Several metal orbs coated in water orbit Emily, drawing away and dispersing the whips of lightning striking out from her opponent’s beating wings. The blade protruding from her left palm finally slices through the thunderbird’s throat, cutting off its bone-shaking cry as a spray of blood coats her in return. Emily closes her fingers around the gaping wound, holding the dissolving corpse up as she waits for its heart to fall free, before turning her head to the distant explosions blanketing the sky with flak.

  “Target eliminated,” Mensacus’ voice comes through her communicator clearly as another mountaintop falls silent. “The heart remains despite me draining it of lifeforce. Would you like me to return with it as well, or can I consume it?”

  “You can eat that one,” Emily replies, lowering herself down to the closest mountain peak to rest for a few moments. “Two empty hearts should be enough to test their properties.”

  The artillery fire several peaks over continues for almost a minute before the clouds dim, and Pod reports his successful hunt. Emily scans the quiet, cloudy sky and the empty, rocky valley below for any signs of their final target. Following her expectations, streaks of charge begin to fill the heavens again, and thunder spreads as the intracloud lightning builds in frequency, gathering above the towering peak closest to where they entered the trial.

  The clouds filling the sky move, gathering around the lightning and circling the condensing ball of charge, forming a twisting cyclone of motion. The pitch-black, starless night sky above is slowly revealed as the clouds envelop the lightning, folding in on themselves and compressing, turning solid and taking on the shape of a giant, horned wolf, curled around itself as if asleep.

  The beast’s energy signature rises, surpassing fourth circle and entering the fifth before its eyes open and it unfurls, releasing a thunderous howl that shakes the mountains, causing several to fracture and spew rockslides into the valleys far below. The wolf’s horn and claws appear to be made from pure plasma, glowing with the same blazing fury as its luminous eyes, and its gaping maw is lined with hundreds of crackling teeth that reach down its throat, promising a painful death to any unlucky enough to fall prey to its bite.

  Before Emily can move to attack or draw its attention, the beast’s gaze locks onto Mensacus and Silica’s position, and it vanishes in a flash of light and thunder.

  “Mother,” Mensacus says calmly despite the sound of tearing metal being transmitted through the communicator along with his voice. “I’ll restrain the target while the little one flees, but I won’t last more than a few minutes alone.”

  Writhing darkness erupts from the distant peak, coiling around it and attempting to smother the flashes of lightning illuminating the trial space.

  “You won’t have to,” Emily replies, letting machina flow to the spike of anger building in her heart at the sound of her struggling child. “Keep me updated on its position relative to you.”

  While Mensacus starts sending her a constant stream of coordinates, she releases a flood of mana, converting machina to support the outflow and draining both her reserves to near empty in an instant. The dense, near-liquid energy twists and condenses, carving runes and complex geometries into the rock and air around her. Metal sprouts from the forming spell, taking on the shape of two floating parallel rails that draw in lightning mana from the spell and air, building charge along their length.

  Emily pours her focus into the spell, starting the construction of a projectile just behind the end of the rails. She starts with a solid metal core before wrapping it with water, folding layers of clear liquid together until it takes on a deep blue hue that conceals the silver beneath. Next, she coats it in dense rock, compacting the shell until she’d struggle to hold its weight with her arms alone, and shapes it into a vicious point, keeping the form aerodynamic while she carves twisting spirals into the rock’s surface. She holds the weighty projectile in place with the last dregs of her mana as the waiting rails hiss with charge and four green, spinning magic circles build along their length, sucking in the surrounding air and preparing to accelerate the shot as a vacuum forms around the magical weapon.

  Drawing back her left arm, Emily adjusts her aim before throwing all of her weight into a blow and striking the flat face at the rear of the projectile. The bullet leaps forward, catching the magnetic field between the rails and vanishing, letting out a harsh crack that drowns out all sounds of the battle taking place several peaks over. Emily’s protective earrings are shattered, destroying their sound-dampening enchantments in an instant.

  Emily stumbles forward a step before catching herself and standing tall despite her exhaustion, looking ahead to see Mensacus’ writhing ball of shadows blown apart, along with the mountain top he was standing on. She sees her son kneeling on the fractured peak, covered in burn marks and missing half of his limbs, but his opponent is nowhere to be seen, leaving only a trace of faint sparks of charge dispersing into the air around him.

  “Thank you, Mother,” his distorted voice whispers into her ear, showing signs of damage to his artificial voice box. “Your attack was simply divine, and the meal is greatly appreciated.”

  Emily huffs out a laugh, letting her anger fizzle out into a quietly simmering satisfaction as she dismisses the magical railgun still floating before her, drawing back in as much mana as she can from the spent construct and barely regaining a fraction of her strength.

  “Good job keeping that thing in one place. You made gains from its death?”

  “I did. Like the birds, and unlike the weak wolves, it held life despite being a dungeon construct. It tastes almost as good as a mage of our strength.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Not better?” Emily asks as the dispersed lightning begins flowing back into a single point above Mensacus, gathering in a near-identical manner to the metal essence that formed at the end of the first trial. “I guess there are still some differences between living constructs and long-developed lifeforms.”

  “You’re both crazy,” Pod cuts into the conversation as she falls silent, Ivor supporting him with an agreeing hum. “We felt that attack from here.”

  “I should hope so,” Emily says while taking to the skies and lending Harriet a chunk of her mana, sending them off to retrieve her apprentices. “I put enough mana into it to defend against several nuclear bombs. I wasn’t going to risk letting an enemy faster than me keep fighting for long.”

  She flies towards Mensacus’ position and lands beside him a few moments after Silica scrambles back up the mountainside to rush over and check on her brother. She’s followed closely by a wendigo and immediately starts licking the wounds Mensacus received while protecting her. Emily brushes her hand down the chimaera’s neck, using a few sparks of machina to scan the damage he sustained and immediately planning repairs.

  “I’ll fix you properly once I’ve finished restoring my energy reserves,” she says before turning her attention to the gathering lightning essence above them.

  The moment it solidifies into a familiar, crackling bolt frozen in time, the doorway out of the trial space forms next to it, and the surrounding mountains begin breaking apart, fading away into the encroaching void. Harriet returns with Pod, Ivor, and a pair of wendigos before the peak below their feet can dissolve, and Emily grasps the raging lightning essence in her metal hand before leading them through to another rest space.

  Unlike the first break room bathed in the light of multiple suns, they find themselves in a near pitch-black space beneath a starless sky, dimly illuminated by the essence in Emily’s palm. She pulls an electrical lamp from her belt, switching it on and immediately brightening the room, revealing a near-identical setup to their first rest. The only difference is the writing on the wall, carved from dark, pulsing characters that seem to draw in all light around them:

  Rest and consolidate your gains, for the next step on the path will open when the dark moon completes its cycle.

  Seeing the familiar space, her apprentices and daughter wordlessly take up positions to rest along the walls while Mensacus ignores his injured state and corrals his monsters into a corner to digest their recent meals, waiting patiently for Emily to rest up. She breathes in the dense mana filling the room and begins producing alchemy supplies from her belt under Ivor’s curious gaze. He pulls a notebook from his robes but doesn’t move to help her, recognising his inability to contribute, as the pressure of the pure elemental essence weighs heavily on him despite the distance separating them.

  Emily starts by experimenting with the energy-packed thunderbird hearts, trying to create a solution to carry the essence’s power, but after wasting two on unstable concoctions, she realises the drained hearts Mensacus collected are better vessels. She stores the failed potions for later use, acknowledging their weakened but still effective mana restorative properties, and takes out the rest of the charged hearts, letting Mensacus draw the energy from them and begin self-repairing his less damaged systems.

  With seven empty hearts ready, she activates her lightning connection and reaches out to the essence with her mana, letting the energies entwine before guiding the powerful source of mana to split between the waiting vessels. It resists her at first, but she carves a stabilising array into the air around the hearts and presses harder, fracturing the stable bolt of pure energy and forcing it into the new containers.

  They begin beating in sync, filling the room with an ionising hum, but Emily holds them in place as she prepares a mixture of herbs and beast materials in a bubbling cauldron. One by one, she lowers the beating hearts into the churning liquid, watching them dissolve and tint the liquid with an electric blue hue. The cauldron bubbles and hisses as the last fragment of the essence is fed to it, and Emily shuts her eyes to focus on eliminating the impurities trying to taint her brew.

  After a few hours of work, she’s finally left with a single vial’s worth of mana-dense liquid that she downs without a moment’s hesitation. Emily feels the energy flood her body, filling every fibre of her being with the buzz of lightning before gathering at her heart and flowing into her circles without any resistance.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  Intelligence: 414 > 424 (524)

  _____

  Ten intelligence from one essence? As long as we get one per trial, I only need three more steps to reach my next ascension when the dungeon closes.

  With faint excitement building in her heart, Emily stows her alchemy tools and turns her attention to fixing her son.

  ***

  Light shines from the unseen horizon, giving Emily a fleeting glimpse of a dark shadow dropping on the opposite side of the glass ceiling, and the message-bearing wall parts as the doorway to the next trial opens. She rises from her meditative position in the centre of the room and gestures for the others to follow.

  They step through to the next trial space and find themselves in a strange environment, standing in the centre of an empty room with blank white walls and floors that appear both close enough to touch and too far to ever reach at the same time.

  “Whoa,” Pod mutters, his hand drifting down to Mensacus’ tendril wrapped around his waist, holding it for support. “That’s…”

  “Wrong,” Ivor signs, filling in for him as Pod trails off into silence. “It’s making me nauseous.”

  Silica lets out an uncomfortable yip and presses herself closer to Emily, who shuts her eyes in lieu of a response. She focuses on her spatial awareness, feeling out the odd twists in the fabric of reality around them and immediately identifying the trial.

  “The last two were metal and lightning,” she says, reaching up towards a twist in space and sticking her hand through. “This is space.”

  A twisting sensation travels through her body, as if she’s being pulled through a keyhole by the hand she extended, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re standing in the centre of an endless grassy plane filled with light but missing a sun. Ivor doubles over and empties his stomach, and Pod pats his back while scrunching up his face in discomfort, resisting the urge to join him.

  Emily confirms they’re not at risk of being separated by any nearby unstable space and nods to Mensacus. He releases his hold on all of them and looks around cautiously.

  “There’s life here,” he says hesitantly. “But I can’t work out where.”

  “Everywhere and nowhere,” a voice Emily recognises answers with no visible speaker.

  They all look around for the source but find nothing. Then, in an instant, the plane shatters around them, and a fiery hellscape replaces half of the grass and blue sky. In the centre, they see Gaius, surrounded by the dismembered corpses of hundreds of mismatched creatures with various limbs and eyes protruding at odd, seemingly impossible angles.

  “Hello again, Emily,” he says with a friendly smile, clearing the multicoloured blood soaking his robes with a single wave of his hand. “It’s been a while.”

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