Ina exploded from the ground in a pool of magma, soaring upward.
A dark wall of wood moved toward them at an alarming rate.
Jian raised a hand and pressed his thumb and middle finger together. A small bright yellow halo appeared between them. He flicked it and it spun violently.
In an instant the world shifted. Up became down. Left became right.
Kael stumbled sideways and was caught by Jian.
"Whatever you do, don't activate the Datum mote right now."
The wooden wall turned pink. In the next moment it dissolved into cherry blossoms, washing over the three of them like a soft tsunami of colour.
Jian spun the halo once more. Ina began to fall upward.
Violet scoffed under her breath and let the force carry her up as well.
Fragmented roots rained down as Ina slammed into the ceiling. Violet landed softly on a root a hundred steps away moments later, the two Luminaires flanking her breathing heavily.
She brought four fingers to her mouth and blew a high pitched whistle.
From her, like a flower blooming outward, icicles began to grow sideways from everything they touched. Snow clung to the thick roots. The biting cold reached Ina and a glacier began spreading from her body outward.
With a hiss that matched Violet's whistle, a cloud of mist erupted. Roots caught fire and softened, drooping toward the ground like molten wax. The ceiling itself became a blinding light.
"Not good."
Jian grabbed the halo with both hands and with a grunt pulled it apart, stretching it further and further until his arms spread wide like a bird opening its wings, snapping the halo in two.
Everything around them lost colour, turning black and white.
Ina reached for a root. Then, if not for Jian, lurched forward with a slither fast enough to have torn Kael's legs off had they been planted.
"God I hate that woman." Jian cursed.
His attention was now entirely consumed by the tangle of threads in his palm. Endless of them. To Kael it looked like nothing but chaos, but he knew each movement was anything but that.
Jian drove his arm into the mass and pulled out a single thread.
"Ah. There you are."
He flicked it backward.
A net of gold spread out behind them, stretching further than anyone could see.
Jian sat down and crossed his legs.
"What to do. What to do." He murmured, chin resting in his palm.
Kael walked over and looked down at him.
"Are we far from the exit?"
Jian looked up.
"Far? No. But distance doesn't really matters when it comes to Violet."
He didn't elaborate. Instead he summoned a miniature mountain into his palm.
Kael studied it.
He had never seen a mote like this. Was it in its true form or its bound form? Why would anyone summon it in its true form even? It looked exactly like a real mountain in miniature. A dark cloud circled above it, small flashes of light where lightning flickered. Snow capped its peak and drifted around it in slow spirals. Kael could almost feel the temperature shift.
Jian dismissed it and stood up.
A golden line zigzagged toward him between roots, passing clean through the net. With a metallic clink it went straight into his head, snapping it to the side.
"Why now of all times."
He murmured annoyed and pressed a hand against his skull.
Jian looked at Kael, eyes widening for a fraction of a second, then turned back forward.
Light poured down from the ceiling into a clearing ahead. Water followed it, falling with such violence it looked less like a waterfall and more like someone had dropped an ocean through a hole. The sound was deafening. Whatever it hit was somewhere so far below it had been grinding down since perhaps the beginning of time itself.
Kael looked down.
Down. Down. Down. No end to it. For all he knew this hole might reached the second layer of the Depths. Perhaps deeper
Jian snickered and turned to him.
"We're here. When you reach the surface, don't be fooled by any sense of safety just because you're far from the central continent. The Royal Noble family can no longer keep all the Dreadborne contained there. You're not supposed to know that, so don't repeat it." He glanced over his shoulder. "Have you familiarised yourself with the Datum mote?"
"Doesn't seem too complicated."
Jian nodded and leaned forward to look up.
"Around seven kilometres."
He said it to himself more than anyone.
Just as he started toward Kael a light swished through the air. A faint green glow washed over both of them as it exploded in a scatter of sparks.
"Just leave already." Jian said, looking past Kael's shoulder.
Violet crossed her arms. "We agreed no one outside our circle should know of this entrance, Jian. Apprentice or otherwise, he's a liability."
Jian's eyes narrowed. He stepped past Kael as though to put himself between them.
"He's different."
She raised an eyebrow. "Didn't I just say it didn't matter what he was?"
"Then the deal has changed."
Violet's eyes darkened. She nodded once and the two flanking Luminaires vanished. Then she pointed a finger at Jian.
"So it seems."
Jian scoffed and launched himself upward. A low rumble followed as Ina's head shifted from the force of it.
"Violet. It was one beetle. I'll pay you twice what it would have earned with its life. Just leave me and Valerian alone today."
"It's not the beetle, Jian. You led a rank one straight to this entrance. Who's to say there won't be another after him, and another after that?"
The two stood so far away that Kael could no longer make out what was being said. Both floated with their arms crossed, barely an arm's length apart, each throwing an occasional glance toward Kael or Ina.
'Does he expect me to climb?'
It wasn't that Kael minded climbing. But the water pouring down would put genuine pressure on him and the rocks would be slippery with it. He was also owed a reward if Jian failed to work out the rank suppression, and he had no intention of forfeiting that by climbing out now.
He looked up.
Seeing the light again felt like stretching your legs after sitting for too long. A welcome sight, to say the least.
Jian drifted back down beside him.
"We decided to kill you."
"Eh?"
Jian looked at him thoughtfully.
"Well. On paper we did. You remember that hint I so proudly said I didn't need?"
"Yes?"
"I'll take it back. I want it after all." He smiled. "Your regeneration. Is it something you control, or does it almost have a mind of its own?"
Kael gave him a sideways glance.
He was almost certain now. Jian had worked out that a primordial mote was behind Kael's survival. It wasn't surprising. However goofy he made himself appear, the mind underneath wasn't easily obscured. Through logic alone he should have concluded that Kael's healing exceeded anything a rank three or even four could produce. He would, however, still be hesitant to name it directly. By any reasonable measure someone like Kael had no business holding a primordial mote.
"Correct."
Something lit up in Jian's eyes.
"I see. I see." He moved a hand to his chin. "No wonder I had such a hard time figuring it out. By now it should have been obvious. Hmm... Or perhaps it was— No, that doesn't make sense."
He had already started musing again.
"Ina. Up."
He said after a while.
It took only a moment for Violet to understand what was happening. She moved fast, flicking toward them. Gravity shifted again and the world blurred as Ina began to fall.
Jian raised a hand to his mouth and blew.
"Tranquility."
The air densified. Buoyancy increased until Ina hung suspended. Kael with it. Then she began to swim through it and Jian grabbed his arm, the air so thick it felt like his hand might tear clean from his wrist.
A vibration moved through the space.
Violet appeared in front of them, and Ina's density increased tenfold.
They plummeted.
The ground beneath Ina liquefied on impact, sending waves of molten rock outward to break the fall.
Violet raised her hand and slapped Jian.
Kael's tattered clothes thrashed as Jian shot away like a bullet, a sequence of cracks erupting as he punched through hills and trees one after another.
She raised her hand again and slapped Kael.
Teeth and jaw fragments exploded outward. His head spun three times, slowing, and came to a full stop completely severed, held in place only by a single tendril. Then a thousand more erupted and snapped back into position.
Violet was already moving toward Jian's direction when she stopped.
Her eyes widened.
Kael was still standing.
She crouched in the air as though preparing to launch.
Then she did.
A roaring sound as she broke the sound barrier a fraction after leaving her position.
Like a meteor she shot down and took Kael by the throat. The two streaked from Ina's head straight into the molten rock below.
An explosion of pain.
His skin melted. Then his flesh burned. Then his bones. Each layer regenerating the instant it was consumed, pulling him back to feel it again.
Ten thousand. Twenty thousand. Fifty thousand.
Kael's Thoughts burned at a catastrophic rate, forcefully healing him only so the pain could begin again.
Violet remained completely unfazed by the heat, holding him still in it. Whenever his skin and flesh burned away her fingers dug deeper, refusing to allow the healing to dislodge her grip.
Just as his Thoughts approached a critical threshold, two strong hands seized them both.
Jian pulled them free from the burning rock and looked at Violet with bared teeth. His own chin had been torn clean off and was only now beginning to reattach. He was not pleased.
He tossed Kael back onto Ina and summoned the miniature mountain.
He drove it forward aimed at her throat. She twisted at the last moment and it grazed her shoulder instead.
Her arm tore free and shot toward the ground.
A cloud erupted on impact large enough to compare to a detonation, dirt and burning matter thrown outward in every direction.
Jian had quite literally put the weight of a mountain on her shoulder.
She drew a sharp arc through the air with her hand. A light fell from above like a guillotine.
Jian summoned the mountain again and raised it to meet it, shattering the light on impact.
Then he spread his arms and drew his hands together in a single motion.
The mountain dissolved into sparks. Wind began to pick up around them.
A dark cloud formed above. Then a snowstorm, violent enough to grind everything it touched, swept through the space.
The mountain and the depths had transpositioned climates.
The molten rock hardened beneath the cold. Snow drove sideways around them. Lightning struck at random, hitting anything it could reach
Kael was exposed to it for only a moment before Jian shielded him, but in that moment alone the storm had burned through more than fifty thousand Thoughts.
This attack originated from mind pathway.
Kael rested on all three on Ina's head, his eyes moving from one insignificant thing to the next, his mind still fractured from the pain.
'I have to climb.'
This fight was so far beyond him. Every moment he stayed was another moment that could be his last. Back then he hadn't even registered Violet's hand around his throat before hundreds of Thoughts had already burned through.
Ina was on the ground now, adding another five kilometres to the seven Jian had mentioned earlier. The exit was unreachable from here. He couldn't even begin the climb.
"Up, Ina."
She must have grown fond of him because she listened.
Jian caught on instantly and began shielding them from Violet's attacks. But when they reached the halfway point she appeared on Ina's head again. Jian arrived a moment later.
"Move, Jian."
She had no intention of waiting for an answer.
Kael felt it for a fraction of a second. Violet had activated over fifty motes simultaneously. She was preparing a mote art. Jian responded by activating sixty of his own.
Then the two stood looking at each other.
She glanced at his hand. "You're going this far for him?"
"I have my reasons."
Mote arts were extraordinarily powerful but they often marked a turning point rather than a conclusion. Activating one often meant firing tens of motes at once, burning hundreds of thousands of Thoughts in a single exchange. If the opposing party somehow managed to block it, the mote art user would be left at a catastrophic disadvantage. But a powerful mote art required something of equal power to counter. Which was why Jian had activated one of his own.
Violet raised her remaining hand and pointed toward the sky.
Jian pressed his thumb to the inside of his cheek.
And Kael… Kael was entirely dependent on Jian for whatever came next.
"A man who refuses to learn from history is doomed to repeat his mistakes, Jian."
Just as she moved to bring her hand down she froze.
Jian froze.
Kael froze.
Ina froze.
A distant high pitched laugh reached them from somewhere beyond. No. Not distant. Close. Terrifyingly close. Just behind them the sound of chattering teeth began.
Both dismissed their mote arts without a word. Neither moved a muscle.
Somewhere in the chaos of the fight, Mona had crawled onto Ina and begun her own ascent.
Huff. Huff. Huff.
It felt like she was breathing directly onto the back of Kael's neck.
A massive foot landed beside him. Another came down on the other side. Two pale hands appeared somewhere further along the snake's nose. Then she leaned down.
Black hair fell around them like curtains being drawn closed, her head alone dwarfing every figure beneath it. The world shrank to the space between her and them.
Rank five or rank three, it made no difference. They all stood still, holding their breath, hoping that whatever she was using to sense them would slide past.
Drool fell from her three layered mouths in slow heavy drops. The chattering of her teeth had become thunderous, swallowing every other sound entirely. She had a nose that somehow fit her face with an almost wrong perfection. And above the eyes Kael had seen before, a second pair had appeared, blinking independently, not quite in rhythm with the ones below.
She was still adapting.
She studied them for a moment longer. Then she rose.
Bones creaked beneath her flesh as she straightened.
Mona turned her head upward and clattered her teeth at the light.
Cold sweat ran down every body present.
"Ina. Up."
Jian managed it in barely a whisper.
Kael could feel the hesitation in Ina, but she listened.
Mona narrowed her eyes as the light grew brighter above her. She reached both hands up, as though trying to touch something she had never been able to reach.
Jian and Violet watched with pale faces as she grabbed the rock and began to climb.
Slowly.
When she was a hundred steps above them Jian shot a hand out and grabbed Kael by the neck, pulling him close.
"Climb, Sinclaire. Climb."
He breathed it more than said it.
With those words bone and muscle erupted from Kael's shoulder, condensing and shaping outward until a new left arm hung at his side.
Jian twisted his body and with a grunt hurled Kael upward.
Mona watched him blur past her. Then, as though something had clicked into place, she stopped climbing and began to leap instead. Hundreds of meters at a time.
Jian appeared beside her with five miniature mountains orbiting him slowly. Violet arrived a moment later.
"Don't let her reach the surface."
Violet urged it through her teeth.
Against every instinct screaming at her she clamped onto Mona's hair and activated the mote that had brought Ina down, again and again and again.
Jian drove one miniature mountain after another into her.
For the first time, Mona screamed.
A dry, rasping screech that had never been made before, from something that had never needed to make it.
That was the last thing Kael saw.
Kael's limbs flailed as he soared upward. The Depths entrance had shrunk to a dot beneath him. When the momentum finally was about to die he activated the Datum mote and suspended himself in the air.
Another haunting scream reached him from below.
Then hundreds of black tentacles, dark as an abyss, shot out from the hole. They moved desperately, clinging onto rock and tree and hill, pulling and anchoring, but everything they grabbed gave way. With a final gut-wrenching sound they retracted, unwillingly, dragging everything they had been holding back down into the hole with them.
Then silence.
Kael's breathing came in uneven ragged bursts.