The team left the remains of the crawlers behind as they chased the flight of the purple mist still spilling out from the second. Daniel had briefly tried to scan the corpses, only to find his heightened Encyclopedia didn’t work on them. It was just another sign that they were something stranger than even the product on the monster system intruding into the Octyrrum.

  He was again tempted to go into hybrid form to test Sense Astral on the stream above them, which was moving slightly faster than they could run, but still refused. That Power Shot was one of the only two ways they’d found so far to beat the crawlers made him wary to take that card off the table, in case they ran into more on the way back. From what he’d seen they weren’t too threatening, he hadn’t even advanced from killing the two, but that was with Sigron holding their attention.

  Shuni was leading from the front now, any concerns of exposing herself offset by the need to detect more crawlers. They’d doubtlessly try to drop on them if unnoticed, and if there was anything else in the corridor she’d shown to be particularly evasive during the earlier fight. Both she and Sigron had physically engaged the crawlers and neither had taken damage. The Knight had his shield arm to thank, while she had been able to thread between attacks, off of walls, and use short bursts of flight to stay safe.

  It didn’t take long to reach the point where the clouds they were following shifted course, beginning to flow straight into where the wall began to curve at the upper third. The group took a pause then, watching it, though the end of the stream was catching up to them. “Fake wall?” Daniel asked the group at large.

  “Not one I can sense.”

  “Maybe it can just pass through the side,” Khiat offered after Shuni’s assessment.

  “If it could, it would’ve taken the direct route to wherever it’s going.” Unless this is just tracing the path they took, but then that would mean the monsters could phase. “There’s an easy way to find out for sure.” He gave Khare a meaningful look and the gestalt tossed one of the legions of daggers in their internal inventory at the wall. It didn’t bounce off.

  “I’d hold up,” Shuni quickly said. “If my powers aren’t working on that wall, I don’t know if I’d sense anything through it. Probably not.”

  Daniel could see the edge of the stream now in their torchlight, quickly approaching the point where it would disappear. A thought struck him and the pressure from his oath bond began to press on him. “I need to know where that’s going.”

  “Probably towards more monsters,” the Rogue replied, not exactly discouragingly but in a way that made it clear she wouldn’t be the first one through.

  Willow had her own concerns. “I don’t know if Tlara will fit up there.”

  I have to know. The monsters were coming from rifts leading to the astral. The odd effect of ‘astral projection’ on the crawlers only reinforced that theory. Where else would the remnants of the monsters be going if not those rifts? What he should be doing is taking a quick peek behind the wall, saying to hell with the consequences. He could be three steps from bringing Hunter back. The thought burned in him, but as he considered the safety of his friends and what had happened with the hulk and Ygazir, he found enough to push back.

  “I still want to go up there,” Daniel said, the seconds ticking by until they lost sight of the monster remnants itching at him despite holding himself back. “I’ll go in first if-“ Sigron coughed, interrupting him, and pointed up with his metal hand while using his flesh one to indicate himself. Right. Still getting used to having a tank in the party. “Can you get up there yourself?” He got a nod in reply.

  Daniel thought fast, seeing little hesitation aside from Shuni and Willow, and made a decision. “Shuni, Willow, Tlara, stay out here and hold the entrance. Khare, I want you to mark it with an up arrow just in case. Anyone else who wants to stay, do so, otherwise follow us through.” He gave Sigron a nod in return, curious as to how the Knight would manage his ascent.

  It turned out he was a regular Mr. Fantastic as his arm stretched and thinned out, shooting up to seek wherever the actual ledge was behind the illusory wall. Even the sturdy construction would have struggled to block something like the crawlers that way, but when there was no apparent danger it appeared to be a very useful function of the enchanted arm. Khiat could do something similar and was preparing to spring up, while Daniel used the winged boots he still wore and Khare climbed up the wall.

  He tensed as soon as he was on the other side, but Sigron remained unmolested after his entry and from the height of the new area it was clear any crawlers here couldn’t ambush them. As the Knight held the front and Khiat shrank down, Daniel turned to what was by all appearances a solid wall. “Can you guys hear me over there?”

  “The girls can,” Shuni shot back with a little bit of playful bite.

  “You sure about that? I don’t know if Tlara qualifies right now.” He was already stepping back to avoid the acid spit he knew was coming, but the tension-driven humor faded slightly as he saw it begin to eat into the floor on this side. “Huh.” The fading trail of purple didn’t give him any time to investigate that further.

  The hallway Tlara was now partially dissolving met the top of the corridor they’d just left, putting it at a comfortable enough height for him and something Tlara could kind of squeeze through if she crawled. Her fighting in this space would be a quick way to get her body killed. It extended out into the darkness, which with Night Eyes meant at least thirty meters. The purple stream itself did little to illuminate the surroundings, only showing the way.

  A quick exchange confirmed everyone was ready to move, Khare already with a paintbrush out to mark their way back. Several alcoves set in the walls confounded a clean line. It looked like semi-circular benches had once been set up here but decay had hit them and whatever else had once been in this passthrough. The material of the walls and the bench skeletons wasn’t extremely fragile, Tlara’s acid had fizzled out after taking off a few centimeters of the floor, but it lacked the timeless invulnerability of the corridor behind them.

  Importantly, nothing stood in their way as they moved. Sigron had his arm constantly morphed into a shield, just in case, while Daniel kept looking over his shoulder at the auras of the rest of the team. He kept telling himself that if they moved or seemed in distress he’d double back instantly, but he didn’t want to find out if he’d keep his word.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The first intersection they reached brought an uncomfortable dilemma. Khiat was moving at a decent speed, but she’d be left behind as it was if they needed to run back. They knew there were no monsters in the hallway behind them, but this introduced the possibility of getting flanked. We should stop here, Daniel thought to himself, trying to convince the compulsion to press forward to ease off. Camp near the entrance and let Tlara try to dominate something, then come back with better lights and a way to detect monsters. Noise traps. Barricades.

  He already had one idea, using Construct Shield to throw up screens of thin material. Track Merchandise counted those items as something he could ping, but there was no plentiful source of material aside from things he didn’t want to waste. It’d be better to make things in advance with enchanting anyway, not waste mana. Too reckless.

  “We’re turning back,” Daniel said eventually, feeling the weight on him only grow as he said it. “We’re not prepared for this, not split up.” It was the right thing to do, but every word hurt, clashing with the ones he’d said before in front of Gtoll. It wasn’t betrayal, it was just a delay, but his bond was making it feel like he was cutting off an arm. He’d seen someone practically dissolve after fulfilling theirs. Grief wasn’t vengeance, but could it be that self-destructive?

  “We can still-“

  “We’re turning back!” Daniel closed his eyes and sighed as he saw Khiat wince away from him. “I’m sorry. Khare, mark what direction that light’s going. It can’t be too far.” He was about to explain his concerns when he saw something at the far end of the hallway behind them that made him pause. They’d gone a fair distance, maybe a hundred meters before hitting the intersection, but it stood out nonetheless. An orange-yellow light blinking in a moderate, regular rhythm.

  His first thought of it being some kind of angler-fish like monster was immediately shelved in favor of one far more harrowing. “Get out of the tunnel!” he yelled, abandoning any concerns of revealing themselves to nearby monsters. More were likely nearby if the rift was, but if something was coming down the tunnel it could kill the three out there instantly. He wasn’t sure if Tlara could tank being run over a train in her current form but had doubts about the other two, especially if the transport was enchanted.

  He’d briefly abandoned the ground, subverting verticality in an attempt to go faster only to notice the speed his boots were giving him was slower than normal. Threst’s Spoke is definitely affecting them, he distantly thought before Dodge Rolling the moment he hit the ground, Balance helping him convert the forward momentum into a run when the ability ended.

  Half the distance had been covered when the wall at the far end disappeared, lights briefly illuminating the space before flickering and dying once more. The initial blinking light turned solid. Through the now clear opening, he saw Shuni wall jump off the opposing side and clear the gap with her wings. She made it first because of how fast she was, and because Tlara had someone else to consider. It’d barely been six seconds.

  The talons on the crest of Tlara’s wings latched onto the edge of the landing, Willow jumping from her back while placing a hand along the neck. Tlara’s head was turned sideways, and by the sound of it, something was approaching from that direction fast. She was too big for Telekinetic Reach to move. Without any powers of her own for bursts of movement, and there was no one in the party that could-

  “T-kgh, Take Cover!” The unfamiliar incantation startled him, as well as who it had come from. Sigron’s power went out and seemed to do what his couldn’t. Tlara jerked towards one of the side walls of the hallway they were in as if temporarily magnetized to it. That still wasn’t enough.

  As Tlara’s front half flew over the edge, something shot past to pin a back leg and the bottom third of her tail to the far wall. Daniel wasn’t sure how he’d managed to trigger Moment of Clarity at the perfect moment, only that no one else had done it for him. Either way, what he saw past the pinned wyvern shocked him.

  It was, as he suspected, some form of subway car. He couldn’t see under the ledge, but by the stairs visible on one side it had to have multiple floors, which also accounted for the depth of the transport channel. It was completely enclosed save for a translucent door facing him, and built for people that were human height as could be expected. In contrast to that, the sole occupant was avianoid.

  Or, she was once. Daniel had been exposed to the undead of this world on a couple of occasions, though perhaps ‘astral monsters’ was a more accurate term as they didn’t exactly fit the mythos of his world. If he’d had Sense and Imbue Astral back when they’d fought Casia a lot of trouble might have been averted, though it was a question of whether the power resistance they possessed would also affect those in the astral domain.

  In a way, the one standing in the car currently crushing a good portion of Tlara could be said to be corrupted, rather than risen from the dead. They still had feathers in places, but portions of the body had also been twisted into a tough, gritty looking substance discolored to match what he’d begun to associate with the Astral. The eyes were the worst, completely black save for the smallest of purple in the center to give a hint as to what the figure was looking at. Him.

  The avianoid had a hand on the second-most alarming thing in the interior of the car. Like a mimic of Soraso’s earlier illusion, he saw the far side of the interior had a break in the wall, with a slightly recessed panel within. Inside was the display of purple and black, though there was a depth to it that the Regent’s illusion hadn’t done justice. Even without touching it he knew this was more than part of the wall, but as much as his eyes desperately searched, he found no hint of Hunter behind it. Willow had mentioned she’d lost sight of him and Graves while they’d been walking in the corridor, but he’d held up hope the ringcat was still close by.

  As if a reminder that time still moved under the influence of his power, albeit lazily, there was a slow flash of light coming from underneath the avianoid’s hand before their body began to fade. The entire sight was gone in an instant as Daniel dropped his power, the car rocketing away as if the wyvern wasn’t even there. Tlara was roaring with pain as it became clear the trapped parts had been neatly severed, but it could’ve been worse. Without Sigron’s power, she could have easily been cut in half.

  Willow had already sequestered the wyvern in Tlara’s pouches by the time he’d made it to the now-visible illusory wall again, the orange light having long since faded. “Willow, do you have Tlara?”

  “I pulled her out before that thing hit the wyvern,” she replied, almost breathlessly. “Was that what you were worried about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gods!” Shuni exclaimed. “I don’t even know how fast that thing was moving. How the Crest is it running after all these years?”

  “There was someone on it,” Daniel replied, thinking. “They looked, I don’t know, taken over by the Astral. I bet whoever it was is in league with these monsters now. They were teleporting away as soon as the car hit Tlara, or the wyvern, I guess. My bet is when those monsters found us earlier it alerted whoever that was.”

  “Retreat?” Khare offered, painting a small arrow back toward the transport tunnel. A pit opened in Daniel’s stomach as he came to a terrible realization.

  “Fuck. If they can reverse that then there’s no chance. We walked, what, two or three kilometers?”

  “So what do we do?” Khiat asked in her small but big voice. “We can’t get out without the Regent.”

  Daniel’s eyes flicked to the path further down the hallway that Khare had painted to indicate where the purple cloud had gone. ‘We have time now’, it seemed to say seductively, but it was pointed in the wrong direction. It still felt painful to ignore the clue, but the sight of the empty rift helped him justify another course. “We find an exit into the tunnel closer to where the exit is. Soraso should still be giving us another few hours, but we’ll have to be careful not to get lost. I doubt it’ll be as straight getting back as it was getting here.”

  “Should have known it wouldn’t be a cakewalk,” Shuni sighed, looking back to where the illusory wall hid the tunnel. “Thought for a moment there I’d be joining the Octyrrum. Serves me right for thinking this would be easier than hunting.”