He hauled himself to the surface of the black pool, gasping for air. His ribs screamed with every motion. Skate has to be down there. Sucking in a breath, he sank back down into the murky depths, vigilantly looking for his pet rock.

  A glint flared from below. Not Skate. He kicked toward it nonetheless. Is it a sword? It was white, thin, and seamless. He swam closer. It’s a tooth! It must’ve fallen off when Skate exploded in the Gem-Croc’s mouth. He closed his hand on it and shoved off the bottom, lungs burning for the surface.

  He pierced the water and shouted out, excitedly. "Mara!"

  She strode to the pool’s edge, her gaze fixing on the gleaming tooth.

  "Look," Trenn rasped, turning the teeth so the firelight caught its edge. "Think you could make a kris knife out of this?"

  "Let me see it," Mara commanded, her voice low.

  He hoisted himself onto the ledge and handed it to her.

  "For a mundane weapon, Gnome or Orc steel would serve you better," she paused. "However, this is ancient. Old as time. An ideal material to craft an Arcane Weapon,” she said, weighing the tooth.

  “With the proper runes and enchantments, it could be just as remarkable as the ancient crocodile it came from." She tested its sharpness. “Now, we need worthy material for the handle, and,” she turned to Trenn, "the emerald the Gem-Croc gave you, for its Arcane Focus.”

  Hours later, Trenn hauled himself from the black pool and set Skate on the stone floor. The hard obsidian shell had vanished. Instead of a black, reflective sphere, Skate was a slumped, quivering mound of translucent purple jelly.

  “A Purple Slime,” Mara observed. “The base form of most slimes,” she said with a soothing voice. “Don’t worry, Trenn. Skate is fine. It just needs time to regenerate its shell.”

  The slumped Purple Slime shuddered, sputtering vibration rippling across its form. Trenn poked at it, testing its pliability.

  "What's up, Skate? Is Mara right? You’re just tired?" Trenn murmured to his pet.

  The sputtering vibration settled at his touch, shifting into a weary purr of bone-deep exhaustion. A tired, fond smile formed on Trenn's lips. The Obsidian Bombs had burned away everything but this simple, exhausted core.

  He scooped the slack creature up. It flowed through his hands as he settled it over his head. Its exhausted purr became a comforting pulse against his scalp.

  Mara’s teasing voice cut through the quiet. "Somehow you look even more delicious when you're soaked." He glanced over. She leaned against a collapsed archway, sword at her hip and bow at her back, a predatory glint in her amber eye.

  "I'll make sure to keep gathering the edible fungi and roots, then," he called back, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "Wouldn't want to end up on the menu."

  The Stomper was a blackened wreck. Zeen was crippled. Ezy was stabilized, but unconscious.

  Trenn moved through the wreckage, his body protesting each step. He checked the lashings on the gurney he’d built for Ezy. Satisfied, he sat by the low fire, letting the immense silence of the deep earth settle around him.

  Across the flames, Mara stirred. A choked whimper turned into a low growl. Her body was coiled, her hands clenched into fists. The frantic, anxious tremor of her fear vibrated through the braided cord of their connection.

  He crossed the space between them and sat by her sleeping roll. He reached out, his fingers trembling, and tentatively brushed the white fur on her head. The fur was like spun silk beneath his calloused fingers. Beneath his fingers, the tension bled from her shoulder. Her frantic tremors gentled, her breathing deepening into the rhythm of true sleep.

  He closed his eyes, his hand adopting a rhythmic scratch behind her ear. He let the cavern fall away: the drip of water, the guttering fire, the weight of the rock above. He reached inward for the tether binding soul to body and located the resonant chord in the core of his being.

  He guided the chaotic energy, tuning its pitch and shaping its cadence to match the resonant frequency of the Sound Element. The path was familiar, a groove worn into his soul. The world behind his closed eyes ignited. A sphere of perception bloomed around him, the cavern rendering itself in vibrating waves, a landscape defined by echo location.

  The Command spell… It was the result of his Charm Illusion, cast with mana attuned to Sound. What if he applied that same principle to his Clairaudience spell? He drew a breath and pushed the Sound-attuned Divination spell outward.

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  His perception crossed universes. He struck a tuning fork in this world and listened for its echo in another. The vibrations of his old life thrummed back, faint tethers stretched thin across impossible distances. He focused on the strongest, the one that hummed with a lifetime of love.

  A sunlit kitchen bloomed around him, so vivid he could smell the brewing coffee. His mother stood at the window. Worry had etched deep lines into her face. She stared outward, a dishtowel clutched in her hand, her shoulders slumped.

  "Mom… I'm coming. I'm going to save you..." he whispered.

  She whiplashed, her entire body straightening. She looked around, searching her environment for something. She opened her mouth, and her voice echoed across the void and reached Trenn’s ear.

  "What? Save me? Who is this?" A pause. A flicker of hesitation, of raw grief. "Trenn? Is that… is that you?"

  Her voice.

  The sound was real, not a memory. The hum of the spell, the drip of water, the world itself—all of it vanished. A hollow ache bloomed in his chest, a void that stole the air from his lungs. The image of the sunlit kitchen tore at the edges, a photograph burning away.

  He clung to the connection, the strain spiking behind his eyes.

  “Mom, can you hear me?” he said with a gasp.

  "Trenn, oh my god, where are you? We thought… when the Event hit, and Montreal was turned to rubble…” she cried, hot, heavy tears. “We thought you were dead!" A dam of grief broke in her voice, anguish and relief warring in a torrent of words.

  “Mom, I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m just… far. Very far. But I’m coming back,” he said, the words a binding promise. The effort to hold the connection corded the muscles in his neck. A fresh trickle of blood wept from his nose, warm against his lip.

  “Trenn, it’s chaos here. Monsters, spellcasting warlords… Timothy… Tim, the little neighbor… he’s been protecting the neighborhood. He… flies and… well. It’s different now, Trenn. People die—all the time. There’s no electricity, no internet… Maybe… Maybe you shouldn’t come back? If things are better where you are.”

  “Listen to me,” he pushed, his voice urgent. “What happened in Montreal? What happened on Earth? It’s called a Mana Bomb. And it’s just the beginning. I don’t have much time. Mom, I need you to get to Montreal.”

  "Montreal? Honey, what are you talking about? We're in Terrebonne. And Montreal is a smoking pile of debris, being fought over by superpowered killers. Why would we go to Montreal?" Her confusion crackled through the fragile connection.

  "I can't explain everything," he pleaded, the strain making his vision swim. "Mount Royal. There’s a forest there. That’s where we meet. Please, Mom. You have to trust me. Get Dad, get Sarah, and go to Montreal. Don’t go into the forest; stay nearby. I’m going to call you every day. I will find you there. I promise."

  A pause filled with her ragged breathing, a sound that carried her fear and her desperate desire to believe.

  "Is this real?" she finally whispered. "Are you really okay?"

  "I'm okay," he lied. "I've met people. They're helping me. I'm coming home."

  "Okay," she said, the single word an override of all logic. "Okay, honey. We'll… we'll figure it out. We'll go to Montreal. Just… please, hurry."

  The connection frayed, her voice dissolving into a whisper of static. The tethers disappeared, leaving an aching silence in their wake. He had done it.

  Trenn slumped against the stone, the psychic strain a physical weight. Beneath the exhaustion, his mother's voice echoed, a promise that gave his quest a destination. The feeling was real.

  The scrape of Zeen’s metal crutch echoed in the gloom as he moved with a lurching gait, a twisted piece of the Stomper’s chassis serving as his support.

  Trenn’s muscles burned as he pushed the gurney that carried Ezy. The frame, consisting of two long pieces of railway lashed together with leather straps, groaned under the weight. At its head, Skate’s obsidian form served as a single, frictionless wheel that glided over the rubble. Ezy’s bandaged chest barely rose with each faint breath.

  Mara stalked alongside them, a ghost of white fur, her quiver full, Trenn’s kris knife at her belt. Above them, Bomber’s wings beat a steady rhythm, its multifaceted eyes scouting the oppressive dark.

  “Not much further,” Zeen’s voice rasped from the rear, his breath coming in wheezing gasps. “A fine establishment, the Wayrest. Best pork on the coast. My partner, Gil… he has a way with the smoker. A secret recipe. Uses resin from the copper trees. Gives it this sweet heat that melts.”

  He paused, leaning on his crutch to navigate a patch of loose rock.

  “And the mead,” he continued, his voice taking on a dreamy quality. “Brewed with pure Hive honey. The real thing! A hot meal. A proper bed. A roof. It’ll all be worth it. Gil will throw a feast. He’ll crack open the aged berry mead he saves for special occasions. You’ll be drinking for free for a week.”

  The air soured. An acrid tang of smoke scraped their throats. Ahead, Bomber chittered, its wings beating faster as it dropped lower. Grey light bloomed in the distance, a dead glow framed by the tunnel’s end.

  Zeen’s monologue faltered. Mara’s advance slowed, her head low, her snout twitching as she tasted the air.

  The tunnel ended in a blackened wound. The surrounding stone was vitrified, melted into glassy shapes dripping from the ceiling. Where the Wayrest’s iron door should have been, a puddle of cooled slag served as a monument to immense heat.

  They emerged into a field of ash.

  Charred timbers and smoking ruins stretched under a sky the color of dishwater. The courtyard was an expanse of blackened earth, warm beneath their boots. The forest beyond was a ruin of skeletal trunks clawing at the grey sky. Greasy smoke plumed from stubborn fires as the wind whispered through the ruins.

  The gurney’s handles slipped from Trenn’s numb fingers. It rolled to a stop on Skate’s silent wheel. Zeen’s jaw went slack. His crutch fell from his grasp, his fantasy turning to ash on his tongue. He stumbled forward, his good leg sinking into the grey powder. Mara went rigid, a statue of white fur in a dead world, her arrow aimed at a threat that had already passed.

  Trenn’s gaze met Mara’s. A shared horror dawned between them. The Fire Elemental. Their Fire Elemental. Every charred timber, every pile of ash, was their doing.

  Zeen wandered, mouth agape, through the ruins of his dream, his hopeful words a cruel, mocking echo. Trenn and Mara stood apart, their gazes fixed on the devastation. They were alone on a new continent, their promised refuge a field of ash.

  The price of victory kept rising.

  Old Pathway arc.

  Arc 4: The Ashen Coast, will be about what rises from these ruins. How does a team with a maimed inventor, a fallen Guardian, and a haunted Wild Mage even begin to move forward? And what new dangers are waiting for them in a world that was supposed to be their salvation?

  Tuesday (October 7). As always, your comments, ratings, and follows are the fuel that keeps this story going.

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