The water felt like it resisted my movement as I dove further and further down. My draconic vision was some help in seeing ahead as the little firelight from the village rapidly faded behind me. I could just make out the end of Griffin's tail as they were dragged down in front of me. I had to brace my wings against the sides of the well, using them to shove myself ahead.

We had to have been at least fifteen feet down by the time a force pushed past me, Brand swimming as fast as she could after the rapidly disappearing Griffin. Her teeth were grit and she struggled in the water, but she kept going on apparently the raw power of determination. I felt the building pressure in my ears as I followed, but soon, Griffin was entirely out of my sight. I could only hope that Brand had a better view.

Then the walls gave way, and I found myself in what was apparently a much wider body of water. I could see small stalagmites reaching up from a rocky floor, and I writhed around, trying to remember which way the surface was. My lungs were burning. I didn't have much longer.

A spark of blue briefly ignited above me, and I immediately launched myself towards it, using my wings as giant fins to propel myself through the cold and murky water. With a loud splash, I broke the surface, landing hard on a rock covered in mushy maroon moss. Clinging to it with my claws, I could only hold my upper half above water, but it was enough to let me take several deep breaths. Arthur stood on a small platform to my left, holding blue fire in his mouth in the same way that Griffin had earlier, while Brand sat on a shallow ledge to my right, trying to catch her breath herself.

I felt my tail lashing in anxiety as I looked down at the water once again. It was too thick with grime to make out any other passages. There wasn't any sign of Griffin in this little cave either. I could feel the corruption here just like it had been in the swamp. Things in the water kept brushing against my feet, and I could see worms, or maybe more centipedes, writhing on the sharp stalactites that hung from the low ceiling. I felt sick to my stomach just breathing the stale air in here.

"Where!?" Brand demanded, as if either of us would have an answer.

«There must be a passage,» Arthur said frantically. «There has to be one, somewhere in here.»

«We don't have much time,» I pointed out. «This place is small, and we're bigger than humans. We'll run out of air fast.»

"But where?" Brand repeated, her eyes moving rapidly over the water's surface as though trying to read a portent in its lethargic splashing.

«I don't know…» I murmured. I desperately wracked my brain for an answer. If only we could see through the water, we'd be able to find a passage more easily! But it was full of this murky decay, a corruption that formed an opaque wall between us and Griffin.

Wait….

This "corruption" was pooled around the village that had entirely been taken by the Scourge. I seemed to recall similar signs of decay and stagnant rot in the Old Quarter, another place heavily infected by the Scourge. What were the chances this "corruption" was really more of a "curse"? It was a tenuous link, but it at least gave me an idea.

«Blast it,» I ordered, nodding at Arthur.

«What?»

«The water, breathe fire at it,» I elaborated. «Just try. It's the only idea I have.»

Arthur gave an unsure look to Brand, but when all she offered in return was a shrug, he did as asked. The glow brightened in his throat before a brief but intense jet of flame turned a patch of water directly into steam. The temperature in the cave soared, but our scales turned the heat away enough to avoid a burn. When the vapour cleared a little, I could see that the murk and grime in the water had retreated int the darkened places between rocks, leaving most of the pool exposed in the blue light of Arthur's flames. It was more than enough to make out a small hole near the bottom, just large enough for us to squeeze through.

Arthur squinted at the water. «How…?»

«The Scourge is driven back by fire!» I said. «Come on, the way is clear!»

Brand beat me to diving back in, but I was right on her tail. I could tell I didn't have nearly as much air this time, after spending a minute in that cave with two other dragons and the steam that had diluted it before we held our breath. I hoped this tunnel was shorter.

The bare rock rapidly cave way to more stone bricks, though these were entirely different in character, much larger and a different colour than the ones that made up the villagers' well. It almost looked like an aqueduct, which had somehow broken into the natural chamber behind us during a cave-in or collapse. The tunnel sloped gradually downwards, but it wasn't long before it levelled out and the stone above us gave way.

I got my feet under me and pushed up through the surface, once again trying to catch my breath. This new chamber was one that was clearly artificial, a large stone box with a wide staircase separating us from the level below. Torches ensconced on the walls burned with a lavender-purple flame that illuminated the room well enough for me to make out the intricate details of the floors and walls. The channel that we had swam through kept going to my left, disappearing behind a wall that had once held a tall, tall door, which was now off its hinges from a cave-in that had evidently happened behind it, blocking off the passage. At the bottom of the stairs was another door, this one made of iron rather than wood, and which seemed intact.

There was a trail of blood on the ground. Looking at it screwed up my stomach with worry, but it didn't seem large enough to be from a dragon's mortal wound. It was thick enough to make out how it led down the stairs and out through the iron door.

Apart from the blood, we were surrounded by death. All of the walls around us had shelves, each one carrying stacks upon stacks of oddly-shaped and oddly-sized bones, picked absolutely clean and bleached white as paper. Every row and column were separated by intricate carvings. Some of them were depicting scenes, but the combination of heavy stylisation and weathering made it difficult to make out much of their meaning. The most common images seemed to depict people being hanged by the feet, and some kind of monster, maybe a dragon, except that it had three heads. Others were almost runic, with a specific triplet pattern growing in frequency as the carvings approached the metal door:

«This is…» Arthur breathed.

«…the catacombs,» I finished. «The Chnawarian Catacombs. The same place I found the gem that changed me.»

We didn't have time to revel in that discovery, though. Brand was already running ahead again, towards the door, and neither of us were about to let her go alone into whatever laid beyond. We rushed down the stairs and flung open the door, grateful that it wasn't sealed in any way.

The room beyond it was a perfect square, one without any shelves of dead. Around the edge of the room, a small channel carried water that had long ceased flowing and filled with decay and generations of insects. The floor went up two short levels near the centre of the room, where a square stone altar sat, covered in discarded snake skins. The only intentional objects placed on the altar were a nearly-melted candle that burned with the same lavender fire as the torches outside, an empty, shallow chalice, stained red at the rim, and an equally shallow silver bowl filled with what looked like fiendish blood, nearly black and distinctly purplish. Inside the bowl rested a strange object. It looked like a helical snail shell, only the way it spiralled into itself made it look like it simply kept going, the curves turning forever. Staring at it made my head feel strange and foggy. An amber ooze seeped from the open bottom, glowing with a faint light that steadfastly refused to be doused by the corrupted blood.

At the base of the altar was Griffin, lying on their side. Water slowly leaked from the corner of their mouth, but they were breathing, if only shallowly. They had a number of chipped, bruised scales, but didn't seem to have been cut anywhere. The blood trail that we followed went past them, climbing up the side of the altar and pooling at the base of the bowl.

"Griffin!" Brand shouted, rushing to their side. She pushed on their chest, forcing a little more water out of them, but not seeming to wake them up just yet. "Move. Please."

«They're unconscious,» I said, coming to their side as well. «But not fatally injured. They might be concussed.»

Brand's shaking did finally seem to draw Griffin up from the darkness of sleep. They slowly blinked their eyes, apparently blinded even by the soft and pale light of the candle, and then broke into a heavy coughing fit.

«Ow,» they mumbled once they managed to cough up enough water that they could draw a full breath. «That hurts.» Their speech was strangely slurred, giving me even more reason to believe that they had taken a heavy blow to the head. I guessed that the mental projection we used to talk was affected differently than physical speech would have been.

Griffin looked around, not saying anything, but wearing an expression of intense confusion. I took the liberty of responding to their unasked questions.

«You almost drowned,» I said. «That spirit dragged you into a ruin underneath the well. You'll be fine, but you need to rest for a little while before we can swim back.»

Griffin seemed crestfallen at the news. They lowered their head to the ground, looking away. «Sorry,» they mumbled.

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"It was a big risk," said Brand. "But I'm happy you're alive."

Arthur stepped up to the altar and snatched the snail shell out of the bowl. As he held it up to the candlelight, it continued to ooze that amber slime, as though there were an infinite source of the stuff inside. It was slow enough that only a tiny bit dripped to the floor, landing just by where my tail was curled on the stone. It gave off some sort of radiance that I couldn't quite describe. It was like I could feel the light itself that it emitted, but it wasn't felt as heat, just…pure light. It was soft and gentle, like a kinder version of the candlelight that lit up the room.

«This can't be what Dulin wanted, right?» said Arthur. «It's just a snail shell.»

I glanced at the slime that had fallen to the floor and stood. «I don't know if it's "just" a snail shell,» I said. «There's something strange about it. Whatever it is, they really seemed to have a liking for snails and slugs at the college. I'm sure that if we bring it back, they'll be happy about it, even if it isn't what was stolen.»

«I guess,» agreed Arthur, and he shoved it into one of his bags.

I stood, lightly shaking myself in an effort to use what little time we had before we needed to hurry back to enjoy being at least a little dry, here out of the rain and out of the water. As I scanned the room, I almost missed the ripples coming from the channel behind the altar. A dark cloth hood began to rise from the surface, utterly silent as the water carried it up. I flared my wings in warning to the others.

«It's here!» I shouted. «We need to go, now!»

Arthur was the first to run, but as he darted for the door, the spirit made a grasping motion with one gauntleted hand, and the door slammed shut in Arthur's face. Through the barred window, we could see foul water rising up on the other side, pressing firmly up against the metal.

Brand snarled as the spirit marched towards her, standing over Griffin protectively. "We must fight!" she roared.

Griffin tried to drag themself away as the spirit took a swing with its long axe. Its strike was slow and ponderous, but when Brand ducked under the blade and allowed it to crash into the floor beside her, it shattered a crater in the stone with its force. Brand jumped, knocking over all the objects on the altar as she pounced on the spirit. Thankfully the candle stayed lit, keeping the room bright although harsh shadows danced over the walls as it rolled away.

Brand locked all four of her talons on the spirit's armour, gripping its pauldrons and greaves as she leaned in close to its face and blasted flames. The thing's hood fell back from the rush of air, revealing five hissing snake heads beneath. Jets of water sprayed from their mouths, clashing against the flames with a burst of ashy steam. Breathing it in made me suddenly horribly sick, and I felt my limbs droop with weakness.

Arthur lunged forward through the steam, striking against the spirit's heads with his claws, but instead of a solid impact, the spirit simply dissolved into mist at his touch, dropping Brand to the ground and throwing Arthur off-balance as his attack went wide. It surged out of the water behind them, leaping forward with a wild roar that sounded more like a maddened scream than a battle cry. Its axe plunged down, slamming its edge into Arthur's back and splitting his scales apart behind his shoulder. He yelped in pain, twisting around to face his attacker, but by then the spirit had already dematerialised again.

«Grrah, how does it keep doing that?» Arthur growled, frantically looking around the room for where it would come from next.

The chamber was far too small for the three of us standing to fight the thing all at the same time, so I retreated to protect Griffin, repeatedly scanning the water myself. The commotion had stirred up the surface of the entire pool, making it impossible to tell if a ripple or wave was a sign of the spirit's re-emergence.

"We can't fight it if it isn't here!" said Brand.

Right as she finished talking, the spirit struck again, this time darting from behind her and swinging its axe upwards, scraping the blade along the stone floor as it did. Brand reacted faster than Arthur had, but the poison in the air was still slowing her down enough that she couldn't entirely dodge the attack. She swung her tail, barely missing bashing the blade aside and instead catching the hit on the edge. Luckily the force was still enough to wrench the weapon out of the spirit's hand, sending it clattering to the side where it disintegrated into black sludge.

«Hah!» Arthur shouted smugly.

The spirit gave him just enough time to revel in having the upper hand before it roared again and threw its arms out to its sides, flinging the gauntlets off and revealing the two giant snake heads underneath. Arthur's grin promptly vanished as the two heads began lunging, one at him and the other at Brand. Both of them had to frantically backpedal to avoid getting bitten.

Without the room to properly get involved, I turned my mind to strategy while the monster was occupied. They couldn't strike it directly, but they had almost hurt it when….

«Fire!» I shouted. «It didn't dodge the fire!»

Brand was quick to adapt, ducking under the snapping snake head before blasting its underside with a jet of orange flame. The spirit let out an echoing hiss-scream, and both extended heads writhed in pain, giving Arthur enough time to catch his breath and follow up with his own blue fire. The spirit's advance turned into a fleeing sprint as it dashed away from its targets and jumped into the water.

I glanced at the door, but the water was still firmly pressed against it. «Damn,» I muttered. «I think we need to kill it. Can you kill a spirit?»

«No…» murmured Griffin.

«Great,» I said, running through the list of options in my mind. «Can we exorcise it then? Is that possible?»

«No, I meant…I mean…» Griffin struggled. «Something's wrong. With it, the spirit. When it grabbed me, it sounded like it was crying.»

«Crying?» said Arthur.

«Weeping,» Griffin clarified. «It…I felt like it was sorry.»

Sorry? What in the Pits did that mean? Was it under someone's control? Or maybe…something's control. I looked at the water around us, then at the spilled blood from the bowl. This place was suffering from the same corruption as the cave under the well, and the Witchweald above that. I had no idea if spirits could get the Scourge, but that corruption was clearly linked to it somehow. Which meant we might be able to purge it in the same way we cleansed some of the water above. If only I could—

The spirit lunged up out of the water in front of me, splashing droplets that stung like acid all over my chest and face. Its gauntlets were back on but its axe was nowhere in sight as it reached out and grabbed hold of me by the throat. It squeezed, and I felt my air close off. I distantly heard the others scream, but my brain started going fuzzy fast.

I need that fire! I called out in my head, hoping the Fiend could hear me. I need it to stay alive! Nothing. No response, and I was starting to feel like even if it did come, I wouldn't be able to breathe fire anyway, choking to death as I was. Damn it all! Why can't it just come when called? Apparently I can't even trust the thing to act in SELF-PRESERVATION!

My thoughts turned into a roar, and between slow blinks in and out of darkness, I saw a light blossom in front of me. Sunset-coloured flames spilled out from my breathless mouth, washing over the spirit's heads and forcing them away. Rather than diving back into the water, it turned its attention to Brand and Arthur, summoning its poleaxe back into its hands.

I picked myself up from where the spirit had dropped me, coughing and letting out small puffs of flame with each breath. I nearly choked again when I saw the fire. I was…still in control. I couldn't feel the Fiend's presence at all, except maybe as an ember of rage in my chest that burned at how this spirit had been turned against itself in its corruption. I felt the rage, but it felt like my emotion, rather than something that was injected into my brain.

«Your tail…!» Griffin whispered, finally getting to their feet and backing a little bit away from me.

I swept it forward to get a good look at it. Where my scales were raised to allow the small needles to poke through, dark orange, fuchsia, and violet flames burned, seemingly escaping right out of my skin. It didn't hurt, but I could feel the warmth of the fire. Yet I hadn't broken a Lock; this change had happened all on its own.

Arthur yelped in pain again at the axe being driven into his flank, and I didn't linger on what had happened any longer. I stood tall, took a deep breath, and exhaled directly at the water in the pool.

At first the murk retreated from the flames, fading away further down the channel, but as I marched forward, tracing its path along the edge of the room, it began to let out a squealing sound as it was expunged, disappearing entirely from the polluted water. The spirit screamed and fell to the ground, contorting in apparent pain. I ignored the sounds as best I could and kept going, and once the thing was at least temporarily out of the fight, Brand and Arthur turned what remained of their own flame breath on and began to bathe the rest of the room in fire, burning away the blood and closing in on the corrupted water with me.

The water boiled and raged, seeming angry at our affront, but Arthur and I closed in on the last bit of decay from both sides. With a tiny scream and a pop, the last of it burst like a heavy bubble under the surface, the purplish-red colour dissolving into nothingness, leaving behind pure, perfectly clear water as the only thing filling the channel.

The spirit stopped making noises then. The four of us all stared at where it laid, waiting for whatever change was happening to it to finish. Its limbs almost seemed to retract, the gauntlets and greaves of its armour falling to the ground and dissolving into mist, leaving only the rotund torso plates. Those too then dispersed in the air, revealing the spirit inside.

It was no longer a humanoid shape with serpents for each limb. It was an ordinary-looking snake, save for its size and a second head that was attached to the end of its tail. It was curled up in a ball half the height of a human inside the armour, but it swiftly unbound its pitch black coils and slithered up on top of the altar, the head on its tail looking around with pale orange eyes, as though trying to remember where it was. Once it arrived on its perch, it bent so that both heads were facing us, and it spoke.

"I am Nosco, / I am Nul," both heads said, each speaking different words at the exact same time. "Thank you / You must be proud / for purging the sickness in me. / of your deeds here beneath the earth."

My head spun trying to listen to both heads at the same time. It took a second to parse which words belonged in which sentence. «Of course,» I said. «We're knights. It's our duty to aid people in situations like this.»

«And we had to get our friend back,» Arthur added.

"Regardless of your reasons, / On the matter of your friend," Nosco-Nul said, "you have struck against the vicious Curse of Impurity. / I am compelled to offer aid for the harm I caused, right mind or no. / This is not a feat that should go unrewarded. / You must wish to return to the surface?"

I blinked. The sound was cacophonous, but at the very least the spirit didn't seem to notice how much difficulty I was having understanding it. «We'd like to go back to the surface, yes,» I said. «But if you're offering a reward, I think we would be very interested in knowledge.» I nudged Arthur, and he pulled the snail shell from his bag. «The villagers that served you, we think they stole this shell from Lynnmore College. Do you know what it is?»

The first head slithered forward to look more closely at the shell, while the other didn't seem fazed by us presenting it at all. "My recollections of the time I spent corrupted are hazy, / I would be happy to return you to the surface, as I have business there as well. / but I remember them telling me of a child of the deeper realms. / There are payments to exact from those who have done me wrong. / An augur. Or a window, perhaps, something to grant insight. / But I can not stay in this place any longer, if I wish to maintain my purity. / I wish I could offer you more, but the scholars themselves likely know more truth than me. / We may meet again, if time permits."

«The scholars…» I repeated, sorting all that information in my head. «Maybe we can ask them once they've gotten the Pure Serpent back.» I nodded, putting the shell back in Arthur's bag. «Nosco-Nul, thank you for your help. It's…extremely heartening to know that we could save you, rather than needing to put you down.»

The snake began to writhe on the altar. The pure water's in the room's channel roiled and splashed, beginning to flood the chamber. We all looked down at our feet, a little hesitant all of a sudden at the spirit's intentions.

"I am perhaps easier to cleanse than others, / This is where we part ways, for now," it said. "Please do not pin your hopes on saving everyone. That is a fool's errand. / Goodbye! May clear waters and starry skies guide your way!"

The spirit suddenly spun in a circle, both of its heads biting onto the other one's neck as it slipped off the altar and into the water, where it vanished. As it disappeared, the water surged with a roaring crash, and shoved us out of the chamber.

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