“On your left,” I said through party interface.

  I tore upward through the earth a heartbeat later, erupting into the open air in a spray of shattered stone and corrupted soil. My knives were already moving before my feet cleared the ground. I flung them in a wide arc, the blades catching the light as they scattered like a metallic storm.

  Sirius reacted instantly.

  A spear surged from the ground beneath his hand, stone and aether fusing as he hurled it forward. It struck the malformed bear nidus square in the right leg, pinning it to the parasitical ground with a wet, cracking sound. Vines exploded upward around the creature, wrapping its bulk and dragging it downward as it roared.

  Sirius sprinted across the corrupted terrain, boots barely slowing as he crossed growth that would have swallowed most people whole. He slammed his leg into the earth mid-stride and launched a stone pillar upward, using it as a vault point. He twisted in the air and drove his second spear down into the creature’s chest, punching straight through layers of flesh and parasitic mass until it struck the core where a heart should have been.

  The bear shuddered once.

  Then it collapsed inward, its body splitting as maggots began to spill from the wound in writhing waves.

  Sirius was already gone, landing and rolling clear as the creature died.

  I hit the ground hard and let my aura roll outward.

  Gravitational Entropy surged from me in a controlled pulse, a suffocating pressure that crushed and unraveled the fungal landscape in a fifteen-foot radius. The parasitic growth shriveled and cracked, the biomass losing cohesion as the field disrupted its regeneration.

  nidus that ran into it stumbled.

  Some froze momentarily, their bodies seizing as regenerative fungus faltered. Others screamed as their flesh began to decay instead of healing.

  That was my opening.

  My knives flew again.

  Each strike carved glowing scars across their bodies. The marks stacked rapidly, entropy eating into their regenerative systems until growth reversed direction. Flesh sloughed away. Biomass collapsed. In several cases, their own regeneration turned violent, rupturing them from the inside.

  Cores dropped free as the parasitical structures that housed them failed.

  They were finished off quickly.

  Dusk was everywhere beneath us.

  She moved through the earth like a living earthquake, her passage visible only by the distortion of the ground before she erupted again. Each emergence sent a shockwave rippling outward, launching stone, bone, and corrupted debris through tightly packed enemies.

  Her claws tore through Asharkith forms with brutal efficiency. Her teeth crushed cores with ease. When she breathed out her anti aetheric breath washed over the battlefield, coating sections of land in a dull, deadened sheen for short periods of time. nidus that tried to cross those areas faltered; their bodies unable to draw the aether needed to sustain themselves.

  Above us, oreowls streaked through the sky.

  Metallic wings flashed as they intercepted aerial nidus, tearing them apart in bursts of feathers, blood, and burning light. I caught glimpses of Wing weaving between them, his twin blades tracing lethal arcs as he danced through the air with impossible grace.

  It was controlled chaos.

  And we were gaining ground.

  We made steady progress through the infected empire, carving a path through land that had long since stopped belonging to this world. The parasitical growth resisted us constantly. Tendrils reached for ankles. Spore clouds drifted through the air. Entire stretches of terrain tried to collapse beneath our feet.

  But we pushed forward.

  The Scouts confirmed what we had suspected.

  During the first week, resistance had been light. The Asharkith had committed nearly everything to the siege of Aurelith, believing the capital to be the final threat worth crushing.

  That changed when we broke through their outer defensive layers on the second day.

  After that, forces began diverting starting with their fastest to pursue us.

  Aerial variants that harried our flanks. All kinds of quadruped-like nidus that chased us relentlessly, forcing constant movement and rotation of our rear guard. We encountered new support forms as well. Creatures designed solely to strengthen the parasitical landscape, pumping aether and biomass into the ground to accelerate its growth.

  Those died easily, but clearly were helping to change the landscape even more in the Asharkith’s favor.

  By the start of the second week, the pressure had doubled.

  nidus began converging on us from two directions. Fresh forces sent from the fortress ahead. Fast remnants peeling away from the capital siege to pursue us from behind.

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  We were fighting a moving two front battle across cursed landscape.

  Every mile forward cost blood and stamina. Every night was spent in short, restless shifts, surrounded by land that wanted us dead.

  And still, we advanced.

  Because if we stopped, there would be nothing left behind us to save.

  —

  The land began to change gradually around us.

  At first, the parasitical growth thickened. The ground grew denser beneath my feet, harder and reinforced. The tremor patterns beneath the soil shifted as well, no longer chaotic but organized. Biomass flowed with purpose here, drawn inward along unseen channels like veins feeding a heart.

  Something ahead was coordinating everything.

  We slowed our pace.

  Scouts peeled outward, moving in a wide arc, careful to avoid detection where possible. Even the oreowls overhead climbed higher, their formations tightening as if instinct alone told them not to fly this way.

  Then the air changed.

  The oppressive fungal aura thickened until breathing felt like pushing against wet cloth. Even solar light struggled here, its warmth muted, dulled by layers of drifting spores that filtered the sky into a sickly gray.

  Thankfully, my aura granted me some reprieve.

  Ahead there was a mass.

  A structure so saturated with aether and biomass that the ground around it bowed inward.

  Then there was forest of parasitic growth that thinned abruptly, falling away into a wide basin of blackened earth and hardened fungal stone. At its center rose the fortress.

  Clearly it was grown around the original dungeon structure.

  Layer upon layer of ribbed walls curved upward in overlapping arcs, fused bone, chitin, and stone woven together into something that resembled both a citadel and a living organism. Massive support spines drove deep into the ground, anchoring it against collapse while feeding it a constant flow of matter.

  Veins of faintly glowing biomass pulsed across its surface in slow, synchronized rhythms.

  This was the Asharkith stronghold we had come for.

  My tremor sense painted it all in horrifying clarity.

  Cores nested throughout the outer layers. Reinforcement nodes buried beneath the walls. Regenerative clusters woven so deeply into the structure that destroying them would be arduous.

  I swallowed.

  “This looks fun,” I said quietly through party communication.

  Sirius did not respond immediately.

  When he did, his voice was sarcastic, but tight. “It would have been too easy if it was just more of the same.”

  Movement rippled across the fortress surface.

  Hatches open along the walls, and nidus poured out in controlled waves. Every kind of demented form imaginable strode along the outer ridges. Aerial variants clung to spines and ledges before launching into the air in circling patrols.

  Asher stepped forward; his eyes locked on the structure. The oreowls shifted above him, wings flexing, their metallic feathers catching what little clean light remained.

  “They should all die if we can destroy the dungeon cores,” he said. “We give this everything we have. Alpha team, move. Everyone else, help clear us a path to the dungeon gate. Then survive as long as you can.”

  No one hesitated.

  Alpha team broke from the formation immediately.

  The five members of the Hand moved like weapons being drawn. Solar took point, his shield igniting with a controlled radiance that pushed back the fungal haze with every step. Hunter and his wolves fanned wide, the pack already sprinting ahead, axes flashing as the first fungal quadruped forms rushed to meet them. Wing lifted into the air in a single smooth motion, blades catching light as he vanished into the swarm above.

  Wraith was simply gone.

  One moment he stood at the edge of the formation, scythe resting against his shoulder. The next, his presence dissolved into the shadows cast by the fortress walls, reappearing seconds later deep within the enemy lines as nidus fell apart around him.

  Viper flowed forward beside them, whips snapping out in precise arcs. Wherever the barbed tips struck, nidus spasmed and collapsed, their movements slowing as venom spread through their biomass.

  Asher raised his bow.

  The first arrow split in midair into a storm of razor-edged fragments, each one guided by subtle shifts of his aether. Aerial nidus dropped in burning spirals as oreowls dove alongside the barrage, tearing through the sky in disciplined formations.

  I followed behind Solar, Dusk already submerging beneath us.

  The ground erupted ahead as she burst free, shockwaves ripping through tightly packed nidus and hurling bodies into the air. Her anti-aetheric breath washed over the soil in a wide arc, leaving scorched, dead zones that the parasitical growth recoiled from instinctively.

  The ground around me died as my entropy field did its work.

  Fungal structures collapsed into brittle ash. Regenerative nodes flickered and failed. nidus charging into the field staggered as Scar spread across their bodies, their regeneration turning inward and devouring them from the inside.

  “Almost there,” I said through party chat.

  “Good luck,” Sirius replied from the rear lines. I could feel the strain in his voice even through the link.

  Solar slammed his shield into the ground.

  A wave of light rolled outward, carving a narrow path straight through the fortress gate. For the first time, the structure reacted violently. Veins along its surface flared bright, twitching and pulsating like the heartbeat of some grotesque organism. The ground split as new nidus surged forward in defensive waves, their malformed limbs clawing at everything in their path.

  It was too late.

  Hunter and his wolves hit the breach at full speed, axes swinging in wide arcs. Feline nidus collapsed under the pack’s coordinated strikes, their unnatural forms tearing apart in a spray of biomass. Wing descended from above like a shard of sunlight, spinning gracefully through the air. His thin swords found gaps between the creatures, slicing clean through wings and claws before he lifted and darted into the sky again.

  Viper struck beside them, both whips lashing out in perfect rhythm. One snapped across a pair of reptilian nidus, pulling them into one another before they crumpled. His movements were fluid, predatory, and lethal, leaving death in his wake.

  We pushed forward, forcing our way through the small gap Solar made. Behind us, the parasitical biomass surged sealing the hole he made which locked us inside the fortress. Every inch was fought for with blades, claws, and aetheric power until the dungeon gate itself loomed in front of us.

  It was like a wound torn into another world. A massive opening rimmed with hardened cartilage and bone, pulsating like the breath of some alien creature. The air inside shimmered with a subtle, oppressive aether, thick and alive with movement.

  We converged at the edge together, shoulders almost touching, before stepping inside in rapid succession.

  The first thing I noticed was the silence.

  It took a moment for my tremor sense to adjust to the abrupt change… the familiar hum of parasitical growth was there, but the cores — the very ones we had destroyed in past dungeons to trigger collapse — were not in the entrance chamber.

  “They’re not here,” I muttered, scanning the room. “I can’t sense them. We’ll have to navigate the dungeon to find the cores.”

  Asher’s eyes narrowed. “I suspected as much. We know from previous attempts that this will function as a normal multi-chambered dungeon, but that the Asharkith control it in some form, so we need to be ready for anything.”

  As he finished speaking, my interfaced flashed with my first new quest since the completion of the last one.

  New Quest:

  Successfully destroy the five cores within the Asharkith Dungeon before your allies perish outside. Approximately twenty-four hours until quest is failed.

  I shared this information with everyone, before we quickly moved to the first chamber in an unknown dungeon landscape.