We stop just before the final arch.

  The heat is quieter here. Too quiet, like the mountain’s lungs have paused with our own.

  Everyone is scraped and scorched in places, glass shards in our armor, but steady. Weapons ready, eyes up.

  I think of the Singing Citidel, the bodies turned to glass, the halls ripped open, the way the hum of the Dominion went thin and afraid. I let that sit in my chest until it firms into something useful.

  “We finish this,” I say, voice level. “For every drone that never came home. For every Hekari who burned while this thing fed on our song. For the Singing Citidel, we finish this.”

  My stance tightens, no one speaks, just a quiet acknowledgement.

  I lift a hand to my brown and the Pale Crown answers.

  Light folds down around my head like poured porcelain hardening to form. The helm seals smooth and white around my head; the three onyx prongs of the crown remain, black stars jutting through radiance.

  In my right hand, the Dominion Chime shifts, bells sliding into interlocked plates, resolving into a kite shield that hums with quiet resiliance. With my left, I draw steel,the Hekari blade rings, clean and cold.

  The visor lowers over my eyes,“When we go in there,” I say through the helm, the words carrying like a bell, “I’ll keep its attention on me.”

  The visor clicks shut, the seams smoothing out nearly invisible.

  “Everyone else stay alive, and take its wings from it.”

  We step through the arch.

  The chamber is a cylinder, taller than any hall in the Singing Citidel. Roost alcoves honeycomb the walls, dark mouths layered up and around, a dead colony’s dormitories. Two ramps spiral toward a high, rounded ledge a hundred feet up where daylight pours in as a pale column. At the top, sprawled like a black altar, the Ashwing lies half-curled, head toward us with its wings draped, still as cooled glass.

  Beside me, Thalos lowers his voice. “You think it’s asleep?”

  Its eyes explode open.

  Shit.

  Well its not asleep now. I give a pointed glance at Scott and Im sure he can feel my frustration even without seeing my face. He gives a smile that says ‘my bad’

  Its eyes are not like an animal's, but more like a furnace’s open door. Blue-white glare blooms in pupils that should be dark, and the pressure of sound in the room turns into a prickle on the back of my neck. The sound here doesn’t echo right; it moves and comes back crooked, it gives the feeling of being under water.

  “Hold,” I say, raising the kite shield. The Pale Crown’s visor frames my world into a narrow, bright slit. “Spread our line. Do not step on any of the glass sheets across the floor if you can manage.”

  The Ashwing rises, deliberate, as if the weight of its massive frame is nothing. Not a dragon of fables, it has no horns, no jeweled crest. It is just a predatory mass of black scale and nearly transparent grey wings webbed with blue veins of heat. It inhales, throat brightening.

  With that tell my mindset clicks back to the Raid: breath opener. Thin beam to test the tank, carve the field.

  To Thalos, quick and low: “likely a breath weapon opener, single-line. Expect a sweep. I’ll anchor center.”

  I turn to my team and declare “Shields up. Eyes on the maw, when it brightens, move. Do not stand in front of it.”

  Just as I say that, the ashwing fires its breath right at me, as if it was telling me to stop talking.

  A beam thick as my forearm cuts the space where my chest is going to be. I plant and raise the Dominion shield. The impact doesn’t feel like heat; it feels like immense pressure, pure force trying to rend a straight line right through me. The kite flares with soft white, the note inside it singing invisibly as the beam splashes across its surface. On the ground to my left, the blast paints a rivulet and sand liquefies, runs, hardens, leaves a glossy, brittle ribbon where solid footing used to be.

  “Watch the floor,” I call. “Those glass sections will break if you step on them, treat them as unstable terrain.”

  It doesn’t roar. It rises from its perch and into the air. The light hits it from the high ceiling of the chamber, and the sound of its wingbeats breaks against the pock marked walls and alcoves, the room answers wrong in return. If this was an MMO this is when the boss name would show up on screen and the music kicks in.

  No time for those thoughts now. It dives the 100 or so feet from its perch and lands with a heavy impact, throwing glass and sand into the air, buffeting it with wing gusts.

  Its tail, low right. I step in, take the sweep on the shield and let it skate across. It hits like a battering ram; my boots slide half a length, obsidian screeching. At least I’m still upright.

  “Rhel, left shoulder,” I say. “Seris, watch everyone's footing, no brittle plates. Thane, mark safe areas for us to walk with glow powder.”

  A second beam lances for Rhel. He reflexively brings his tower up out of reflex, and I see as clear as a red circle on a raid diagram, what will happen if he takes that hit dead on. The Dominion shield is perfect, but his is not.

  “Down!” I slam my shoulder into him and we trade places in a short moment. The line hits my kite dead-center, a white stripe across it glowing brightly, and blows a new molten gutter behind me. Rhel blinks once, then nods, understanding my motive.

  To Thalos, over the pressure of the fight “It's carving lanes to those ramps. It wants to deny our ascent. We need to figure out what is so important to protect up there.”

  “Copy,” he says. “We break a wing so it can’t guard both sides”

  “Exactly. Everyone, spread to the edges. Don’t give it an easy target. Make it pick a side.”

  It steps back and the air around its head ripples, That’s the cone wind-up. I recall the footage of the fight I spent hours analyzing.

  A short, wide, control tool, need to avoid grouping up.

  It’s the same logic as a boss’s point-blank AoE.

  “Back step, now, keep distance!” Heat belches as a blue-white fan washes twelve feet out and across the center. The polished patch it leaves will shatter if you think about putting weight on it.

  I advance on the edge of that fresh plate, shield forward, sword low. It tracks me with its head.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Good, eyes on me, not on Aaren sighting from the right ramp base, not on Ira finding a lane of attack.

  “Make it choose,” I tell them. “The wings are your targets. If that thing takes to the air, this gets a lot harder.”

  The Ashwing lashes a claw at my head. I jam the kite up and meet it at an angle that turns the blow aside. The impact rattles my arms and throat. I answer with steel, a short cut along the wrist where scale overlaps. It’s not for damage; it’s for message. “Here I am. Keep the agro on me”

  It definitely hears it. The next beam is pure hate: a straight line starting at my hip to cut me in half. I dodge this shot, with no one behind me its better to get out of the way than tank the damage. The path the beam carves becomes a smoking seam that will soon turn to brittle glass. It is destroying the terrain, making floor hazards where there were none.

  “It’s blocking lanes to the ramps,” I say. “We’ll need to climb with ropes at broken points. Thane, prep anchors.”

  “Already on it my King,” he answers, calm.

  The tail comes again, high this time. I duck under and it slams the stone where Thalos was a second ago. He slides the hammer up, kisses the tail’s underside with a rising check, a redirect, and the blow glances off skidding along the floor and showering us with chips of broken slate and glass.

  “Damage window open!” I say, hearing my own voice like it’s coming from someone older. “Aaren.”

  “On it.” She steps to a clean patch and snaps a javelin: a silver line through the air. It hits membrane at the base of the left wing, a satisfying thunk as it sticks through. The Ashwing flinches and the beam that would have driven another line toward the left ramp scorches the wall instead.

  Next Ira fires, not a scatter of little arrows, but three measured shots, each tuned to punch in and stay. One lodges along the same wing Aaren hit. The other two pepper the right membranous vein, forcing a hitch into the wingbeat even as it’s still grounded.

  “Good,” I say. “Keep that up.”

  The monster answers by directing a cone breath at Aaren’s position; the Sunforged is already moving, boot soles sparking as she skates off the edge of the fresh plate. The cone lights the floor; the flames run for a few seconds, then die, leaving more treacherous glass.

  This room is becoming a diagram in my mind, safe ovals shrinking as the Ashwing redraws the map with fire. If the ground phase is a puzzle, then the flight phase will be a storm.

  “Thalos,”

  “When it rises, you’re my anti-air. Save the big tremor. We’ll need the stagger at the ramp.”

  “Copy.”

  I test it with a forward step, and slam my shield with my sword. I keep the kite slanted taunting it to hit me with another beam. It takes my bait, this time the pressure is heavier, hotter, it’s dumping more into the line because I keep not dying.

  The note inside the Dominion Shield clarifies, a single bell singing out in the darkness, and the beam redirects harmlessly to the side. I push into the blast, one step, two and then cut across her field of view so she has to pivot and show flank to the right. Kaira doesn’t waste the chance, she slides in, radiant fist crashing into the same wing joint Aaren pinned. The Ashwing barks out in pain and slams a foreclaw down that would have crushed Kaira’s spine if Rhel hadn’t shouldered in with his tower to take the rake. The blow cracks the shield rim, a spiderweb fracture blossoming on the face of his tower. He grunts once, knees flexing painfully.

  “Rhel, no more direct hits. If it tracks you, you break line of sight behind me. Understood?”

  “Understood,” he says, breathing steady.

  Seris ghost-steps along a safe strip Thane just chalked with resin dust, flicks a dagger to test the brittle plate and it caves silently. “That whole lane’s going to be an issue,” she calls. “Treat it as lava.”

  “Copy,” I say. “Everyone adjust, we dont have a centerline now. We go curve left, then up.”

  The Ashwing looks at me and I feel it: the moment when the predator recognizes that something in front of it is not an easy hunt. She shifts her stance, weight coiling back toward the hindquarters. Her wings lift, membranes catching the column of daylight like a sail testing wind.

  There it is, looks like we hit the threat threshold. She’s going to claim the vertical and police the ramps from above.

  “One more exchange, we have this” I tell the line, “We take it, then we move.”

  The Ashwing feints a flying tail swipe, high again, and I don’t buy it. I’m watching the chest; the brightness climbs its throat. “Breath weapon,”

  “Single-line sweep. Punish it for trying to trick us.”

  The beam scythes and I meet it. The shield’s song is a clean, perfect thing; the world beyond the kite becomes white and blue and soundless. I lean forward into it like a sea wall against a tidal wave, hold it for everyone else, and when it flickers out, I dash two steps and slam the kite into it’s knee where it hovers.

  It doesn’t hurt it, but it annoys it, that is for certain. That’s all I need, it swipes where I was, misses, and has to reposition.

  “Aaren!” Thalos barks.

  Her javelin hits the same wounded wing. Kaira follows with a cross. The joint pops ugly. Not broken, but its loosing air faster. It cant keep this up much longer.

  The ashwing decides, and leaps up, pushing a blizzard of glass grit out from under its talons, wings beating once, twice. It lifts, wobbling on the sore joint, then steadies in the column of light, hovering fifteen feet up like a blade held by invisible hands poised to remove our heads.

  Phase change.

  “Up she goes,” I say, mostly for myself. “Everyone, eyes on the ramps. She will not let us climb.”

  I call out to Thalos “Air phase. Save tremor for ramp denial. We cut a wing off or we die on the slope.”

  He laughs once, short, eager. “Been waiting for my cue. Just line her up for me.”

  The Ashwing’s throat brightens again. The bright line of it’s breath begins to move, not just fire and stop, but home in. It’s going to raise new walls across the base of both ramps, carve Xs to force us into the worst of her aoe zones.

  “Spread wide,” I tell my team. “We stay loose. We go left ramp on my mark. Keep your feet, assume every glossy patch will betray you. Ira, you and Thane stay out of sight and head up the right ramp while we distract it left. I might need you to flank.” They both acknowledge and back into the shade of the overhang while we group left with me front and center. It’s breath lights, like a gas burner igniting and shoots out high, lancing down as it turns its head.

  The beam lowers to meet me, a guillotine of plasma and hate.

  “Come on,” I tell it quietly, behind the visor. “I’m right here.”

  And I raise the shield to deflect the beam, glancing it up and away safely.

  It continues to try and force us off the base of the ramp. It bullies the entire left ramp with the ferocity of a nesting animal with every blast angled to deny our approach, force us to stay low and never breach higher ground. Each beam it fires is placed with intent, cutting molten seams into the slope instead of bodies. It’s defending something. It has to be.

  But with it focusing so hard on us, the right ramp is empty.

  Thane and Ira take that opening instantly, two shadows sprinting hard up the far incline the moment they see it on us. Ira does what any good ranged DPS would do seeing that opportunity; she fires three arrows across the chamber to gain threat and split attention. They spark and skid off hard scales, but they make the Ashwing flinch up and turn.

  Good. Even half a second of split aggro is enough.

  The monster lifts off, wings beat and drag hot dust into a hurricane. The beam lights again in its throat.

  “Plasma breath!,” I call out. “Everyone push left while it turns right, GO!”

  We surge. Boots pound up the ramp, shield braced high, we drive up the slope making as much forward progress as we can before its agro shifts again. For a moment it works.

  The Ashwing angles downward toward the right ramp and I feel the surge of victory like a mechanic exploited. Thane and Ira are about to slip completely out of its lane and make the upper ledge before it even corrects—

  —and then it snaps.

  The thing spins midair in a violent twist and rips the beam across the space toward us instead. A downward arc sweep, aimed to take out the entire left ramp structure itself.

  I see the tell late.

  “MOVE—” I manage, but I am still braced high expecting the line to track right.

  Narai reads it first.

  He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t think, just lunges and bodily shoves me forward with his lower left arm. The beam hits that limb instead of me.

  There is no blood spray, just a flash of blue white, like a arc torch cutting clean. His arm is gone before I hear anything. The smell of charred meat hits a second after. Something metal rings against stone behind us, his spear, bouncing down the slope.

  “NARAI—”

  He sucks a breath through his teeth, steady, sharp, then adjusts his stance automatically to three arms like he’s done it his whole life.

  “I can fight,” he says, voice tight but certain. “Just a change of balance. Continue the push, my king.”

  Below us, the glass under the ramp cracks and fractures from the beam path. The angle we’re on will not hold for everyone behind.

  “Hamu, Iskri, get Scott and Rhel across that break NOW!” I bark.

  The great cat and the obsidian Sablehound don’t even wait for a second call, they vault the gap, bodies slamming into Scott and Rhel and carrying them in a brute jump to the safe upper left curve.

  The rest behind Narai can’t make that jump.

  “Fall back right!” I shout at those still lower on the incline. “Circle around and regroup at Thane’s position!”

  They peel off, Seris, Aaren, and the last of the rear line dropping back and bolting for the opposite ramp.

  The six of us are still climbing left, forcing the push while the window’s open and the Ashwing’s mid-turn.

  Narai meets my eyes once before he pivots to break away toward the right side, with three arms and murder in his posture.

  This is no longer a game.

  This is no longer pattern recognition in a raid.

  This thing is protecting something, and we are halfway to touching whatever it would rather kill itself than let us reach.