It had taken barely a few hours to find one.
Kalsar's Kithren had led the way almost the entire distance, pausing periodically to test the air in a way that looked, to Ant's untrained eye, indistinguishable from an ordinary animal sniffing at something interesting. Kalsar had simply followed, saying little, offering no commentary beyond the occasional grunt of confirmation whenever his Kithren's pace picked up.
"That was fast," Ant said, mostly to fill the silence of the last stretch of walking. "I expected this to take days, not hours."
"Depends on the region," Kalsar said. "This area's had three known vortices logged over the decades I've lived out here. All three have been farmed regularly enough that most people stopped bothering to check on them. But farmed doesn't mean gone. It means smaller. Manageable." He nodded toward the ground ahead, where something had begun to shimmer faintly against the flat grey light of the afternoon. "There."
The vortex looked exactly like the earth had been torn rather than opened, a ragged fissure perhaps ten feet across, the soil around its edges curled upward in jagged plates as though something had punched through from below with considerably more force than the ground had been built to withstand. Energy poured from the gap in slow, visible currents, a faint violet-grey shimmer that moved the way heat moved above a fire, except cold somehow, and wrong in a way Ant couldn't quite place beyond the simple fact that nothing about it looked like it belonged in the world above ground.
Standing at the edge of it, Ant could feel it before he could properly see it, a pressure against his skin, faint but unmistakable, the discomfort of standing near something that had been building for three centuries and had finally found a way to breathe.
Maren stood at the edge of it, staring down into the swirling dark with an expression caught somewhere between fear and the same hungry fascination she'd shown in the ruined lab.
"We go in together," Kalsar said. "I'll be behind you. Watching, not fighting, unless something goes wrong enough that watching stops being an option." His eyes moved between them all, ending on Ant. "Understood?"
Ant nodded. Beside him, Mahkir made a small sound that might have been agreement or might have simply been boredom, difficult to tell which.
They went down together.
The passage narrowed briefly before opening into a wider space below. A cave was perhaps the best description, although that barely did it justice, it was almost like a wound in the earth that had settled into something semi-permanent, walls of packed soil and exposed stone streaked through with the same faint violet residue that had been leaking from the surface. The air here was thick with it, a pressure Ant felt against his skin rather than saw.
Mahkir's amber eyes had gone slightly wider than usual, taking in the space with genuine interest rather than his usual dismissive assessment.
This place is thick with it, he said, through the bond. Whatever it is. I can feel it against my skin, the way I'd feel standing too close to a fire.
Ant relayed the sentiment. Kalsar, a step behind them, nodded slowly. "Good sign. Means whatever's inside had reason to accumulate."
They'd gone perhaps thirty feet further into the passage when the growls reached them.
More than one. Low, overlapping, bouncing off walls that gave the sound nowhere clean to travel, and Ant's hand found Soul Render's grip before he'd consciously decided to reach for it.
Three silhouettes emerged from the dark ahead of them, roughly the size of large dogs, their forms somewhere between shadow and substance, edges bleeding into the surrounding gloom. Points of dull red light marked where eyes should have been on each one, shifting position as they spread out to circle.
"Wraithkin," Kalsar said, quiet and hard. "These three will be a good test for you. They appear to be the weakest variety you can face. If the four of you work together, it should not pose any problems."
Axel dropped into a defensive stance without being told. Maren herself had gone rigid, her hand gripping the strap of her pack hard enough that her knuckles had paled.
"Okay, we got this, let's spread out and ensure they can't box us in!" she called, the words tumbling out fast, her voice higher than usual but steady enough. "Ant, take the left one, I'll get the one circling right, and Mahkir, you can..."
The Wraithkin didn't wait for the plan to finish forming.
All three lunged at once, and whatever coordination Maren had been attempting collapsed within seconds. Her Kithren surged forward to intercept the nearest of them, four arms swinging in a wide defensive arc that clipped Mahkir's flank as he darted past in the same instant, sending him tumbling sideways with a sharp, irritated snarl.
"Watch him!" Ant shouted, with no time to say which one he meant, and the half-second everyone else lost working it out cost him more than he had to spare. One of the Wraithkin closed the distance and raked something insubstantial across his forearm, cold rather than sharp, the wound arriving without the clean pain a blade would have given him. A number he didn't have time to read ticked down somewhere behind his eyes and was gone again just as fast.
Mahkir recovered fast, twisting back into the fight with claws already out, meeting the creature that had struck Ant before it could withdraw. Axel, still tangled in its own momentum from the earlier collision, swung wide at empty air where its target had already moved, overcommitting in a way that left it exposed.
"Mahkir, don't..." Ant started, watching Mahkir move to cover the opening Maren's Kithren had left, only for Axel to recover at the same moment and swing back into the same space, the two of them colliding again, neither quite where the other expected.
This is remarkably poor coordination. One Flame Breath and I could end this fight, Mahkir observed, dry disapproval running through every word, a Kithren forced to share a task with people who hadn't rehearsed it and clearly not enjoying it.
"Don't you dare," Ant said, breathless. "The whole point of this is to work as a team," he added, quickly ducking under a strike from the third Wraithkin and driving Soul Render through the shifting mass of its shoulder.
The fight sprawled across the chamber in overlapping exchanges that refused to settle into anything resembling a pattern. Maren calling directions that arrived too late to matter, her Kithren throwing its full strength at targets that had already moved, Mahkir compensating for both of them by covering gaps that kept opening faster than anyone could close them. Ant felt himself flagging, Soul Render growing heavier with every parry, his forearm throbbing where the first strike had opened it, sweat stinging in the wound each time he moved.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"Behind you!" Maren shouted, and Ant spun to find nothing there, the warning arriving a full second too late to matter, her Kithren's own confusion apparently bleeding into her calls as much as into its movements. He caught the real strike a half-second later on the flat of his blade, deflecting it wide rather than absorbing it cleanly, the impact still jarring up through his wrist.
Something felt different.
His arm moved faster than it should have, Soul Render catching the next strike with a speed that hadn't been there a moment ago. He didn't have time to question it properly, but the sensation stayed with him through the next exchange too, lighter, sharper, the blade responding like it weighed less than it had at the start of the fight.
He checked his screen mid-motion, the habit too ingrained to suppress even in the middle of combat.
[ USER STATUS ]
User: Anthony Byrren
User Level: 4
Str: 9 (+0.45)
End: 5 (+0.25)
Magic: 5 (+0.25)
Agi: 12 (+0.6)