The formless smoke writhes. It twists, it twitches, it glints in the sourceless light, tearing itself from the golden sky to rush toward us. Bone-grass fttens with its passage, and as it spasms through the rifts, we prepare ourselves.

  Unless distance is exceptionally warped, and assuming I’m making the right estimates, we have maybe a minute until it arrives. I tell Verity as much, and her response is the same damned smile as always.

  Wind swirls around me, eager to answer the call. My cws lengthen, my muscles coil; I feel scales creeping up my neck and down my chest. Another yer, should the smoke infiltrate my armor. But therein lies a question, I suppose:

  “I hate fighting things like this one,” I rumble to Verity, flexing my cws. “Sometimes they have a solid core. Sometimes they don’t. Might have to break things, might need to dissipate it.”

  “I’ve fought one or two! Tricky ones, aren’t they,” Verity chirps, swinging her mace. Once, twice, and on the third, I catch a glint of reddish light. On the fourth, she draws a wobbly circle of sparks. “Fire heats air, makes it spread out and flow upward. So if it’s intangible, I should still be fine.”

  “Why not just use Wind?” I scratch my scaled chin with a cw, but then drag my focus back to the smoke. Closer now. Are the other smoke plumes moving oddly? No. Good, but also obnoxious, because inconsistency is... annoying. Are the other plumes monsters? Maybe. Maybe not.

  This already seems oddly dangerous for a first yer monster, more comparable to what I see in the five hundred plus march range. Now is not the time for contemption, though.

  “I just—”

  Clicking, cmoring, shattering bones. The sound swells around us as the monster approaches, cutting Verity’s answer short. It could be musical, if not for the crackling, morbid undertone. My ears ring before they adjust, and a low growl builds in my chest.

  And as the smoke draws closer, rippling like stirred ink, a hint of white, right at the front. When it lurches, the white moves up, and the smoke follows.

  “You see it?” I mutter, not taking my eyes off the monster. Six hundred marches, maybe. No, I decide, narrowing my eyes and sharpening my sight. Five hundred at most. Goddess, this thing is quick. Hopefully it doesn’t turn well.

  “Mm, could be a weak point,” Verity hums. “Shield out, then. If you’re not sure you can take a hit, call it, alright?”

  Before I can ask, my question is answered. Light flickers in the corner of my eye, and I spare a heartbeat to check. A glowing shield rests in Verity’s previously free hand, ft-topped and curving down to a rather sharp-looking point at the bottom. Sun magic, from how bright the damn thing is.

  The smoke has halved the distance once more. Fifteen seconds until contact, at best.

  At any other moment, I might’ve stopped to ask about her shield. But right now, my heart is starting to drum a heavy beat. My blood pulses, my fangs lengthen, and my tail shes across the bone-grass.

  Ten seconds.

  “Got it,” I growl, rolling onto the balls of my feet. Muscles bunch and tense in my legs, flexing eagerly. The smoke closes in, the music of bones rising to an agonizing roar.

  Five seconds, and it is not slowing down. I leap away, Verity hops in the other direction—

  The smoke blurs past us, and the wind in its wake is nearly enough to make me stumble. The rhythmic clop-clop of galloping hooves rises through the endless noise, a herd of hooves in concert as the monster’s tail end finally blows past us.

  Verity’s grin finally fades, and she hefts her mace. The air ripples in its wake, radiating outward, and the lingering trails of smoke vanish around her. I do much the same with a flicker of Wind.

  The cmour of bones rises and falls, and as we watch, the monster begins to turn. It’s a slow, nguid motion by comparison, marches measured in seconds rather than heartbeats. I exchange a gnce with Verity— she nods. That’s our in. Bait, dodge, strike, like so many other monsters in Delves.

  Prepare, as always, for surprises.

  And then the monster is upon us once more, a foggy, serpentine mass devouring the distance, tossing a rippling mane of shadow. Thirty marches long, possibly, lurching and bobbing in strange, arrhythmic motions. I trace its path, call on the Wind, and watch as it gets closer, closer, bare marches away, so loud I can barely hear my heartbeat—

  Wind thrums, and I leap once more from its path, this time keeping closer to the fringes of its smoky body. My Wind still swirls around my cws, catching the smoke in eddies while the structure forms in my mind. I swing my tail around to bring my descent even closer to its body, dropping down with a thud. The ground shakes and crackles, the roaring wind and smoke sting my eyes.

  I twist, turning back towards the monster as it barrels past me, march upon march of smoke. The structure I’d imposed finally solidifies, and I unleash it with an open-palmed upward thrust. It catches the air, tangles the smoke, and yanks it upward, following the motion of my palm before dissipating into the golden sky. Hardly enough to harm— no, it doesn’t even react— but enough to rip away the smoke to reveal what lies beneath.

  Yellowed, cracked bone, twisted and bent. Spines, woven into macabre rope, rippling with countless and mismatched cloven legs that don’t always point toward the ground. I hear a muffled thump and crack from the other side, and see a fsh of light through the trailing smoke.

  Before I can process this, the tail end arrives, whipping toward me with a shriek of breaking bones and popped joints. I barely have time to dodge, pushing away from the densest parts of its smoke. Still, I can hear the whistling sound as something in that smoke passes within a handsbreadth of my face, and the acrid smoke that follows has me blinking and cursing.

  And then it’s passed, and I take a moment to breathe as the monster gallops off into the distance. Verity appears again, with a strange bck stain marking the center of her shield. It sizzles as I watch, though the sound is barely audible over the constant ctter of grass and pounding hooves.

  “It’s in the bones!” Verity shouts, shaking her shield. The stain bubbles, crackles, and sloughs off in a series of wet thuds. A blood analogue, maybe? Mm. Something seems off.

  Dragging my tail through the brittle grasses, I watch as the monster begins to turn once more. It’s slower than before, curving around much closer to us and hooking behind Verity. My instincts buzz, tugging at my focus. Strangely, though, the onrushing monster isn’t the source.

  No, it’s something else.

  A motion in the corner of my vision. A bck and white blur lurching toward Verity’s foot, a shape that the scaled, cwed core of my mind decres a threat.

  My hands are on it before I can even think properly. My fist is driving into a mass of cracked, dried tar, my cws twist a misshapen neck; Verity’s boot crunches into the still twitching remains. Her metal boot comes away coated in...

  Bck, sizzling sludge. It vanishes in a flicker of reddish Fire-light and a puff of smoke.

  And then, we dodge, and the monster blurs past once more. Slower, now; the hoofbeats are less frantic, the wind less brutal. It’ll be easy for me to lunge after and strike at the rear, perhaps ripping off a chunk to slow the damned thing further.

  But I don’t. I growl, drawing myself up to my full height, and vent my thoughts through my tail. Doesn’t take much to connect the stars into a useful shape, from bone to sludge to monster and back to sludge again. It’s not a shape I like much at all.

  Is there a benefit to splitting duties? Verity cleaning up, I tear the damned thing apart? No, one of us needs to bait so the other can nd consistent hits. But then we’ll need that clean up for these sludge-monsters, and... bah. Cycles of breaking the sides and cleanup would be the safest option. I watch as it curves around, sharper this time thanks to its slowed pace. It turns right back toward us, whitish bone showing at the very front of the smoky mass.

  Another option presents itself, though. Wind and Lighting pour outward, moulded by my will and flowing into my body. Muscles tense and stretch, scales thicken; my heart pounds ever louder. Intoxicating excitement builds in my chest.

  “Ready?” I raise my voice, letting a growl from underneath emphasize the word. Our prey draws close once more, thundering toward us in a cacophony of shattering bone and fttened grasses. “I’ll slow it down.”

  “Oh, I like this pn,” Verity shouts, a flicker of a smile crossing her face. She lifts her shield and nods. “Go ahead.”

  It’s closer, now. Verity moves to the side, shield up, mace low.

  I stand still, one side presented to our prey, arms raised halfway. My tail scrapes through the grasses, fttening it in rhythmic arcs.

  Thump thump, thump thump. Louder and louder, until the ground shakes with countless hoofbeats. Until I can count the individual dents and warps on each glimpse of bone, until I can see the yers of smoke that make up my prey's intangible hide. My knees bend, one foot shifts to the side to make my inevitable dodge shorter. Lightning crackles and sputters between my cws.

  THUMP THUMP—

  Lean, step, swing tail out to bance. Front foot back, Wind to the leg to brace.

  The prey’s front arrives where I was, two heartbeats ago, and the smoke burns my nostrils. My lips curl back into a sharp-toothed smile.

  With a roar, I pivot my body, swinging my weight and stretching every muscle until a scaled fist sms into hard bone. A deafening cp of shorn air follows, accompanied by groaning bones and the comfortable buzzing of Lightning. I can feel my heart and growl thrum in my chest, pulsing heat and excitement throughout my body. The air heats and sears, smoke vanishes beneath violet light, and the very stone beyond the prey’s now-revealed skull begins to crack and crumble. Three horse skulls bound together, all missing their lower jaws; one rge one on top, with two smaller ones on bottom serving as a split jaw. Woven spines cling directly to the back of the skulls, vanishing back into the smoke further down.

  Hardly the strangest thing I’ve seen, but it’s up there. Fortunately, my fist just shattered the empty eye-socket of the rge head, sending cracks down its snout and arcs of Lightning down its entwined spines. And, as the monster’s front half staggers, the back catches up with enough force for the whole thing to go tumbling. I’m forced to leap away from the filing, smoky mass of hooves and skulls, dodging the puddles of bck tar that follow in its wake.

  Were that all that happened, I’d still call this a success.

  But then, Verity lunges in, a blur of yellow and silver that dances between the hooves before smming into the monster’s still-exposed spine. Our prey's body groans, and the blur resolves itself into Verity smming the edge of her shield into the exposed bone. Vertebrae splinter and crack, charring on contact; tar bleeds from the opened wound, only to sizzle and burn away in a plume of sickly yellow-bck smoke.

  She swings her mace around, batting aside a few twisted hooves with flickers of reddish light. I’d run to catch up, but the sludge around me is already rising through the bone white grasses, muzzles and maws and teeth taking shape.

  And, just as the smoke-monster begins to recover, Verity rolls away, raising and lowering her shield to block every filing hoof-strike. Fire trails through the air in arcs, searing each tarred wound and setting the ground alight. She pivots, crashing her shield directly into a forming tar-monster, and then my focus has to tear away from her.

  The smoke-monster scrabbles to its hooves, galloping off and leaving us with its strange spawn. Prey, fleeing as it should. Something deep within rumbles contentedly.

  But... this isn’t right, my conscious mind adds. The thought clings to my mind insistently as I grasp a tar-monster’s neck and crush it between my cws. This monster is far too durable for the first yer, but it’s obviously from this yer. How had the original Mage or Delver addressed this? I imagine Winston would’ve mentioned it, if the Delve was so dangerous before.

  More monsters, more prey rise from the tar. Wolflike beasts, the lot of them; no rger than dogs, with skin of dried, swiftly-cracking tar. Experimentally, I bat one away with my tail— it stumbles away with a wet thud, dented but not reshaping after my tail lifts away. Bck sludge slides from my scales, finding no purchase.

  Switching to a more efficient method, I kick the next one away without even a whisper of Wind. My armored forearm blocks a leaping strike, my other hand snaps up and delivers a quick punch to its head. In the corner of my eye, I see another, and another, and...

  Beyond that, the smoke-monster is turning once more. The prey returns! Verity is nearby, and seems to be doing well. I catch her using the bottom point of her shield to bisect one monster while crimson and orange fire devours several more behind her.

  Flicking sizzling tar off my scaled cws, I toss away the monster on my arm. I tug on my magic, on my Wind, drawing it out and binding it tightly to my hands, and get to work. Punch, kick, block, leap with tail as counterweight, tar bubbling on my scales—

  A crunch from behind me. Verity, shield as much a weapon as her mace, wading into the mess we’ve made and carving arcs with Fire and brute force. I stomp through one monster’s skull as it makes a dive for my legs, snarling at the wet series of cracks that follows. There’s something offering resistance at the center of its head, something more solid than mere sludgy tar. I’m just thankful none of these things seem to be getting back up.

  The sound of pounding hooves rises once more. Rattling bone-grass forms a wall of noise, the ground shakes underfoot, and beneath it all, my own heavy breaths matched to Verity’s. The monsters are dead—

  “Just in time for another round,” Verity states, striding past me. Her armor is caked in bck tar, but it sizzles off in bursts of reddish light. Embers stir in her wake, matching the slow-burning fires scattered about the field. “It’s slower than before, isn’t it? Good work. So, your pn?”

  “Thanks,” I growl, slowly putting words together, shing my tail through the brittle grasses. The tremors swell. “Could break the sskull down over a few hitss. Or.”

  “Or what?”

  “It hit the ground and sstayed there when I knocked it over,” I say quickly, weighing my options. My hiss is bleeding in over a sharpened tongue, let loose by a blend of excitement and magic use. Bothersome for communicating, but now isn't the time to try and fix that. “We try that on the cliffssside, hit it even harder. Make it drop.”

  She shakes her head, brow furrowed, but her eyes never stray from the monster’s form. Closer, closer, seconds away— “Not sure. Dodge, then.”

  Mm.

  And the monster barrels toward us, devouring the distance as it picks up speed, lurching and twitching but never swaying from its course. Still, we hold our position to the st moment, side by side, until I can feel the air itself vibrating. Our prey runs back into my cws, and I can feel my lips curling.

  One foot slides back, my tail swings out to aid a speedy pivot, and then I jump back using that same back leg.

  Hooves sh out from the smoke, and a burst of Wind is barely enough to avoid getting hit with the brunt of it. One clips the padded armor on my chest, dragging a snarl from my lips and almost certainly leaving a bruise. I can hear the thud-thud-thud of bone cttering against shield opposite the monster. The wet spts and cracks of tar dripping over the grass follows.

  The monster passes, turning sharply, and the handful of forming monsters are all that separates us now. Five, no, six of them, a seventh already colpsing with a hoof-print in its chest. Verity sms her shield into one, her mace into another.

  Wind aids my stride and strikes, a string of rapid blows to shred two monsters, an uppercut to rip the head off a third. As one leaps, I lean to the side and catch it by the sludgy leg. My back muscles flex, my shoulders tense, and I whip the monster from whence it came. Verity catches it midair against the edge of her shield, splitting it apart with Fire and force alike.

  A handful of breaths to collect ourselves, a glint in Verity’s eyes I can’t quite understand. Her eyes glow against the deep blue of her sclera, and the feathers on her face have crept down her neck. It’s hard to look away from, really.

  “It did drop, but I kept it there. I’m not sure that’ll work, given it flies over gaps,” Verity says, rolling her neck and drawing herself up to standing.

  “I think it’ss worth trying,” I hiss back, flicking my tail toward the closer edges of the chasm. Goddess, now is not the time to bicker, but Verity is a padin. Surely she’s wiser than that. “It’ll be a few hitss, not one.”

  “Let me do it.” Her eyes burn, brighter than ever before. “I’m more heavily armored.”

  Will and curiosity override the base, scaled urge to tear this prey apart myself. Nothing to do but nod, and trust that the padin has some tricks up her gauntlets.

  We move for the edge of the chasm. The smattering of tar-monsters offer little resistance, crushed beneath Verity’s armaments or torn apart by me. We’re fast enough to make it before our prey does, slowed as it is by our assaults, and we exchange gnces once more.

  The chasm spreads out before us, a jagged maw of greyish stone, shot through with bleeding veins of bck smoke. It stretches beyond sight, down into nothingness, a raw wound that will never heal.

  “Ready?” She murmurs, the sound nearly drowned by the hoofbeats. “You’ll need to follow up.”

  Lightning crackles between my cws, drawn to the fore. Wind curls around me, bound to coiling muscles. The air smells of storms and woodsmoke, acrid but pleasing. One hit, a risk of sorts, but one with significant benefits. Worst case, we back up and restrategize.

  The monster is close once more. The st time, if I have my way. A hundred marches, seventy, fifty.

  “Ready,” I decre, my mouth splitting into a broad, toothy smile. I can even feel my lips stretching out, baring more teeth to the sunless, golden sky. This has been a good fight.

  Verity nods... and lowers her shield.

  Twenty marches. What is this woman’s pn? I see Fire swirling around the head of her mace, but that doesn’t tell me much.

  Ten marches. I leap out of the way, as I have before. Her legs bend, but she doesn’t jump.

  Five marches. She’s cutting it close.

  One—

  She jumps. No, she soars. Whitish light and sparks trace her path up, and the monster barrels by beneath her. Her hair and feathers flutter in the wind, and I catch a glimpse of a grin. Red light gathers at the tip of her mace, Fire thick enough I can feel it from here.

  Half of the monster is galloping over the chasm; not much time left for me to strike.

  And then a burning, searing sphere of fire erupts from her weapon, twice as wide as the monster itself. It crashes down into the monster, a wave of heat, light, and force accompanied by a symphony of shattering bones and sizzling tar. The monster bends, dipping into the chasm. What remains on solid ground scrabbles, cracking and bending as the legs try to stall the massive force of the monster.

  I pounce, leaping in, weaving through hooves and smming four crackling blows into the monster’s side. Wind and Lightning, bsting the back off its hooves, twisting the bound spines till they start to crack. A leg crumbles between my cws, another fractures. A hoof hits me squarely in the chest, forcing me a step back, but I break that one, too. Prey may struggle, prey may fight, but it will lose.

  With each hit, more and more of the monster slides into the abyss. Tar squirms around me, writhing and snapping with half-formed maws. I push through it, pushing forward against the struggling hooves and breaking everything I can come across.

  And, finally...

  The monster’s ruined back half slides off the cliff. It makes no sounds of pain, no roars or snarls; all I hear is the sounds of bones breaking, echoing off the chasm as the monster bounces off each ledge and outcropping.

  Verity drops to the ground a moment ter, knees bent, mace glowing cherry-red.

  There’s monsters to worry about, sure, more than I care to count, and they demand my full attention. Of course, Verity decides to wink at me in these conditions, and I can’t help but chuckle in response.

  “How’d I do?” She shouts, scything through the monsters spawned by our final assault with a mix of mace swings and shield-bashing. One even sails into the chasm, sent flying by a burst of whitish light that erupts from her mace. Her smile is, unsurprisingly, too bright for the current situation.

  Mine might be, too. There is visceral, inimitable satisfaction in breaking monsters between my cws.

  “Fireballs, Verity? Really?” I bark out a ugh, swirling surprise and jilted pragmatism into amusement. “Excessive, but it worked. But we've still got work to do.”

  And, the quiet knot of dread in my gut murmurs, we don’t know what awaits us. This prey— this monster was too much for this yer, for something so shallow. I could’ve taken it alone, but a regur Mage? Even a Delver, one greener than I? Dead, in short order.

  What in Adamantine’s name is wrong with this Delve?

  Origami_Narwhal