Dusk and I spent the following hours learning what our bond had truly done to us. It was strange at first, like trying to walk after waking from a long dream. Every movement felt charged with something new. Every heartbeat hummed with shared strength.

  She had changed in ways I still struggled to comprehend. Her aetheric energy pulsed through the bond like a living current, alive and fluid. When she slipped beneath the earth, I could feel the pressure of the stone shifting around her. It was not the brute force of digging, but the elegant motion of a bird in flight. The ground itself seemed to yield to her. She was tunneling as a wyrm would, yet with the grace of something more refined.

  I watched from above, her glowing outline flickering faintly in my tremor sense. Each pass carved smooth tunnels through the earth, veins of freshly moved soil that crumbled and reformed behind her. She would surface beside me with a rumbling sound like rolling stones, her scales gleaming in the light before she sank again below the stone.

  I couldn’t help but marvel. She was still young, still growing, and already her control was beyond impressive. This was only the beginning of what she would become.

  It took time before I realized something had changed in me as well. My steps felt lighter, surer. When I ran, the ground seemed to rise to meet my feet, my balance unshakable even across loose rock and uneven terrain. During our sparring drills, I moved faster than before.

  A thought began to form, wild and impossible, yet it refused to fade.

  I crouched and pressed my palm to the earth. The ground was cool beneath my skin, its texture rough and unyielding. I closed my eyes and reached through the bond, calling to the sensation I felt when Dusk moved through the earth. I imagined the stone not as solid but as something alive, something that could breathe and shift.

  A pulse of warmth ran through my arm. The ground rippled beneath my hand, and a shallow trench began to open ahead of me. The soil parted in a perfect line wherever I guided my palm, as though the world itself was moving to let me pass.

  I pulled my hand back in shock. The trench sealed itself, the earth settling into place as if nothing had happened.

  Dusk tilted her head, her molten eyes watching me closely. Through the bond, I felt a hint of amusement.

  I placed my palm back on the stone, feeling the quiet hum of energy beneath the surface.

  “Do you think I can do what you do?” I whispered.

  Dusk’s image brushed against mine, soft and sure. A picture of me trying to do what she was doing.

  I swallowed, my pulse steadying as if the world itself had gone quiet in anticipation. Everything I knew about earth and stone told me this was impossible, yet something inside me knew differently. The bond between us had awakened something deep within me, an instinct that felt like memory, like I had been made for this.

  At first, I tried alone. I pressed my hands into the soil, willing myself to move through it as Dusk did. I pushed, clawed, and concentrated until my arms ached. The earth shifted a little, but it was like forcing my way through wet clay. Sweat beaded along my neck. I could feel the faint laughter of Dusk’s presence behind me.

  Then she stepped closer lowering her head and nudged me with the edge of her beak, eyes glimmering gold. An image filled my mind—my hands gripping her side as she dove into the earth.

  “Alright,” I breathed, wiping the grit from my palms. “Show me.”

  I placed both hands on her shoulders, fingers curling between the ridges of her scales. Her warmth thrummed beneath my touch, alive and pulsing with aether. For a heartbeat, she waited. Then she dove.

  The world vanished.

  Stone and soil parted around us like flowing water. The sound was strange muted yet alive, as if the earth itself sang in low tones all around us. The pressure didn’t crush me. Instead, it carried me, buoyant and light. My senses stretched outward, and for the first time I truly felt at home.

  Rivers of aether flowed through veins of earth. Roots twisted like serpents through the stone, pulsing faintly with life.

  We glided together, weaving between layers of rock and crystal light. Dusk’s joy filled the bond like sunlight breaking through clouds. She was in her element, and now, I realized, so was I.

  When we surfaced, the ground rippled open and released us into the light. I fell back, laughing breathlessly, the taste of stone still fresh in the air. Dusk settled beside me, her golden eyes bright with satisfaction.

  We spent the rest of the day practicing. It took patience, focus, and more than a few failed attempts, but Dusk was relentless in her quiet encouragement. Each time I lost control or got stuck halfway through the earth, she circled back and bumped me with her snout, urging me onward. Little by little, the rhythm clicked.

  By evening, we moved in unison. I could feel her pulse through the bond, and the earth itself seemed to yield to our motion. We swam through it together, carving graceful tunnels and bursting from the ground like waves breaking against the shore. Each pass grew smoother, faster. By the end of the day, it no longer felt like learning something new. It felt like remembering some part of who I was.

  When we rejoined the others at camp, they were finishing their preparations for the next day’s assault. As Dusk and I surfaced a short distance away, a ripple of surprise went through the group.

  Milo was the first to speak, of course. “Alright,” he said, pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth, “either I’ve gone mad from the fumes in my satchel, or you two just popped out of the ground like startled moles.”

  Zephyra crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing in thought rather than disbelief. “You too?” she asked.

  “It was just as much a surprise to me,” I said, brushing dust from my hair. “We practiced most of the day.”

  Grond frowned, staring at the small crater we had left behind. “So you can… move through the ground? Like she does?”

  I nodded. “It’s strange, but natural somehow. It has felt like embracing a part of myself I didn’t know about.”

  Malorn let out a low whistle, his fox companion flickering invisible and back again beside him. “There are some things I can do after my bond with Fern that felt like what you described. Though nothing so drastic. This could change everything in a fight though. You could flank from underground, appear behind an enemy, or escape through the stone if things go wrong.”

  Milo’s grin widened. “Imagine the look on a monster’s face when you pop up under it with those knives of yours.” He mimed a stabbing motion, as he laughed.

  Zephyra still studying me, said “Bryn, this is a significant tactical advantage. If you and Dusk can both move unseen beneath the ground, we may need to change the way we have been fighting around this new advantage.”

  “There is something else to, Dusk got my regeneration which means we can both function as frontline fighters without the normal risk others have.” I admitted. “But we are not used to fighting together and things may be clumsy at first even with our bond making it easier and we don’t have the time to get used to it here.”

  Shine stepped closer, her golden scales catching the firelight. “Your bond is deepening faster than most from the start,” she said softly. “To share power like this… it means your spirits are aligning. It will not be long before your strengths and senses merge completely.”

  Dusk tilted her head, and I felt her quiet agreement pulse through the bond.

  Zephyra nodded slowly, her eyes gleaming with something between excitement and curiosity. “Then we will rebuild some of tomorrow’s plan around it”

  Milo looked thoughtful for a rare moment. “Do you think you could take someone else with you through the earth? I am not looking to get stuck in the ground, but it would be epic to leap out of the earth as a group and surprise attack everything!”

  Grond grunted. “If it works, I’ll buy you another pipe, halfling.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Milo said, smiling again.

  For a while, the camp buzzed with conversation as we worked through scenarios. Zephyra asked questions about the sensation, how deep I could go, how fast I could move. Malorn followed up on Milo’s question wanting to know if Dusk could carry others.

  We quickly discovered that it was not something we could do to Milo’s dismay knowing he wouldn’t get his new pipe now.

  It was the first time since joining the academy that I felt fully seen. Not as the orphan with strange scars. Not as the boy with untrained power. But as part of something greater, trusted, valued, and needed.

  When the talk faded and the fire burned low, I lay back against the earth and felt Dusk settle beside me. Through the bond, I could sense her calm, her quiet readiness. Tomorrow would test everything we had learned, but for the first time, I wasn’t afraid.

  Together, we would face what came next.

  —

  Dawn was upon us before we knew it. The pale light that filtered through the dungeon’s false sky carried no warmth, only a dull gold shimmer that reflected off the suspended shards of aether floating in the mist.

  We broke camp quietly, the air tense before the coming storm. Each of us moved with practiced precision, packing gear, checking weapons, and exchanging few words. But all our minds were focused elsewhere.

  We stood at the edge of the bridge leading to the final island. Beyond it, the expanse spread before us like a dark wound suspended in the void. The island was immense, far larger than the ones before, its edges cracked and jagged as if it had been ripped from the earth and left to drift in the endless mist.

  Massive root-like structures wound through the rock and hung downward into the abyss, pulsing faintly with yellow aetheric light that matched the color of the Myrmaray’s blood. The air shimmered with heat and spores that glowed faintly as they drifted on unseen currents.

  From what Malorn and Fern had reported, the entire island was a hive. Cavernous openings riddled its surface, each one large enough for a small house to fit through.

  Thick strands of hardened silk wove between the cliffs like bridges, glistening in the light. They formed a web of saliva-built pathways where the Myrmaray crawled and flew in countless numbers. Every variant we had encountered so far was here. The smaller, but matured hatchling worker types scuttled across the lower ridges, carrying pieces of chitin and bone into burrows. Larger warrior variants patrolled the air and the bridges, their bodies gleaming with a metallic sheen.

  And then there were the ones from the first bridge, the massive flying manta ray versions. They circled the island like vultures over a battlefield, their shrieks echoing through the fog. Beneath them, shadows moved.

  A deeper vibration pulsed in the ground, one that I could feel through my senses even at this distance. It was slow and rhythmic, like the beating of a great heart.

  At the center of the island rose a structure unlike anything we had seen before. It was a spire of fused stone and silk, towering higher than any of the others. Its sides pulsed with veins of aetheric energy that fed into it from all directions.

  At its peak sat the Queen’s nest, a massive hollow encased in translucent salvic rock that shimmered with sickly gold light. Every few moments, the light would pulse, and from somewhere deep within, a new creature would emerge and take flight.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “She’s birthing them constantly,” Zephyra informed. “If we don’t stop her now, she’ll overrun the chamber completely.”

  Milo exhaled a slow, shaky breath. “I’d prefer not to find out what happens when this place hits capacity.”

  Grond’s grip tightened around his hammers. “Then we give her no chance. It’s time to end the swarm, end the hive. Or die trying.”

  As we crossed the final bridge, I glanced once more toward the towering spire at the island’s heart. The light within it flared, and a distant shriek echoed across the island.

  This was it. The heart of this dungeon chamber, the final test of our strength.

  Zephyra crouched behind a broken rib of stone and traced the field in the dust. “Positions,” she said. “We do this in layers. Malorn, take the north ridge with Fern. Prioritize flyers, clip wings, and call out rotations. Milo, plant the trap grid at the spire mouth. I want a ring of binders inside a ring of cutters, then your heavy charges deepest. Shine, weave wards along the lower ledges to blunt any potential ranged attacks. Anchor a cleanse at the rally mark. Grond and Bryn on point with me. We force the path and hold it.”

  We moved.

  Malorn climbed to the ridge and vanished into the pale haze. Fern flickered in and out beside him, a ghost of tails and keen eyes. Below, the manta Myrmaray circled in slow spirals. Every few breaths Malorn gave a soft birdcall that marked flight patterns only our party would recognize.

  Milo knelt at the spire mouth and worked with quick, precise hands. He set iron jaws in the silk-latticed floor and dusted them with a thin paste that would harden like stone on contact. Between those teeth he fixed glass vials the size of plums and fed a wire to each one.

  He laid a second ring of sticky coils and spiked caltrops with poison, then set three buried charges in a triangle aimed inward.

  Shine moved along the ledges and sang under her breath. Light pooled from her fingertips and spread in thin veils that settled across stone like frost. She anchored small sun glyphs that would flare to burn away most ranged like webs or acid these creatures may be able to use. She finished by planting an auric line from the front to the rally mark so fallen allies could be dragged through its cleanse without stopping.

  Grond checked his runework, then planted himself at the head of the approach. He set his stance with both hammers low and forward, ready to hook or crush. “I’ll hold left,” he said. “Bryn can take right. We squeeze the central lane.”

  Dusk pressed against my hip, then slipped from sight into the earth. Through the bond I felt the tunnels under our feet, the hollow pockets, the brittle seams in the spire’s base. In in mental link I said, “We undermine only if Zeph calls it.” Warm assent moved through me like a second heartbeat.

  Zephyra closed her eyes and pulled air into her palms until the dust at our boots lifted and drifted away. “Phase one,” she said. “Bryn, draw the front patrol and keep them in this lane. Grond, break plates, and let the other hit killing blows if possible to reserve your strength.”

  I nodded and slid forward to the lane she had marked. The ground thrummed with the Queen’s slow pulse. Dusk showed me a thin run of brittle silk threaded through the spire’s lowest strut. If we broke that line at the right moment, half the webbed walkway would sag into our trap grid.

  Zephyra lifted two fingers. The air stiffened. Malorn’s bowstring creaked once to my senses.

  “Go.”

  I broke cover at a sprint. Knives snapped from my hands in a steady cadence, each strike pinging chitin or severing the joints. The nearest warriors hissed and turned. Their hooks hit the stone where I had been an instant before. I slid inside their reach, carved a shallow line to set the hook, then gave them my back and ran, loud enough to keep their attention, fast enough to stay just ahead of the bite.

  They followed into the lane.

  Grond stepped in from the left and hammered down. His first blow broke a knee plate, the second pinned a claw, the third turned the pin into a ruin. Malorn’s first arrow took a flyer through the wing joint. The second drove into an eye. Fern shimmered and snapped at anything that veered for Milo. Shine’s first ward flared white as a stream of yellow web struck it and burned away in a hiss.

  Another new variant that Malorn thought he saw when scouting. Spitters.

  Zephyra’s wind shaped the fight without throwing it wide. Gusts pressed at angles, turning charges into skids and lifting my leaps when I needed an extra handhold. When a manta variant dipped toward the spire mouth, she shifted the air just enough to drop it into the outer ring of coils. Milo smiled without looking up and palmed a wire. “Welcome,” he said, and the coils bit shut.

  “Hold the lane,” Zephyra called. “Malorn, eyes on the high right. Shine, refresh the veil at mark three. Milo, left side armed?”

  “Armed,” he answered. “Center live. Inner dead until you say.”

  Dusk pulsed a warning. Burrowers shifting under the approach. I stamped once to mark the spot for Grond. He adjusted his stance, flipped a hammer to pike form, and drove it down. The ground cracked and a Myrmaray burst up into iron and rune-lit steel.

  “Phase one is clean,” Zephyra said, voice steady. “Phase two on my mark. Bryn, be ready to break that lower strut when I call for collapse.”

  I breathed, felt Dusk coil under the stone, and set my feet. The spire’s heart pulsed again, deeper and faster. The Queen was stirring.

  Zephyra lifted her hand. “Phase two.”

  The wind gathered at her back and pushed outward in a slow roll. Webbing trembled across the hive as if it had sensed the change. The warrior pair that held our lane hissed and lunged. I drew them three more steps, then cut right and slashed the mark Dusk had shown me. Silk parted with a wet snap. The lowest strut sagged. Weight shifted across the network like a shiver.

  Milo saw it and cheered, “Lovely.”

  Grond crashed into the nearer warrior and drove it across the slumping run. Its foreleg punched through soft web. I tagged the second in the eyes with a pair of throws.

  Malorn pinned arrows where both knives just were with clean shots, then sent a third arrow through the breathing slit under the jaw. The beast toppled, caught in the sinking net of silk. Milo tugged the first wire. The outer ring spat shrapnel and paste. Hooks locked. Coils tightened. The warrior bucked once and went still.

  The hive erupted from here.

  Every opening along the spire bled motion. Smaller forms poured over the lip and scuttled along the silk roads. Flyers lifted from upper vents and turned in a widening spiral. The root-veins in the rock brightened from dull yellow to bright gold. The pulse under my feet no longer felt like a heartbeat. It was a drum.

  “Shine, curtain now,” Zephyra said.

  A wash of pale light fell from the ledges and ran along our front like rain. Yellow strands slapped into it and burned away in drifting smoke. Zephyra stepped forward and raised both blades. The air clenched. A sharp crosswind scythed through the lead wave of workers and swept them into the side wall where they stuck and thrashed.

  “Milo, inner ring armed,” she said.

  “Armed,” he answered, and tapped the second wire with two fingers. A low hum started under the silk. The central triangle began to glow.

  “Malorn,” Zephyra called, “stagger the incoming flyers. Eyes, joints, wings.”

  He obeyed without reply. Fern blinked from thin air onto the back of a manta and ripped at the tendon near the shoulder. The flyer rolled and fell into the binders. The traps snapped shut, then went white with heat. The entire mouth of the spire became a furnace of glue and iron teeth.

  The drum under my feet changed again, at a stronger and slower pace.

  “Bryn,” Zephyra said, voice quiet now. “On me.”

  We advanced to the lip of the trap grid. Heat licked our shins. The hive’s breath pressed out of the spire in a slow, greasy gust. I could see a vast hollow beyond the grate of silk and stone. The walls were layered with shed plates and hard resin. Eggs pulsed in low alcoves, each one a small lantern of sick light.

  The queen had been moving toward us.

  She did not crawl so much as pour forward, a living mass of armored plates and glistening silk. The front of her body flared wide like a hood. The rest of her coiled behind it, longer than the approach and thick as a cottage wall.

  I saw the seam where abdomen met thorax. I saw the knot of runes set into her crest. I saw the way she tracked heat and sound. None of it mattered as much as the weight of her presence. It crushed thought.

  “Hold,” Zephyra said.

  Milo breathed in quick little sips of air. “Holding.”

  Grond set his feet and rolled his shoulders. “I am here.”

  Shine moved to my left and planted a golden glyph at my heel. Her light ran up my calves strengthening me. “You will not fall,” she said.

  The Queen surged.

  She hit the mouth of the spire and met the outer ring. Teeth clamped and Coils tightened. The hooded front lifted and spat a fan of sizzling resin. Zephyra threw her arms wide and the wind walled it. The spray bent and fell into the furnace. Steam screamed through the grid.

  “Now,” Zephyra said.

  I hurled two knives at the crest runes. They struck and stuck. I hit the same spot with another volley and the Queen convulsed. Grond stepped in and hammered the forelimb joint twice in the same spot. The second blow broke it. The limb folded and jammed in the trap.

  “Milo,” Zephyra called, “walk the charges. Do not pop the center.”

  “Walking,” he said, and touched three studs on his wrist board in a rhythm. The left side boomed in a rolling sequence that drove the Queen’s bulk toward us and down. Plates buckled and resin cracked. The right side answered. The mouth sagged another handspan.

  Dusk rose beneath the spire like a tide. I felt her slide through a seam in the root-vein and brace under the triangle of charges.

  “Collapse line,” Zephyra said.

  I slammed my palm on the mark Dusk had shown me. The brittle silk gave. The support cut. The whole front of the web floor dropped a full yard. The Queen’s weight slammed into Milo’s grid and stuck fast, half risen, half trapped, the hooded head lashing for anything it could reach.

  “Grond,” Zephyra said, “aim for her head.”

  He leaped, swung from the hip, and caved the skull socket in a shower of dark fluid. The Queen screamed. The sound hit us like a wall. Shine’s ward flashed brighter and barely held.

  The flyers dived in a wave. Malorn turned and cut five from the air in five breaths. Fern tore a sixth and vanished. A seventh broke through and angled for Milo. Dusk erupted from the stone behind it and took it in the neck joint with a snap that echoed across the ridge. She vanished again, then burst up inside the spire and raked along the Queen’s abdomen. The plates there were thick. She did not break them, but she opened seams and left a chain of bleeding lines.

  “Center is live,” Milo warned. “One trigger left.”

  “Not yet,” Zephyra said. She stepped to the edge and raised both blades. Wind climbed the spire and came back down in a tight spiral that wrapped the Queen’s hood. The air turned into a press. The hood bowed inward. The exposed jawline showed for a breath.

  “Bryn.”

  I threw both knives into that narrow line and ran as I threw. The first struck. The second struck and turned. I hit the edge, slid, and drove a third into the hinge where the hood joined the spine. The Queen snapped for me. Zephyra hauled me sideways with a gust. The bite found air.

  “Grond, finish the hinge,” she said.

  He did not wait. Two steps. A leap. Both hammers came down and the hinge cracked causing the hood to sag.

  “Milo,” Zephyra called, “center.”

  He touched the final stud.

  The triangle went white. Heat rushed up the spire and blew past us in a sheet. The center of the grid failed by design and the Queen dropped another yard deeper into the pit. Plates met stone and runes across her crest flickered.

  “Shine, flare the line,” Zephyra said.

  Shine clapped her hands once. The auric strip from the front to the rally point burned gold. The resin in the air ignited and rolled back into the spire. The scream that followed shook grit from the ceiling.

  “Hold,” Zephyra said again, and her voice steadied us as the hive went mad.

  Workers swarmed the walls in a living tide. Flyers came in broken spirals, wings tattered, eyes red in the furnace light. Malorn worked until his fingers bled. Milo fed wires and swapped vials with a manic calm. Grond stood in a widening pool of ichor and turned aside anything that found the lane. Shine sang, with the wards and healing slowing as time passed.

  Dusk dove one last time and rose under the Queen’s jaw. She broke through the weakened seam and tore free with a wrench that sent black blood in a fan across the grid. The Queen thrashed once and sagged, as she died.

  Zephyra voice cut through the chaos. “Time for our last push,” she said.

  Grond spun with an abandoned fury. My blades flew threw the air at rhythmic pace. The drum under my feet had stopped. Dusk pressed warmth through the bond. Malorn was still firing. Milo’s sling launched orbs around the battlefield.

  From the surrounding tunnels poured the survivors, hundreds of Myrmaray of every size and shape, their bodies glimmering like a flood of living metal.

  Zephyra didn’t hesitate. “Everyone form up!” Her voice carried through the smoke like a blade’s edge. “We end this now as one!”

  Grond slammed his hammers together, runes flaring red. Milo kicked over his satchel and hurled a spread of orbs into the oncoming tide. They burst into clouds of color, acid green, flame orange, blinding white. Malorn’s arrows streaked through the gaps, each one a whisper of silver light that dropped fliers from the air in burning spirals.

  Shine planted herself at the center and raised both hands. A ring of golden light spun outward, each pulse knitting torn flesh and bolstering strength though at a slower pace as time went. Her song threaded through the chaos, a steady rhythm in the madness.

  “Bryn, dive!” Zephyra shouted.

  Dusk roared beneath my feet, and I dove.

  The world swallowed us whole. Earth and stone folded open as if remembering our shape. The tremor sense spread through me, each vibration mapping the battlefield above. We surfaced beneath a cluster of warriors mid-charge and erupted from the ground like a geyser of light and dust. My blades cut through armor as Dusk’s claws raked across their legs, shattering bone. We dove again before they could strike, vanishing beneath the soil.

  Each time we surfaced; destruction followed. We tore through the swarm in flashes of motion, appearing where the lines faltered, striking from below, disappearing before retaliation could find us. The ground became our ally, a living veil that hid our strikes and carried us where the team most needed us.

  Zephyra’s wind curved with our path, guiding our dives and controlling the field. Grond’s hammers followed each emergence with bone-breaking precision. Milo’s traps detonated in rhythmic bursts, sealing breaches as fast as they formed.

  Still, they horde continued to come.

  The hive shrieked as the last of the Queen’s essence pulsed through the spire. From the cracks in her fallen body poured smaller spawn, glowing faintly with newborn fury. The air grew thick with heat and dust.

  “Bryn — it’s time!” Zephyra cried.

  I felt Dusk’s agreement through the bond. We dove once more, tunneling beneath the massive carcass. The ground vibrated with the pulse of the dying Queen, every heartbeat weaker than the last.

  Our dive took us deep below the spire. We glided through the ground, breaking apart tunnels and anchor points for the whole spire.

  Minutes passed until the earth around us began to shake violently, then it collapsed.

  The entire heart of the island gave way in a roar of cracking stone. A large portion remaining swarm screamed as the nest, the evolving eggs, and the spire caved in on itself. Wings shredded and claws scrabbled in its descent.

  When we swam up from the rubble, the others were still standing. Having finished off those who survived the collapse. We were battered, but alive.

  Milo sat on the edge of a broken ridge, staring at his broken pipe in dismay. “I should have let them take me with them” he bemoaned.

  Grond snorted and shouldered one hammer. “You have like five of those.”

  “Ya, but this was my favorite.” Milo replied as he got out another pipe and began to pack it with tobacco.

  Zephyra sat near them, her hair matted with dust and sweat. The glow of her wind faded to a whisper. “I can’t believe that worked,” she said, looking at each of us in turn, “I think we all thought we could at least get the queen, but fighting the hordes pouring from a hive…”

  Dusk padded to my side and pressed her head against my shoulder.

  Somewhere far above, the dungeon light began to shift. The runes carved into the air flared gold.

  Dungeon Task Complete.