Deepholm.

  The Great Foundry.

  After a few hours of agonising deliberation, Gwen learned that the Dwarves also indulged in mental gymnastics like Theseus's Paradox.

  The story goes that Haj-Zül Brumdahr, the artificer of the Seven Ancestors, had made a Thinking Engine that aided his calculations for constructing the “Dyson Sphere” around the previously discovered Singularity. Unfortunately, before the Founding, the material science of N?rn-Zur, the alchemist, was not yet completed. So, the Thinking Engine suffered an ongoing series of catastrophic failures, from explosions to implosions to argumentative Dwarves. Over the next few centuries, Haj-Zül replaced his Thinking Engine so often that by the time the Odror Bezmadan was completed and Deepholm began its expansion from the Singularity; no one could verify its original components. Likewise, after Haj-Zül’s passing, the Deepdowners who prayed to keep the Engine operative had to constantly replace the parts worn, lost, damaged or beyond the younger generations' ken.

  Some six-seven thousand years later, there wasn’t a single original component visible from the Chamber of Cognition—but the Thinking Engine was nonetheless Haj-Zül’s original Engine.

  QED, as the spokespersons for Deepholm in the absence of greater, more senior representatives, Hilda concluded that everything from the Heart Forge to the Thinking Engine should be replaceable—so long as they had the original schematics. As for preserving historical validity—that would be her albatross to bear and for the surviving generations to judge.

  The problem then lay with the latter—how to enact the perfect preservation of the Hall of Artificers, the Hall of the Ancestors, and the Deep Library at the heart of Deepholm.

  The obvious answer was to loot the places, though Hilda had expressed with absolute certainty that only the Deepdowner caretaker of each place knew where the deepest secrets of their people were stowed. Ergo, looting was far less desirable than reoccupying them and manually sealing each chamber from within, leaving a well-provisioned contingent of Golems and Engineseers to wait out the results of Gwen’s plan.

  For Gwen, what her Dwarves’ requests meant was that on her merry way to Crocodile Dundee the Big D, a covert op would have to be carried out by the Dwarves and her Rat-kin to enter and seal these zones of cultural interest—while hoping that they were of no interest to Dhànthárian’s kin—and that the infested Dwarves hadn’t already erased everything.

  “Which is why we shall not speak of debts, not yet,” Gwen stopped the two Deepdowners before they could offer up their Deepdowner Suits as collateral. “If we all survive this, we’ll hash something out.”

  “Aye, if you wish,” Hilda dropped the uncomfortable subject, a reprieve Axehoff gladly accepted. Unlike the orthodox Deepdowner, the Murk-minted Engineseer possessed a far more liberal understanding of what would make Gwen happy. For the Regent, it was just as she had already told them: trade routes, exclusive items, favourable barters and general service of Dwarven technology for her endless constructions was already payment enough. For Hilda, however, a favour such as the return of their home was more metaphysical than HDMs and minerals and, thus, required payment in kind.

  With their general strategy hashed out, Gwen gathered Alex, Lulan, Strun and their officer corps to plot their next few weeks.

  “Your Paleness, If you move the Orbital Leviathan Cannon,” Lulan interceded with two cringe-worthy phrases which Richard had been fomenting among the ranks. “The Russians will make their move.”

  “I’d like to see them try,” Slylth reminded them of the layers of contingencies in place. “That’s assuming we’re not double-crossed.”

  “Natalia says that Essence deliveries to our Eastern ally remain uninterrupted and that their confidence only grows with the false information we’re feeding them,” Lulan assured her Paleness. “Richard has alternative contingencies planned out with Lady Ravenport, with assistance from the Militant Factions.”

  “He does?” Gwen felt genuinely surprised. “He only mentioned that they were in negotiations.”

  “We’ve received assurances from Lord Holland weeks ago, actually,” Lulan gave her a strange smile. “Richard said that we shouldn’t use that favour if we don’t need to, lest you had to pay it back by way of your dexterous lips.”

  Gwen tilted her head and channelled her most judgemental glare.

  Lulan shrunk back while Slylth grumbled something dangerous and Draconic under his breath.

  “There’s no need for that,” the Red Dragon puffed out his chest, heating the air. “I can take care of it. And if I lose a wing or two, Mother will take care of it.”

  Gwen felt her temples throb. “Thank you, Alex,” she spoke as she tapped the Dragon’s shoulder. “But please don’t defend my property with your true body. I can afford a dinner or two with Thomas, but repaying the Summer Queen for mangling her son’s holy appendages is a whole other matter.”

  “Oh, you can repay…” Slylth coughed, then remained silent when Gwen’s glare grew more intense.

  “So,” she returned the matter to its core subject. “Two weeks for the Core to arrive?”

  “Three weeks for the rune setting to be completed,” Axehoff added to her estimate. “We can rush, though most of us would be away on expedition.”

  “True,” Gwen nodded. “Strun, how's the World Tree’s expansion going?”

  Gwen referred to the phenomenon of her World Tree’s roots finding their way into the low-way, following wherever she ventured. While she was in Shalkar, Sanari had noted the proliferation of an inter-planar plant connected to her Astral Body and its conscious desire to be near its host. However, it was only now, far from home, that the tree’s growth had notably accelerated its reach. Gwen’s question was for her Commander, for the Rat-kin was linked to her Astral Soul, and they could both keenly feel the Tree’s proximity.

  That, and the only way to power the Orbital Leviathan Cannon, was through the Leviathan Core. And the best way to charge the Leviathan Core without astronomical volumes of HDMs was the mana provided by her World Tree.

  “Its growth isn’t as rapid as the Leviathan Cannon transit,” Strun reported expertly. “We will need Lady Sanari to aide us on this.”

  “Well, tell her we need power down here, but don’t frame any requests as related to the subjugation of Dhànthárian. Tryfan likes its neutral facade and won’t respond if we’re too explicit in our purpose.”

  “Of course, you Paleness,” Strun made a half-bow with a hand touching his heart. “It will be done.”

  “Hilda, your forces, when will they be ready?” She asked the two Dwarves furiously working on data slates while pinpointing locations on the transmuted sand-sphere map of Deepholm.

  “We can leave now, but please let us finish the beachhead fortifications inside the Grand Forge,” the Deepdowner explained. “We’ll be able to fabricate as much equipment as we need once it's done, meaning so long as we’re not overrun…”

  “Gotcha,” Gwen needed no explanation. The Dwarves were few compared to Humans, but they had their way of attrition warfare. “Lord Urmrak?”

  “Myself and my fellows will enter the Heart Forge at the Core of the Singularity, if indeed we may be delivered,” the Balefire announced its role, setting off many warnings on Gwen’s Da-peng suit. “There, we shall remain, preventing the entry of anything and any moisture, until we are extinguished or Deepholm is freed.”

  “Good man,” Gwen tilted her upper body to communicate her respect. In their earlier discussion, the Balefire had explained that the most dangerous and uncertain part of the operation was the space near the Singularity.

  Firstly, the gravity inside Odror Bezmadan, the “Core”, was multitudes that of the surface-like gravity they presently enjoyed. This was why only Deepdowners ventured to such depth in their specialised suits, and Balefires were its main custodians. Secondly, any Dwarf who ventured into the Singularity would likely be the last to be liberated, and the location naturally meant no food nor water could be resupplied.

  Lastly, their final quandary was where all the city's upper echelons had gone. As much as Hilda and Axehoff knew about their kind, they could not discern where tens of thousands of infected Dwarves would venture, especially since the exodus took place sporadically over decades.

  “Alright, people,” Gwen clapped her hands, satisfied that they all had their orders, herself included. “Let’s get to it!”

  Strun Jildam, Commander of her Paleness’ armies, wiped a spot of “rain” from his shoulder plates. The source of the liquid was from the ceiling of the enormous spherical cavern that housed the Dwarven city, and from its consistency, he discerned it to be akin to mineral oil.

  His location, and that of his platoon of Stalkers, was what Dwarves designated as Grethir Kjangtoth, or the Thirteenth Gate. There were fifty-one such Gates, with the final gate leading to the Singularity, Eth vjeit Avor Zothrad, the Gate of Truth. Though Strun had initially felt overwhelmed by the prospect of penetrating fifty such layers, each the likeness of the city’s entrance, it quickly became apparent that the scale and scope of each level drastically shrunk with each layer, with the thirteenth layer possessing less than one-tenth the distance he had to travel between gates nine and ten.

  Presently, below the watchful eye of Strun and his rats, his prey feasted upon its sire’s spoils of war.

  Strun had spent some time studying the bestiary provided by the Mageocracy, but even so, he could not pinpoint the exact physiological qualities of this strange, marauding monster that now fossicked through the debris of the old Dwarven foundry for crystal growths.

  From head to tail, the beast possessed five pairs of limbs, with the rear twin pair being the most powerful and the first pair forming something like prehensile claws. It was also heavily armoured, clad from its bulbous, serpentine head to its clubbed tail in crystalline chitin that formed into jagged shards.

  “Basilisk,” Strun made his call based on his best judgment. From his vantage point, he could see that this was not a creature of speed or strength, meaning it must logically possess supernatural means to debilitate both prey and foe. “Skri, Drek, Ska, hold positions. Zar, Fik, Rikk, wait for them before attacking.”

  Using the mana control unique to his people, Strun silently traversed the smooth sandstone walls transmuted into place by the Dwarven architects. As a murky ghost, he dosed himself with her Paleness’ Essence so that his muscles and sinews matched the strength of Dwarven artifice.

  Strun stepped into the air.

  His body grew weightless, phasing through the Prime Material.

  When he reappeared, he was armed with twin implements of murder and mayhem, a pair of kukri blades vibrating so fast that they appeared as mirages. In one swift stroke, he sunk the blade into either side of the Basilisk’s armoured face, where he had observed the double-eyed slits were thinnest.

  “SKAARRRK—!” The scion of the underworld Dragon howled in bewildering agony, thrashing with so much force that its tail hammered through the reinforced base of a three-storey building.

  Strun easily rode the buckling creature, his body matching the momentum with supernatural agility.

  Behind and from above, his fellow Rat-kin descended, each armed with sonic-tipped spears that swelled bulbously before tapering off into polearm handles.

  Strun pulled on the handles, feeling the blades turn something hard and rocky inside the skull to mush. Riding the momentum, he leapt backwards, performed a perfect summersault, and then was swallowed again by the Astral Plane.

  A breath later, the spears struck, most finding their mark, a few becoming stuck where muscle and bone had tensed. These then erupted into explosions of ice, fire, acid, and magma, tearing into the body of the thrashing Basilisk.

  “GHARR—GARRRRU—“ Its mouth opened, large enough to swallow a small cargo Golem. From within, a long and agonising breath, the appearance of grey mist, poured forth, mixing alchemy with Draconic magic, turning everything it touched into crumbling shale.

  Strun watched as the creature retreated, its guts trailing the floor, its head rolling from left to right.

  “How is it still alive?” He asked his men, though he knew the answer was no different to the blessing her Paleness had gifted him.

  “Shall we attack it again?” His Stalkers materialised new pilums from their storage rings.

  “No. Retreat and report,” Strun placed his fingers upon the pommel of the twin kukri. To exhibit their full power, the blades' lifespans would be drastically reduced. “I’ll return to her Paleness with a gift, then join you at the twelfth Gate.”

  Deephlom.

  Eth vjeit Avor Zana—The twenty-fifth gate.

  “Tragol! KEEP UP THE FIRE!”

  “Joti! More fuel! Replace those Blade Crystals!”

  Spellblades roared, as did the Golem Engines transmuting stone to slow the advance of the Titan Lizards.

  Across a no-Dwarf’s land of only nine kilometres, a vast exchange of fire and magma transformed an expanded low-way into a field of elemental carnage.

  As the scion-kin of Dhànthárian were resistant to fire, earth and magma, the Dwarves had taken up barrages of ice, combined with bursts of imposing heat to crack the heavily armoured lizards blocking their way into the city’s deepest core.

  Ten days and this deep into the expedition, the Dwarves were finally running into proper resistance in the form of old citadels converted into mausoleums, now re-converted by Earth Dragons into dens, warrens and nests.

  Of the three, the former held entire tribes of what the Peruvian priestesses would call Titan Lizards, referring to Lizard-kin infused with the blood of Green Dragons. For this Earthen variant of Titan Lizards, each manifested as three-metre tall bipedal lizards, covered from snout to feet with dark obsidian and shale, wielding crude instruments of Dragon Glass that could cut through Dwarven steel with marginal effort. At first, the Dwarves had feared that new civilisations had already occupied Deepholm—but subsequent engagements revealed that these wretched slave lizards were scant more than stone-age savages fuelled by the worship of an apathetic sire.

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  Luckily for her Dwarves, their core combat role was to provide artillery and mass suppression, for the bulk of the fighting was done by roving squads of Rat-kin Exterminators supported by Stalkers. Frothing with fervour from their leader’s selfless psalms of sacrifice, they fearlessly met their counterparts by thrusting claws of Mithril alloy in between impenetrable scale plates.

  Though it took two Exterminators to match the bulk of a single Titan Lizard, the rats made up for size with ferocity, speed and tenacity. So long as their Dwarven plates protected their vitals, they cared not for obsidian shards that punctured their limbs or gored their torsos, instead using the distance to latch onto their foes so that teeth could be brought to bloody use.

  And when the inevitable happened, swift-footed striders transported the grievously wounded to the backline, where Human Clerics and ??pters Shamans administered potions of healing and restoration.

  The battle was bitter and hard. When throngs of Basilisks emerged from hiding holes in the outer districts, the Dwarves formed phalanxes that channelled the monsters into killing fields inhabited by the Exterminators, who then engaged the brutes in bloody hand-to-hand combat.

  Even so, the expedition’s progress was far from smooth.

  “Thadod—! On yer right! A breach!” Every other encounter, some light-forsaken Deep Drake would emerge from the nests they had made in the mineral-rich catacombs of the Dwarves from generations past. Unlike the Basilisks, these were purer scions of Dhànthárian, each manifesting in forms that betrayed their bastardised lineage.

  The brute that breached the eastern line was one such creature, an enormous Shingleback Monster, so heavily armoured that no Exterminator nor Dwarven Golem could peel back its crystalline shell.

  Carving a swarth of destruction, the abomination was six Golems deep and a dozen Exterminators underfoot when it suddenly stopped, its beady eyes scanning the ceiling in instinctual terror.

  Its confusion lasted less than a few dazed seconds, for its foe was suddenly upon it, materialising as an enormous black bird with a faceless mien and a pair of six-fingered claws that resembled a young woman’s dainty fingers.

  Without hesitation, the Shingleback let loose its petrification, admixing chemicals and magic to flood its surroundings with deadly greyscale.

  Much to its horror, the faceless crow cared nothing for its Draconic prowess, which could turn even Basilisks into stony morsels. Reaching out with its fingers, the bird caught the Shingleback’s face in its clawed embrace—then tore it off, armour and all.

  Even hardened as the Dwarves, their Greybeard commanders could only wince as chunks of skull and spine as large as a Fabricator’s mana tanks exited the body of the enormous, multi-storey Shingleback. Underneath those fingers, empowered by some primordial rule of a world older than the Dwarven race, the Dragon-kin’s blessings offered no protection against those white, sensual digits.

  Another tug and the Shingleback’s brain was hanging off those perfect talons.

  With a cry of “SHAA—SHAA—“ That filled with cavern with echoes of insanity, the bird then descended upon the Titan Lizards, sending the usually fearless battering rams into a blind panic. The Lizard Shamans rebelled at once, trying to rouse their troops against the invading Dwarves, only to be caught and crushed like jellied delights by the grasping hands of the faceless bird.

  “To her Paleness!” The Rat-kin cried, a few holding aloft golden icons in the form of unopened SPAM. “Her Paleness guides us all!”

  As a race, the Dwarves were worshippers of ancestry and knowledge, logic and rationality—yet even so, a few of them found themselves mouthing the same prayers, their hearts and minds carried off by that screech of manic madness echoing in the dim dark—

  “Shaa—SHAA—SHAA—!”

  Deepholm.

  Eth vjeit Avor Blothaldr—The forty-fourth gate.

  The fact that the Core’s surface was visible from their present fortification did not make Gwen feel any better about their prospects.

  She was tired.

  Not physically tired, for that was an impossibility so long as the World Tree’s juices flowed, but she was mentally exhausted. Theirs was the sixteenth day of the Dwarven expedition, and she knew she and her troops needed a reprieve just as much as they had to keep up the momentum.

  The gates from thirty onwards were hard-won, but the fortieth Gate was where her troops had begun to sustain irreparable casualties. The cause had been a blooded Scion of Dhànthárian, a gargantuan Earth Glider—an exotic terror that Gwen could only describe as a digestive system in the shape of a Manta Ray. On the forty-first floor, a segment largely occupied by stratums of an old fungi farm that resisted transmutation, the creature had burst from the walls and swallowed a Fabricator and its crew wholesale. In their alarm, the Dwarves had formed a wagon circle, only to fall victim to the fact that the Glider could meander through the hardened earth, swallowing everything.

  Normally, when the creatures of the deep-throated her Rat-kin, Gwen could sense their life still holding on while they battled digestive juices or dietary tracts, meaning they could be rescued. This time, those motes of Essence were instantly extinguished and absorbed, making her physically ill.

  To have her Essence usurped by a predator wasn't above Gwen’s expectations, for her World Tree was young, and Almudj’s blessings were diluted—yet she still felt acutely the sensation that a part of her, a sinew or perhaps a fingernail of her skin had been flensed by pair of gnashing maws.

  Instantly, she had teleported to the front, her Crown of Thorns ablaze with chastising fury as the Blade of Disaster hovered near, awaiting its victim.

  When the next attack came, the arcane eruptions that tore at the scallop shell of the Glider had knocked it from its trajectory, exposing it just long enough for Gwen to lob off a pectoral fin. The massive monster then crashed into the hollow floors carved out to house the Dyar Morkk, escaping into walls even as it bled out.

  For days after that, she had to be fully awake and lucid to prevent the next ambush.

  With her mind taut as a wire, The Regent longed for Lei-bup, the sisters, and her Crab-shelled Captains from the Elemental Plane of Water.

  When they had fought for months in the Fifth Vel, Gwen had not felt nearly so haggard, for her lieutenants had taken care of almost all the logistics of throwing the might of her meaty citizens against the eager bodies from the opposing Vel. Millions had died, and Gwen, in her snug abode, had not felt a thing.

  This time, as Commander in Chief and a key combatant, the endlessly vital bodies of Dhànthárian’s Clan were driving her up the wall. Even with her dogs, Hydras and Caliban, the Dragon-Lizards wading through her Rat-kin could ignore her terror, for fear wasn’t an option when the overbearing mind of one’s Draconic scion had given explicit orders not to be disturbed.

  Now, the bodies were piling up, the Dwarves were fatigued, and their supply lines were stretched. Unlike the vast space of the Elemental Plane of Earth, phase-shifting the Dyar Morkk beyond the detection of the Elemental wildlife did nothing to prevent ambushes and assaults on their backlines, an irksome parallel that made Gwen feel sympathetic for the Russians on the surface.

  With each report of bodies marked as unrecoverable, she felt a growing desire to forsake Slylth’s advice and just flood the damn tunnels with seawater.

  Yet, preserving the sacred knowledge buried in Deepholm’s heart was just as important as ridding it of the Dragon squatter. Of equal importance, Slylth had explained over and over that decorum had to be followed if she wished to be challenged via decorum in turn. No Dragon fondly remembers the Primordial Age; he had reminded her: not Elves, not Ancients, and certainly not the races who were the piggy in the middle of duelling Draconic egos.

  “Regent, Section 13-2-9 reports that the Scion has arrived to reinforce the Titan-Lizards,” a Rat-kin aide reported across a Message Glyph, his voice lighting up the darkness of her Essence meditation. In Gwen’s mind’s eye, she saw a dozen sparks of Essence extinguish, acknowledging the voracity of the spotter’s report.

  “Lulu,” she roused her aide, who had stayed awake the whole while. “We’re going.”

  “Yes, Regent,” the Marshal of her ground forces replied. Without her Mage Flights, city Militia and the Centaurs, Lulan could focus on being Gwen’s bodyguard.

  The two women stepped into the Teleportation Circle, using Gwen’s Essence sense as a beacon for the whereabouts of her Exterminators.

  Seconds later, the Pale Priestess reappeared amid a cacophonic clash of screaming metal and rending steel against the feral ferocity of armoured Lizard-kin towering over her troops. With a thought and a spoken keyword, the spells she had been preparing manifested.

  A crown of light-swallowing stars, each a micro-furnace of devouring Void, framed her Da-peng armour with supernatural darkness the texture of spilt ink. In her other hand, she floated a three-meter-long Morden’s Blade forged from Void matter so dense that the space around it appeared to collapse inwards.

  With a “SHAA—!”, a pair of enormous wings six meters from tip to tip unfurled against her back, cowing the Titan-Lizards below with its predatory silhouette, igniting a genetically inherited terror from the days when even Dhànthárian was but prey.

  “Dhànathak!” She called out the true name of the Earthen Glider, a name Slylth had provided after conferring a heated, insult-filled exchange with the cowardly creature. “Come and receive your death!”

  “Khaliff hofiba!” The cavern reverberated. “You dare to invade so deep into our home? Do you not fear that Father will extinguish your very Essence?”

  “SHUT IT!” Gwen hollered back in Celestial Draconic more eloquent than the guttural tongue of the Earthen Drakes, her Clarion Call bouncing from the ceiling. “This is MY LAND by creed and conquest. You and your ilk are parasitic squatters!”

  “I’ll flush it out—” Lulan had no chill nor patience for banter.

  Zwing—!

  The Sword Mage’s heavy blade shot out at once, striking the reinforced walls so resoundingly that metal by the ton began to fall from the distant ceiling. Of the six massive slabs, the final struck true—returning not a resolute clang but the sound of iron on the rock.

  An enormous sheet, larger than a stretching Golos from snout to spiked tail, detached itself from the ceiling, twisting and turning until it turned into an enormous flying mouth.

  Zwing—!

  Zwing—!

  Zwing—!

  A continuous rotation of exploding blades materialised from Lulan as phantom Naga heads danced about her figure, drawing out the molten mana from her Heart of Iron. Watching her Marshal, Gwen’s heart swelled with oxymoronic pride and sadness: pride because her Lulu had come such a long way since her crazed berserker days, and sadness because the life she had once envisioned for Lulu as a free Mage and not a sword directed by her ambition was long behind them.

  Fearful of the Black Blade hanging behind Gwen, the creature known as Dhànathak banked sharply, diving for the side walls that made up Deepholm’s strange urban geometry.

  “Sword Blossoms!” Lulan called out in her native language, her voice vibrant and strangely youthful.

  Around the draconic Glider, giant blooms of twisted metal erupted from the flying swords, creating a nasty mess of razors resembling the infamous Blade Barrier.

  With a sound of rock screeching over steel, the Glider forced itself into the mess, escaping yet again from their half-dozen encounters.

  This time, however, Gwen had steeled her resolve.

  Closing her eyes briefly, she allowed her consciousness to flow into the strands of Essence that cocooned her Astral Body, transmuting her will toward an enormous Essence beacon hidden behind stratums of tapped-out mine shafts.

  “GARP!” Gwen called out as her Essence Sympathy flowed freely, briefly invigorating her fatigued followers.

  With a seismic crash resembling a high-pressure blast from an overcooked dark steel mill, Garp burst through the walls, tackling the Glider just below its supine spine. With a painful crunch of snapping bone, Dhànathak folded like a tablecloth, and a split-second later, it was driven head-first—though much of it consisted only of head—into the remains of a crumbling scaffold.

  Crash—CRASH—CRASH—

  Layer after layer of stone and steel crumbled as the pair descended. Behind them, Gwen followed, her bird-like silhouette shadowed by her fearless rats.

  When the song of fatigued metal failing under duress finally struck its final note, all that was left was the harsh wail of hissing pipes and pressurised oil among ruptured organs and fragmented bones.

  That took five days. Gwen swallowed the distaste in her gullet as her eyes scanned their new battlefront. She was so close to the Core now. Surely, they’re close enough.

  “The Sire will have your seoyl—“ the talking carcass beneath Garp was somehow still capable of vocalising itself—a testament to the voracity of its threat. “You have disturbed his slumber now.”

  “This wouldn’t be needed if you had just delivered my message,” Gwen ordered Garp to slide from the crushed Glider, noting the dozens of steel beams skewering the monster to resemble a slice of flayed and skewered eel at an Izakaya. “Now, did you enjoy consuming my children?”

  Caliban slid from her shoulder, expanding and growing until it resembled Garp. Of course, its form could only mimic what Garp had been some half a decade ago. In its present form, the Garp that travelled with Gwen was a fully mature specimen fed on the exclusive wealth of Shalkar, then fortified by her World Tree. Where a normal Sand Wyrm would shed once a century, Garp had already left behind a dozen shells, making it the undisputed apex predator of her domain and beyond.

  Gwen waited for the creature’s plea.

  Unexpectedly, the creature known as Dhànathak did not plead as Caliban closed in to reclaim what had been taken. Dhànathak was a beast without human form or a fully formed mind, but it was a Dragon-kin nonetheless, and like a bested drake of Arthurian legend, the creature accepted its fate like a dying monarch.

  It took Caliban several minutes to extinguish the creature and free it from agony. Then, it burped happily and returned to her pocket to digest.

  “Hold onto that,” Gwen cautioned her creature. “We’ll be needing the vitality very soon.”

  “Regent,” Lulan’s hovering voice echoed beside her ear. “The Dwarves are securing the escape route now. The lizard-men tide has thinned.”

  The ground rumbled.

  Bits of metal fell from the ceiling and had to be warded away by Lulan before they inconvenienced Gwen.

  “The old Drake is awake,” Gwen spoke to everyone and no one, vocalising the changes in the atmosphere she felt more keenly than anyone present. The death of its faceless minions was nothing, but Dhànathak had been a cultivated scion with enough motes of the Earthen Dragon’s Essence to overcome its sloth. “Garp, open up. Let me have a word with our friends.”

  Her Sand Wyrm’s petalled mouth split, revealing its cargo of Dwarven volunteers in their shield Fabricator unit, Urmrak, his Golems, and a few recovered Balefires who had survived the city’s fall.

  “The time is upon us,” Gwen explained, her head throbbing with the palpable knowledge that something very large and very upset was approaching their whereabouts. “Lord Urmrak, I wish you the greatest blessings of your Ancestors.”

  The Balefire’s flaming glare lit up Garp’s cavernous interior. “Darthr hverth Attarth, Regent.”

  “Darthr hverth Daattarth, Engineseer,” Gwen returned the archaic Dwarven oath with its reciprocal twin. “The honour was mine.”

  “May the Ancestors guide us both,” the Balefire bowed its head, moving the only part of its body that was fully articulated. “If we meet again, Regent, it shall be as your hammer and drill.”

  The Golem’s solemnity carried a fatalism that made Gwen’s eyes water.

  Hopefully, if her waterworks worked as anticipated, the goodbye would merely be an until-we-meet-again.

  Garp’s maw closed. Its body withdrew from the cavern. Discreetly, it would circle Deepholm’s core regions and deposit the Balefire and the Engineers while Gwen converses with the living incarnation of doom.

  Measuring the distance from walls, Gwen drifted carefully to where she was most equidistant from each surface, waiting for her foe to make an entrance.

  The walls began to sing.

  Puddles of oil and water, with their petrol-sheen colours, began to shift and dance as more debris fell from above.

  After checking and double-checking her defences and contingencies, Gwen took a long, deep breath, then allowed the Essence of the World Tree to permeate her body, filling herself from crown to toe with verdant vitality.

  To the angry mountain rising forth to seismically assault her, she would be a fledgling being, but the power she wielded and the backing her Almudj-mixed Essence implied would make it think twice about attacking without warning.

  “Gwen!” the space beside her sizzled and flared, then regurgitated the slim form of a horned Mage in gold-red robes. “I’ve decided to keep you company.”

  “Slylth,” Gwen felt genuinely surprised that the Red Dragon decided to join her. After all, unlike picking a fight with the Russians, Dhànthárian had no beef with Sythinthimryr, and it wouldn’t do for her true-blooded child to start an eon-long feud. “Not that I am not glad you’re here, but are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “Absolutely,” Slylth’s nonchalant tone made her a little happy, enough to hide that the Dragon was sweating profusely. “Umm…”

  Gwen extended a gloved hand, retracting her Da-peng claws.

  The Red Dragon took it.

  “Worried about Dhànthárian?” Gwen couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t be. I am under no delusions that our Big-D will take a bribe and go home. We’ll be fighting this out, Alex. Right now though, it's just a matter of stalling until Umrak and his kin can make it inside the Singularity’s Core.”

  “Actually,” Slylth revealed his true fear. “I am a little worried about Mother flipping her wig when she finds out—“

  “REGENT!” Lulan’s voice called out from above. “ITS NOT SLOWING DOWN!”

  Below the talking trio, the entire subfloor grew concave and formed into a massive spiral of all-devouring debris resembling the eye of an oceanic maelstrom made of magma.

  Gwen felt the pull of the sudden gravity as palpable as adamantine manacles tethered to her arms and wrists, rapidly dragging her downwards. As a connoisseur of using Void Maelstroms on her foes, she had never been herself caught in the wake of one—especially one generated by the yawning maw of a Dragon with a mouth large enough to resemble a natural disaster.

  She and Slylth’s magic activated in a split-second, as did Lulan’s, sending them rapidly upward by displacing space.

  With equal speed, the Dragon below ascended, moving its mouth to catch its wayward prey.

  “LULU! USE TELEPORT!” She shouted as the Dragon-shaped Dyson approached from underfoot, tugging on herself and her companion, drinking in the architecture of Deepholm through an enormous straw. Her rats and her Dwarves! Gwen cursed herself. She had underestimated the rage of a Dragon that hadn’t given a single shit during two and a half weeks of lizard genocide. “RETREAT! FULL RETREAT!”

  Her voice reverberated as the mana of Conjuration enveloped her body.

  At the same time, a telekinetic force briefly muddled the spatial fabrics of space around herself.

  Gwen felt the pit of her stomach drop as her brain divined the next few seconds.

  She pulled Slylth toward her with a tug until they were almost cheek to cheek.

  “What a rude Uncle…” her companion grumbled annoyedly. “Mother shall hear of this.”

  “Fucking oath…” was her reply as her shield of Void expanded, encompassing them into a perfect egg.

  Then miasma as thick as soup, as choking as crushed limestone and more petrifying than the distilled venom of a thousand Medusas washed over the pair, pouring upward through the entry made by Garp and the Glider, flooding every nook and cranny of Deepholm’s inner sanctums.

  Notice: Vol 8 Will hit the shelves soon, meaning those chapters will be removed from the RR backlog.

  New VOL 12 COVER - THE SEA OF FLAMES

  VOL 11 COVER - THE BLOOM IN WHITE! MISTRESS OF TRYFAN, QUEEN of the Elves of Light