Trenn took a half-step forward, raising a placating hand.

  “Or maybe we talk first?” he called out, his voice feeling small and thin in the vastness of the cavern. As the words left his lips, he pushed his Mana Radiation towards the ancient crocodiles in an attempt to form a tether between them.

  He channeled the raw, untamed hum vibrating in his bones and pushed it into the colossal creature. A frantic, desperate attempt to charm, to soothe. To negotiate.

  A deep, rumbling sound began in the Gem-Croc’s immense chest, a vibration that shook the stones at their feet. It was a laugh, a sound of pure, condescending amusement that echoed from the cavern walls.

  “Arrr yo-u t-ry-ing to cha-ar-mm me, T-rrr-ennnn?” it said, its voice laced with mockery. “I know all yo-ur tri-ick-ss.”

  Zeen scrambled for the deepest shadows he could find, disappearing into the rubble. High above, Bomber wheeled in agitated circles, confused at the lack of eyes to dive bomb.

  Zeen executed a tactical retreat born of a lifetime of avoiding fights and angry clients. He dove behind a thick outcropping of stone, flattening himself against the rubble and making himself impossibly small, his teeth clattering.

  From his new, fortified position, his mind was a frantic mess of risk assessment. His entire plan, his entire future, was riding on these three lunatics not getting themselves eaten… or on the giant crocodile to forget about him.

  “Who are you?” Trenn screamed.

  “The One-Eye. Yo-u car-ried me-e. Yo-u foll-low-ed mee. Yo-u were ea-si-er to tri-ick than the Gob-blin-ss.”

  While the entity’s mocking laughter vibrated in the air, Mara moved. She didn't aim for a killing blow. She aimed for information. She drew, nocked, and loosed a bronze-tipped arrow aimed at the spherical void that had replaced its eye.

  The arrow did not impact. It did not ricochet. It vanished. It flew into the darkness and disappeared without a sound, as if it had passed through a window into a dimension of eternal, empty night.

  Not an eye, Mara’s mind registered with a cold, professional dread—a gateway.

  The void-like eye of the entity swiveled, its featureless gaze locking onto the source of the vanished arrow.

  “Ma-a-ra di-ies fir-rs-st!” the entity’s gravely voice snarled.

  One moment, it was a mountain of patient observation; the next, it was an avalanche. The ground shuddered as it lunged, its colossal mouth—a cavern of serrated teeth longer than a car—opening wide to snatch the white-furred woman.

  Trenn could barely see her in the dark. The amulet was gone. Possession was impossible. His charm was useless. He was out of tools, out of time, out of options.

  She’s going to die.

  It was a primal shock that bypassed all conscious training. All his failed attempts to gently 'match the pitch' were swept away by a single, absolute need. His Wild Mage nature responded not with force, but with sudden clarity.

  The chaotic hum in his bones snapped into focus, locking into the pure, crystalline frequency of the Sound Element.

  His perception instantly reconfigured. He was no longer seeing with light, but perceiving with vibration. The cavern bloomed around him, a 360-degree map rendered in the echoes of his own attuned soul.

  It’s… echolocation!

  The Gem-Croc was about to close its maw on Mara.

  “STOP!” he screamed, his voice tinted with attuned mana.

  The Gem-Croc froze. Its massive jaws halted feet from its prey, its immense body locked into an unnatural tableau of arrested violence. Mara continued her evasion by diving into the deep, black waters of the Old Pathway and disappearing beneath its surface.

  The command had worked. For a single, glorious second, Trenn had imposed his will on the One-Eye. The backlash was instantaneous. The creature's immense, ancient mind slammed back against his own, a psychic recoil that exploded behind his eyes and sent him staggering.

  He fell to the ground, gasping for air, spitting blood, while Ezy’s hands flew over the Stomper’s controls. She yanked back on two main levers and simultaneously pushed the firing studs built into their grips.

  Its two massive hands snapped forward, and a torrent of elemental fire erupted from its open palms. The twin jets of fire engulfed the paralyzed Gem-Croc, turning the ancient, wet scales of its hide to blackened, steaming slag.

  But the damaged machine, pushed beyond its limits, began to protest. The elemental containment unit, already compromised, was overloading. A jet of searing flame spat backward from a ruptured coolant line on the Stomper’s chest, instantly igniting the leg of Ezy’s coveralls.

  She screamed, the smell of her own burning clothes filling the cockpit. A primal instinct shrieked at her to let go, to save herself. But this was her machine. Her life’s work. She wasn’t going to let it fail. She held the levers down, buttons pressed, gritting her teeth against the fire licking her leg.

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  With a roar of pain, the Gem-Croc broke free. It moved with a speed that defied its own mass, whipping its tail to swat the Stomper, thrown sideways to crash into the cavern wall. Inside the cockpit, Ezy was stunned, fumbling to find the eject lever while second-degree burns started to creep up from her feet to her thighs.

  The One-Eye was furious at the burns on its new face. “Ss-tt-u-pi-d Gn-o-me!” The ground shuddered as it charged, a living mountain of vengeful fury aimed directly at the downed Stomper.

  Trenn was on the ground, his vision blurred by the mental whiplash he suffered casting his Command spell, the Sound Element version of his Charm spell. He saw Ezy crash against the wall. Flames were coming from the Stomper’s cockpit. He saw Mara disappear in the black waters. He didn’t see Zeen, but that was probably a good thing. With a desperate, guttural roar of his own, he dropped Skate from his head and pushed himself up to his feet. The Gem-Croc caught movement in the corner of its eye. It spun to meet Trenn head-on, but Trenn was already kicking his Skate with all his gathered might. The Obsidian Slime shot forward like a wrecking ball.

  Upon impact with the burned jowl of the One-Eye, it detonated. The effect was a soft THUD against the Giant-Croc’s thick hide and scales, followed by a loud CRACK as Skate’s obsidian shell exploded into shards. A hundred razor-sharp fragments of volcanic glass erupted like shrapnel. They tore into the blackened and burnt scales, leaving bleeding gashes and embedded pieces of stone in the giant crocodile’s face.

  The One-Eye's charge faltered as a piercing shriek of agony tore from its throat. It reared back, golden ichor bleeding from the wound. Skate’s fragmented shell was already reforming as it rebounded upwards to return to Trenn. But the Gem-Croc’s massive jaws snapped open and snatched the arcing sphere in mid-air.

  Its teeth closed on Skate, who had recovered a thin obsidian shell. The pressure caused it to detonate a second time, inside the One-Eye’s mouth. There were fewer shards, but they cut the Gem-Croc’s gums, tongue, and inner cheek.

  The Gem-Croc screamed as it spat Skate into the deep water, where it sank without a trace. Meanwhile, Ezy had recovered from her brain fog and pulled the ejection lever. The seat ejected meekly, and she was forced to slide off to the ground, where she desperately rolled to put out her burning clothes.

  The Stomper was dead, its internal systems fried, flames now licking at the exterior of the cockpit. Ezy was on the floor, unable to stand. The welts under her burned clothes were torture.

  The Stomper's engine was burning. A knot of grief for her life's work tightened in her gut. The Fire Elemental’s containment chamber was heavily damaged.

  A raw curse tore from her throat as she ripped the wrench from her belt and hurled it at the damaged reactor.

  CLANK. “Stupid machine!” she screamed, throwing a screwdriver at the same target.

  It sparked off the warped plating, which was useless. Pliers followed, then a nearby stone, each frantic throw rattling the cage. Screaming and crying, she pushed herself to the side and tried to crawl without scraping her burned feet and legs on the ground.

  The One-Eye’s attention returned to Ezy. The Stomper was the real danger, since Mara lost her Guardian claws. It surged forward, a wave of scale and fury aimed at crushing the defiant Gnome.

  But Trenn was ready. He could feel the cost of the last command, a searing echo in his skull. To do it again… it might break him for good.

  Not again, a voice that sounded like Tyndral's screamed in his mind. Not another one. He braced for the psychic backlash and yelled.

  “STOP!”

  The command tore from him, and something in his mind snapped. The world went black before he even hit the ground, limp, unconscious.

  The giant monster froze mid-stride. Ezy picked up her thrown wrench and banged directly on the hatch of the Fire Elemental’s containment chamber. Her wrench was a frantic blur of motion as she hammered at the bent, smoking piece of metal on the Stomper’s chassis.

  The One-Eye regained control of its muscles as the damaged locking grate sprang open. Ezy barely had time to raise an arm to shield her face as the Great Fire Elemental erupted from its prison. Ezy’s screams lasted a fraction of a second.

  Her raised right forearm was erased by the flames, her stump cauterized. The fire, barely disturbed by her arm, peeled the skin from the right side of her head, melting her eye and ear into a ruin of charred flesh. Lying on her back, her body had gone rigid, immobile.

  The elemental was the embodiment of rage. Escaping the Stomper’s prison had brought it face-to-face with the Gem-Croc, who was lunging towards Ezy. The One-Eye tried to stop, but it was moving too fast, with a body that was too large for its size. Its entire head entered the greater elemental’s flames.

  The Gem-Croc thrashed in all-consuming agony. The entity’s hateful, intelligent rage was gone, replaced by the pure, instinctual terror of a creature being burned alive.

  It was no longer a god or a demon; it was an animal, mewling and whimpering. It did the only thing it could. It turned and dove deep into the subterranean waters, disappearing into the black, silent depths.

  The Fire Elemental hovered for a moment, a furious, sentient sun in the center of the cavern.

  It pulsed once, its elemental senses tasting the air, searching for new fuel. But the cavern was a world of damp stone and stagnant water; the air was heavy with a moisture that was anathema to its existence.

  With a final, frustrated crackle, it darted away, a streak of incandescent rage rocketing down the main corridor. A profound, dripping silence fell over the cavern.

  The Old Pathway held its breath. The echoes of a dying god had faded, leaving the metronomic drip of water into stagnant pools. The Stomper’s elemental core pulsed, a feverish, orange heartbeat that threw their monstrous shadows against the walls. The air, thick with the stench of burnt scales and damp rot, was heavy enough to drown in.

  High above, Bomber wheeled in agitated circles, a frantic splash of life in a world of ruin. Below, the Stomper was a burnt wreck.

  Mara knelt beside Ezy, her hands working with a surgeon's precision on the ruined face of the unconscious Gnome. Its right side was a featureless landscape of fused, blackened skin. Her arm was a cauterized stump below her elbow.

  “I need a fire, Trenn. Now,” Mara commanded, her voice a ragged growl that scraped against the quiet. She didn’t look up, her fingers already slathering a poultice over the burns.

  Trenn kept his Mana Radiation attuned to the Sound Element to see in the dark. He was becoming accustomed to navigating the strange pulsing environment created by echolocation.

  Mara emptied the last of their Healing Balm on Ezy’s face, arm, and covered her burnt legs. Their lifeline was cut. The necessary ingredients grew in the Mana Forest’s outskirts.

  Trenn pushed the thought away and started gathering splinters of wood. He walked past Zeen, who was busy cleaning washcloths in the cave’s black waters.

  Trenn surveyed the wreckage of their victory: a crippled smuggler, a fallen Guardian, a maimed inventor, and their wrecked machine.

  Ezy had saved them. And it cost her everything.

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