The world was a slow, nauseating vortex. Trenn lay on the hard stone floor, the coppery tang of blood thick in the back of his throat. A high-pitched ringing in his ears cut through the dull, heavy thud of his own heartbeat.

  He was a depleted vessel, a hollowed-out echo of the man who had plunged his soul into a star.

  Through the spinning haze, flashes of life returned to the cavern.

  Mara was methodically slathering a generous amount of white-green poultice over the raw, pink skin where the fire had seared the fur from her arms.

  A few yards away, Ezy was a whirlwind of soot-stained energy, clambering over the smoking, half-melted chassis of her life’s work.

  “Fried the primary drive belt, that’s obvious… fused the hydraulics in the leg… and what in the name of the Schedule is this doing here?” she grumbled, prying at a warped piece of metal with a crowbar nearly as long as she was.

  A series of sharp, ticking sounds, like cracking glass, drew Mara’s attention.

  Skate was shedding the last of its incandescent heat. Beneath its cooling, reddened shell, its familiar matte grey surface had vanished. Its texture had shifted from porous stone to the glossy black of volcanic glass.

  Stomper’s new core glowed faintly, reflecting in a single, polished obsidian gleam on Skate’s surface.

  Mara’s eyes widened. She glanced from the new, alien sphere to Trenn’s pale, shivering form. His plate was full. She’d tell him later.

  Wrapping her freshly bandaged hands, she finally broke the silence, her voice a low rumble. “Ezy. Is it true? You really want to leave the Hive?”

  Ezy stopped her work, planting her hands on her hips. “Yes, it’s true,” she declared, her voice ringing with a passion that seemed to push back the shadows. “There’s nothing for me here! I want to see the mainland. I want to see a city! I want to see a Bear Kin! They’re even taller than you two, I bet!”

  She took a deep, excited breath, a torrent of ambition washing away her frustration. “Know what? I want to see more than the world! I’m going to follow Trenn, and I’m going to have a life like in the Wild Mage songs. We’ll travel through space and time! Dimensions! When I come back to see Mum, I’ll be a hero of legends! And my stomper will be running on star fuel or some nonsense,” she mused.

  A wide, vulpine grin split Mara’s scarred snout. “That Wild Mage has got you charmed, Gnome.”

  “So what if he does?” Ezy shot back, her tone shifting from dreamy to fiercely pragmatic. “He’s my ticket out. Everything else is just smart.” She gestured with a wrench at the vast, dark tunnels. “If I could travel with a dragon, I’d do that. But I don’t know any traveling dragons. What I do know is a traveling Wild-fucking-Mage who can possess elementals and… whatever that was with the club and Skate.”

  Both their gazes fell upon the transformed sphere. Mara’s grin faded, replaced by a focused, analytical curiosity.

  “Rock Slimes are grey,” she said, tilting her head. “Why is it so black and shiny?” She paused. “It’s not dead, right? Because Trenn really likes that thing.”

  Ezy vaulted from the Stomper’s chassis and strode over to it. She knelt, running a gloved, expert hand over its new, glassy surface. She tapped it, listening to the sound it made.

  “It’s igneous rock,” she announced, her voice filled with the dawning wonder of a scientist making a breakthrough. “The extreme thermal shock—the elemental’s core heat followed by the rapid cooling—it reforged its entire molecular structure.”

  She looked up, first at Mara, then at Trenn’s still-recovering form, a look of profound awe on her freckled face.

  “It’s not a Rock Slime anymore,” she breathed. “It’s an Obsidian Slime. Its entire nature has been reforged.”

  Laughter was the first thing to cut through the ringing in his ears.

  It was a strange, foreign sound in the oppressive silence of the deep earth. Trenn cracked his eyes open, the world a blurry smear of orange light and shifting shadows.

  The nauseating vortex in his head had settled into a dull, throbbing ache, but the animated voices of his companions were a welcome distraction.

  “…and the Cloud Giants of the Sister Peaks have built an entire tourist town on a cloud they keep perpetually solid,” Ezy was saying. “It drifts with the wind, stopping over any town it crosses to let passengers on and off. A literal flying cruise-ship city!”

  Mara let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “You’re lying! There’s no such thing!”

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  “No, I swear!” Ezy insisted, her voice rising with excitement. “And in the Eternal Desert, there’s a giant so tall that an entire civilization of Ape Kin lives in its fur!”

  “No! That’s so gross!” Mara howled, her laughter turning into a fit of coughing.

  A real smile, the first in an eternity, touched Trenn’s lips. The sound was so normal, so full of life, it was better than any healing poultice.

  With a deep groan, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, the movement sending a fresh wave of protests through his battered muscles.

  “Look who’s back from the brink,” Ezy said, her grin wide and triumphant. “How are you feeling, hero?”

  Trenn let his head fall back against the cold stone. “Like I got run over by a truck,” he managed, his voice a gravelly rasp. Mara and Ezy exchanged a quick look. The Gnome’s brow furrowed in analytical confusion while the Guardian gave a dismissive shake of her head.

  “So, partner,” Mara said, her festive mood undiminished. She pushed herself to her feet and strode over, giving him a sharp, vulpine grin. Her amber eyes glinted with mischief.

  “Want to scout ahead?” she asked, knowing full well he was in no state to use his powers. “Or are we spending the night down here with the elementals and the lava?”

  Trenn grunted. “How about you scout for once, partner? Can’t you walk between shadows? This place is one big shadow,” said Trenn playfully, as he forced himself to his elbows.

  “Possessing the elemental… It’s so fundamentally different from a biological creature. It was like I was being ripped apart.”

  “Well, that’s a learned lesson,” Mara continues. “Don’t possess elementals.”

  “I disagree,” Ezy said from behind her Stomper. “I say push those boundaries, guy! If you hadn’t, pretty sure we’d be Fire Elemental fuel by now.”

  Trenn smirked at Mara. Mara frowned, and her right eye twitched.

  “The Wild Mage doesn’t need to be encouraged. He is reckless enough,” she shoots at Ezy, who completely ignored her.

  “Oh god, you’re both reckless,” Mara said, throwing up her hands in frustration. “I’m in a team with reckless idiots.”

  Trenn’s eyebrow raised.

  “A team?” Trenn said, turning to Mara with a smile. Mara lifted her head and crossed her arms. “Aren’t you bound to the forest?”

  Mara fidgeted uncomfortably. Ezy’s voice came from behind her Stomper.

  “We talked about this while you were sleeping,” Ezy said as she worked. “I’m staying with you. She’s staying too, she’s having trouble admitting—”

  “No! What?” Mara jumps. “Stop it, both of you. I… Can we go? We shouldn’t be loitering here,” stammered Mara.

  Ezy’s head poked out from behind the Stomper. She was wearing big safety goggles and had grease stains on her face. She looks at Trenn, then at Mara. “I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s obvious you want to come with us.”

  “Ezy,” Trenn said, “I… We didn’t even discuss this,” he finished, laughing.

  She immediately spun on her heels to face Trenn. “So what, Wild Mage?” the two-foot-three woman stepped into view. “You going to say no to me?” she challenged, putting her hands on her hips.

  Trenn couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “No ma'am!” Trenn answered quickly.

  Mara smirked.

  “Good. Now, I’ve got work to do,” Ezy said, turning back to the Stomper. “You two scout the area. Make sure we don’t get ambushed.”

  The Stomper was running again, albeit stripped of most of its armor, its chassis a latticework of melted and re-welded metal. It moved with a smooth, powerful hum, the new elemental core glowing with a steady, internal fire.

  “With this level of power in its belly, I bet I can find a way to make it fly!” Ezy declared, patting a hydraulic leg with proprietary pride.

  They began to gather their few belongings, the unspoken agreement to leave hanging in the air. Trenn, testing his legs, walked toward the cavern wall, Skate now resting on his head like a smooth, heavy helmet. “I wonder what the transformation means,” he mused aloud. “It can become pliable, and—”

  He stopped. The air grew still, the background hum of the Stomper seeming to fade into the distance. A patch of shadow against the far wall was a void, a hole in the world that drank the light and exuded a silence so profound it was a pressure against his ears.

  It was there. Staring at him.

  Trenn froze, his words dying in his throat. He glanced at Ezy, then at Mara. Their faces were turned to him, brows furrowed in confusion at his sudden silence. They couldn't see it.

  “Trenn, are you alright?” Ezy asked, her voice sounding distant.

  The hole in the world lifted an arm of pure void and pointed, as it had before. Trenn blinked, and it was gone. The shadow was just a shadow again.

  “Is he always this weird?” Ezy asked Mara, who was already starting to nod.

  “There’s… a path here,” Trenn said, his voice strained. He took a few steps toward the wall, toward the spot the creature had indicated. He closed his eyes, pushed past the throbbing in his skull, and cast his senses out.

  He found it immediately. A carved tunnel, facing west, with gleaming, flawlessly maintained brass tracks running its length.

  “There’s a tunnel,” he reported, opening his eyes. “Over there. It has tracks. I think it connects to your undersea corridor? The one you said your ancestors built?”

  Ezy’s head snapped up, her exhaustion forgotten. “Impossible,” she breathed. “All the corridors to the Old Pathway were sealed centuries ago.”

  And yet, tucked behind a recent rockfall that looked suspiciously deliberate, they found it. The entrance was an arch, the stone smooth and expertly carved. Ezy ran a hand over it, her expression a mixture of awe and deep unease.

  “This is new,” she confirmed, her voice low. “The engineering is modern, but the design… It’s ancient. Someone has been digging. Re-opening the old ways.”

  “Who?” Mara growled, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade as she stared into the oppressive darkness.

  Curiosity, overriding caution, pushed Trenn to send his senses further, his consciousness flying along the gleaming brass tracks into the unknown. The journey was long, the strain immense. He returned with a gasp, sweat beading on his pale forehead.

  “It’s probably a day’s walk,” he said, panting. “Maybe more. I can’t reach the end. It’s a wide path, but the ceiling is low. About five feet high at most.”

  Ezy stared down the dark, mysterious tunnel, a look of profound, calculating unease on her face. “A low ceiling… Gnome tracks,” she murmured, her mind already working through the terrifying implications. “Who built this? And why?”

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