“Gaius,” Emily calls with a matching smile. “It’s good to see you again. How’s life outside your domain treating you?”

  The mage in question starts with surprise at the enthusiasm behind her greeting, but he chooses not to say anything. He walks towards them without sparing the corpses at his feet a second glance as they dissolve into mist that blows away on an unfelt breeze.

  “Good, good,” Gaius nods as he passes from fire to grass, his steps never wavering even as he weaves an odd path, avoiding several invisible tears in space. “The country’s changed so much since I last walked among the people, and I was surprised to see how much The Glade has grown; it’s gained several hundred metres since before I entered seclusion! Little Arthur never mentioned that in the reports he sent me, but I guess it would be hard to notice if you never saw the forest back in the Empire’s time.”

  “Interesting. There isn’t a single account in The Covenant’s library that mentions The Glade before the kingdom formed, but I never thought that was because it was smaller.”

  “Yes, it went by a different name back then: The Dark Woods, if I remember correctly. I actually took a trip there recently to search for this Abyss you mentioned, and I have to say, it was a fun challenge searching for a path that would take me deep enough. That’s where I found the door to this here dungeon.”

  “Oh? Which level was it on?” Emily asks as the man comes to a halt before them, feeling the air naturally bending around him without his conscious effort, similar to her Faraday Cage’s magnetic field, yet completely different at the same time. “I never saw any signs of it building when I was in The Depths.”

  “I entered through a path near the coast, and it was in The Crystal Waters, so it’s not a surprise you missed it. Anyway, I see you’re here with your family. I take it this is your son? His signature feels familiar,” Gaius says while turning his gaze to Mensacus, looking the mechanical chimaera up and down.

  “Yes, this is my firstborn, Mensacus: forged from a fragment of The Abyss. The creatures are his creations: wendigos. The fox is my secondborn, Silica: refined from an unstable dual-elemental’s core. And these two are my apprentices in mechanics and magic: Podrick Rockworth and Ivor Juric.”

  “Gaius Longaeva. It’s good to meet you all,” the man says, dipping his head to them politely.

  Golden sparks dance along Emily’s left arm, and she pulls a clockwork bird from her belt.

  “Sorry, and this is Harriet, my familiar.”

  Harriet enters the small bird and perches on Emily’s shoulder, waving a wing in greeting, drawing Gaius’ sparkling eyes as he steps forward to get a closer look.

  “Oh, wow. A… bound elemental?” he questions, reaching out to brush the bird’s metallic feathers.

  “Exactly. I met them in a storm, which they were inhabiting, above the Morzean Mountains, and after a short exchange, they took to my body as a vessel, taking my circles in place of their core,” Emily explains.

  Before she can continue, though, a fluctuation in space draws her and Gaius’ attention, and their heads snap to the side to see a twisted creature with a gaping maw leaping at them from nothing. One of the waiting wendigos leaps at the foe before it can strike, tearing into the mass of flesh making up its body and shredding the creature to pieces in a fraction of a second, lapping up the shifting rainbow of hues that spills from the torn body before it can break into mist.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you again, but we should probably focus on this here dungeon trial,” Gaius says with a chuckle, watching the wendigo feast with undisguised fascination.

  “Agreed.” Emily nods, drawing the Spitter and flicking the safety off before aiming towards another spatial fluctuation and letting out a burst of shots that vanish into nothingness, with only a wailed cry confirming she hit something. “I assume you’ve been here for a while, considering the fight you were ending when we met. This trial appears a lot less clear than the last two we completed, so I’d appreciate any information you can provide us with.”

  “You’ve completed two already? Most impressive. I wasn’t certain there’d be more to the dungeon since I’ve been stuck here for almost a week already, but I’ll gladly share what I’ve found.”

  “A week?” Pod blurts in surprise, glancing away from scanning their surroundings for threats.

  “Is that a judgment from external observations or your internal clock?” Emily asks. “We’ve only been in the dungeon for what would be four days outside.”

  “My internal clock. It’s hard to judge in this distorted space, so I wouldn’t trust my calculation.”

  “Interesting. Maybe time dilation is common among high mana spaces: I experienced something similar when I entered The Abyss.”

  “Maybe,” Gaius mutters in a contemplative tone, stretching out his arm and firing a spatial blade that bisects several amorphous creatures as they crawl from the ground dividing the grass and burning rocks. “Well, that aside, I’ve tentatively named these creatures dimensional beasts since they all bear similar signatures tinted with the element of space, but have completely different forms. Most of them are only as strong as a second or third circle mage, but I’ve encountered five unique beings at the fourth circle. I managed to kill one, and it left behind a single claw, unlike all of the fodder, that fade completely upon death, but they’re slippery things. They flee through the ever-present cracks in space when confronted, making more as they please to go wherever they choose. I had to devote nearly all my focus to forcefully stabilising space around me to stop the one I killed, and even then, I only succeeded in finishing it with the help of a few offensive artefacts.”

  “Five major targets? Noted. If my observations from our past trials hold true here, I suspect that number will increase now that we’re here. We ran into eight major targets in our first, and nine in our second, where I encountered a single Morzean mage already present upon our arrival,” Emily explains, tentatively reaching out to one of the cracks spewing dimensional beasts with her mana and trying to sense any fourth circle signatures beyond. “Be warned, after the major targets are eliminated, we’re likely to face a fifth circle beast to end the trial.”

  “Really?” Gaius asks with an excited grin crinkling his eyes. “Well, I’m glad to have your support then.”

  Emily nods and, making a quick decision, pulls a single mechanical soldier from her Factory before connecting to it with a thread of machina and commanding it to march through a dimensional fold a dozen metres away. The robot raises its machine gun and unloads the connected internal magazine as it charges forward, dropping several beasts before vanishing. Their connection holds despite the impossible space separating them, and, in the blink of an eye, an inverted icy tundra replaces the sky above them with her soldier mirroring her position and fighting off tens of dimensional beasts trying to swarm it. Emily’s face twists into a grin matching Gaius’ as she stokes the fires of her battle lust with machina and releases several more soldiers to target the other folds in space she can sense.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Happy to help,” she says, detecting a fourth circle beast hiding within a snowcapped mound above them. “Let’s start our hunt.”

  ***

  After nearly two weeks of battling their way through distorted landscapes following impossible geometries, Emily finally cleaves the head from a horrific bird-like creature with eight wings and three clawed tentacles, causing it to go limp in Mensacus’ grip. The wendigos clinging to its splayed limbs unlatch their jaws and fall to the ground, licking up its spilt blood and nursing the cuts and bruises marring their pale skin.

  “That makes nine,” Gaius pants, dropping the complex spell orbiting him and locking down the space around them. “When will this fifth circle beast spawn? Do we have time to recover?”

  “Not really. It should appear any second now, though I don’t know where, so we may be able to avoid it for a bit if you need time to recharge,” Emily replies, switching the attachment in her arm to the Lightning Core and drawing mana from the crystal mixture in the batteries to regenerate her reserves faster.

  “Bah, I’ll be fine. I’m not so old that I can’t keep up yet. I still have half my mana left, and I’m sure you have enough toys in that dimensional pocket of yours to do this alone if needed. Speaking of, how big have you managed to grow it so far?”

  Gaius pulls a head-sized greater space crystal covered in tiny engravings from one of his rings, holding it between both hands and activating its enchantment. The crystal begins shrinking at a visible rate, releasing a dense purple mist that he breathes in.

  “It’s up to nearly four hundred thousand cubic metres. I’m able to guide the growth a little, so I’ve prioritised width over height, and each wall’s now close to a hundred metres across,” Emily replies, sending Harriet a signal through their link to call the others back to their position.

  “Interesting. Has it been detracting from your magical growth?”

  “Not by much. As long as I’m surrounded by enough ambient mana, my absorption rate already exceeds my rate of refining, so it’s not too much trouble to divert the excess mana to the Factory instead of simply cycling and expelling it.”

  Pod, Ivor, and Silica are carried down from the canyon hanging in the sky above on a cloud of charge, but before Emily can acknowledge their presence and welcome Harriet back into her flesh, the entire trial space quivers. An oppressive presence washes over them, and Emily knows their next target is already waiting despite not being able to see a single trace of it. Her family immediately fall into formation, positioning themselves with the weaker members at the centre as their heads all swivel and their muscles tense, waiting for an attack.

  At first, they’re met with complete silence, with not even a single weak dimensional beast appearing to test their defences. Several minutes drag on without any signs of attack, but they don’t lower their guards, taking the chance to recover as much mana as possible for the coming battle. Then, with no warning, the ground before Emily parts as if cleaved by an invisible blade quickly approaching her position. She forms a stabilising array between her palms and slams her hands together, releasing a wave of spatial mana that flies out and clashes with the coming attack just as it enters the range of her spatial awareness, slowing but not stopping what she confirms to be an impossibly thin thread of spatial mana filled with the intent to cut.

  Gaius hears the impact of her hands and immediately surrounds the group in a thin film of spatial mana, attempting to sever their connection to the surrounding dimension for a fraction of a second to dodge, but the thread slices clean through his protection and slams into Emily’s innate barrier. It cuts through her magnetic field, slowing to a crawl and finally stopping after catching on the magical metal mesh sitting just below the surface in her left forearm.

  She glances down at the razor-thin line cut into her metal arm and makes a snap decision.

  “Gaius, Mensacus, we’re going after this thing alone,” she barks out, pulling the barrier disk from her belt and slotting several spatial crystals into it before tossing it up into the air. “Leave the wendigos to defend the others: that attack would have been near fatal for anyone but me despite our quick reaction.”

  Pod and Ivor both click their tongues in frustration but don’t argue, and Silica lets out a displeased whine, dipping her head and pawing at the ground, unhappy that she can’t help her mother. Emily doesn’t even glance at the fox, sending out several commands to her mechanical soldiers spread through the twisted dimension and starting the search for their target as she watches for another attack.

  She pulls a large construct from her Factory, setting the massive, mounted machine gun beside Pod and sending it a pulse of machina to activate its systems. The heavy metal base clicks and whirrs, and several jagged claws extend, plunging into the hard rock beneath their feet to anchor it in place as a belt loaded with fist-sized shells slots into the feed tray. She pulls a small spatial anchor from her belt at the same time and fuses it to the back of the receiver with a flex of metal mana.

  “Pod, prepare to fire on my command. This will probably be a mobile fight, so I’ll open portals as needed to aim.”

  “Roger that.” The young mechanic nods resolutely, sliding into the turret’s attached seat and flooding the machine with his own machina.

  “Ivor, you’re on defence with the wendigos. Make sure he doesn’t have to waste any ammo if any stragglers try to bother you. And Silica, use that acceleration spell I taught you to help boost the gun’s power.”

  Her daughter perks up immediately, standing to attention and yipping confidently.

  Without another word, Emily switches her arm’s attachment back to a mana-conductive blade, tinting it with space before cutting a hole in the fabric of the trial’s dimension and opening a portal to one of her distant troops that’s detecting spatial fluctuations. Mensacus and Gaius follow her through to a landscape of drifting miniature planets and, as the portal shuts behind them, the mechanical chimaera turns his head towards an orb of rock and sand floating in the middle of the empty sky a few hundred metres away.

  “I smell life,” he says, lowering his stance cautiously. “It’s strong: definitely the target.”

  Emily nods and takes the lead, letting Harriet draw mana to control their flight and guiding her son through the random, unseen twists in space that would send him far away as Gaius floats at her side.

  “This beast may not act in the same way as the fourth circle ones, but just in case, please prepare to lock down space the moment we make contact,” she asks the elderly spatial mage.

  “You think it will be enough?” he questions in return, weaving a complex matrix of runes despite his doubt.

  “Probably not. I’ll cast a spatial lock as well, but it will likely be able to overpower us both given time. I’ll attempt to mark it so we can follow if it flees: I have a few mechanical options that it shouldn’t notice if we’re lucky.”

  Emily’s cores immediately split between several tasks, and she switches the attachment in her metal arm to a railgun, loaded with an electromagnetic tracking chip, while wrapping the other in a spell linked to the anchor on Pod’s gun, preparing to open a portal in the palm of her hand with but a thought.

  They approach the drifting asteroid concealing their target, swerving to dodge another spatial blade, and Emily and Gaius both activate their binding spells, spreading a field of mana that forcefully stabilises the space around them. The asteroid splits in two, and a harrowing shriek hits them as tens of writhing tentacles lash out, coated in a film of distorted mana that seems to bend reality around them. They split apart, flying in different directions to divide their target’s focus, and Mensacus catches several of the deadly limbs with his own tendrils coated in malice, quickly losing the magical battle but holding them fast for as long as he can.

  “Fire!” Emily commands, raising both hands towards the immobilised tentacles and opening the purple eye-like slit in her right palm.

  The bark of heavy gunfire mixes with the dimensional beast’s screams, challenging Emily’s newly replaced earrings but not yet breaking through their defences, and a stream of bullets slams into the creature’s reinforced flesh. Amongst the heavy impacts, Emily fires her tracker, hoping the beast won’t be able to differentiate between it and the bullets as she charges her legs with lightning and draws one back for a kick, using a flex of her other ankle to dodge a striking tentacle.

  Her foot arcs forward, shooting out a crackling beam of golden plasma boosted by Harriet. But, before her blow can land, a powerful pulse of spatial mana erupts from the centre of the divided asteroid, knocking it askew and momentarily freeing the beast from their combined fields of control. The creature, still hiding its full form, folds in on itself and vanishes in a blink.

  “Hold,” she says, halting the stream of bullets from her right palm as she waits for a ping from her network of soldiers with bated breath.

  Confirmation comes a moment later, and she turns to her approaching allies with a bloodthirsty grin.

  “Marking was a success. Let’s keep up the pressure and not give this thing a moment to rest.”

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