wondering if there was a limit. If the heat was extreme enough, which it would no doubt become, could she survive out there?

Emily wasn't sure how long she had been out, but if it was anything like her last encounter, it had to be days, and the heat had still not begun to dissipate.

As though awakening, her stomach grumbled desperately to get her attention.

Emily rummaged through her bag and pulled out a ration, washing it down with some water.

If the storm had not let up by now, she had to assume that it would remain like this indefinitely. Or at least longer than her food would last.

That meant she needed to get the hell out of here now.

Looking around, she didn't have much to work with. The only direct way out was up, but there were still sands below to explore. Perhaps there was an exit there.

Lowering herself a couple of stories to the water, Emily rubbed her chin as she tried to figure out where the heck she was.

Part of her was worried that the water would be contaminated with that same vile shadow as everything above, but when she dipped a finger in, she felt nothing but cool, pure water.

Rubbing the back of her neck, she considered her options.

This tunnel could potentially lead somewhere, and she had the perfect spell the excavate it, but if it was a dead end, then all she would be doing was wasting her time and resources. Her choices weren't that great, but with the discovery of water here, she could last a bit longer. That meant she could potentially explore it without losing too many resources if she rationed her food.

Emily wanted to grumble about the hunger pains to come, but there would be no one here to listen, so even that felt like a waste.

Sighing, Emily began replicating the spell she had used just before passing out.

The earthen dome spell was fundamentally just a way to pull in surrounding sand and stone and integrate it into a more complex shape.

The blood ward glowed to life with ample source, and Emily began pulling sand from below the surface of the water

The grains of earth floated up and out of the water and into the wall she had first built. There was no harm in making it thicker than what she already had, but she did leave a hole in the wall, so that if she needed to leave quickly, she had a narrow escape route to block.

This continued for well over an hour, and Emily was eventually running out of places to pack the dirt, even though it shrank as she compressed it into stone.

The water level had not moved at all, but she continued to dig through the sands until more of the tunnel came into view.

A chamber opened up below as the last of the sands she could reach left the tunnel. What she saw was a massive rectangular room completely submerged in water.

From up here, she could just make out pillars holding up the large passages below. The more she looked at it, the more it reminded her of the pools below Keal's city.

Only these stores were far larger than what was down there.

Crossing her arms, she drifted just above the surface. So she was in some kind of well, the problem was she didn't know where it led or how deep it went.

Deep bodies of water weren't the easiest thing for her to navigate, and if there were no exits, she didn't exactly have a lot of options.

However, it was either find out where this went or take her chances with the storm above.

Taking a deep breath, Emily let herself plunge into the chilly water below

No sooner had the bubbles vanished than the scene unfolded around her.

Her new vision could make out dozens of interconnected columns through startlingly clean water. It was like a massive diving pool.

Searching the distant walls, she saw several tunnels heading off in every direction.

Contemplating her options, Emily searched for one that looked like it was heading away from the city center. She should already be on the outskirts, but the further she could get away from the storm's epicenter, the better.

She found one that looked like it was heading out into the dunes, and to make things better, it looked like it was at a gradual incline. Meaning this had to be the lowest point of the chamber.

The only assumption she could make from this was that these pipes collected water from all over to store it below the city.

Once she was certain of her heading, she swam back to the surface. Lifting herself out, Emily let her gown fall around her and then expanded it. The blood shaped itself around her, moving to her back and down to her legs, as it expanded to fill with air.

Then thin tubes ran up her neck and over her mouth like a rebreather.

She'd created this technique a long while ago, and it helped to extend her breath-holding ability by a lot. But it wasn't permanent. Even with the clever use of her abilities, she'd run out of air very quickly. At most, she'd have five full breaths of pure air, and seeing as she would be breathing back into the 'tank' as it were, maybe a few more.

Letting herself drop into the water again saw that she had a lot more buoyancy now. Luckily, she could overcome it by strengthening her hold on the blood and dragging it downward. At the same time, she shot herself towards the tunnel at incredible speeds.

A combination of swimming and blood manipulation allowed her to cut through the water at a speed that would have put Olympic swimmers to shame.

The tunnel appeared in front of her, and she plunged into it, rushing along the walls. Emily also kept an eye out for any dangers she might be running headfirst into. It would just be her luck to run into a school of piranha, or something equally annoying living down here.

Two minutes later, she could still only see a cylindrical tunnel ahead, and she was already releasing her second breath.

Three more, it was turn back now, or things would get very bad, very quickly. But it wasn't like there was anything to return to. Emily ground her teeth and pushed on.

Another breath passed, and nothing changed around her. So she pushed herself harder. Accelerating her speed even further.

She tried to hold off for as long as possible, but eventually she had to take her fourth. Not even ten seconds after she took it, though, she noticed a shimmering up ahead.

The water had begun to warm, and just above her, a ripple shimmered—an air pocket, small and delicate, like a bubble clinging to the ceiling of a submerged tunnel. It was exactly what she needed. Ignoring the sand-choked corridor ahead, Emily surged upward.

Her head broke the surface with a desperate gasp, expelling stale, carbon-laced air and dragging in lungfuls of warm, humid oxygen.

Heat clung to her like a second skin as light stabbed at her eyes. But it wasn't sunlight. She blinked up through a jagged crack in the earth. A fine spray of molten-hot sand kissed her face, blown in from above.

The gap was narrow—barely wide enough to admit light, let alone air—but just beyond it, the storm raged.

It was like nothing she'd seen before. The smog was gone. In its place: embers. Glowing motes floated through the sky like fireflies, drifting on invisible currents of searing heat. It was so intense that even obsidian couldn't form. Above her, the world burned.

Blood points: 673

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