The second floor was a lesson in attrition. The third was a masterclass in monotony. The geothermal heat intensified, the air growing thick with the taste of sulfur and brimstone. We moved from one lava-tube cavern to the next, a relentless, grinding advance. The Fire-Skulkers, having learned from their first failed ambush, no longer tried to engage us in open combat. They resorted to hit-and-run tactics, darting from fissures to spit jets of flame before retreating into the labyrinthine tunnels.

  It was a war of a thousand paper cuts. Annoying, but ultimately meaningless. Each encounter was a near-identical repeat of the last: Tes would flag the thermal signature, Nyx would intercept with lethal speed, and Goliath would secure the area. My own Plasma Katana remained dormant at my waist, a silent, waiting threat. My role was purely strategic, a nexus of data and commands, and the data was becoming crushingly repetitive.

  We cleared the tenth identical chamber, the air filled with the familiar smell of scorched reptilian flesh. As we prepared to move on, the shimmering, cat-sized dragon perched on my shoulder let out an almost inaudible sigh, a vibration that ran through my pauldron and directly into my bones.

  Brother, this is dull, Kaelus projected into my mind. His mental voice, usually a low, resonant rumble, was tinged with the unmistakable pout of a supremely powerful child forced to sit through a boring lecture.

  This is not for entertainment, Kaelus. This is work, I replied, my focus remaining on the tactical overlay in my vision, which was already mapping the layout of the next cavern.

  It is boring work, he huffed. The vibration intensified slightly. The big one gets to smash things. The fast one gets to slice things. I am just sitting. Let me play.

  His logic was childish, but the underlying sentiment was a strategic variable I couldn't ignore. Kaelus was not one of my automata. He was a being of immense power, tied to my own soul. His morale, his engagement, was an asset. To let that asset fester in boredom was inefficient, and potentially dangerous. The power he wielded was not something to be trifled with, even in jest.

  I paused at the entrance to the next cavern, my hand raised in a silent signal for Goliath and Nyx to halt. The chamber beyond was vast, an open space teeming with at least a hundred Skulkers and a dozen larger, alpha variants who patrolled the perimeter. A conventional clearing would take minutes and expend a calculable amount of energy.

  Fine, I conceded, my own curiosity piqued. The next chamber is yours. Be quick about it.

  A wave of pure, unrestrained glee, so potent it was almost a physical sensation, flooded our mental link. Yes!

  We stood back. Kaelus hopped from my shoulder, landing as silently as a falling shadow on the stone floor. He trotted to the center of our formation at the mouth of the cavern, a shimmering, nebulae-skinned creature no bigger than a housecat, facing an army of monsters.

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  He didn't roar. He didn't breathe fire. He simply sat down on his haunches, closed his cosmic, starlit eyes, and focused.

  Inside my helmet, I could only watch, a silent observer to a violation of nature. To Bob and Patricia, sealed within their own suits of armor, the experience was something else entirely.

  The air in the cavern went still. The low, guttural growls of the Skulkers died in their throats as they sensed a fundamental shift in reality. It was not a sound or a sight, but a feeling a sudden, crushing wrongness, as if the universe itself was holding its breath.

  A single point of absolute darkness, no bigger than a marble, materialized in the dead center of the chamber, twenty meters off the ground. It did not emit light; it consumed it, a perfect sphere of nothingness that seemed to drink the very color and heat from the air.

  To Patricia, it felt like a hole had been punched through the tapestry of her senses. Her innate connection to the shadows, the source of her power, recoiled from it. The darkness of the singularity was not the comfortable gloom she commanded; it was an active, hungry void, an utter negation of existence that made her soul ache.

  Then came the pull.

  It started as a gentle tug, and the beasts stumbled as if caught in a sudden wind. Then it became a hurricane, a silent, irresistible force that ripped them from their feet. Dust, pebbles, and then the Skulkers themselves were pulled from the floor and walls, shrieking in a terror so profound it was soundless. They were drawn into a spiraling vortex around the miniature singularity, a macabre ballet of flailing limbs and reptilian bodies.

  For Bob, a man of simple, unwavering conviction, it was a moment of terrifying revelation. He had sworn an oath to the bloodline of Wight, a bloodline of dragon knights. He understood dragons as noble beasts of fire and storm. This… this was not that. This was cosmic horror. He felt the gravitic pull tugging at his own multi-ton automaton, a force that defied every law of physics he had ever known. He had to brace his machine, its servos whining in protest, to keep from being dragged forward into that silent, all-consuming maw.

  The Skulkers’ bodies compressed as they neared the point of darkness, their forms crushed and distorted. They did not die in a spray of blood. They were simply… unmade. Annihilated as they reached the event horizon, their matter and energy ceasing to exist in this plane of reality.

  In five seconds, the cavern was silent and empty. The point of darkness winked out of existence, leaving no trace it had ever been there. The sudden return of normal physics was as jarring as its departure.

  The silence that followed was more profound than any roar. Goliath and Nyx, sealed within their unfeeling machines, were visibly stunned. Their automata, extensions of their own wills, were frozen in place. The sheer, casual application of that level of power the power to simply delete an army from the world was beyond their comprehension. It was the power of a titan, not a pet.

  All done, Kaelus chirped in my mind, the glee in his mental voice undiminished. He trotted back to me, his tail held high, and leaped gracefully back onto my shoulder, nuzzling his head against my helmet as if expecting a reward. Can I do the next one?

  No, I replied, my voice calm, masking my own astonishment with cold pragmatism. I placed a hand on Goliath’s shoulder, a steadying gesture. Forward.

  My retainers obeyed, their movements stiff, robotic. I knew what they were thinking. They had followed Alarion Wight, the last son of a noble house. They were only now beginning to understand that they were also following the brother of a titan.