The writhing Devouring Coil froze for an unnatural moment. Then, it turned on itself until its tapered head faced Logan's ledge.

Logan's shoulder's locked up. Somehow he doubted it was mere coincidence the Coil targeted on his location.

New quest available! You are an opposition to another entity's goals. Draconic aura has revealed your position to the Devouring Coil, and it will hunt you to no end until it has Consumed you completely and eliminated the threat. Objective: Survive Accept? YES/YES

Quest accepted!

The Coil shrieked and threaded in a rapid snakelike zigzag toward Logan.

"Run!"

Mishki clambered over the broken terrain and Logan followed close behind. They reached a shadowed overhang, and just as Logan ducked in, the goble vanished from view, somehow continuing ahead, even as his form melted into shadow.

"Mishki? Mishki!"

"Over here," the goble shouted, from beyond the overhang's shadow. He wrung his hands. "I'm sorry, that's my Shadow Slink. It's passive and kicks in while fighting or… scared." Shame bathed the goble's face.

The ground shook as the Coil's body rammed into the terrain Logan had just leaped off. "Got it. You go on, I'll keep up." Logan had the Void affinity again, and that also meant he had Unrelenting Hunt.

Mishki nodded and scrambled further away. At that moment, though, a blast of searing sunlight lanced the side of the Devouring Coil.

In the brief moment Logan's and Cassandra's eyes met, they shared a smile. Alden, too, conjured an icy lance, striking the scaled armor on the Coil's body.

Moments after, though, a flare of ice and light pulsed from the Devouring Coil's body and what looked like twin beams of blue and golden arcing lightning struck both mages. They screamed.

"It drained a level of my skill!" shouted Cassandra.

"Mine too!"

Logan thought the Coil was smiling at them, a fleeting expression before it snapped its head in his direction.

"Logan," shouted Senna. "Get that poison to the furnace!"

The thing thrashed and the rest of Logan's team lurched as the slab holding them sank thirty feet, catching on a crag that prevented them from plunging completely into darkness. War pincer raptors didn't waste time with the opening, darting in toward them. But that meant the raptors weren't focused on him.

The Coil was, though.

Logan took a deep breath. He could almost see the Coil squinting at his bag, which held the dragon egg.

Stifling a groan, Logan dashed away.

Null Pulse!

Unrelenting Hunt!

Patches of upset rubble caught Logan's eyes in sporadic bursts. The disturbed angles of their fallen path directed him, and whenever Mishki emerged from shadow, Logan glimpsed the goble before he vanished beneath the next overhang.

Every time Logan leaped away from the Devouring Coil, though, it was right behind him, smashing into the stone with violent crashes.

Null Pulse!

Null Pulse!

The impact of each pursuit shook the terrain underfoot.

He dove into a crevice, following Mishki's trail through a narrow tunnel, then burst out into a side path running parallel to the Coil's rampage, shadows cloaking every jagged step. Mishki had already scrabbled to the next hidden patch, but Logan peeked from the stony cover to see what the monstrosity was doing.

For a breath, the Coil slowed, its head swaying.

It shouldn't be able to see me in here. Once it veered away, he would continue following Mishki's path.

But then the Coil's gaze snapped directly to him.

…How?

Stone flew as it hurled itself toward him, smashing through the stone overhangs.

Null Pulse!

Logan was wasting mana with no perceivable advantages. He had already burned 20% of his total pool, and he was nowhere near close to evading the Devouring Coil's attention.

He slammed into something in the dark, which earned a sharp yelp. Not something, but someone.

"Mishki?"

"Yes… I'm sorry Logan. If we can't conceal ourselves, we're not making it into the castle."

Logan refused to accept that. There had to be something he was missing.

Meditate!

He had a sanctioned quest objective. To survive. As obvious as that was, the System was giving it to him. He reopened his questboard and scanned the details. The Coil was locking onto him because… because of the draconic aura.

He had thought the Coil had lost interest in the team because it wanted him. But he was wrong.

Logan wasn't the threat the Coil wanted to eliminate. It was the egg.

His bag couldn't hide it from the monstrous thing, but he wouldn't just throw it away into the bottomless pit. The chasm was the Coil's home and it would have no problem finding the egg there. And abandoning it was unthinkable.

But he had a better hiding spot than the gear pack or even the entire abyss.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Logan unshouldered his bag and pulled out the egg. It pulsed faintly in his palm.

Then he opened his interdimensional storage ripple.

Mishki blinked. "Whoa."

"Yeah." Logan slid the egg inside, letting the ripple seal behind it.

The Coil paused. Its head tilted. Then it writhed with fury, swiping at the air like it had lost a scent.

Logan grinned. "Which way now?"

They crept forward again, Mishki leading. Logan stuck to regular climbing, using Null Pulse only to cover the stretches that were too far. Every time he used Null Pulse, he was mindful of loose pebbles and blasted them with ice before they could fall and betray his position.

Null Pulse is level 24!

CryoPyre is level… 17!

Climbing is level… 31!

Stealth is level… 18!

At one patch, though, when Logan sank his gauntlet into the stone on his left, he recognized the gritty texture of porous stone crumbling underneath his grip.

Oh no…

A segment of the wall broke away, revealing a deep tunnel, illuminated by red light. If he had thought he had seen a colony of torch slugs before, this was a civilization.

And at their front, one massive slug undulated.

Name: Infernal Slug Mother (Corrupted) Type: Invertebrate Level: 25 Health: 102/102 Mana: 157/157 Lore: Meet the queen of flaming bile! She produces a massive colony, birthing one slug every thirty seconds. Unlike her children, she has full motor control and aim and her ooze can deteriorate stone. This creature has been corrupted and imbues her burning goop with the Void affinity. Strength: Acid-infused flame attacks Weakness: Thermal fluctuation

Logan had beaten his initial trial without ever having to confront this creature, and now she was a monstrous hybrid. She crawled upside down across the ceiling, turning slowly. Her face, or what passed for one, angled straight at him.

Then she dropped.

The entire tunnel shook as her bulk slammed down and slugs scattered in all directions. But in the moment she fell, Logan spotted her underbelly. He had found that suctioning cavity to be a weakness on her children, and hers was even larger than the standard torch slugs'.

Logan leaped back, hands already glowing.

CryoPyre!

Whorls of fire mana flew into his forearms and then inverted within him before erupting from his palm in a blast of bone-white frost. The red glow vanished in an instant. The entire tunnel dimmed as icy vapor rolled through the chamber.

Critical hit!

The slug mother convulsed, looking like an amorphous blob trying to shape itself into a thirty-pointed star. Smaller slugs ignited and popped like blisters in the sudden cold.

Notifications flooded Logan's vision. Most were worthless, from the low-leveled slugs.

"Well that was surprisingly easy." He supposed she had only been a boss for his initial trial. And he had come quite a ways since then.

Still, the experience from her alone was enough to bump him to level 15, but the sound had also drawn the Coil's attention. She was close enough he could loot her, even though the only contents on her corpse were a few handfuls of themal-insulating slug goop. Right after snagging it, he scrambled after Mishki, emerging from the tunnel mouthin back into the open cavern. They darted into the nearest patch of shadow beneath a crumbling overhang.

As the ancient serpent's tongue flicked, inspecting the corpse-ridden torch slug chamber, Logan and Mishki reached a ledge overlooking a ruined entry tunnel and Mishki stopped cold. They stood at the edge of a precipice, the waterfall cascading down like a scattered mockery of the beam of light blasting down from the cavernous ceiling.

"What is it?" Logan asked.

"That was our path into the castle. The one we were supposed to take."

Logan groaned. "Come on, there's got to be another way in."

Mishki paused, and his brow furrowed. "There's only one hall leading to the furnace room, and this was the simplest way to it. We would have to backtrack directly underneath the Coil to slip in at the other end."

Logan glanced behind where the Devouring Coil slithered, its nostrils flaring. That wasn't an option. He wasn't looking forward to being the massive monster's dinner.

"Unless," Mishki said, trailing off.

Logan had to coax him into continuing, so lost in thought was the goble.

Mishki turned to the condensed stream of mana.

"Unless… those," he said, pointing to three gaping holes, cut neatly and symmetrically into the stone ceiling around the light's origin, almost like a radiation warning sign. "Old debris chutes directly into the furnace room. But they just drop straight into the abyss."

Logan's eyes flitted from the thick pillar of illuminated mana to the dark chutes. He had seen people moving above the beam before. From what little he could see into the chutes at this angle, he estimated the stone to be at least five feet thick.

The furnace's light glinted off the cascading waterfall, but did little to shine up into the holes.

Access chutes.

Waterfall.

"Mishki, you're brilliant. Follow me."

As quietly as possible, Logan and Mishki raced along the sheer cliff to a jutting rock, the nearest point to the waterfall along the winding ledge. Logan only had 40% mana remaining, but exposed as they were, they didn't have time to spare for regen. He popped open one of his mana potions, but Mana was his largest vital pool and the lesser potion barely nudged the bar. And he didn't have time to wait for his potion cooldown.

"Mishki, I'm gonna have to carry you. Hold tight."

Logan focused on the falling torrent.

Aetherlens!

Meditate!

CryoPyre!

Fire mana surged around his forearm, sank into his wrists, and shot out of his palms as blistering blue-white ice. Logan shoved the mana outward and the freezing blast rocketed onward to where it hit the waterfall.

A horizontal segment froze into a solid block.

Perfect!

It was already falling, though.

Null Pulse!

Logan surged upward, Mishki tucked under one arm as his reinforced gauntlet sank into the icy section. Though his shoulder ached from supporting his weight on one arm, the momentum of his jump helped him get a grip by jamming his toes into icy crannies. He wasn't trying to stand on them; just create a climbable sequence.

CryoPyre!

Null Pulse!

It was tricky to get the angle just right, but he surprised himself when he discovered he could shoot the frost from his chest and not just his occupied hands. Another platform appeared higher up.

He repeated the upward climb. Over and over. Each leap drained him, especially with Meditate actively consuming more mana to give him the time to focus.

The ascent was excruciatingly slow. He pumped extra mana into every movement to climb faster than the ice was falling. He was creating the icy platforms midair to maximize his ascent.

50 mana.

40 mana.

The ice began to thin. The current platform cracked under his weight.

This next surge would be his last.

Null Pulse!

He funneled the last ounces of his mana into the lunge and vaulted them upward.

They soared through the chute, the echoing vastness of the cavern collapsing into a sharp, rushing whoomp as the soundscape narrowed, funneling around them like wind through a pipe. In a blur of fifteen feet, they slammed into something hard.

For a moment Logan feared they had struck the chute's side and would slide into endless darkness, but it was the ceiling of the furnace room they hit. They landed with a hard smack against a stone floor.

Sharpshooter is level 8! … Sharpshooter is level 12!

Pain Resistance is level 37! Pain Resistance is level 38!

Mishki sat up, dazed. He recovered in mere moments with an excited gasp.

"Here! The aerudine is here!"

He ran forward, dragging his body three feet before he was fully standing, and then sprinted toward a massive metal dome at the center of the chamber, its open archway humming with energy.

At least, he tried to. Mere moments after he stood, he immediately collapsed. His HUD showed mana and stamina both at zero. He should have known just from the splitting migraine battering his skull.

It was a few long seconds before he could right himself and steady his wobbling legs.

When he did, he limped a few feet forward. A majestic, though stooped, figure was bent over a perfectly round metal ball in the open chamber before Mishki. Crackling energy sparked from its body to extending nodes surrounding the sphere as if Logan had found himself in a futuristic laboratory from a 1920s film.

"You're the aerudine," Logan said with breathless awe.

But it looked sad.

And Mishki wasn't moving. Instead, the goble trembled and from the profile view Logan had, he could only see the whites of Mishki's eyes. He had seen that look in the Cave of Cursed Music when the gobles appeared to have tapped into their shared communications.

Before the aerudine could respond, another goble, a hand taller than Mishki, stepped from behind the winged silhouette, a gnarled staff in its hand with polished black wood curling around a foggy purple gem.

"And you," said the goble with the cruel grin, "must have a certain egg I've been looking for."

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