Our descent was heralded by the screams of the dying dead. Seemed the traps couldn't kill those fuckers, but it could turn them into a fine and bloody mince.

  I led the way, Shorty on my heels, Laticia bringing up the back.

  As much as I wanted to push us all into a sprint down that long stair, I knew it was folly. I needed to keep my eyes open for more dangers, and the two girls were in no shape for a run.

  While Laticia was uninjured, her mind had clearly suffered. Her eyes were hollow and she breathed like a rabbit caught in a snare. Fast and fitted, just working up to another scream.

  It was clear her and Lottie had been some kind of close. Hell, the kind biomancer was probably close to every single man and woman in the camp. Now, they were all dead, and she had been helpless to save them.

  Shorty was a little better off. She was a little better recovered from her injuries than I had feared, and I knew she kept some distance from most in the camp.

  But not Lottie.

  We all felt her death. That woman had been a leader, a friend, and a guide to all of us in her way. And now she was gone.

  That thought made some hate burn up from the ice in my guts. What kind of world, what kind of Gods could suffer that?

  The kind that don't care, I supposed.

  Good people died. Bad men walked away. The world, it was just turnin' on. Never look back, never look too far forward. Just keep your head up, hand on your gun.

  "It's hot," Shorty said wiping blood and grit from her red scaled brow, "do you know what's down here? My dreams were, vague."

  "No. But I know what it smells like."

  Soil, rot and fetid life.

  "A jungle," whispered Laticia, "I can feel the hum of concentrated life. This is... Strange."

  "More than strange," I said as we hit the bottom of the stairs and looked at the path ahead, "It's plain unnatural."

  Ahead our reality opened out. Another dome, like the one above, but this filled with far more than mad murals and a statue to some dragon god.

  Trees as tall as any you might find on the coasts below the sands. Flowers, rich, red, blue and more, all in vibrant bloom.

  Insects buzzed and flittered, living life as they did, as they always did. Things didn't change for the bugs, and for that, I envied them. They couldn't know everything about this was wrong.

  It all looked so strange in the heavy red light.

  "How?" asked Shorty with a breath, her lips barely parted, "How can this be? We're in a cave, under the earth, the sun can't reach here..."

  I looked up to the top of the dome and extended a gloved finger.

  It nearly blinded me to look at it, made something in me shake, "They made their own damn sun."

  Mana swirled and boiled and my arcane eye began to ache.

  How much power? How much could it take to fuel a spell like that?

  I couldn't imagine.

  "This... This is what we were looking for," Shorty said, no awe in her voice, "a true artifact of the Anasisi. This could change our understanding of magic forever..."

  I looked at her and nodded. The girl's eyes were fixed on the impossible sun, her pupils as small as pin pricks.

  "Come back in force. Bring an army, a thousand mages and priests, but come back. We can still make some good of this." I said, taking her by the shoulder and turning her away from the blinding light.

  "But right now, we got only one thing to do, and that's survive."

  Her small chest heaved and I could feel her heart pounding through her ribs.

  "It's not what I saw," she whispered, "this isn't even what they're trying to protect..."

  "Can there truly be more to this insanity? What could justify," Laticia shook her head, eyes falling to the blood and brain that stained her leather shoes, "any of this?"

  "Same damn things that justified any other evil, I reckon." I said, "Fear and power. It's always fear and power."

  "Yes. There's a secret, deeper, hidden. They didn't want us to know." Shorty looked to me, her eyes hard, "We should never have looked. Never have come. All the secrets of the past... Not all of them should see the light of day."

  I slid two shells into my scatter gun and did a quick inventory. I had had enough philosophy for one day.

  Down to twelve sanctified shells, none of the mundane ones left. Eighteen rounds for my pistol. One fire-snake left.

  Oh. And my good knife.

  That was all that'd be standing between them and us.

  Without ammunition, the fact that we had almost no food and severely water left was, well, no problem at all.

  "Stick behind me. Miss Laticia, if shit comes our way do not run. Not until I'm dead or tell you otherwise, you hear? Runnin' through dense terrain is a fabulous way to break a leg and get shot in the back."

  She nodded, though her eyes were still looking anywhere but at me. I could see the cracks in her mask of sanity, in her composure, but she was fighting to keep it together. That had to be enough.

  Shorty meanwhile... She was just staring off into the artificial jungle, eyes unfixed. I couldn't say what she was seeing, but I hoped it was some path to survival.

  I started moving. They followed.

  Shorty's pistol was in her hand, cocked, ready to fire. I could feel mana gathering at Laticia's fingertips, the preamble to some flesh warping spell.

  The heat was a stark contrast to the cool stone we'd left behind, and the air was thick and heavy with humidity. The constant buzz of thousands of living beings felt foreign after days in the cold dead upper halls.

  It made that crawling sensation of my skin, the sense of a thousand eyes watching me, that much worse.

  We followed a rough trail through the undergrowth, the light dimming a fraction, shaded by the canopy.

  I tried to focus for any disruption in the constant drone of chirps, cheeps, ribbits, and buzzing wings. It was a hopeless task. My senses were as overwhelmed as I'd ever known them to be.

  This was very far from the kind of forest I knew.

  The smell of the place, the sounds, the damn feel of it on my skin, it was all just wrong.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  It only got worse when things did change.

  Suddenly, the noise stopped.

  All them eyes looked away at whatever would come next.

  I swallowed a lump of rotten fear and tried to keep the panic out of my voice, "We're going to run."

  "I thought you said-"

  "Run!"

  I took off, my feet pounding across the moss and mulch as I sprinted down the winding trail.

  Behind us the sound of something, many somethings crashing through the lush green hell only served to spur our doomed trio on. I saw Shorty glance over her shoulder and her eyes go wide. I didn't have the luxury.

  Not yet.

  The trail twisted and turned in front of me and I barely dodged a tree as I skidded around a sharp corner. The path dropped into a low ravine and I slowed and turned and gestured the girls down. Down into the only hard cover we'd likely have.

  My eyes scanned the trees for the beat of my fluttering heart.

  Nothing.

  Just movement, almost like the wind...

  Except for that faint whisper of dark mana bleeding through the trunks and ferns.

  Invisibility?

  Maybe.

  Don't matter.

  I drew the final fire-snake and dragged a match across the stubble on my chin.

  It caught with a hiss, then-

  Fuck.

  I looked at the fuse, the match, the fuse.

  It was out.

  My blood froze.

  Slowly, like a knife diggin' through my guts, a nightmare materialized from the green.

  Three. Just a dozen paces away.

  They slithered slow, careful. Their yellow eyes cut by a vertical slit. They had no legs, but their arms were strong, a curved sword in each hand. The runner patterns on their fanned hoods were like the one from camp. Like the ones I'd seen in the murals. It drew my eyes and made it hard to-

  To...

  What was I even doing again?

  They're gettin' close.

  I had to do something, right?

  I had to-

  "Roche!" Shorty screamed and her pistol cracked out in the damp air.

  The crack snapped me out of my waking dream and adrenaline made me act.

  There was not time for a plan. Only room for reflex, and a little luck.

  The Anasisi in the center reared, fangs bared. Poised to strike.

  I threw that fire-snake as hard as I could, right between the eyes of that demon from the past.

  And before it could hit, before anyone present could so much as blink-

  I drew.

  The gun bucked hard in my hand and I felt half a days worth of energy flow on out to power the inscribed ruins.

  Dragon's Fire.

  It took the last of me, every ounce of my reserves. Every fiber of my steely nerves.

  I watched another new sun be born underneath the old.

  Then I flew. Up and off my feet like a child's doll.

  The air was filled with heat, ash, and the smell of my own cookin’ meat.

  I kind of expected the sweet release of unconsciousness. The long deserved rest of death.

  But nope.

  Nope.

  Instead I hit the ground like a sack of rocks. I'd say it knocked the wind out of me, but the blast had already done that. No this time I had the joy of feeling several ribs crack. My head hit something hard, and the world became a kaleidoscope of pain and confusion.

  And of course, I was very much present to enjoy it all.

  I got lost in the crashing waves of confusion and agony. Set adrift like a ship in a storm, no anchor, no rudder, no guiding light to see. Just lost, as I had been most of my life.

  Lost and suffering.

  I felt hands on my arms. They wriggled beneath my smoking gloves, each and every tendril trying to struggle free.

  Shots.

  Shots in the dark. The flash and the boom. The smell of black powder.

  Then I was in the air, dragged over a slender shoulder and hauled through the branches and leaves.

  I was taken away from the fight.

  From the only place I ever could be.

  Now I was useless. Now I was dead weight.

  Just a burden on better folk than me.

  "Roche!" said a shrill voice, punctuated by a clawed slap. Yet more pain chased it and my vision began to return along with whatever sense the blast had knocked out of me.

  "He has a concussion! Do not do that again." Said another voice, this one calmer, older, a touch motherly.

  I blinked away tears, grit and blood to find myself looking up into Shorty's eyes.

  "Hey there kid," I croaked, trying to smile, but failing, "I'm glad you're alright."

  "We're not alright," she snapped, "you're not alright!"

  I could feel my ribs knitting, flesh regrowing, blood cells replicating.

  And I could feel the cost of being healed again.

  Whatever flesh I'd recovered since the prison ship, since I woke up on that strange beach just a week ago, it was long gone. Yet the magic would take even more than that. It would wear away bone, consume organs, it would eat me, inch by inch, piece by piece.

  And I'd have let it. Better to be a ghost on my feet, than a burden on my friends.

  I drew in a deep, shuddering breath and sat up as Latacia backed away.

  The woman was unharmed, save for a few singed strands of her greying hair. Short was likewise whole, besides the missing arm and a few new scrapes.

  We were all sat in a dark passage, the jungle and its noise only a few dozen paces away. I could still smell the burning bodies, still taste the acrid stench of the blast.

  "Are they..." I swallowed, hard and dry. Laticia passed me a canteen and I drank greedy and deep, "Are they dead?"

  Shorty's eyes met mine. They were full of rage and fear in equal measure.

  "Two. We got two."

  "Good. Good. Where-"

  I tried to stand and found my legs weren't working.

  Fuck.

  Fuck no. Not again. Not again.

  "Easy, Roche," said Laticia, "your spine was nearly broken. As it stands there is some damage to the nerves. You have to rest, let your body work. Give it time."

  "How long?"

  "Too long," Shorty cut in, her yellow eyes cold. So damn cold.

  Huh. Guess that blast shook somethin' loose in her too.

  "I'll carry you," Laticia offered, but I could see she knew already what my answer would be.

  "Nah. Just leave me here," I said, "I'll be right behind ya. Just give me a minute to catch my breath. I'll be right there." I lied, a little easier than I breathed.

  Ice-Cold Blood would get me up, eventually. But it was also the reason I had survived long enough to enjoy this looming fate. I guess being tough really just meant you got to wait longer till you died. Got to see death slither close, got to look it in the eye...

  That was a gift I could have lived without.

  "You know a way out, don't ya Shorty? See it in a dream?" It was half question, half accusation. I knew she was holding something back. From us. From me.

  She didn't answer me, just stared.

  That was enough.

  "Go. Go on, get her out of here. Come back with an army. I'll have coffee on, just for you." I said, and for once Shorty did not protest.

  Laticia tried, bless her she really did. That woman had more care in her than I did, and I could hardly stand myself. Still, I refused and she relented.

  And they both...

  They just left. Down the hall and past me. Into the dark and whatever lay beyond in this accursed vault.

  Left me on the stone, my gun in hand. I gave Laticia my pistol and the rest of the ammo, whatever good it would do her.

  If I were a better man I would've lent my scattergun too, but I just couldn't stand the idea of dyin' without it.

  It was the only friend who'd not abandoned me. Or simply died.

  I thought about Moxie. Finally, let myself now that I didn't need to keep my feet. Didn't need to keep my head.

  She'd been my best friend. I'd known that pig for all of few days but we matched as man and beast. She brutal, greedy, and mean, and me, the same.

  I thought about Lottie. About what might've been. She was a keen woman. Strong too.

  More of a loss to this world than I would ever be.

  And… The more I thought about them all, the more I left Roche and his weakness behind, the more I was startin’ to realize somethin’ I should known from minute one.

  That’s how they do it. Them fuckin’ snakes. They don’t put the fear in you, they just take a twist to what you already have inside.

  And for some reason, that made it all change. All that fear became just dry kindlin’ nice and piled up.

  And when I saw that wretched shimmer of the Anasisi’s magical cloakin’, saw my final enemy slitherin’ towards me. It was like a spark.

  The fire caught, and regret and fear and weakness started to burn away. A tether unnoticed before, one that connected me to something out in the green-

  It went taut from the heat of it all, then snapped.

  Fire rose, and in a moment.

  Ashes and hate. And a hunger I had forgot.

  "Come on, you son-of-a-bitch," I said to the heavy, warping air, "come on and I’ll make it hurt!"

  And then, the thing was on me.